Cultivating Gratitude / Gratitude Journal Class

My next class, Cultivating Gratitude: A Gratitude Journal and More is now open for registration HERE.

I'm so excited to offer this class through My Creative Classroom.  We'll be making a journal from scratch using an old hardcover book.  I also have several other crafty projects prepared so that you can share everything you're grateful for with others, too.  I hope you can join me!  Class starts March 30th.  Don't forget it's all online, there are no grades, just great ideas and crafty goodness.

K is for Kite Scrapbook Layout

We've been having some windy days in March (imagine that) and Hannah and I decided to attempt kite-flying in the backyard.  It took a few tries, but we got our Cinderella kite high up in the air.  Hannah was all excited about it until the wind started taking her for a ride and she began yelling, "I'm done! I'm done!"  Well this mama was having fun so I kept it going until, alas, the apple tree ate our kite.  Oh, bummer!  At least we can relive the memories in a scrapbook page.

Luckily, I spotted this super cute kite-flying paper from imaginisce (see the line, including the super-cute kite paper on their product page here) at Scrapdoodles last week.  I picked up the coordinating spring border sheet and a pack of stickers to work with.  I've seen a lot of fun strips of ribbons or papers as borders on layouts lately and these papers seemed to fit the bill for that kind of design.  I simply cut up my border sheet and arranged them in varying lengths down the left side of my page.  I was inspired by the kite strings to stitch on my page and haphazardly ran a few wavy lines to secure my strips.  My title cut is from Cricut's Nate's ABCs cartridge.  I created the feel of a windy day by extending the kite-tail down the page by cutting small "ribbons" from paper scraps and sewing them in place along the stitched tail.

Hope you get a little kite-flying in this March.  And watch out for the apple trees!

Pretty Spring Garland and Banner

I'm itching for spring.  How about you?  To hasten the season, I decided to create a couple of lovely spring decor items, namely a butterfly garland and a banner.  I used some pretty papers I found at Scrapdoodles (the most awesomest scrapbook store!).  The papers are double-sided  from We R Memory Keepers.  The line is called "Cotton Tail" and features an adorable bunny on the coordinating border sheet and stickers.  You can see the whole line here on their website, or just go to Scrapdoodles and get some :)

For my butterfly garland, I chose a butterfly cut from the Cricut Sentimentals cartridge and cut out several, all the same size, from the various papers.  It was really easy to put together.  I used some twine, some irridescent pony beads (which I looped to hold in place) and some glue dots.  The twine is sandwiched between two butterflies.  I then folded out the wings of the butterflies.  The photos do not do this garland justice as it takes on a life of its own with any gentle breeze.  The butterflies twirl and the beads sparkle.  I thought they also looked pretty cute piled up in one of my sun-purpled glass plates.

I used the same line to create this easy spring banner.  The base is a cut from Cricut's Something to Celebrate cartridge.  I cut slits in the tops and wove my ribbon through to link all the pieces.  I think the brown kraft paper really allows the patterns to shine.  My letters are the font from the Sophisticated cartridge.  The flowers, about 24 total, are from Walk in My Garden.  These were really easy to do, too.  After cutting the flowers I just used my hands to crinkle and fold them in to give them shape.  I simply used hot glue to attach them to the base and then added a sparkly gem in the middle of each flower.

Since I had several butterflies left over from the garland project, I added a few onto the banner, adorning them with more crystals.  Then, I added a few extra sparkly brads to complete the project.  It's adorable!

Hope you're able to craft some spring around you!