North Pole Friends

This year for my Mother's birthday, my brother and I "bought" her Santa to come to her annual Christmas party - the real Santa! This guy was amazing!!! He just embodied Santa. And it was an extra good present for me because I was able to get some wonderful photos of Santa with my girls.

For these pictures, I wanted to create a layout that was different than just the ordinary sitting-on-Santa's-lap layout. As I started looking through my Cottage Cutz, I got the idea of doing a North Pole kind of scene as the perfect background to my special Santa pictures. I borrowed an idea from one of Natasha's layouts where she cut the QK tree border and layered it. I loved how she did it and always wanted to try it out on one of my own layouts.

I used the Cottage Cutz Elf Workshop as well as these adorable little Cottage Cutz Festive Penguins. These little penguins were so fun to put together!! I think they are a must have for any Winter layout. This was definitely one of those dies that I am so glad I got because it is so much cuter when you have it in your hands and start thinking of all the different things you can use them for! The Cottage Cutz Mini Holly shape is absolutely the perfect decorative photo corner! I could see putting this holly on all kinds of different things for just a little added flair. I also used the Cottage Cutz Mini Christmas Tree to add to the Elf Workshop. Be sure to click on the layout so you can get a close-up of the Elf Workshop and Festive Penguins.

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmoose Everyone

My boss is an avid hunter so I knew I had to make his Christmas card with this

CottageCutz Moose with hat. The rest of the year I simply leave off the santa hat and he's great for those camping/hunting projects.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Watch for it Wednesdays!! #40

I feel like we have sort of reached a milestone with our 40th Watch for it Wednesday post! I guess 50 will really be exciting!!

My post today is a memory preserving kind of a tip. I think around the holidays more than any other time, you end up taking a lot more pictures in a much smaller period of time, am I right?? Every family gathering big and small, parties, children's pageants, you name it - the photo ops during this time of year way out number the scrapping hours available.

Sometimes, us scrapaholics can get bogged down by wanting to scrap every single picture we have in order to truly commemorate the holiday season. If you have that kind of time and patience, go for it!! But for the rest of us, we need another system.

What you need to remember is that there is a difference between a scrapbook and a photo album. Photo albums exist so you can print every picture you took of each and every Christmas present and proudly display it in the album. But scrapbooks are for telling the stories and the memories behind the pictures you see. That's why we scrap, right?! To tell and preserve the stories.

I want to share with you something I have started doing for my Disney album which I think would also work great for these holiday times. Why not have a combination scrapbook/photo album?! There are no rules saying you can't have layouts and photo pages in the same album!! In my combination Disney album, I scrap the pictures I want, and then in between the layouts, I include photo pages filled with all the "extras" that go along with the story of the layout. For instance, I scrapped a page detailing a parade we watched in Magic Kingdom. Then following that layout, I added photo pages to hold all of the parade pictures I took. It is like the best of both worlds, plus it keeps all of my pictures and stories together in one place.

I hope this tip has been interesting and has inspired you to stay "caught up" this holiday season!

Merry Christmas!!!!

Believe

The minute I saw this CottageCutz Dog w/Santa Hat die I knew what I wanted to do with him - make lots of different colored dogs. Isn't he cute??
This CottageCutz Believe Phrase die is also a fun one - I ran it through my Revolution with green and red cardstock and one more time for the extra "e" and I had all the letters I needed. It has the solid letters as well as the ones with the holes so you don't have to keep cutting it out or worry if the holes pop out while cutting.
I used a tiny stylus to punch out the tiny holes and glued that letter to the solid one. For the "B" I also mounted it on an extra red "B" for added emphasis. I used a little distress ink and one little gem for the "i".

These are both 3x3 dies and remember the dog can be used all year round as he's complete even without the santa hat. His ears are all one piece which makes him so simple to put together.

I cut these dogs out of one color and then colored in his ears, nose and spots with my Copic markers.

We'll see you back tomorrow for Ruth Ellen's Watch for it Wednesday post!

Christmas Train Book

I wonder if every little boy loves trains as much as my little grandson. He knows all the names of the Thomas the Engine trains. So, hopefully this will be the perfect little book to help capture his Christmas memories.

I am using the Cottage Cutz Holly Jolly and Winter Wonderland minis to help me embellish this fun book. On the front page, I used the Cottage Cutz Holly Berry.
For the second page I used the Quickutz Revolution Train and the Cottage Cutz Santa Hat mini.
This will be my next page. I used a circle punch to make the wheels and then used some sliver stickles for the center of the wheel and gold stickles for the back light. The Cottage Cutz Snowman mini is so cute, I used it on this page.

I am working on this train book daily. I sure hope I can finish it before Christmas........ Have a wonderful, exciting and fun filled day...Merry Christmas!!!

My Christmas Elves

I know I usually post my projects on Thursdays but we had a little Christmas pageant issue come up at my youngest daughter's preschool on Thursday. So, instead of taking a picture of my layout and uploading it for you guys, I was helping out with some last minute costumes. I figured y'all would understand :)

Sooooooo.................I am loving these Cottage Cutz Elves from the Holly Jolly Christmas Release!! They are so cute and SO much fun to put together!! I especially love the little bells on the shoes of the CC Elf with Present Shape. Another great Cottage Cutz touch!! I added gold stickles to the bells to really make them shiny and fun. Doesn't he just look like is running across the page!

If you haven't ordered your Christmas Cottage Cutz shapes, you don't know what you're missing!!

Winter's Sweet!

I am just amazed by all of the

beauty in winter. Glistening

trees, icicles melting, smoke

rising from tall chimneys,

white snow falling....it is a

wonderful time of the year!

The wonder of it all inspires

me to the core. I love winter

but I love Christmas most of all!

Watch for it Wednesday #39

Let it Snow!

Today's Watch for it Wednesday is a pretty quick and easy tip. When you want to make snow on your layout or card all you have to do is take some white cardstock and tear off a strip, trim the sides to the size you need and apply it to your project. You can tear several strips and layer them for more depth. You can ink it with lt.blue ink or add glitter or Stickles to make it shine. You can also use tan or Kraft cardstock and make sand the same way.