Sample Mini Book

I am working on a craft workshop proposal for my local Parks and Rec, and my suggested theme is Halloween. The program director suggested a make-and-take in one night to showcase fun Halloween pictures. So I opened up my new Cricut Mini Books cartridge and began working on a sample book.

Here is the fun part, bare bones, not embellished. (The final, which I am tweaking is above.)

I plan to make my own embellishments using Teresa Collins's Halloween cart. I love her modern, clean cut designs! Check out the cart at cricut.com:

http://www.cricut.com/Shopping/detail--Cricut-Teresa-Collins-Chic--Scary-Seasonal-Cartridge-291-1419.aspx

Now it is time for Part 2, pricing! Since my Halloween paper pack that used above is depleted, I need to price out new patterned paper designs, and this is a challenge -- I am creative not mathematical! My efforts up to this point seem to be futile. If I order what I want, I blow my budget completely, and still have to cover baby sitter costs!

Double Slide Santa Card

Every year I love to start my Christmas cards in July. This way I am not stressed in November and December about my cards. This year's card is double slider card, featuring Santa coming out of his chimney.

Creating this Year's Crafty Christmas List

Thinking about the projects from my Christmas past...Teacher Treat Gifts; Christmas Card Keepsake Book; Thank You cards...My list seems to get longer each year, I have to start early so I don;t have that crafty-induced stress. I'd rather spend December shopping for gifts, decorating, and baking cookies!

One year, I joined in on Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of Christmas Challenge, where improvising was the name of the game, as I don't have a vagabond or his dies...So using my cricut and a lot of substituting, I created some Tags for special presents.

I want to recreate some more for this Christmas, so I am creating my Crafty Christmas to-do list now.

1. Christmas Gift Tags
2. Teacher Treat Gifts
3. Scrapbook Gifts for Family
4. Scrapbook Calendar
5. Christmas Card Keepsake Book
6. Handmade Christmas Cards (this will be a first!)
7. Christmas Thank You Cards

What are you planning on creating this Christmas?

Christina's Creative Cricut Party Decor

I created party decor for a good friend of mine and wanted to share!
Here is the banner:

Invite (sorry about the lighting):

And thank you treat box filled with pink, white, and grey M&Ms:

Home is Where the Heart is...

This was a mixed media challenge in a private group. I am new to mixed media, so this was a big experiment.

Grungeboard Mistakes
I began with Tim Holtz Grungeboard stripes elements...and tried to "alter" them with Picket Fence and Weathered Wood Distress Stain. I didn't love blue hearts, so I went searching for red in my stash. No red stain, but found Luminarte Radiant Rain in Poppy Red. I wanted to finish it off with crackle medium, but I couldn't find it! (Must have used it up.) So I improvised with Stickles Rock Candy - BAD idea! It made my red BRIGHT red and run awful. After it dried, I tried adding white acrylic and that bombed too - the white turned an odd red, so I added drops of white ink and blended away.

The Challenge
We were required to have a house, scrapbook paper, a heart; then additional 3-5 elements and I chose: paint (distress on houses, title and pic), markers (on title), more hearts, metal element (keys) and chipboard (the hearts). The perfectly matching seaming is from Scraputante.com (it matched my Prima patterned papers perfectly)!

Cricut Houses

The houses are cricut cut from Home Improvement Lite cart. I used transparency for the windows and cut the house layers on Tim Holtz Kraft Resist. Using more Distress Stains, I colored the houses, roofs and fences. My favorite part of the houses is the brass looking door knobs: brads from my stash.