A look back... A surge forward.

Well lookie who is trying to crawl back out from the mayhem, stress, and utter exhaustion that has been my life for the better part of the last year.  As most of you read a few posts back, my youngest daughter fell from a piece of playground equipment at preschool last May and suffered neurological problems that have required ongoing treatment.  Followed by discovering an undiagnosed congenital malformation of the pituitary gland in the brain that requires frequent medical tests, appointments, treatments, and shots (super fun trying to make a 3yr old understand daily shots..lemme tell you). Add to that 6+ hours twice a week spent at our local children's hospital an hour from home for said appointments including lots of physical therapy and I'm spent.  Did I mention I also have a 4th grader and a 7th grader who need just as much attention as before???  Well once I put it all in print, it's a little easier to understand why I went AWOL from every social media that couldn't be managed easily from a waiting room on my phone.

Things still aren't calming down much even though baby girl and I are getting our routine and tolerance of her medical helmet down pat, but something over winter break snapped in me.  No, not splashed all over the 10pm news kinda snapped, just a revelation of sorts.  There are LOTS of moms and dads with special needs children who still manage to have an identity outside of that.  My goal for this new year is to figure out just how to do that.  No better place to start than jumping right in....right?  So I printed off a goal planner and set baby steps.  Things may not be able to get back to the business of challenges, design teams, and my etsy ventures, but I can and WILL find time to document the memories my family is making inspite of the mayhem.

To kick off my mojo, I would like to jump on the bandwagon of sharing my 13 favorite projects from 2013.  Not a hard task since I stopped cold turkey even going INTO my scrappy space last spring, but I did find 13 things I loved from last year that I'd like to share.  Did you share your favorite(s) from last year on your blog?  If so leave a link in my comments because I'd love to come see them if I haven't found them already!  :) :)  

thirteen

twelve

eleven

ten

nine

eight

seven

six

five

four

three

two

one

Thanks for visiting!

♥

Best Friends Mini

Hey everyone...back again with another mini album!  I am having so much fun playing with all my chipboard and embellies.  This one has one very special feature that I'm so super duper excited about...a two part cover.  What's a two part cover you ask???  Well I designed how I wanted the cover to be and then I split up the embellishments between a piece of acetate and the main chipboard cover.  They are two separate layers decorated all their own, but yet they still blend well when placed together.  I'm definitely going to have to make that a go-to technique.  Here is a close up of what I'm talking about:

Here is the finished mini bound with my new toy 'The Cinch' by We R Memory Keepers and finished off with a twine bow and butterfly charm.  Below is a collage of all the inside pages.  Eventually this bad boy will go into my etsy shop once I work up the nerve to get me one LOL.  

I'm also entering this into the challenge posted over at Divas by Design: Make It Girly.  Everything about this mini is girly.  BFFs, bling, glitter letters, flowers, butterflies, charms, more bling, and just for good measure...an extra few bling.  LOL

Thanks for visiting!

♥

Christmas Joy mini

I have a fun mini album to share with you all today!  I know I always say my first love is scrapbook layouts, but I think a clooooose second is mini albums.  I just love the feeling of completeness that comes from finishing a project start to finish.  I actually made two of these bad boys, one for a friend who asked me to make her something to stick her Christmas morning photos in and one to go in my eventual etsy shop if ever I work up the nerve to hit 'publish'. ;)  I've been making them for friends, family and friends of friends for over a year now and I'm running out of minis I personally need and people I know first hand who need more quicker than I am getting tired of making them.  HA!  

The album is a ornament shaped chipboard base embellished to the point of exploding with spots to hold lots of wallet sized photos.  Several challenges helped inspire me along the way to finishing this bad boy off.  First up, Crafty Creations asked everyone to create something with snowflakes.  Well not only is there one on my cover, but the inside is littered with several too.  The chipboard album is my something 'new' (I just picked it up at Michael's yesterday in the 80% off section WOOT!) and the star is cut from my George and Basic Shapes cricut cart to meet the requirements for the Cut It Up challenge posted last week.  After die-cutting the chipboard, I painted it white and then modge-podged (oh yeah..that's a word LOL) and then glittered it within an inch of it's life.  That fun little star was inspired by workout #83 over at ScrapFIT.  Hop on over to their blogs for some kick-booty DT inspiration after you are all done here.  

Thanks for visiting!

♥

2012 A Year in Review

I really can't believe another year has come to an end.  Amazing how it seems to start off so slow, but then Halloween to New Years is such a blur!  I wanted to take a moment to look back on some of my favorite projects that I've created over the past 12 months.  You can click the picture to go to the original post. :)

Favorite Card

Favorite Mini

I'm sharing this one with ABAC's year in reviewdesign team project!  Click the pic to go to theoriginal post to see the full series of inside pictures!

Favorite Layout

Favorite Off the Page Paper Creation

Favorite Non Scrappy Project

Favorite Gift

Thanks for visiting!

♥Christy

Halloween mini

Happy Sunday everyone!  It's been a slow craft month around my house because we have all been so very busy.  From Mom and Dad all the way down to the toddler in the house.  We barely have time to eat at the dining room table, much less belly up to the craft table.  That is one reason why I love applying for DT spots.  It keeps your mojo flowing even when you don't have time to go looking for it.  :)  

This week at Anything But a Card our theme is Halloween or Fall.  So if you aren't a big fan of Halloween, you can create anything (as long as it's not a card!!!) that uses beautiful shades of fall.  As for our house, with three little monsters running around, we LOVE spook day!  I had the idea of creating a mini that will let us look back on each year's adorable costumes!  I can't share the inside pages just yet, because I was experiencing photo print fails all over my office, but stay tuned.....

As always, I want to share this with the challenges that helped inspire my project.  So make sure you click on over to Divas by Design to play along with their 'Spooky' theme challenge! :)

Thanks for visiting!

♥Christy

First Love Mini

I was catching up on blogs and saw Practical Scrappers was looking for mini album submissions and it just so happens that a few nights ago my nephew's girlfriend asked me if I could make a little album to put some of her favorite pictures of them together from the past 3 1/2 years all in one place.  Always one to rise to a challenge, I jumped in head first.  I even busted out the Cinch hubby bought me for Christmas finally.  I'd been too scared to give it a whirl, but this was JUST the project.  I gotta tell you, this tool is pretty much the most fun I've had in a while...and I own more than my fair share of scrappy toys.  :)

The paper is almost all Cherry Arte Vanilla Vintage line.  There are a few scraps I dug out of my pile of leftovers from other projects that matched well enough to get thrown in too.  The flowers are mostly Prima and Recollections.  I used misc gems, tags and stickers and letters from my stash.  The binding is done with my We R Memory Keepers Cinch tool.

I really had fun with the inside pages.  I tried several new things that I'd never even considered.  On the first page I embossed a piece of acetate with a Tim Holtz folder and cut out the clock to stash in the cluster (I embossed a few tags with it too just to have good flow).  I had so much fun with this that I absolutely went around cutting up random packages for the acetate just to emboss HAHA!  The 4th page is actually an envelope that I added so she could stash more pics or even memorabilia.  A few pics down (the 10th/11th page) you'll notice I went all embossy on the acetate again and made a clear page to display 2 tiny instagram pics.  The back page has a fold out accordian mini inside a mini that she can either stick down wallet sized photos or even jot down notes.  I also left just a few spots open so she can add even more photos down the road.  The verdict is in and she is in love with this so SUCCESS!!!!!

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'!!!