A Major Update after a Couple Busy Days

Haven't gotten too much done in the last couple days.  Finished up the "Let it SNOW" page last night (5th) and started a layout for a "Deck the Halls" page.  As you'll notice later I ended up adding a "Christmas Jammies" page in between these two because I forgot about it.


Let it SNOW

Love how the snow page turned out, with the exception of wishing that I would have used a Cricut cut snowflake shadow behind the glitter snowflake sticker on the top right corner of my journal box.  Still got to get it through my mind to think about what resources I have.

Christmas Jammies

Lucky for pictures, I just about forgot a page.  As I was going through photos to add for the next page I came across the "christmas jammies" page. In interest of a true chronology I will add this in (I've already finished writing the next section on "Deck the Halls").  As was tradition in my family growing up we received new pajamas on Christmas Eve, that was typically the only present we opened before Christmas morning, although that really varied by year, we all opened up a present, pajamas, at 2am on Christmas morning.  Why 2am, that's no longer Christmas Eve, you may ask.  I will refer you to my 10 month old who completely and utterly crashed on Christmas Eve before we got around to opening the present, and then decided to be up for a diaper change and a meal at 2am, then didn't want to go back to sleep, so we opened a present.

This page ended up being a rather strange color combination, but I think it turned out well.  Ironically, Melodi was wearing monkey pajamas, and was opening monkey pajamas too, which is really where all the colors came from.  I was planning on using the actual cut out brown letters for the title, but flicked the "c" away and couldn't find it so I used the "scrap" instead.  Love how it turned out!

Edit to add:  I found out through reading the message boards or someone elses blog that the reason that the tall letters (h, i, t, and j) are not straight inline with the rest of the letters is that I had the "material/paper saver" mode turned on.

Deck the Halls

As I mentioned before the next page I started working on was a "Deck the Halls" page last night (5th).  Basically, I picked out the main paper last night, the green dot and the cream/red/green strip.  This will be an nontraditional two page spread, meaning that the base paper will be different but both pages will us the same paper for the basic design.  As I write this I'm wishing that I would have taken a few more pictures in order to do a basic, intermediate, fancy, extreme sort of progression (so, I may go back and take the extra photos later and update this post).

Originally I was going to lay out my spread with the "action" shots on the left and the "stills" on the right.  But I think that I will actually do just the opposite because of title and journallying placement (mostly title).

As you may notice there are some "extra pieces" at the top of the photos, we'll get to those in a minute.  First, I would like to address the title.  I started off with thinking that I would use a solid semi-bright solid green for the shadow, the red for the phrase, and the green dot for the phrase pieces.

The pictures are a little deceiving, but that means I'll look at the actuals before I stick it down for good.  In person the semi-bright green is way too bright to match the rest of the page even with the semi-bright green line in the backing paper.  Since I wasn't sure about the bright green (first piece I cut) I decided to try out the shadow in the green dot and like it a lot better.  The cutting procedure here was bright green, then red, and finally green dot.  As a result of this order I decided that in addition to cutting the planned phrase pieces out of the green dot I would also cut the shadow since I didn't love the semi-bright green.  Well, that's about in on the title, so we'll move on to the embellishments.

I decided that I should tie in the red paper that I used for the title a little bit.  As I was thinking about this page I was thinking that I should us an ornament cut out some where since that's what Melodi "gave" her parents (William and I), grandparents, and great-grandparents for Christmas, as shown in the photos on the page.  There really wasn't room, or the necessity (it would make it seem crowded) for a full size ornament, so I ended up deciding to use a border in a couple different places.  The first place I decided that I wanted to use it was in between the top and bottom rows of "action" photos.

I got those cut out and placed then decided that I should try to use them on the other side of the spread as well, another great way to connect the two pages.  Since I was planning on a fairly large journalling box I figured that I could add the boarder to the top of it.  I ended up cutting out two different sizes and still don't know which ones I'm going to actually use yet.

We'll see how much I end up writing and in the planning for the writing I'll decide on the border size to use.  I wasn't too sure on how large to make my journalling box but ended up deciding on a 4" x 4" square of cream paper (considered using a green).  As you may have noticed there was a strip of green dot paper on one of the previous two pictures, that's because if I get to the end of my journalling and there is still room I will put a strip there to sort of frame in the box.

