Sunday, January 31, 2010

How will you express...

Your Love this Valentines day? Will you be making your own cards or other craft to share with the ones you love? Today I was sitting around with my gypsy in hand just foolin around. Didn't have a project in mind or anything but as it turned out I came up with a pretty cute yet simple card I will give to either my husband or one of my kiddos for Valentines day.

For this project I tool the word love from Walk in My Garden and the heart from Accent Essentials and welded them together. I embossed the welded pieve with a sizzix A2 folder and filled the little dots with scribbles very berry red 3d paint. Here you can see the finished project.

And as always thank you for stopping by. Feel free to comment or become a follower you know how us bloggers love our comments.

Happy Crafting :)

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Post It Note Cover

Anyone who knows me knows I use Post it notes for everything. At work I have them stuck all around my desk. I work in such a fast paced environment and sometimes I do stuff I have to go back and recheck one to 2 days later so I post a sticky to ensure I remember to go back to check.  Not to mention when you work in an office Post Its make wonderful little gifts to make a persons day. I came across this cute blog that had post it note covers
http://crayola58a.blogspot.com/2009/12/tutorialsweet-little-gift.html

And I had to give it a shot. I used DCWV Pocket full of Posies paper and  here is what I came up with.




Thank you for stopping by. And please swing by Carole's Blog to see what other great tutorials she has you definitely won't be disappointed.


Some cards I made

Here are a few cards I made to go in the note card purse I posted yesterday.

I wanted to do cards to match the purse and think I matched up pretty well. I plan to make at least 2 more cards to go in the purse.

I used cardstock from the American Traditions Paper pack I picked up from Tueday Morning for $7 for 48 sheets. It has some great colors and the quality is wonderful. I used a Martha Stewart punch for the border and Cricut with SCAL with Josh's font for the words on the Smile card and the Hi cards. I used a Happy Birthday stamp with gold ink from who knows where for the Birthday card.

Thanks for looking



Saturday, January 23, 2010

I made a purse and you can too

I am excited for a couple of reasons. The first one is I ordered a cartridge off of the cricut rewards site using my reward points. This means it was free. I didn't even pay for shipping. I was expecting it to take forever to get to me but alas it arrived in just 5 days. I ordered it on the 17th and it arrived on my doorstep on the 22nd. Talk about super quick.

For the longest time I have been seeing these super cute paper purses and wondering how in the heck do people make then. I have mentioned before I don't get a whole lot of time to scrap so a lot of times I will go for projects that are quick and painless. So I kept shying away from the cute little purse as it looked way too difficult. Little did I know that once the Accent Essential cartridge I ordered off the cricut rewards site arrived I would have a nice simple way to make that cute little purse.

Big thank you to Miss Mona from http://cupcakescreations.blogspot.com/2009/03/polk-dot-purse-tutorial-and-video.html for her wonderful detailed video describing every detail of this project. I was truly blown away by how much time and energy she put into ensuring we all can make this cute purse. So again Thank you Miss Mona you definitely inspired me!!

Here is my finished purse. And now I just have to fight my daughter for it apparently she thinks it was made for her funny little girl that she is.




Thank you for checking it out and please feel free to leave a comment or become a follower :)

Monday, January 18, 2010

Who doesn't like a chance to win free stuff???

If you are like me a lot of you are lured to a blog with the offer of blog candy. I have a little something up my sleeve for next month but in the meantime please check up this blog where you can enter to have a chance to win some really cool scrap goodies. We are talking stamps and cuttlebug dies and cricut markers. How cool is that. Please take a couple minutes to go check it out. It is pretty simple to be entered to win. All you have to do is become a follower, post a comment and spread the word. Pretty easy right? So what are you waiting for?



Oh thats right you need the link.  http://scrapathomemomoasis.blogspot.com/2010/01/30th-birthday-blog-candy.html#comment-form

Get on over there and do me a favor and make sure you wish Melissa a very happy 30th Birthday.

Have a great day all.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Its amazing the things you can do when you put your creativity to work

So my son had a science fair project that had to be done. Unfortunately the project he originally came home with was a little too difficult for him. We called his teacher to discuss the project and were told that he was not limited to that project he could do his project on anything he chose. So off to do research as we were beginning to run out of time as we had already spent a good part of time attempting the other one.

I talked to some people at work and the idea was thrown out there to compare temperatures of popcorn. Sounded like a pretty cool project so we rolled with it. We froze a bag or microwave popcorn. stored one in a cabinet, and stored one in the fridge. The idea was to see which one popped the most kernels.

It was a fun project and Joshua enjoyed sampling the popcorn.

Here is a picture of our finished science fair board.



Here is hoping he gets a good grade. I had fun because I got to play with my cricut. Now granted the only things using the cricut were the title and his name but Hey anytime mom gets to play with her toys she is happy lol.  And Joshua was happy because he got to eat popcorn and glue popcorn on his poster board. I will post an update to let you know what the teacher thought.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Trying something New

Several years ago I was one of those people that made siggys for other people on message boards. Never really looked at as a form of scrapbooking but it is kind of cool giving it a name. Anyway here recently one of the boards I frequent http://www.cookinupcreations.com/ began a Digital Creative Design Team. I didn't try out because well as much as I love to scrapbook I know my limitations I want to scrap because I like it not because I am committed to doing it. Who knows maybe I have commitment phobia or something. No really I just have no time.

So anyway I started searching for digital scrapbooking kits and found a few I thought I could have fun with. I downloaded some stuff and opened PSP8 which I have had for several years. I stared at it for hours over the course of a good week or 2 and I would start a page and my computer would freeze. So I would have to start all over again. I was lost in the sauce couldn't remember the basics that I knew so well so long ago. Call it age or Mommy brain or whatever it was just hard for me.

