It's Disney Time Again!

I am finally getting back to some of my Disney layouts! I planned these eons ago but just got around to them at a crop last weekend. The series of layouts I will show you over the next week or so were really a challenge to me - and I thought they were going to be so easy! When we were at Disney I picked up just about every pack of Disney paper they were selling - and in the stacks were these photograph sheets from each of the parks. So I have been dying to use them but when I sat down to do them it was hard to find a balance between placing the pictures without covering up the background! And it took me all day - but I am pleased with how they came out!

The details: 

This is paper showcasing Mickey's house at Magic Kingdom - which I hear is no longer there  - aww poor Mickey! (The economy is so bad he's homeless! but I digress.) I was in a bit of a photo corner mood but instead of using them I used these great Mickey head brads from Queen & Co that I picked up at CKC Buffalo. For the title I used Mickey font, cut at 1 inch in red and shadowed in yellow. And so you can see it closer....

I used a Mickey glove brad for the comma! I so love these brads (Have we talked about my brad "problem"?? If I don't call it addiction they can't be taken away from me!). And I also added a Mickey button (also from Queen & Co) so that I could enter myself in Kate's Challenge over at Paper Craft Weekend Challenge! Who knew a layout so simple could take so long?! I have a few more of these to share so stay tuned!

Crystal Palace Shaker Layout

As I was working on this next layout  I found the Mickey confetti I had saved from our table at the Crystal Palace and wanted to incorporate it into the layout. After all, I thought why should shakers be just for cards??

The details:

The paper I used was from K and Company, and I used Storybook for the title and cut with the coordinating plain papers from the same stack as the print. The title was cut in green and shadowed with blue but I just was not happy with how plain they looked - and then it hit me! The "Crystal Palace" needed crystals! And since it had been so long since I used my I-rock I apparently forgot what a huge PITA it is, I busted it out. Eleven hours later (not really but it felt like it) I was done adding the bling and (since I am a glutton for punishment) I added it to all the photo mats too.

Here you can see the bling in the photo mat corners and in the pic you can see the confetti I used for the shaker part of my layout.

To create the shaker element I used the same welding technique I used in this post. It is basically a frame made using some rectangles from George and the silhouette cut of the Mickey shape  from Mickey Font welded together. I used a blank frame behind it so you could see the background paper. The plastic is recycled from a package of plastic easter eggs.

I used a double layer of foam tape to give it more dimension than my shaker post-it holders, and you can see from this picture how it is popped up.

So even though adding the bling was more time than I liked to spend on one project I was super pleased with the way this came out and I was able to incorporate our souvenir confetti right into the layout. I guess sometimes the extra effort (and swearing) is worth it!

Altered Gift Bag

We interrupt these layouts with a quick craft that I have of late found more necessary to create, especially since this weekend will be the second Saturday of this month with back to back birthday parties *SIGH*. Both Joy from Obsessed With Scrapbooking and Nadia from With Glittering Eyes featured bags in recent posts so this is one of my attempts. The party is to go see the movie Hop so I wanted to incorporate that into the bag.

The details:



The egg is (obviously perhaps) from Easter 2010, cut at 5.30. For the letters I used Mickey Font but I did some major tweaking to them on the G to get them to fit in the egg shape and look like the movie logo. I unlocked height and width, played with the skew a little, and rotated them slightly. Then I still had to do some "cricut surgery" and trim the H and the P with scissors. Then of course I had to use Elegant Edges for the background, and that is sized at 7.20 inches. The name is spelled out in a stickers from an old pack of stacker stickers I got at Michael's for 99 cents.  A closeup:

I don't think you can see in the picture but the egg is cut on DCWV glitter cardstock, and the background paper is DCWV Blossoms & Butterflies stack. The letters were cut with papers from my scraps. Well, I hope you enjoyed this brief commercial break, as I believe we will be back to layouts soon!

Mickey Ears - From Sketch to Layout

I have been slowly but surely planning and working on my Disney album  and so while I may not have been diligent about posting I have been working. This week's challenge at the Cricut Circle Blog is to work from a sketch and since that is the way I work anyway I thought I would share my process for this layout and how I design my layouts in general.

The details:
I usually begin by sitting down one night with my pencil and paper and a stack of pics. Then I group my pics together by theme or event and begin to sketch. I sometimes use my Becky Higgins book of sketches or ones I have cut out of magazines or sometimes I just move the pics around until I come up with an order I like. Then I begin to sketch my page layout - and what I have started to do is next to the sketch make a list of the possible papers and cricut cuts I want to include as well.

My inspiration for this particular layout was I wanted to model it after the pair of Mickey Ears my daughter picked out and designed for herself at Disney World. Here's a closeup so you can see:

And once I have done a few of those (or on a different night) I pull out my Gypsy and use the first layer as my design layer - I layout the cuts as I want to see them on my page. I might use more than one layer if I have to plan welding and shadow cuts.

