Whew! It has been a long time....

since I have posted on my blog.  Life has just been so busy, but band season is officially over, we made it into the 2nd round of the playoffs and then we won our big Thanksgiving Day game rivalry againts the Ridley Raiders so the football season ended on a good note..

So here is what I have been up to lately. Finished my Christmas cards. Here is a sample of the cards I made. I used different pattern papers but same stamp set for the cardinal.  The Santa ones I only made a few.  Both stamp set and inks are from CTHM.  The paper is from assorted paper pads and the ribbon is from Joann's. 

I also completed my Christmas/Winter tags for my swap that I am in that is due this Saturday.   I used the new Cricut Lite Cart. Jolly Holidays for the penquin and the tag was cut from last years seasonal cart. Very Merty Tags.  The ribbon is SU organdy, trinket pin from Tim Holtz and the JOY trinket is from the beading isle at Michaels.   I used Martha Stewart glitter embossing powder on the umbrella and I gave the little guy googley eyes to make him even cuter!

I have also acquired several new Cricut Carts. that I need to get cracking on making projects with them.  I have picked up since the summer -- Toy Story, Mini Monsters, Creative Memories Cheerful Seasons, Quarter Note, Birthday Bash, Nifty Fifities, Jolly Holiday and Four Legged Friend.  I hope to have projects posted with each of the new carts as soon as I can.  My Gypsy is on its way back to Provo Craft to be replaced so I am back to just cutting with my Expression. 

Some Recent Cards I have Made.....

Here are a few cards I made using my cricut.   I love making the cards, I just need to figure out how to squeeze more time into the day.  It is marching band season and I am very active in the Music Boosters so that really takes up a lot of my free time.  But any way here are three cards I made recently.

Girls Rock!  Using my brand new cart - ROCK PRINCESS, I really think I am going to love this cart!

Pretty Pony - I made this card for my DD's boyfriend's little sister's birthday (got that?) and I absolutely LOVE how it turned out!  Made using CREATE A CRITTER my all time favorite cart.

Happy Day - I made for my SIL's birthday.  I really like this cart, first time I used it and I will be on my go to cart list from now on.  Cart used - HELLO KITTY.

CKC Valley Forge

I we to CKC Valley Forge on Thursday and Friday of last week.  It was awesome.  I think this is the 6th year CKC has been in my area, I have gone 5 of the 6 years, but this is the first time I have stayed over at the hotel.  I shared a room on Thursday in the Scanticon with my friends Jean and Denise.  We had a such a fun time.  Two other friends, Shirley and Linda had a room right down the hall.  I took a total of 5 class and did one crop.  The classes were all pretty good - two Technique Tuesday card classes, Boxer Palooza (Boxer Scrapbooks talks about their company and hands out freebies pretty fun), Disney Magic by Lickety Split, and Mosiac Moments class that I added at the last minute.  This system for creating picture mosiacs using your photos is just awesome.  I hope to have pictures to post of projects and goodies that I bought while there up tonight or tomorrow!

All Day Crop and ROBOTZ

I went to an all day crop on Saturday, which was a fundraiser for the church where we hold our monthly crops.  The group wasn't as big as usually only 30 (we normally have up to 52 ladies) but $800 was raised for the church!  Way to go ladies!  I had a lot of cricut rewards points and I didn't really want any of the carts they had available but I knew that my friend Tonya wanted Tags Bags Boxes and More and it is discontinued and hard to get a hold of.  I saw that they had it in the rewards site so I ordered it for Tonya and we did a trade.  I gave her TBBM and I got ROBTZ in exchange.  Here is what I made while playing with my new ROBOTZ cart!   I got the tutorial for the little card purse from Splitcoaster Stampers 

Card purse, I think my scoring was a little off but it was my first attempt.  I made four cards to go into the purse and the are all below.  I love this cart, perfect for kids cards. 

All of the casdstock was CTMH and the colors are just great I love the way they coordinate so well.

I'm Melting...I'm Melting......

Ok I have had enough of summer already and it is only the first week of July.  It has been so stinkin' hot in Southeastern Pennsylvania through the spring and into the early summer I just can't stand it anymore!   It is only like 93 degrees today (take notice that I said ONLY) but the humidity must have spiked up because is is oppressive outside.  Yesterday and Tuesday we hit 102 degrees both days and there is no end in sight, nor any rain!   We had record amounts of snow this winter -- almost 80 inches -- and now we are having record breaking heat!  Enough already!!

Well..  I received a package in the mail the other day from Oklahoma.... yes from Robyn at My Pink Stamper and it was my goodies that I won on her blog in June.  Here they are:

All four of Robyn's new stamps sets and the nice note she sent with them!  Can't wait to play with them this weekend at the all day crop I am going to!  Hope every is staying cool where ever you happen to be.  Hope to update on Sunday with lots of great stuff I will be making on Saturday!

