HAPPY NEW YEAR! A happy and HEALTHY one to you and yours! Here is a lil something I put together that was inspired by T.Holtz' Rosette Maker. I'll try to do a vid on how I did it without the rosette maker. Laurie will post tomorrow about a challenge we're going to have, but today I'm posting about our swap! This should be a fun one! Here are the rules:
1. Let Laurie know by this Sunday, January 9th. if you want to participate. We will stop at 10 participants.
2. Each participant will make three standard size "all ocassion" cards per participant. Any ocassion you choose. All three the same.. all 3 different ocassion..either way. Remember you could be responsible for making up to 30 cards.
3. The finished swaps are due to Laurie by
January 26th. This will give us time to
put all the mailing together and get them in the mail by that following weekend and to everybody hopefully by February 1.
4. You MUST have fun! :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR

Merry Christmas to all of you! Laurie and I thank you so very much for being part of our blog family this past year, its been a blast! We look forward to seeing all of you after the new year and we look forward to meeting new friends in 2011. We will start the new year off with a swap and a challenge..so make sure your here for all the fun!

WINTER FUN

Here is a layout that Laurie and I had seen in a magazine. We decided to scraplift it and we liked the outcome. We did it a while ago and I'm embarrassed to say that I don't remember too many deets about this page. Laurie may remember more? I do see that I used self stick ribbon and mine seems to be un-sticking on the right.. lol. Anyway, here's a page maybe you can take some inspiration from to use for all your winter fun pics!

HOLIDAY HAPPENINGS - WEEK 2 - DAY 2

Good afternoon all. Sorry for the late post. We have been busy working and shopping and working and shopping and cleaning and decorating and working and shopping. You get it!! LOL. On Friday night I had the girls over for a Christmas dinner, Kel, Dawn and Susan. I wanted to make place card for the ladies and this what I came up with. I then realized I could use them as a gift card holders as well, so I made some for my nieces.


This is the place card/gift holder. You can't even tell anything is inside (I made this one for my niece Brianna)

Sneak peek of what's inside.

I cut the card holder from Tags, Bags, Boxes and More. Image #31 (sorry I don't know the page number, I re-numbered my pages so I knew exactly where the images are on the overlay). I cut at 10 inches.

I then cut my patterned paper from My Mind's Eye, I Believe stack. This also has a matching ribbon that put across both the patterned paper. The little ticket is also part of the My Mind's Eye collection. The letter is cute from Plantin School Cartridge, and shadowed. I cute at 1 3/4". I have to say I am quite pleased with how it came out.

The one I made for Kel, Dawn and Susan had a Christmas tree inside with Thank you stamped on it.

MY CHRISTMAS CARD by Kel

This is my card for this year.. Pardon the lighting. I didn't check pic before I sent all my cards out..so this is all I got, oops. Anyway, this idea is from the 2010-11 SU catalog on page 37. The stamp set it called Welcome Christmas. I put a bit of my own personal touch to it too, Laurie helped as well. I also added these great ornament brads to it from the

Eyelet Outlet & Brads - Scrapbooking Brads, Scrapbook Eyelets They sent me and Laurie a bunch of fun brads, ribbon and eyelets to put on our projects and show you gals. They also gave us some to give away to our fantastic followers.. We will be having a challenge after the holiday to win some of these awesome prizes! Their selection is great, the quaility is great. I've used a lot of their products over time and have been pleased!

AND THE WINNER IS.......................

Good evening followers,

Kel and I got together this tonight and we put all the names in a hat. We wanted to thank all of those that entered the challenge, you all did an great job!! We do appreciate.

The name we picked was.......Kate!! Congrats Kate, awesome card!!

Have a wonderful weekend!!!

OK HERE IS #3 CHALLENGE FOR TODAY, Scroll down for 1 and 2

Kate from

Small Bits of Paper sent us this GREAT card for the challenge. Kate says: "I designed the window using George and Basic Shapes and Destinations. I cut the window three times. Between the bottom two layers, I placed piece of transparency which I embossed with a snowflake folder. The wreath is from Joys of the Season.Have a great weekend!"

Challenge #1 by Marijo..Scroll for #2

Marijo says "Here is my entry for your Christmas challenge. On the card, I used Cricut Very Merry Tags cartridge. On the blocks, I used 1"x1" wood blocks, glued some paper to them and used Creative Memories letter stickers. This is the first time I have submitted to one of your challenges"

I love these blocks they are so cute. What a clever idea!!

This card is just perfect. I love the Merry Christmas paper!

Thanks so much Marijo for your submission, great job!!