When I do get around to start cutting (usually after a torturous afternoon trying to pick out papers - oh the decisions!) then I simple copy and paste the images to a different layer for cutting.

For this particular layout, the big Mickey shape is cut at 9.5 inches, the font is cut at 1 inch and shadowed, and the little Mickeys in the corners are cut at 2.90 inches and then I trimmed off the excess that hung over the edges. The printed background paper is DCWV Blossoms & Butterflies, the holographic pink is from Target, and the rest to the paper is Recollections. The gems are from Michaels too - from the kids crafts section and adhered with glue dots.

I hope this is the start of more layouts to come - and if you enjoy looking at the sketches too please let me know - I will be happy to include them.

A Royal Thank You

As we come to the end of Princess week, I have to round out the week with the thank you cards. It took me quite a while to decide on a design that I like for these cards, but once I did they were fairly easy to put together. I did three variations of the same design, because I tend to get bored mass producing the same thing, so I decided to play a little bit with the colors.

The crafty details:

The base of the card are the pre-made blank cards that I got on sale at ACMoore. I did not attach the layer to the front until after my daughter was done writing out the inside, in case there was a disaster - I didn't want to waste a completed card!

The top layer is glitter paper from Target, and I created a rectangle using George with the "thank you" cut out using Mickey Font, leaving enough room on the side for the ribbon I found the Princess Tiana ribbon in the craft section at Walmart, and ran it through my trusty Xyron to make sure it stuck. Then I added the bottom layer of plain colored cardstock, adding the center of the O and A, and adhered the whole thing to the front of the pre-made card. Really easy peasy once I was done obsessing over the design.

Why didn't I stick with the frog you might wonder?? I was tired of the dang thing!!! I need a serious break from that frog and its pain in the hiny teeny legs for a good long while.

I was hoping to show you some pics of the party location but unfortunately the camera I took them with is not cooperating. Hopefully I will at some point be able to get them posted. Thank you so much for joining me for Princess Week!

First Blog Post - and Happy Halloween!

Wow! this is exciting.....now what have I gotten myself into?

I am guessing all those enablers at the Cricut Cricle finally got to me, and I have decided to jump on the Blog Bandwagon! I can't make any promises that I will become a daily or even weekly blogger, but I will certain try my best to keep up among all the other crazy things I have going on.

First, some much deserved thanks go to Caroline at Caroline's Craftography for getting me started and set up (she would be the number one blog enabler). So if you see something that looks great here, she can take the credit. If it looks messed up, it is because I have NO idea how to use this blogger dashboard yet!

Next, in case you were wondering the reason for my blog name (and even if you don't care)...goody bags are not only my favorite thing to put together and create, they are my retirement plan (hey it's only 30 years away - I believe in long term plans). In my next career I definitely want to be a party planner. I will warn you, I tend to go a teensy bit overboard (just a smidge) but I can't help myself. I would do goody bags for Columbus Day if I didn't think people would day I've finally gone over the edge.

Oh wait! did you come here to see crafts?? Who would've thunk? well then I guess I had better get on to it.

For my first post, I want to showcase some goody bags (what a surprise huh?) that I was super excited about. Why, you ask? Well not only were they made with my most favorite material, which would be heat transfer vinyl, but it was GLOW IN THE DARK heat transfer vinyl! And it really works!

Let's view the evidence, shall we? I did twenty canvas bags for my daughter's kindergarten class (black for boys and orange for the girls) that I was lucky enough to find at the local dollar store for six for a dollar! (totally my kind of deal). These are what they look like in the light:



and then when the light go out (insert bwahahahaha here):


Isn't that so neat?? I just love it! I filled the bags with all sort of goodies: bubbles, pencils, stickers, playdoh, tattoos, fangs...and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember (this is one of those things where I may have gone the teensiest bit overboard).

Now for the crafty details:

I cut the Halloween Images from the Pumpkin Carvings Cricut Cartridge at 2 1/2 inches, while the "trick or treat" used the Mickey Font Cricut Cartridge at 3/4 inches. I designed all of them using my Gypsy, because I had to get 20 images and phrases out of 3 sheets of vinyl. It was a close call, but I made it!

I purchased my vinyl from Nick Stafford at Craft Vinyl. I purchase all my heat transfer vinyl from him, and I can guarantee you will not find better customer service from an online vinyl guy! When it says you can call or email him anytime, he means it! (I sometimes wonder when he sleeps.)

Oh and I couldn't forget my daughter's teacher (the horror!) and I had picked up this Halloween paint can at Michael's on clearance so I decorated it with regular sign vinyl, using October 31st for the Happy Halloween phrase, Mini Monsters for the "trick or treat" on the lid, and Pumpkin Carvings (again) for the pumpkin - the face was layered on the pumpkins shape by hiding the contour of the square outline.