Friends in Need

Hi everyone! Once a month some girlfriends and I get together for a girls night and play bunco. About half of the group has grown up together, and we've known each other since elementary school. Last night we found out that one of my friends fathers has been diagnosed with cancer. She lost her mother 19 years ago to this same disease, and now her father is beginning his own fight, and their family is facing this terrible nightmare all over again. They can use all the prayers they can get right now... STRENGTH for the ability to stay strong emotionally and physically to fight this thing as a family and with the support of friends, HOPE that their father will be healed by the hands of God, and COMFORT knowing they have many friends, family, and strangers praying for them asking God to help them through this difficult time.

Today I thought I would make a card for both girls in my group (they are sisters), and have each girl in our bunco group sign the card showing our love and support. This is the first idea I came up with.

This card was made by using the Wild Card Cricut cartridge and some Prima flowers from Michael's. When using flowers I also like to add a flower brad to the center for an additional embellishment. Just when I thought I was done making these encouraging cards I came up with a better idea! I thought of a way to make some dice, since Bunco is a dice game.

These are some of the dice I made. I created these by using the Creative Memories square punch and by using the Making Memories brad and eyelet setter for the holes. I then decided to remove the flowers I had originally used and replace them with the new dice I just made. To add a 3D effect I added some pop dots to the back of the die to make them stand out a little more. Here is what the final project looked like.....I am so excited that I thought of this cute and creative idea!!!

Thank you all for visiting my blog and for all the prayers and support....I know my friends are appreciative as well!

Busy Bee

I have been so busy with life and work that I have failed to keep up with my blogging. I fell so behind that I almost lost some blog candy I won, but thankfully they were very understanding and agreed to honor my award and allow me to claim my prize. This is the first item I have won since I began blogging, and I can't wait to see what I will get in the mail. While I have been away from blogging I practiced with my Nikon camera and took some photos of my friends ten year old niece. For some reason I really love taking head shots and close up  pictures. I think it  might have to do with how clear and awesome the picture turns out.

This next picture was my absolute favorite. We were determined to find a sunflower and drove around until we did. When I have an idea for a picture I try to make it happen. This turned out so awesome and she looked so pretty.

My other reason for finding the sunflower is because I like being able to take an awesome picture, turn it to black and white, and then focus on one item and bring just that item into color. For this picture I used the creative memory manager program. It is an awesome program for storing, editing, and photo shopping your pictures...and the best part is, it only costs $39.95. If you love this photo as much as I do, and would like to have the same ability, you can view this on my personal website at:http://www.mycmsite.com/sabrinacherry81

My mom needed me to make a birthday card for one of her friends, so when I am making cards I try to make a couple extra to have on hand in case I need them for another occasion. I never thought I would like using flowers, but they really bring a lot of character to a card, and I am really starting to love using all of my flowers. So much that Michael's just had a 50% off coupon and I went 3 times to get three different colors for $5.00 each! Here are a couple of the cards I made.

I hope you liked my new additions and projects that I am experiencing with. Every time I work on a new card  I am always trying to do something different and make it better. I always love ideas for improvement, so let me know what you think.

Crafty with my Cricut

I finally have had some time to sit down and use my new Cricut Imagine and cartridges, and I must say I LOVE IT!!! I needed to make two cards.The first one was a get well card and the second was a birthday card.

I used the Cricut Wild Card Cartridge for this card. Everything on this card except for the monkeys were used from this cartridge. The tree branch has a bird sitting on it, but because I wanted it to say "Hang in There" I decided to cut the bird off and add the monkeys. The monkeys were made with a clear stamp that I had and embossed with a bronze/brown glitter.

The second card I made  was a birthday card for my friend who is an absolute Mickey Mouse lover.

