Day 9: Lace Flowers

Holy blurry video Batman!  My camera really struggled with finding the spot to focus on with the white on white.  I promise to work on getting better at this whole video thing.  :)

This flower can actual be made with most any kind of fun trim, try out your fav!  And don't forget to keep checking back!!

Eighth Day of Flowers

This is such a fun flower.  It can be made in so many designs if you buy white liners and dye/mist them or buy any of the variety of patterns/colors available in the baking section of most stores.  In fact I JUST found some awesome red and green foil liners that I am totally going to try this with next!

Elf-capades part 2

...the adventure continues...

If you missed the first post about Buddy, check it out HERE, and then head back here to see what Buddy has been up to since we last left off.

Day 6: Mountain climbing on the advent calendar.

Day 7: Reading the Rainbow Fish.

Day 8: Taking the Barbie-mobile out for a cruise...let's hope she's insured.

Day 9: Norad??  Just how did Buddy get the wifi password?!?!

Day 10: Checking to make sure the kid's stockings have plenty of room for coal.

Day 11: Helping out Mom by doing a few dishes.

Day 12: Having a sip of tea in Katie's 'kitchen'.

Day 13: Buddy's gonna wind up on the naughty list if he doesn't 

             steer clear of mama's Stickles and chipboard stash!!!!!

Flower #7

We can now return to our regularly scheduled crafting!!!  :)  Thank you to everyone who saw my post on FB and sent their best wishes.  We had a terrible week and unfortunately it prevented me from even checking in online, much less uploading my tutorials I worked so hard on.  Monday the baby kept getting sicker and sicker and by that evening was at the ER with dehydration and a kidney infection, which isn't all that common in little ones, but something we've dealt with her and her sister so we were prepared.  She also got a secondary stomach flu which wasn't related, but only making the dehydration worse.  Wednesday hubby had to go in for a routine surgery and after a weekend of recouping is doing 100% better.  Wish I could have said the same for the rest of us.  1yr olds are notorious for not wanting to share their toys, but their gastrointestinal flu??  SUPER GENEROUS!!!  My 7yr old came home early from school Thursday after getting sick in class, I followed, and my 11yr soon after.  All 4 people over the age of diapers in the house laid out and a 1yr old ruling the roost made for an interesting week/weekend.  So thank you all for the well wishes and the understanding.  I'm still going to be posting the remaining flowers because I am still so excited about them!!  :) :)

Today we are going to be making one of my new favorites.  You can totally change the look depending on the fabric/colors you use.  Any synthetic fiber like tulle, satin, organza, etc work.  Here is the one I made:

Day 6 - Fan Fold Flower

This idea is not new.  I see these EVERYWHERE!!!!  Not just being used as flowers, but on a bigger scale too.  They are super easy and so fun.  Make sure you email or comment with any questions and keep commenting and checking back!!!

Day 5 - Ribbon flower

This is one of the most simple flowers and I could easily knock out 1 every 3mins or so.  They can have such a different look depending on the ribbon you choose to use!!  Please email or comment with any questions and don't forget to keep commenting and letting me know what you think of each tutorial.

Also, after shooting several video's I realized my camera batteries were dying so the picture of the finished product is a little blurry, but it's super duper cute so that's okay!

Day 4 - Easy Peasy Carnation

I'm sure this could easily pass for several other flowers, but I used it as a carnation, so we'll call it that.  I will say I used scalloped circles that were 2" in diameter because it gave me the flower size I wanted, but you can easily make it bigger if you'd like!!!

Email or comment with any questions and don't forget to check back each day for a new tutorial!!!  If you felt froggy, please share it with your friends.  Post it on FB, twitter, add a short sentence/link to a blog post.  Anyway you can help get the word of the 12 flowers of Christmas out and I'd be so super grateful.  :)

Day 3... MIGHT be my favorite

I made this flower a few weeks ago for a ballerina themed princessy project and fell in love with it because the tulle gives it such a tutu look.  So this is being called the Tutu Flower.  Now don't forget if you have any questions, just shoot me an email or comment and I will get back to you.  ...and make sure you keep checking back!!

*several spots I got pretty chatty and you made need to pause to read all the text*

On the 2nd day of Christmas....

Oh yes, it's another flower tutorial!!  This one was a little more trial and error, and then one little tidbit stirred an entire 'Aha moment'!!!  When you are snipping along each circle following along with the video, make sure you cut an even number of slits.  It will make the finished product look nicer and make the making easier.  You will figure out just why when you get to the spreading the very last 'fringe' and think, "well ooops...is this supposed to go up or down"  LOL.