AND HERE IS SECOND CHALLENGE

Here's one from Rhonda . I LOVE this angelic tag! Blogger is being a PIP... Sorry for the freaky format for today posts..lol

HOLIDAY HAPPENINGS WEEK 2 - Day 4

Good Thursday morning (doing the Thursday dance as this means Friday is soooo close). Kel and I have been so inspired by Tim Holtz' 12 tags of Christmas, http://www.timholtz.typepad.com/ we decided to give a go. We cut the tag at 4" from Tags, Bags, Boxes, and More Cartridge. Ran it through the Cuttlebug using a Tim Holtz Alternation folder. I bought Perfect Pearls from Ranger at Michael's and we used those to give it the vintage look. The stamp of the reindeer is from My Minds Eye, stamped with Quick Quotz ink. The 25 is Grungeboard from Tim Holtz (are you seeing a pattern here?). We do love us some Tim Holtz!!!




Here is a close up of the pretty pink poinsettia's that I had in my stash. I got them from Dawn last year for Christmas. They look perfect on this tag.





This is the folder we used for the background on I love the Music Sheet. Perhaps we have a problem here. We are NOT stalkers!
















This is what the Perfect pearls look like. It comes with a glue pad and Kel just put the glue all over the tag and we just started painted on the different colors.

JEANS CRAFTY CHALLENGE ENTRY

Here's Jeans entry for the challenge. She says :
I started out with a plain blue sheet of paper as the background. I used the Christmas Solutions cart to cut the Santa and the moon. I then printed out the sheet music to the song Up on the Rooftop and used Tim Holtz Antique Linen Distress Ink to make it look aged. I used some gold foil paper from a paper stack called winterberry to matt the picture of Kaylee with Santa. To finish it off, I took a yellow glitter pen and hand drew some stars around the page. Please check out some of her other super creations at

Jean's Crafty Corner

ANOTHER CHALLENGE ENTRY!

Here is a challenge entry by Sharon C. These are great Sharon, thanks for joining the challenge!

Please visit Sharon at .in the big blue house She's very talented!

JANETS XMAS CHALLENGE ENTRY

Janet, great card! She says: "I have only stamped and colored one card before this one and was not really happy with the results. I've avoided stamping and coloring since. I have had this Santa stamp for a couple years now and wanted to use it but was reluctant to try, I finally got up enough nerve and did it, the results aren't too bad. Let me know what you think!"Check out Janets blog at: LadyLuvBug: Santa Christmas card

QUICK Vid on doing a Xmas card using Photoelf

Lau and I did this a while ago and I meant to get it up on here..Enjoy! If you need clearer directions.. let us know! Head on over to Photoelf and check out the program

SNEEK PEEK! GET YOUR CHALLENGE IN!

SHHHHH, don't tell, but here is a peek into part of the xmas prize challenge...It's 1/3 of the prize.. if you know what it is...don't tell. Hurry..one week to get your layout, tag or card in!

CARRI'S CHALLENGE

Carri's submitted this cute xmas tree card into our challenge as well as a few other challenges. Please check her site for more deets! Good luck Carri!

Snowflakes Cuttlebug embossing folder
Tree from Create A Critter
Snow from Deco Art
I hand stamped the little snowflakes on the tree and used glitter embossing power

HOLIDAY HAPPENINGS - DAY 5

Day 5 that only means one thing, FRIDAY!! Woohoo!! I have to say I am a bit behind with Christmas this year. I still need to buy my tree, my kids keep asking when are we going to get it. Even the 15 year old is asking. I say, please boys I am busy scrapping pictures of last years tree!! I have had this string of lights for a long time and have been dying to use them. I finally did! Not too much going on on the page, but I do love it. I didn't even need to do a title, the patterned paper says it all!!






Here is a close up of the string of lights.











This is all of decorating the tree, even the 15 year old, well he was 14 then.

















These adorable presents were cut from Doodle charms.

Ok, I guess I better get going and buy that tree, pushy fellas I got!! LOL!! Have a great weekend!

HOLIDAY HAPPENINGS - Day 4

Here are two more layouts from our BFF Dawn (she is a good sharer isn't she). When we get famous she will be the first on our design team, lol! Dawn says "Jingle All the Way uses non-traditional colors for a Christmas LO, plus, I actually broke out the little craft sewing machine and stitched on the LO! (Many bad words were said!)

To Be A Child is probably one of my fave LOs. I used the picture in my holiday cards that same year. All the digital elements were added to the picture in Photoshop Elements 8 prior to printing it out. The "stitching" on the circles are rub ons. "


I love both layouts. She did an awesome job on both! Thanks Dawn for sharing!!!

I won a mini!!

I am so excited that I won one of Rhonda's mini albums. If you haven't check out her blog you have to! She has such fun projects and AWESOME mini albums that she gives away. Please check out Rhonda @ SCRAP HAPPENS
Rhonda was also kind enough to give Kel and I an award. Thanks so much for thinking of us Rhonda, it really means a lot. Check out the award on the sidebar. Kel and I will post the eight things about us and the eight blogs we will pass it along to very soon.

Thanks again Rhonda for EVERYTHING!!

HOLIDAY HAPPENINGS, Day 3

Here is a great card and layout done by Dawn. As you can see, she used the same pic for both the card and the layout..great idea! Dawn used PhotoElements 8 to add the swirls to the picture before printing. The papers are from Minds Eye! Loving these Dawn!