Then last night as the ideas started rolling around in my head I opened it up and went to work. Finally able to accomplish not one but 2 layouts. I was excited. I didn't forget everything after all it was just smushed in the back of my brain needing a nudge to pull it out.

I am not going to give up paper layouts because one of my favorite things about scrapbooking is collecting the tools, embellishments and the feel of the paper but I definitely will be making time to do digi layouts as well.



Here are the 2 layouts I completed last night. Please feel free to leave me comments and sign to follow me. I appreciate you stopping by and checking out my work!!!

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Through the Years

Here is a Layout that I did to capture Angelina's growth through the years. There are a couple of baby pictures and a couple of School age pictures. Being a Mother is so amazing. It is such a wonderful thing to watch as your children grow. I really enjoyed making this layout as I looked back through the years with my baby girl.


Christmas Layout

I was super excited when while visiting my Mother In Law I was able to stake claim to some older pictures. My Alex was born right around the beginning era of the digital camera. Well unfortunately for us we were one of the early owners of a digital camera. Not being near as computer savvy as we are now that meant a lot of pictures lost when a computer crash happens. We lost over 15 months of our middle child's pictures minus anything that was taken by other people on the good ol fashioned 35mm camera. My Mother in law was one of those people. I was able to get Alex's first Christmas pictures and his 2nd Easter. So what did I immediately do? Scrap planning of course.

Here is a page I did for his first Christmas.

I used SCAL and the Cricut to cut out the letters for the Merry Christmas title however that was the only thing that I used the Cricut for. I used Chipboard letters for the 2000 and DCWV Christmas paper.


The Christmas tree was cut from another sheet of DCWV. This was a quick page put together with the help of Dear ol Mom in law. I told my husband I want to get her a Cricut Create for Mothers Day. So we will see if that works out.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

My Space

Here is where I do my crafting. I just finished reorganizing everything. Now to come up with some fun new projects.


Here is a cutting table my Mother in Law got me when I thought I wanted to Sew. I am sure she is thrilled to know I came up with another idea for it and it was definitely a well thought out gift.


I wish the lighting would have been better for this photo but I think you can get a pretty good idea of the space I have to work with. My husband built me 2 8 foot by 2 foot table that form an L shape in the room. We then tacked a curtain to the front of each of the table. This makes a great hiding spot for all the scrappy related things that make a scrap space messy. My husband also made me a really cool paper divider shelf which he attached to the underside of the desk so that my paper is easily accessible.


Last but not least here is the Antique Sewing table with an Antique Sewing Machine. I have been told this machine works but have not actually tried it. I have it more for looks than anything else. The table has been in my husband's family for quite some time and eventually I would like to finish it and find the Singer machine that actually works with the table.


Saturday, January 2, 2010

A Picture frame with a twist

Here we have a cute little name frame.

This plain wooden frame cost $1 at Michaels and when I was finished it made such a cute little decoration for my niece's bedroom. I picked up several of these little frames several months ago because I knew one day I would come up with a perfect project. Little did I know it would be during the holiday when I was working so hard to come up with a completely homemade Christmas that a wonderful woman over at the Cookin' Up Creations website posted this as one of the many countdown to Christmas challenges. It was a fun project and the little girl loved it as did her Mama.

Glass Etching

Here are a few of the things I made for some of our family.


here is an etched candle holder I made for my Sister in Law. Her last name begins with a H and she loves candles. She got 2 of these with the letter H etched as well as vanilla scented candles. She was completely thrilled. And they were so simple to make. All I did was use my gypsy to creat the letter H in the Gypsy font which was already installed on the gypsy. I then cut that H at 2 inches on white contact paper so much cheaper than vinyl. I used the negative from the H and used Armour Etch cream. Waited about 5 minutes rinsed the etch cream off and Voila a beautiful custom candle holder in a matter of minutes.

I did custom beer mugs for several family members as well. With these I did fill a celephane bag with M&Ms so that the mugs were not given empty but that was just something I wanted to do. I used fun fonts, contact paper, etch cream and my cricut.  All the glass I used was bought at the Dollar tree for a dollar a piece. Can't beat a cheap but creative gift. Here you can see one of the cool etched mugs




Friday, January 1, 2010

Happy New Years

So not only has another year passed but a new decade as well and here we go ready for new ones to begin.

2009 was not a bad year for the Browning family. I earned a promotion and returned from a 15 month deployment to Afghanistan and was able to spend some much treasured time with my family.

My children began another year of school thankfully staying at the same one as last year. We saw some friends move on and made a few new ones. Had the oppertunity to welcome a good friend home from Iraq, And unfortunately had to watch several other friends make their departure over to the foreign lands between Iraq and Afghanistan.

2008 brought me to facebook but 2009 gave me a chance to reunite with several friends from long ago.

2009 brought me to scrapbooking where I have created 24 layouts and altered several things. Scrapbooking gave me the opportunity to do a completely homemade Christmas for our loved ones. It was pretty amazing to watch people open their gifts and wonder how it was possible to do the things that were done.

2009 brought me to cookinupcreations.com where I have virtually met so many amazing crafters and have met the owners when we have gotten together to do a little scrapping or shopping.

I begin the new decade ready to embrace the challenges that lie ahead of me, ready to roll with the punches and woke up this morning knowing that I am completely blessed with a family who loves me, good friends, good health, and a guaranteed paycheck. I begin the new year being thankful that I have so many blessings to count. May we all be so lucky.

Happy New Year