The final placement I have to decide on is that of the spoon ornament.  This is a photo of Melodi's 1st Christmas ornament that we bought her to commemorate the event.  I will either line the bottom up with the bottom of the other photos in the row or where the bottom is about halfway down the green dot stripe.

Hopefully I'll get this page done tomorrow night (7th) since it will be three days in the making by then.  I'm a little worried about securing the border pieces because they are rather thin in places.  Sorry about the random numbers, they're the dates, but I'm up after mid-night here so the days are starting to run together.

Getting Good Use Out of the Cricut

I ordered some 160 photos today and picked them up this afternoon.  The photos span November and December, and even a few days into January.

The first page that I did this evening was Melodi's stocking page because I had a really cute idea that has been rolling around in my head since Christmas (and learning what cartridges William had bought me).  I used the Winter Frolic cartridge to make a stocking and put the picture of her pile of stocking stuffers "in" the stocking.  The phrase on the the stocking key was "the stockings were hung" which I cut out as well.  The first paper I used for the phrase overlays was the same as the strip which didn't look very good when I was planning it out after I had cut the pieces out, so I decided on a different paper.  Since the white strip in the stocking body was making the outline of the stocking a little weird I ended up cutting the shadow out of the same paper I used for the phrase overlay.  I really like how the page turned out.

The next page I did was the "Under the Christmas Tree" presents.  Couldn't include too many pictures, but that's okay.  Didn't use the Cricut much, but I did cut out a tree.  It's the same one that I did when I first got the machine, but I didn't do any of the decorations, just the tree outline.  I was going to use an "oh Christmas tree" title from the Cricut but I cut it out and didn't like it very well.

Well, I needed a short break from being creative so I left a half finished (mostly planned, nothing stuck down) page sitting on my table downstairs.  The page is of Melodi "playing" in the snow for the first time.  Had a hard time picking out paper cause of the colors, but I'm down to sticking everything down, journalling, and then adding embellishments.  I cut out a "Let it SNOW" title, and once again learned that the heavy cardstock causes more work then a standard paper.  I think the best cuts from a heavy cardstock will end up being extremely block cuts with little detail at all (the shadows).

All Caught Up!

I got caught up with Melodi's scrapbook last night.  I consider myself to be up to date although I still have 2 months to scrap, but seeing as I don't have the pictures printed to do so there isn't anything I can scrap in her book.  The other spread that isn't done is from our trip to California in October, but I need to get a picture for that one still.

There were a few pages that I had finished with the exception of some journalling so those got finished up.  I went back and finished the journalling from Melodi's newborn pictures with Stacey.  Put together three pages (starting solids, general October, and Liz and Evie's visit) and did the journalling on the four pages that encompass fall and Halloween, as well as Melodi's first big girl bath.

The Cricut got a break from working pretty much the entire evening.  I used it to cut out "october" and then ended up using the scrap instead of the letters.  First I tried to cut out every other letter in green or pink using the matting paper, which made a mess of my cutting mat, so I ended up using a basic paper that I was going to use for my journalling anyways.

First Scrapbook Pages with the Cricut

I had a basic layout set up for Melodi's scrapbook page of our Christmas photos that we had taken at JCPenney.  All it needed was a little embellishing with a title and some design elements.  I started off with a thick, textured red cardstock for the title, border, and smaller circle.  After a number of different settings on the Cricut and making a mess of my cutting mat I gave up and used a standard paperstack paper.

As I was writing this typing "embellishing" made me think to add some sparkle to the page using some gems that I put on the ornaments I made for Melodi's grandparents and great-grandparents with a couple of these pictures.

I was in a little bit of a rut and have a bunch of pages to catch up on right now in Melodi's book, but none of them were really speaking to me.  In the end I ended settling on Melodi's first big girl bath by herself in the bathtub.  I used the Brittany bathtub cut (Playtime) and its layer then cut off the top portion of the backing piece, and a variety of sizes of the circle and its shadow (Classic Font) to make bubbles.  Since I had a couple circles left I ended up using them on the journaling box.  Haven't pasted anything down or done the title or journaling yet, but that will come.

First Cuts

I made a number of random cuts with some scrap paper I have laying around.  These were done with the cartridges that came with my Cricut, and the Winter Frolic.  The "Melodi" cut out was welded using DesignStudio, and I glued the "cute" tag and tree pieces together using Creative Memories Precision Point Adhesive.