I AM SO EXCITED!!!!!

Close to My Heart just made my life soooooo much easier as of this morning!  They rolled out our new websites, which is not all that exciting....but they also developed professional newsletters, that they do most of the legwork on, to send out monthly to our customers.  It's a big task, and quite time consuming to get all of the images and info together...ahhh, how I love simplification!!!  Way to go CTMH, and THANK YOU!

You can visit my new website at www.rhondac.ctmh.com

And for those of you that get my newsletters, the new and improved version will land in your mailboxes on April 1st! :)

Oh paper purse, how I love thee!

This is my first attempt at a paper purse!

At team training Saturday, one of my fellow consultants, Renee Pileggi, brought a few purses that she had created and used as prize bags for her open house the night before.  It was love at first sight!!  And she said they were easy enough to make...maybe for her, but I wasn't so sure!  Thank goodness for the Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge, it made it soooooo easy!  It cut the purse (bag) shape, as well as the flap shape.  A little adhesive, some bling, and VOILA!!  I'm going to make it into a workshop, along with a couple of the 3D milk cartons, and see what everyone comes up with for uses!  The purses are the perfect size for a few candies, a gift card, a thank you card, or other small treasures.  Until next week, happy creating!!

Perpetual calendar

One of my fellow consultants showed me a pic of a perpetual calendar at our last training session in January, she was going to send us the instructions, but I couldn't wait to create it.  So I set down with my girly Roxie paper pack, the collage cubes, and my Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge, and this is what I came up with!  It was originally only going to be given as a door prize for the New catalog BINGO game, but I had requests for a workshop with it...so ask, and you shall receive!

February 24th, 6:30pm here at my house, for $25 you too can create this calendar that will last for years to come!  You need to reserve your spot no later than Sunday, February 5th, so that I can order the supplies and get everything cut and ready for you!  Respond to this post, or send me an email at rhonda@jcrackington.com if you are interested!

ZUMBA

I have a zumba friend, that is making a zumba album for another friend, so I volunteered to make one layout to help with this.  What better way to combine two of my true loves...scrapbooking and zumba!  I gave her the layout the other night, and then decided it was a good thing I took a picture of it, because I NEEDed one of those for myself as well!  Came home from zumba and made another one for me!
Enjoy! 
PS... I used my zumba bracelet to help me freehand that funky little symbol on the pink circle...an artist I am not, but it will do for now! : )

Dinosaur Valentines

In sticking with my theory of using what I have instead of buying more scrapping stuff....I decided to use the super cute new Roar! dinosaur stamp set to create 'manly' valentines for the boys for school.  The card will have a dinosaur toy attached to it, rather than the traditional candy...the parents will love me for not sending candy, I'm sure the kids will think I'm an old fuddy duddy, but such is life! ; )  For once, these were super easy to make and reproduce 33 times!  I random stamped a sheet of white daisy cardstock with the dinosaurs in pacifica, sunset, pear and desert sand.  Cut the heart using the Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge, and ink distressed the edges with desert sand (Jeny will be so proud of me)...and VOILA...33 cards are finished, except for the boys to write their names and their friend's names on them!  One more thing of one million off the to do list!!

Valentine you're DINO-MITE!  How cute is that!  The boys like them, so that's all that really matters! : )  Happy scrapping!!

New stamp set card swap

For training with my CTMH upline in January, the team decided to pick a stamp set, design a card and do a swap at the February training meeting.  I picked the Just a Number stamp set because it has smarty pants birthday sayings, that sound as though I could've written them myself.  I found a design in one of my card recipe books, thought it looked simple enough, and set out to make 1 for me and 12 for the swap.  You would think that I'd know by now that simple enough in the book, means painstaking to reproduce more than once...but I'm a slow learner.  It is sort of what I had in mind, but since I have way too much to do, and not even close to enough time, it has to do for now! : )

You know you're getting older when...the candles cost more than the cake!

The flames on the candles are actually super small hearts cut from my Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge, flipped them upside down!!  They are the only thing that made this card any easier to reproduce 13 times! : )

Family album for Mother in law

About a year ago I was given several pictures of my mother in law's, mother's side of the family--The Anderson family.  Between my love of scrapbooking, and interest in getting to know that side of the family better (even from such a distance), I came up with an album for her.  Here are a few of the pics of the pages, that I forgot to take good pictures of before I gave it to her (because I procrastinated up to xmas eve to get it done for her on xmas)!!  It's the first album I've ever made and given away, so it was difficult to create for someone else.  And it was incredibly challenging trying to put some kind of order and semblance to pictures of people from generations ago that I've never met, and not heard a lot about.  It was a good experience for me, and has gotten me interested in researching both my mom and dad's side of the family.  I have very few pictures of either side, but making a detailed family tree that I could pass along to my kids someday would be fun, and quite an adventure nevertheless!

PS  My website will be updated and fully functional in the very near future!  www.scrappinmama.jcrackington.com