Disney Hollywood Studios

I am still working on our Disney trip from 2008, and have not even begun the album for the trip we took to Disney in 2009 for my sons birthday!  I shared the first double layout I did for Hollywood Studios, so this is the next one.  I had a lot of pictures so I had to make 3 double layouts worth!

I continued the star border theme throughout all the pages to connect them somehow.  The stars are from a Stampin' Up wheel that I used black in and just rolled it across white paper.  The rest was just simply placing the photos on the paper.  For this album all my layouts are pretty simple because, well, that's what I wanted!  I think for the 2009 Disney I will try a little more embellishing.

Toy Story Birthday

My sons are HUGE fans of all things Toy Story.  We have watched Toy Story 1 and 2 countless times, and Toy Story 3 was the first movie they saw in the movie theater.  We've had to role play Toy Story characters and they both had to be Buzz Lightyear for Halloween.  So of course for their birthday it had to be a Toy Story theme.  You can imagine my excitement when Provo Craft announced a Toy Story cartridge this past summer!  I just knew it would be perfect for their birthday and couldn't wait to get it.  Even with all the delays in getting this cartridge, it still managed to get to me on time, although my work time was cut short.  So I had to work some magic to get everything done, but I did it and I love how everything turned out.

I used my Gypsy for most of the cuts because I had to make everything a certain size and the Gyspy makes everything so easy for that!  Plus I was able to use the hide contour feature on a couple of things, which helped save an enourmous amount of paper.

This is just an overview of the kids table

I made 2 toy story signs and we taped then back to back so no matter what side you were on you could see the sign.  We then hung it from the ceiling in the middle of the room.  Hanging from the sign is the 3D alien cut.  We used a piece of a toy from my one son to be "the claw" and had the alien hanging from the claw.  He had been chosen!!

Beneath that on the table I had 2 aliens from the trio alien cut (I didn't cut out the middle one), and had one on each side of the alien in the claw pointing up, almost like they are saying "oooooohhhhhh, the claw!"  The aliens are taped to a covered up wooden block to hold them up, and there is an alien on the opposite side as well so both sides of the table had a view!

Here is a view of the whole thing together

On another wall I had Jessie, Buzz, Woody, and Bullseye.  The Happy Birthday letters were cut from the Old West cartridge.

closer view of the gang

Here are more cuts I did that we just put up as decoration.  The only thing I didn't cut was Zurg, because I needed him to be bigger than what I was able to cut.  Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head was part of the game "pin the parts on the potato heads"   I also cut out the individual pieces from Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head and then the kids had to try to stick the part where it belonged.  Zurg was a "defeat zurg" game where the kids got to throw balls at Zurg!  I made him by tracing a picture from a projector onto poster board and then coloring him in.  Then velcro sticky tabs were stuck to him for the felt balls to stick to.

This sign obviously has nothing to do with Toy Story, but I made this little sign to hang in their bathroom so it was the first thing they saw when they woke up the morning of their birthday.  All the cuts for this sign was from the Celebrations cartridge.


The boys loved all the decorations for their party and now all the cuts are in their room.  I am so happy that it worked out and they had a great party, and I loved seeing everyones reactions to all the things I made

A new year, a new start

Happy New Year everyone!  The beginning of a brand new year seems to be a time of new beginnings and starting over - almost like getting a fresh start on something.  For me, I am determined to prove something to myself this year.  I am so tired of starting something and then somwhere along the way, I stop.  I also want to make sure I take more time for myself this year, especially to scrapbook or do some sort of creating.  This past year I scrapbooked less than I ever have since I started this hobby.  So with that...

• I am going to do my best to blog at least 3 times a week.  At times it may be more or less, but I really don't want a week to go by without me posting something!
• Because of the blogging, that means I need to make sure I create something!  So I am going to try my best to make time for that every week.
• I would like to try all the different techniques I have seen but have never tried, but have really wanted to!  As I try each one I will share it here.
• I want to use my stash!!!  I know this is a big one for a lot of scrapbookers and cardmakers.  We are always talking about using the stuff we have more and buying new stuff less.  For me, I have a bunch of stuff that I bought but I haven't used yet, and I would like to take this year to challenge myself to use the stuff I have bought at least once!  For example, I bought alcohol inks because I really wanted to try them out, but I have yet to use them.  So they have been sitting in my drawer for a year :( 
• I am also determined to make at least 1 project with each of my cricut cartridges.  I have cartridges I haven't used yet, and I don't want to feel like I wasted my money buying them just add to my collection.
• I feel the same way about my stamps.  I have stamp sets I had to have, but haven't used.

Whew!!  I hope I can do it!!  I want to look back when it turns to 2012 and say I did what I set out to do, or at least I gave it my best shot!

With that, I will share a layout I wanted topost last year but never got around to it.  Since I don't have anything new yet, I will be sharing a lot of older projects I've done for the next couple of posts.

