'Tis the Season for Homemade Mini's

I love making homemade keepsakes, especially for the Holidays. I like to look back each Christmas to see what old traditions we still celebrate or to see the new memories we created. Sometimes I don't keep my own handmade treasure, rather I pass them along as special gifts to someone I love. I shared this mini album with my customers using a combination of Artbooking album pages with the newest Cricut City Sidewalks collection.

Did you see all the fun shapes from the cartridge along with some of the City Sidewalks Complements? They all played together very well in this mini album!

Don't forget that these collection will retire at the end of the month!

Haunted Escape in a Volkswagon!

Here is a fun Halloween card idea for you! I used one of the Pop-up cards on the Artfully Sent cartridge to create this card. Instead of using the Volkswagon bug on the inside of the card, I cut it out to create a Haunted scene on the front of the card. I stamped and colored the little characters and added a spring under the skull to make him more animated!

I love making Halloween cards fun and whimsical, it makes me think back to when I was a little girl! Go ahead, be silly with your cards and scrapbook pages this Halloween!

Tall and Happy

So I had a few pieces of cardstock and papers left over from a recent card exchange. A tall template design that I featured the Typewriter SOTM, Typed Note. Not to let these pieces or card bases go to waste I created a few cards with the Operation Smile stamp set, Happy Everything. (back cover of the Annual Expressions 2 book) It is a great stamp set that offers ideas for so many occasions and fun events. Plus, a portion of proceeds goes to Operation Smiles. Take a look at what I created!

You can learn more about Operation Smile through this great story on the Make it from your Heart Blog.

Cookies and Cards Mini Album

Today I am sharing the special surprise project I created for my Card & Cookie exchange! I have also been invited to be a guest designer at Heart 2 Heart Challenges Blog this week. Their challenge was to create a project using the Sparkle & Shine color combination. I took the challenge literally and used the papers, but you will see that I have incorporated a few other colors too!

Every year I hold card exchanges, but always do a Christmas themed swap at the end of the year. Each time I save all the cards and usually just store them in a ziplock bag. This year I decided to display them in a mini album made from the Artbooking cartridge. The keys to create this album include the pages and various little pockets. This was perfect to store each card and the recipe from the cookies that the card maker brought to share. The book is dated and I have little notes throughout indicating who made each card. I also adhered photo's I took at the event.

 

I added some Kraft papers to the Sparkle & Shine papers for this book. It blended well and allowed a nice stiff cover to the album. The cute gingerbread man is from the Candyland stamp set. The binding is simply 2 holes punched in the seam and tied together with some cranberry twine.

 



Here is a peek inside just a few of the pages. Photo's were taken before all the cards and pictures were added, but you get the idea.

More Halloween Mini's

I have some more Artbooking Halloween mini albums to share with you today. I just couldn't resist creating more of them! They are fun to embellish and the Cricut makes it so easy!

The first album is a spooky dark purple and black theme. The cover has a glittery haunted house and the pages are filled with spiders, skulls and rats! The second album has more of a cute, trick-or-treating theme, with bright colors and sweet candy treats!

Here is the second album~

 

{I had a question on the other mini album I did referring to the gray tombstone. It is actually found on the Artiste Cricut cartridge and I cut it at 1". It just happens to fit perfectly!}

 

Open House Update

This past Saturday I held my semi-annual Open House. With a brand new Idea Book filled with 500 new products, I had a lot of work to do! I showed many new products including card kits, scrapbooking projects, base & bling jewelry pieces, home décor and lots of items using the new Cricut Artbooking cartridge!

Half of my display table was filled with an array of Artbooking projects from cards to layouts and let's not forget those adorable mini albums!

I will post more photo's here of these projects individually and up close, but first I would like to share the make & take project we made. A cute little gift box cut on the Artiste cartridge. Ladies got to use one of new M sized stamp sets called dotted love. It fits perfectly on the face of the box and what a deal for these little stamps....only $2.95! They also got to use the day of the week stamps found in the Artbooking collection. These are so much fun with different fonts on each and will come in handy for journaling on scrapbook pages or My Crush books! Some glitter gems and Lagoon houndstooth washi tape are the perfect embellishments to finish the box!

 

 

These little boxes can be decorated for many different occasions. I just have to share what my daughter wanted to do with them. She decided she wanted to make some for friends after she saw mine. Hers are for back to school gifts. She plans to fill them with some book marks she made and some candy! The ruler border and apples were all cut on the new Artbooking cartridge. The book mark topping was also a stamp found in the Artbooking collection.

 



Stay tuned for more projects and inspiration!