I am fairly new to card making along with embossing, and sewing on my projects. The mickey mouse paper I was able to find at one of the local craft stores. Mickey Mouse was cut out and pieced together from my Imagine and using the Disney Mickey and Friends cartridge. I used different colors of paper and then pieced together to save the ink in my printer. I put pop dots underneath Mickey to give him the 3D effect. Happy Birthday was made with a stamp I had and then embossed with black powder. Finally I tried sewing with my new Pixie machine I got from a friend. This is the first thing I have tried to sew with it so it was a little crooked. I had a problem with the foot not powering the machine, so I am still trying to figure out if it is inexperienced operator error, or the machine just decided to quit working on me LOL.

My favorite part of this card was the inside. I don't know why maybe its the colors or how well i think it matched, but I think the inside is what turned out the best!

I did the same thing with this Mickey as the other one. I pieced it together after it was cut out by my imagine, and then I raised it on a few pop dots. Since the Mickey was raised it also worked well as a gift card holder, for the gift I placed within the card.

Even though I saw flaws, and picked at things that could have been better or done differently my friend absolutely loved her card, and she was totally surprised when I showed up to work with her gift!

Confessions of a Scrapbook Shopaholic

Today my friend Nati and I started our morning off with a movie (Something Borrowed). When we got to the theater the movie was no longer being played, as they just updated the movies times this morning. Thank goodness for iphones because I found the movie at the Manteca theater (about 20 min away) and it was going to be starting in 30 min. We hurried to the theater and there was no way I was going to let Nati out of our date. She just started driving again after all of her recent medical set backs, and she needed to get out of the house and have some fun friend time ;-)

After the movie we headed over to Joann's since this store is bigger than the one we have. I must say it never fails that every time I am with her and we go to a scrapbook store I always end up leaving with some new tool that I do not have, or wouldn't have known about if it wasn't for her. I'm totally not complaining because I love all of my things, but that is just our little inside joke that every time I am with her I spend money LOL ( i know i am the one in control of my spending).Today I left the store with an embossing gun and some powders that I have been wanting to get for some time now because they were all 40% off. I may spend a lot of money on scrapbooking supplies, but all of my friends know that I am so frugal when it comes to shopping. I am all for getting hand-me-downs, discounts, and anything that is free. I will return something and then re-buy it if it saves me money in the long run. I used to be a cashier, so I know I must be one of their annoying customers at times.

My mom had asked me to make a birthday card for a family friend who is celebrating her 90th birthday on Monday, so using my new tools, supplies, and a couple of Nati's ideas I made my first birthday card. It took me a couple tries to figure out the embossing thing, but eventually I got the powder to stick LOL silly me. I think it turned out really cute for my first card, but I am also so darn picky I always manage to  find things that I could have or should have done better/differently.

Our family friend loves humming birds, so I thought this card would be perfect for her. I never thought I would use my flowers as much as my friend, but now I can see why she absolutely loves them. They add so much more to whatever project you are working on.

Next project in progress

Well I always tell my friends who want to start scrapbooing that they should have their pictures organized before they do anything else. Although I have not followed my advice, it is very true. If you don't have your pictures organized before you begin, there is a greater chance of you missing some awesome picture you late wish you would have included in your album. My unorganized photos used to be a bigger mess, so some of it has already been organized. With that being said I would like to share with you my embarrassment of a mess that still remains.

Not very organized is it? I don't even know what these are all picture of, but I will soon find out! I also started trying to organize my old 35mm negatives, but I was not happy with the system I was using. I did however find another system I think might work better and help keep me more organized, so once I get those together I will share those with you as well.

I did it!!! 6 years Later

Well I did it finally after 6 long years my Italy trip album is complete!! Here are some pictures of the first and last page along with some of the layouts I did.

Wlecome to Italy! the bottom city that is handwritten is where my mom is from.

My cousin and I went on a boat to three different little islands and this was one of the stops. I love my hand made volcano! 

While we were in Italy my parents celebrated there 30th anniversary, but my dad was in the US, and my mom was with me in Italy. I arranged with my cousin and dad over the phone to have some flowers delivered, and it worked out perfect. 30 long stem roses!

This is a layout of my cousins wedding. This was part of the reason we had gone to Italy to celebrate with our family.