This was from our Disney 2008 trip:

I am going to try my best to remember what I used:

cardstock: SU basic gray textured cardstock

star border: SU star wheel with black ink and some are outlined with black stickles

Title is cut with Make the Cut and a font I had on my computer

Stars are cut from cricut cartridge Hannah Montana

Disney Layout

I know I have been missing, and I really regret that.  I haven't had much of a chance to actually get any crafting/scrapbooking done so therefore I've had nothing much to post!  I am going to make sure I make some time for myself by giving myself some personal challenges.

In the meantime, here is a layout I did a while ago from our 2008 Disney trip:

Hopefully I will be back with more soon!!

Happy National Scrapbook Day!

I joke with my husband that today is my holiday!  It's National Scrapbook Day and I didn't even get a layout done.  Boo!!  It figures that we would actually have nice weather (although a bit hot for May!) and it was hard to justify keeping myself holed up in my craft corner all day.  Oh well!  Maybe tomorrow I will try to get some pages done.

I am a bit disappointed, though.  For being National Scrapbook Day, I sure didn't see a lot of scrapbooking going on.  I did see a lot of cards, though.  Now, I do my fair share of cards also and am starting to get into that more, but it seems lately that is all I am seeing and I am missing some inspiration in the form of a scrapbook page.  I guess I'm just a bit disappointed.  It's also not just today but it seems like it's the latest trend.  I love seeing card ideas, but I do miss my layout inspirations. :(  Anyway, speaking of cards, I have a bunch of cards to share with you coming up soon.  But today, in honor of the holiday (tee hee) I have a 2 page layout I did for our Disney 2008 trip.

I just used some paper scraps to fill in the spaces that there were no pictures and I also used some stickers I had in my stash.  I love using things from my stash that I haven't used in a long time!  I really should challenge myself more to do that.

I am really trying to catch up on this particular album (Disney 2008), because now I have Disney 2009 to start doing! 

Counting down to Disney!!

Woohoo!!  It's that time!

We are at our 30 day countdown to our trip to Disney World!  This time we are going to celebrate my sons' 5th birthday.  I can't wait!  My mom and dad are coming as well, which makes this trip pretty special.  I feel I am super lucky to be able to have divorced parents who can still be friends and go on vacation together to celebrate their grandchildren's birthday.  Anyway, onto the calendar...

This is another hybrid calendar made with digital paper, photoshop, and my Cricut!

 

First I worked on the calendar part using digital paper from Digital Design Essentials.  I darkened the background, and lightened the paper for the circles.  I then used the Mickey font and the Disney World font for the letters and numbers.  The size of this portion is 8x8, which is then matted on white, then matted on black.  Once this was done and printed and matted, I worked on the Cricut portion.

I used the Mickey & Friends cartridge for the heart with the Disney, the gloves (border option), and for Mickey and Pluto.  "Countdown" was using the Disney World  font and "to" was using the Mickey font and I just printed that out and cut it by hand.

For the Disney heart, I used the same digital paper I used as the calendar background.  I just printed a patch of the digital paper on regular paper and then cut it with the Cricut.

 

I also cut out little Mickey heads from the cartridge and this is what my boys will put on the dates as we countdown to when we leave.  Every night before we go up to bed, they each take turns and stick one of the heads on that days date.  We even have a special place in our kitchen where I put the countdown calendars, and when I went to put this one up they went right to it and told me where to put it.  The whole thing is mounted on 12x12 paper.

I can't believe my boys are going to be 5 years old!!  I can't believe we will be able to celebrate their birthday (hopefully, if all goes well) in Disney World!  I am really looking forward to this, but I am trying not to show too much excitement because I am always afraid that once I do, the thing I am excited about won't happen!!  So for now I will cross my fingers and hope for the best and maybe pretty soon we will be in the happiest place on earth! :)

Disney Mania

Many projects I start working on, halfway through I think to myself, "What did I get myself into?" I always seem to be happy with the results and once it's finished I always say it was worth it, but during the process I usually have a few choice words.

My latest - my son's autograph book from our Disney World vacation. I thought it would be perfect to use the Disney Cricut cartridges for the characters and names...until I had to start cutting and piecing those things together! Oh my! First I had some trouble cutting some of the smallest and thinnest pieces and would have to try a couple of times to get a cut good enough to use. Then I actually had to glue on those tiny pieces. Some of those tongues are quite small! All the while I am thinking to myself, why didn't I just use stickers???

Of course, once I was all done cutting, piecing, and gluing and I looked at them all together, I was quite happy! I love the dimension it gives, more than what a sticker would do. I haven't even started working on the actual album yet, but at least I am done with this part of it.


I still have to do Lightening McQueen, but for that one I just may make his name using the cartridge instead of doing the car also. I made a fit to page Lightening McQueen for my son and it came out pretty big and it still had small parts so I can't even imagine having to cut it at a size that would fit in an 8x8 album. I also am trying to find stickers for other characters or at least something I can add to those pages.

I didn't put the album together before we went because I had no idea what characters we would see or even if my sons would be interested. Turns out, one was and one wasn't. So I just bought one regular autograph book and I tore out the pages that were signed and matted them on black cardstock. My album will be 8x8 and one side will be for the autograph and the other side will be for the picture. I am probably going to keep this album pretty simple, since I would like to be done with it before we go again (which might be in October for their birthday!!).