OH YEAH.....

On my way to my crop in Quakertown I noticed that I passed by a Walmart.   Shirley who hosted the crop informed me that this Walmart had ALL of the new Cricut Lite carts in stock the other day.  So on the way home I could not resist and stopped to see what they had.  They had most of the new ones, they were out of stock on about six of them.  So of course I couldn't stand there and not bring one of these new carts home with me so I got..........

......................................  CAROUSEL 

Cricut Cards -- Creative at Last!!

I went to crops two Saturdays in a row! Both crops I spent my time playing with my Cricut carts. My new Cricut Lites as well as some of my older carts. I also used My Pink Stamper Punylicious Stamp Set and my other new stamp set Scrappy Mom Amusing Animals Stamp Set  All inks are CTMH - Papers assorted brands of patterned paper and cardstock.

Here are the cards I made today at the crop I went to in Quakertown.

( Cricut Lite Meow)

(Life's A Beach)

(Paisley)

(Life's A Beach)

(Hoot N Holler)

 Here are three cards that I made last Saturday at my local crop. 

(Meow)

(Live Simply)

(Live Simply)

TIM HOLTZ WITH NO RULES

I am on vacation this week, have gotten next to no scrapping or card making done, but I have been doing a lot of blog hopping.  I came across the cutest video on Tim Holtz's blog.  Check 3 year old Pezza making a Ranger distress inks masterpiece.   TIM HOLTZ WITH NO RULES  I have run across Pezza's mother's blog in my blog hopping travels so while you are there checking out the video you should check out the rest of the blog too!  Enjoy!

I won something!! Check it out!!

Look at what I won at MY PINK STAMPER!!  If you haven't been to Robyn's blog you have to go on over and check it out.  She has great ideas and videos all about using Cricut cartridges!  I won all four of her new stamp sets coming out next week.  All of her stamp sets work nicely with Cricut cartridges.  I already have one and can't wait to get the four new ones!!  See the Winning post!

Woooooo Hoooooo

I got an email this afternoon from a friend who had located the new Cricut Lite Cartridges at a local Walmart, the one of three that I had not gotten to yet.   So I made a quick trip over there tonight after dinner and picked up MEOW and LIVE SIMPLY.   I am doing a happy dance!!!  Don't have time to play with them tonight, hopefully tomorrow night!   I am so thrilled, I was obsessed with getting these two carts it was driving me crazy LOL.  Now I am putting myself on a scrap spending restriction until CKC at the end of July.

Scrapper Block Continues....

I am still feeling less than motivated to create anything.  I did do a card and a cut both from Create a Critter last night.  I got my new Peachy Keen faces stamps in the mail and wanted to try them out.   They are just adorable.  Here is what I did.

The penguin came out cute, but when I was trying to do the new hide contour feature on my Gypsy and as you see by the little line beneath the beak I missed something I should have hidden!  I also didn't have any of my colored pencils handy to color in his beak. 

This I was pretty happy with how the card turned out.  I might make the cuts slightly smaller if I do this one again.  I think the fawn was cut at 3.5 inches and this is an A2 size card.   I messed up her face a little bit.  The stamp smeared a little bit and when I used my white gel pen to finish her eye it smeared too!  I may take a black pen ad try to touch up her eye tonight. 

I doubt I will do any crafting tonight the Flyers are playing at 8:00 and then tomorrow night my DD  has music lessons and I have to help her start studying for finals.  So this weekend once again I will try to break out of my scrapper's block and get creative!

Scrapper's Block

I am having total scrapper's block.  I just don't feel creative at all.   I forced myself to make two cards last night.  I want to scrap, I really do but when I sit down to do it I lose my mojo.  I only got these cards done because I scrap lifted the ideas from My Pink Stamper's website.  The bird house is a shaped card -- Robyn did in a video and the fish one was posted by a creative lady during a challenge on MPS site.  I am not real happy with the birdhouse card, it is missing something.  I do like the fish card, the sequin scales really add to it.  I intend to use MPS's Puny-licious Stamps to out little sayings on the cards, so they are actually not 100% done.  Maybe tonight if my mojo returns!

New Cricut Cartridges -- 24 of them!!!!

The Cricut Message Board has been a buzz since yesterday when someone posted that they stumbled across new Cricut Carts at Walmart.  They are called Cricut Lite and there are supposedly 24 of them!!

Here is a partial list of the new carts.   The crazy thing this caught everyone by surprise --- no announcement by PC just a mysterious appearance at Walmart!  Here is a link to a bunch of pictures of the new carts that I found on 2peas  http://picasaweb.google.com/phiedragon/CricutLite#

My two favs so far are of course Meow and Live Simply, couldn't get a picture of that one but it has a little hedgehog on it that is just too stinkin' cute!