Since I am in the medical field I like to learn new things, and also see how things are done differently in other countries. Lucky for me my cousin worked on the ambulance, and he now owns his own company. Hopefully next time I will get to ride out with him since he owns the company!

The last page. I wanted to have the front and back similar.

Now that I finally have this album complete my next project should be organizing all of my photos since that is also one big disaster. I have gotten the organized pretty well so far, but I still have a long way to go.

Making Progress

Well Last night after 12 hours of work and going to see a movie I decided to come home and start working on my forever long and ongoing project the Italy album. I finally opened and used my cricut imagine for the first time! Whoo Hooo! I just made a title for one of my pages. I didn't get as far along in my project as I would have liked because as my printer was cutting I heard some loud noises outside my house. I thought it was just bratty kids again throwing rocks at my dads truck, but nope it ended up being a robbery that started about 1/2 mile a way, which then led to a high speed chase, and ended a few house down from where I live with police shooting the suspect in front of my neighbors yard. I live in a nice neighborhood and for some reason these last couple weeks we have had police around here like crazy! So since there was so much excitement outside my house last night I was not able to make much progress, but I did cut with my imagine for the first time and this is what I created. Famiglia means Family in Italian!

Now that it is a new day I just need to grab my barrings and finish this album today. With only a couple more pages to go I am hoping to have it completed tonight and posted with pictures. Wish me luck!

Always Picture Ready

Yesterday started out great! I was finally able to sleep in, a little later than expected, but with all the hours I have been working it was really needed. I finished a couple more pages in my Italy album. I had to rip some apart and then change them around since they were out of order and I am picky like that :-) I am hoping that I will have it completed this Wednesday, so fingers crossed.

Speaking of fingers crossed that is something my friend won't be doing for a little while. She is a manicurist and all day yesterday we were trying to meet up, so I could get a manicure. She was trying to make arrangements to fit me into her schedule, but unfortunately she managed to break her wrist, and boy was it deformed!

Those of you that know me know that I work in the emergency room. I rushed to the ER to meet her there because once she said it was deformed I knew it wasn't going to be good. Luckily we were able to get her in right away. Of course my first thought was to take care of my friend and make sure she was all right, but I have to admit I did grab my camera on my way out the door. Who knows what opportunities you will have to take a picture and capture memories. Even though they may not be the most memorable moments, they still tell a story in your life.

By the end of the night she asked me to give her copies of all the pictures I took, so I made a deal with her. She would have to scrapbook with me and put them in a book :-)

  

New to the blogging world

Well I have finally decided to give in and try the blogging world. I definitely have to say though, that I do have an addicted scrapbooking friend who is the one influencing me to become more motivated in my scrapbooking, since it has taken me 5 years to work on my Italy album and to this day is still not complete. I had a scrap space, but I have bought so many supplies I had no idea where I wanted to put things, so they just kept piling up. My room quickly went from scrap space to storage space. I wanted very much to be organized, but every time I would walk into the room ready to clean I would get so overwhelmed not knowing where to start or put things that I would walk back out. 

I decided that I was going to need the help of a friend who I jokingly say has OCD when it comes to organizing. I know I myself have a small amount of OCD or I am just to much of a perfectionist at times, but for some reason I could not put those two things to work for the life of me in this specific situation. I finally told my friend that I would buy her a Cricut cartridge if she were to come over and help me. Since her and I are very much alike, anything that is FREE we jump for, so without hesitation she agreed to help me ASAP. While spending 5 hours last Thursday cleaning and re-organizing my room I learned that she has won tons of FREE scrapbooking supplies from following bloggers, which is now part of my reason for beginning this blog. I can not pass up the chance of FREE scrapbooking supplies!

Thanks to my friend Nati Tristan for helping me turn a disaster into a miracle. I now have a scraproom and I am ready to put it to good use!!

Nati always points out good deals and discounts, and I have to say what really sparked this interest in getting organized ASAP was that she found the Cricut Imagine for about $400 less than what it usually retails. We were both very lucky customers thanks to HSN.com because now the Imagine is SOLD OUT and we both have ours!!!