Lesson Plan Book Layout

I like to decorate my lesson plan book each school year and this time around I did a fun playground inspired theme. I couldn't bring myself to make a traditional school playground, I wanted a little taste of home. I grew up around cornfields and I pass some on the way to work so I had to have a field behind a fence. My parents had a tire swing when my children were small and we shared lots of giggles and family time on the swing. When I found the tree and swing on Pop-up Neighborhood I knew the layout for my planning book.

All the cuts are from Pop-up Neighborhood except for the school year numbers and the little dude gliding down the slide. The numbers are from Nifty Fifties cart and the little dude is from Winter Frolic (he's supposed to have some skis!)

I used some real twine salvaged from some rustic packaging and and untwisted the ends to make the hair/fringe on my sliding dude.

The same twine was used for the rope on the tire swing.
The yellow corn stalks are cut from bazzil paper, black and silver slide from my stash and the scarecrow and boy's clothes are from scrap stash.

The rest of the paper was My Minds Eye. I slicked up the tire swing with some Viva decor and added grass tufts with a green viva pearl pen. I get a nice happy feeling when I see the layout and hope it will serve to make me smile during the hectic school days to come!

Circle Monthly Challenge

This month for the circle the challenge was to make something for travel...I used an old baking cookie sheet and used the doodle charms cart to create a magnetic backgammon game.

My sister and her family will be moving from MA to MN and I thought this would be a good game to have in the car. I just returned from a trip out east and I know they will be driving cross country so my plan is to mail the game pieces (nice and flat!) and they supply the dice. And yes, I know they have some spare dice because I picked them up and told them to same it for the car ride! I used doodle charms to make a summer themed backgammon board. I use Maya Mist to create the game board on the back of an old cookie sheet and the cart Doodle Charms to make the game pieces. The watermelon and flower were cut at .98 for height and 1.24 width. For both game pieces (flower and watermelon) I used paper from Archiver's dollar spot scrap pack. To create the flower I sent the center layer through the cuttle bug useing the swiss dots folder. The watermelon seeds were made using Viva decor pearl pen dark brown. The magnet was cut using the blackout feature and I had a large selection of thing magnet sheets from a promotion. The gypsy was very handy to plot where to cut the images. the end result are some lovely game pieces that could also be used as tick-tack-toe game pieces or even checkers (but I am not sure how to "king" a piece).

I painted the cookie sheet on the parts where the magnets would not be placed for any long period of time so the paint wouldn't be hampering the adheasion. I thought magnets would be best for traveling in case of running over bumps in the road and the pieces would stay in place.

Valentines

I've been crafting, really I have! I just don't always post that quickly...so I made a few Valentines this weekend but of course I couldn't post in case my loved ones saw them before receiving the cards!

This first card was made using the guidelines for the Cricut Circle blog weekly challenge-use a heart, embossing and two cricut cuts. The shaped card is actually white card stock. Most of my photos are taken at night, I know it should be in the real sunshine of the day, but really?! I work during the sunlight hours so crafting occurs at night and thus picture taking is at night. Back to the card...I used the cheap card stock found in the office supplies and cut the heart shape with the cricut Wild Cards cart. Then I embossed the top of the card using the floral folder that came with my cuttlebug, and nope, there never was a name listed (or I didn't see it in my excitement of opening the gift at Christmas!) Next I used some colored twine to stitch around the heart (the holes were there from the cut!). Then on the wild card cart I found the hugs and kisses sentiment, cut that out of the white scraps. Adhered the hugs and kissed to a heart cut out from Wild Cards using shiny red paper from my scrap stash, popped up the heart with some 3m dimensionals and you see the results! The white "stitching" on the red heart is drawn with the white signo pen

Okay this card the color is really off! The embossed background is actually a light blush, pinkish color, and shiny. The paper is from my scrap stash (most of my paper was given to me from a card making friend who inherited it from a thankful parent of a student). I embossed the blush paper with the Persia Die/Embossing combo (the folder part of couse!) The layered cut is from one of my newest carts, Groovy Times. I just love that cart and have more fun looking at the book than creating (well that will change as I use it!) All the papers are from my scrap stash (I have a lot of scrap paper!) The ribbon was from some packaging, and the white stitching was part of the ribbon. In all a fun card with out any investiment! (other than time and cricut machine materials!)

Okay so now for this third card. The black background paper is Coredinations black magic.

I used the argyle cuttlebug folder and lightly sanded the black layer. I actually did this background piece to show my DS's girlfriend how the cuttlebug works. Being the paper horder I am, I saved the sample and used it to make this card. The cuts are several from Groovy Times and the paper is all from my (yep, you guessed it!) scrap stash! The silver letters that say Stay Cool are "shined" up with a bit by drawing small curved lines with the a light blue colored Viva Decor Pearl pen. The sunglasses have a bit of glossy shine from a clear Viva Decor pen.

And here is a photo attempt to show the dimension the viva decor paints have and maybe a bit lighter look to the card!

My son loved the card because it wasn't girly at all, and he had a pair of silver rimmed glasses just like those!