Christmas Gifts #2 - Explosion Box

I started my mom's gift months ago. A friend had shown me pictures of GORGEOUS explosion boxes that she had made and I was ready to try my hand at it.

I used Bo Bunny's Welcome Home collection for the box. I generally don't stick to "collections" when I do things, but this was such a huge undertaking, I thought starting out with everything that coordinated was a great idea :-)

I was excited to make the box interactive for my mom. There are tags to pull out with words and pictures inside. Some of the extras were "hinged" with brads so that they could be pulled aside.

I made the flower out of one of the patterned papers and one of the coordinating colors I bought to go with it. I cut each one 1/4" smaller than the previous, and used the end of my Xacto knife to "cup" the flower petals to give it depth.

I used a lot of the beautiful family photos we had taken in October!

It was definitely the Christmas present I was most excited to watch opened this year!

Christmas is coming....

Time to bust out the homemade gift ideas again!  We didn't make this one for Christmas, but it would make a great gift for a grandparent, aunt or uncle!

For Father's Day this year (yes, I'm that behind on my blogging) E and I made Daddy a handprint calendar.

I found the directions HERE. I did change some of the poems for our calendar.

They made SUCH cute little pictures and Daddy LOVES it!

I would have liked to have had more time to coordinate the paper better, but we were on limited time, limited budget and had an infant around who 1) didn't like to sit still while we painted E's hands and 2) wasn't sleeping through the night!

Homemade Christmas Part 2

The grandma's got brag books for Christmas!

 I've done a post about accordion albums before, and these ones were just as much fun as the first!

I used Zutter 4.25x4.25" chipboard covers on these accordion albums.

Lots of pictures of my daughter, some cute quotes and, on one of them, even some art work that she did herself!

I used a Crop-a-dile to punch a hole in the front for the jewel brads, then hot-glued the ribbon in place for the fastener These make great purse albums to carry around, ready to show off the grandbabies at the drop of a hat!

A Special Gift!

I've known Stef since I was 3 years old. She's is, in fact, my oldest friend (time, not age ;-)) She got married last summer and promptly moved out of the country, so they haven't had a chance to print wedding pictures. For their anniversary, I had some pictures printed and put it in a multi-photo frame.

When a friend mentioned a folded album , I thought "Well, I want to try the album and I have lots of extra wedding pictures!"

And so this album was born.

It took me two hours, start to finish, for the entire album.

It doesn't hurt that they are an incredibly gorgeous couple who picked gorgeous wedding colors!!

I was able to embellish both the front folds and the backs. They had some beautiful photos of their day!

And it just arrived (having been shipped about three weeks ago!!) at their doorstep yesterday! Stef and Nick, I hope you enjoy your pocket album!

ABC Book #3

HUGE hurdle crossed this week with my ABC book! All of the pages are COVERED! :-) I had to focus and sit down to do it yesterday, but my goodness, it's done :-)   I also inked all the edges, because I didn't like the glaring white edges around this beatifully colorful book.

These facing pages will be B-C-D and E-F-G-H-I.

These pages are for I-J-K & L-M

N-O-P & Q-R-S

T-V-U & W-X-Y

Z will stand alone on the back cover. It's gets a full page spread :-) Because, you know, it's so easy to come up with things that start with Z.....

ABC Book #2

Some random letters that I have finished :-)

D - Dinosaur

P - Piggie, of course
(if you know E, you know she's OBSESSED with Piggies)

U - Umbrella (with some storm clouds that I am so proud of!)

X - X-Ray. I'm proud of this one, it wasn't an obvious solution for X!

The Dinosaur is from Paper Dolls Dress up

The Pig is from Animal Kingdom

The umbella/clouds/raindrops are from Everyday Paper Dolls

The X Ray is:  a paper doll and the skeleton Halloween costume from Paper Dolls Dress Up. I cut the head and hands off of the skeleton costume. Then I used Accent Essentials for the rectangle frame!

So I'm moving right along on the book.  My cards have taken up a lot of my time, but I plan on spending some time working on the book this weekend! Yay for stormy weather :-)

ABC Book #1

I am in the process of making E, my 21 month old daughter, an alphabet book. This all came about because I found these awesome slide door books (Piggy Tales) on clearance at 50% off! I bought two and have decided one will be the ABCs. It took a LOT of planning because there are only 8 pages (and as many sliding doors!) So I'm getting creative with it :-)

I work on this in small pieces. I'm borrowing Everyday Paper Dolls and Paper Dolls Dress Up (Cricut cartridges!) from friends, so I want to get all my pieces/parts figured out before laying out the majority of the book. I am also heavily relying on Animal Kingdom, Hannah Montana (I know, I know), and Doodlecharms.

This is post one in the series about the book. I have a lot more bits done than big pieces, but here's the overall effect I'm going for: 

Then you will slide the door and there will be:

I haven't decided if I will be putting the word for the picture on the book yet. I'm working with about 2x3" spaces here....