This flower was inspired by a LaLaLoopsy card I created for my daughter.  They are little rag doll inspired baby dolls that she absolutely is gaga over.

You can comment or email me with any questions you may have after watching the video and I will answer back here (or respond via email when possible).  Stay tuned tomorrow for a flower fit for a princess!! :)

On the 1st Day of Christmas....

♪♫ how does that song go again???  I'm sure it given enough brain power and eggnog, I could belt out every verse, but since we are about the business of scrappin' here (and I've been requested more than once by my children to never sing...never), I've decided to replace the lords a'leaping with lots o' flowers!!!  And we aren't going to wait until Christmas to kick start the fun!!!

Starting today, through the 12th, I am going to do a flower tutorial every single day.  Not all of the ideas are uniquely my own.  Some are flowers I've found on layouts that I just had to figure out how to recreate, some are tutorials that have been floating around blogdom.  Either way, if you check back here daily....or better yet click that little follow button to the right....you will find a fun new flower you can make to pretty up your paper crafting.

If you have any questions on this tutorial or any future ones I post, please ask me a question in the comments and I will come back and add the answer.  Or you can email me (see the 'about me' page above) and I'll respond directly.  Up first is a fantastic flower if you are looking for something with lots of dimension yet very little added height.  PERFECT for scrapbook pages.  The video shares lots of detail, but I will tell you this will work with ANY 5-6 petal flower that you can get 3 various sizes of blooms cut.  Diecuts, punches, machine cut, etc.  I chose to use the flower on the George and Basic shapes Cricut cart, because it's a resource available to lots of my readers.  You will need 2 of each size (3 sizes means six blooms total), but all of that is detailed after just hit the play button below:

Elf-capades

Buddy, our elf on the shelf returned to the Skinner casa the night after Thanksgiving and also picked up where he left off with his mischief making!!!  For those of you that haven't heard about this fun family tradition: Santa sends an elf down from the north pole to watch the kiddos in the house and report back to him each night.  He sits on a shelf and watches the good, the bad, and the ugly and then after the last kiddo falls asleep he travels back to the north pole to tell Santa.  When he gets back, he usually gets bored and finds something fun to do around the house.  When the first kid wakes up, his Christmas magic stops and he freezes doing whatever he was doing.  We hunt him down each morning with lots of laughs and return him to his shelf.  It serves two purposes:  1-It helps kids keep their behavior in check because they know that Santa will find out and 2-It brings a little of the magic of Christmas Eve to the entire month of December.  He flies home with Santa on Christmas Eve and next year returns after you put your tree up!  For those of you that haven't been give their own elf from Santa, he also left some at Target!  ;)

I plan on taking pictures of what we find Buddy up to each morning and making a scrapbook of his adventures for the kids to treasure in the future and thought that any of you looking for ideas for your own elf might enjoy them too.  So here are days 1-5.  I'll update with more pics when I can.

Day 1: Buddy climbed into Allie's MegaBlocks and started an elf sized tower.

Day 2: Totally busted in Mama's spot watching Nick Jr!

Day 3: Snowboarding with the Playstation.

Day 4: Playing peek-a-boo with the Christmas ornaments.

Day 5: Even elves like to color!!!

Winner Winner!!

I wanted to stop in and announce a winner for the birthday blog hop giveaway.  Remember this fun mini?

Well random.org has found a new home for it's sister.  That's right, I made two!  One for the birthday girl and a duplicate for one lucky commenter.  And that lucky person is:  

Jill Angel said...

What a gorgeous mini album. Absolutely incredible!
Jill
http://craftwithanangel.blogspot.com/

Please contact me at chuckandchristina(at)yahoo(dot)com with your mailing addy and I would love to drop this in the mail to you!!!

Happy Birthday Hop!!!

**GIVEAWAY CLOSED**

Today kicks off the super fun birthday blog hop in honor of my friend Tanya.  She is such an awesome friend in fact, that we decided to get together and throw a par-tay in her honor.  If you just happened upon this post then head back to the starting line at Scrappy Zeni's blog.  If you came from Cindi's blog then you are in the right place!!  There will be fun, prizes and inspiration along the way so please hop along for the ride!!  There will not only be an amazing Cricut imagine cart at one of the stops, but the grand prize (sponsored by Your Memories Here) is this fabulous Christmas goodie package:

I created this fun little birthday mini album for her.  All of the photo mats are designed to hold 2.5x3.5 standard wallet photos (these can be printed at almost all 1hr photo stops) with a little edge to provide a nice mat.  All the paper is DCWV.  Each page has a spot for a photo of your favorite birthday memories and the back page has a spot for journaling.  It might even be fun to put pics from a birthday party in it and have your guests sign a spot on the journaling spot on the back!  

