I have a NSD hangover!

Yes, it’s true!  I am not afraid to admit it!  I have a National Scrapbooking Day hangover.  Seven projects in two days and I am beat!  Now, I know many of you are saying, “What’s with her?? I can crank out that many layouts or cards in a day.”  You will have to let me in on your secrets of survival, because I think I am just getting too old for that kind of crafting!

The good news is that I have a bunch of fun projects to share with you in the next couple of weeks.  As I mentioned on Saturday, my home base for NSD was CropChocolate.  If you haven’t been by CC for awhile, you should pop by!  They released some exciting news last week about a merger with Oh My Crafts, so there have been many contests and giveaways on top of the challenges.

One of the projects I managed to finish was for the “Wedding Colours” challenge.  When I got married, our main colour was purple, and this was a perfect match with some photos I recently had taken of my youngest daughter!  I teamed up this challenge with a sketch challenge from Echo Park, and this was the result:

This is the Little Girl collection from EP – one of my favourites! The twine is from Trendy Twine (Grape Fizz – yum!)

I had so much fun embellishing this layout!  From hand stitching on the circles, to a row of pennants, to a Glossy Accents title, and even an embellished straight pin inspired by a Scrapbook and Cards Today Challenge, this layout had me fiddling for many hours (probably too many given the deadlines for the challenges – but so worth it)!  Take a look:

I had some fun adding some hand stitching to these circles.

I simply added a little bow made from twine to embellish this cute Making Memories pin. It was an easy way to coordinate this embellishment with the rest of the project!

And of course, some popular pennants for a bit of texture!

But, my favourite part is….you guessed it – an interactive element.  Hidden behind the large picture is a hidden journaling tab.  Pull up….

Oh, and there is even a little surprise hiding behind that big photo! Here’s a peak!

Yup – there it is – keep going…

Here is the hidden journaling tab pulled out completely.

…and the rest of the title, another picture and a spot for journaling is revealed! I think it does justice to my little one’s “cuteness”!  What do you think??

Welcome All CCers and Friends!

Good morning everyone!  Welcome to our first OFFICIAL CropChocolate blog hop!

If you arrived here from DeeDee’s blog – yahoo (that’s Calgarian for “welcome”)!  If not, I am sending you away and all the way back to CropChocolate to start there!  It’s not because I don’t want you here – it is just because I want you to have a chance to win the great blog candy that CC is offering as part of this hop!  To do that, you need to visit each of the blogs and leave a comment.  So, get going, or keep reading!

Celebrating you...

How did I get luck enough to be a part of this hop?  I made the 2011-2012 CropChocolate design team!  It’s my first time on a design team, and I couldn’t be happier that it is for CropChocolate!  It’s a great company, and I am happy to be able to use the products they sell to create fun projects to share with you all!  And here’s the first one (oh, and this project is actually a bit a sneak peak for the one I created for the August monthly challenge, but you will have to wait until the 24th for that reveal):

Can I just say that I love making cards?! I’ve been making them for family members since I was little, and although sometimes I am creating at the very last minute, it really is a labour of love!  There really is just so much inspiration that you can pull from your relationships- from nicknames for those you love, to funny sayings or situations!  For this one, I pulled out the super cute Echo Park Little Girl paper and created a pop-up card for my little girl who just turned two (my DH and I are both pop-up book fans)!  The little llama on the front was inspired by a cut on the Cricut Birthday Bash cartridge.  It isn’t the actual cutout because I am sad to say that my Expression suffered an untimely death.  But I couldn’t go without this image on her card (we call her “Tama Llama DingDong!”), so I had to count on my own drawing skills this time.  Oh, and you might notice that I did a bit of distressing on the edge of the llama thanks to DeeDee’s helpful instructions on the the Crop this last week (click here to check it out if you missed it)!

...Because you're two (or 2222222)

On the inside, I played around a bit with a super easy “box” pop-up and numbers with tabs.  Right now, Tama calls anything more than one, “two”… so I thought it would be really fun to put a bunch of “2s” inside.  I hope the joy and fun I had making this card comes through for her as she looks back at this card in years to come!

Oh, and if you are feeling inspired to make a pop-up card of your own, don’t be intimidated by it!  They look far more complicated than they are!  Check out this handy little tutorial on how to create the box pop-up on Extreme Cards!

So, Happy Birthday my Little Miss!  And thank-you to the rest of you for stopping by!  Now don’t forget to leave a message below so you can be entered into our chance at some great blog candy provided by CropChocolate (I know I am going to comment so I can try to win that Slice…it might help me get over the Bug’s passing)!  And then, it’s off to Jenn’s blog - http://moon-scraps.blogspot.com/  See you all again soon!