1. B is For Boy

2. Baby

3. Billionaire

4. Block Party

5. Carousel

6. Celebrate With Flourish

7. Cherry Limeade

8. Cupcake Wrappers

9. Dude

10. Feeling Groovy

11. Handy Man

12. Hoot and Holler

13. Live Simply

14. Meow

15. Slumber Party

16. Sugar & Spice

 17. Wildlife

Here is a picture of the one that I must own!

Waiting for the weekend!

I went to AC Moore on Sunday to get one of the new release Cricut cartridges, even after telling myself that I really didn't need them and would wait for the long anticipated "CAT" cartridge.  I picked up not ONE but TWO of the new carts!   I got them price matched for Joann's sale price of $39.99.  I picked up Cindy Loo and Freshly Picked.   I have them out of their box and linked to my Gypsy but haven't done anything else with them.  It has been a busy week so I am looking to play this weekend!  So by the weekend I promise to have projects using all of my new cartridges posted.

Here are my two new aquisitions from this past weekend.

Here is my eBay find for only $26 incl. shipping!

And just because I love this cart so so so much I thought I would ad it to this post too!

Cards from Saturday's Crop

I wasn't as productive as I had hoped I would be at Saturday's crop.  You know how it is, you get together with all of your crop friends and you talk more than you create sometimes!  But here are the few cards I did get done.   The two farm one's I scraplifted from someone on the cricut message board, I apologize that I don't remember her name (my bad) and then the hedgehog is pretty simple but I just love him!  I also used My Pink Stamper's Punylicious stamp set for the sentiments on the cards.  The deer I ran out of time for getting her on a card but she was just so adorable that I couldn't leave her out!

Cricut Obsession

I am totally obsessed with my Cricut Cartridges, Expression and Gypsy!   I think about what I can make with my cartridges all day long at work!   I troll blogs and get such great ideas from all of the ladies and men out there that are so talented.    I picked up the new Cricut Cartridge PRESERVES last night on eBay for $26 and free shipping!   I saw some really great paper in the new CTMH catalog that will be perfect to use with the PRESERVES cartridge.   I have an all day crop tomorrow and I plan on creating with my E and G all day!  I will post all of my creations either Saturday night or Sunday morning.  Hope you stop by and check it out.  Once I get my blog more organized and I get better at updating it several times a week with my creations I will start promoting more and have some blog candy!

Updating of Blog

I made some changes to the looks of my blog and I am committing myself to posting more of my creations and card/scrap related posts. I tried to scrap on Sunday night while I was watching the Survivor finale but my darn cat kept getting in the way, if he wasn't laying on my papers he was messing my Expression so I gave up!

I am attending an all day crop this Saturday and plan on working on cards. So look for an update on Sunday hopefully full of great new cards I made with my Expression and Gypsy!

Cards

Here are some cards I made this past Saturday at the crop I went to in Quakertown. I had a great time and made some fun cards I gave to my mother for Mother's Day. Here they are:

I used CTMH paper and inks, the stamp and punch were SU and I embossed with a cuttlebug folder.

Paper, stamp, ink and rick rack all CTMH and the adorable Hippo is from the new Cricut Create a Critter (CAC) cart.

Cardstock, stamps and ink CTMH, Patterned paper is Basic Grey Kioshi and the Panda is from CAC.

Again paper, stamp and ink CTMH and the Owl is from CAC.

I LOVE Create a Critter

Ok, Create a Critter (CAC) has to be Cricuts best cartridge EVER! I just love it! I am going to a crop on Saturday and I plan on making cards with it ALL day. And just so you know how much I LOVE this cartridge I failed to mention that I am the proud new owner of an Expression. I finally upgraded my baby bug to the E!! Here are two cards I made the other night with CAC. The cat is a shaped card I made by playing with the images and layers using my Gypsy another awesome crafting tool that I am finally getting the hang of using! The mushroom card I scraplifted from an image I saw on mypinkstamper's blog.

Happy Spring

Here are a few things that I worked on this weekend.

The card and the triangle treat box I made for a contest on a blog (see previous post). I used CTMH papers, and cuttlebug embossing folders.

The cat stamps below I picked up at the scrap stamp art tour that was in Oaks this weekend. I just thought they were adorable. I already used the to make a birthday card for my mother in law. I also used my new colored pencils and experiments with gamsol. Fun!

And last but not least, is my kitty -- Sonny. He loves when I get my Cricut out. He likes to watch the paper moving. I was helping Katy with a school project (another great use for the Cricut) and he was helping!