It's on it's way to Ms. Tanya now and I really hope she loves it!  I really hope all of you love it too, so much so that I made a duplicate to give away to one lucky reader!!!  Just comment on this post by Sunday night (Nov 27th) at 11:59pm (eastern time) and your name will go into the hat.  I will announce a winner early next week so be sure to check back.  The winner will have 1 week to contact me.  :)  Now that we're all done here make sure you head on over Liz at WhichCraft to keep the party train rollin'!!!  

Happy Thanksgiving!!

I hope all of my friends in blogdom are having an absolutely fantastic day surrounded by family and lots of yummy food.  Don't forget to check back tomorrow for a fun surprise!!

A very special project

A year and a half ago, when I was oh so very pregnant, I got a whim to create a mini album from a pile of pictures I had of my Grandparents when they were first married and all the special days of their 50+ years together.  My grandparents not only helped raise me when I was very small and my father was navigating the trials of being a single dad, but they were also the single most defining presence in how I hoped my life would turn out.  They had decades of love and commitment under their belt, 6 fantastic children with 6 equally as fantastic son/daughter-laws, 9 grandchildren, a few bonus grandchildren as some of us married and 3 beautiful great-grandchildren.  We were spread from one end of the country to the other, but when Grandma called and said there would be a party (there was always a reason for a party with Grandma!) we all knew better than to not be there.

The day after I printed these photos and less than a month from the day I was due to give birth, my grandmother unexpectedly passed away.  It is the single most devastating loss I've experienced in my 32 years.  Every time I tried to pull out the pictures since, I've been overwhelmed with the loss all over again as I try to wrap my head around the fact that my youngest, Allie, will never have the bond with my grandmother that my other two babies can always cherish.  Then a few days ago I received a very special package in the mail.  I'd won a give-a-way sponsored by OohLaLa Vintage Treasures  and when I opened the HUGE package of goodies, out spilled a beautiful little pin that reminded me of a piece of jewelry that my grandmother passed down to me.  I just KNEW that this was the push I needed to pull out these pictures again and start work on this very special-to-me mini album!  A few of the pieces are also from an embellishment explosion of a package from my friend Tanya just sent me!  :)

I'd like to share 3 pages so far that I've completed.  The cover was inspired by the DT project at Paper Hoarders.  It is to scrap something you are thankful for.  Thankful doesn't begin to cover how I feel towards my grandparents for showing me just how good life can be if you stay committed to nourishing family bonds.  This is a new look for me, I've never worked with vintage/shabby chic scrappy supplies and still not entirely sure I'm pulling it off LMBO!

The next page was inspired by sketch #180 at Creative Scrappers.  I really ran with the sketch so hopefully it's close enough to still count.  I was working with 6x6 size instead of 12x12 so I had to trade the big circle elements with smaller embellishment clusters and I didn't have room for a title at all.  Plus I gave glimmer mist a big ole' workout on this one!!!

The third page (there are more to come in the next few days) was inspired by sketch #58 at Sketchabilities.  I tried to add a few more of the fun details I see in the vintagey layouts online, but not sure I've got the knack of it quite yet.  I'm getting there though!!! :)  I'm also sharing this one with the StuckOnUSketches diecut challenge of the week: Leaves!  The leaf tucked into the cluster is cut out of green mulberry paper from my Cindy Loo cricut cart.  

Have a spooky birthday!

My hubby has the fun of having a birthday smack dab on Halloween.  It takes some real juggling on mommy's part to make sure his special day is celebrated to the fullest and to make sure the kids get a normal Halloween fun time experience too.  Needless to say Nov 1st comes with a much needed scheduled nap each year!!  LOL. Here is a layout I just finished for this week's Paper Hoarders DT project (include a Halloween shape) of my hubby celebrating his birthday with the fam and the kids enjoying getting to wear their costumes to dinner.

It's another 8 1/2 x 11 and involved a whole lotta improvising on the embellies.  I dug deep for some of the pieces and have decided I am definitely running low on Halloween goodies.  I made the pumpkin out of oval punches after giving up on finding one on my Cricut carts, only to find one...oh, about 2 seconds after I'd glued it down.  DOH!