Mothers warning others about Essure

I was honored to be a part of a new story recently about Minnesota Mothers warning others about the side effects of Essure.  Here is a link to the story.

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2015/07/15/minnesota-mothers-warn-of-permanent-birth-control-product/

Read More..

Monochromatic Scrapbook Layout

I always feel like I need a theme, color, color combination or some sort of item to be my inspiration to make a scrapbook layout come together.  It helps me to find pieces and elements that work together.  For this layout, I decided to go with a monochromatic look . . . cream colored background and shades of blue.

Now, I knew that I had enough pictures that this would have to be a two page layout, but I only had one sheet of this paper.  So I decided to split it and use only a portion on each page.  I made the split slightly off center, so then it would not look like I was trying to do a perfect center cut and just missed.  :)

For the next part, the nice thing was that I was able to go to my scraps piles and use up some of those papers.  I cut strips of paper in various shades of blue.  I also cut several butterfly shapes out of the same blue papers.

As I built my layout, I was able to use these strips of paper and butterflies as accents to tie things together.

I also cut the word laugh out of the same blue paper.

See how running the strips of paper from one side of the layout to the other helps to tie both pages together.  The flowers from the main background piece of paper are in the corners of the overall two page layout, and the butterflies are just scattered around.

Read More..

Cricut for Mothers Day

**This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking through my links. 

Looking for the perfect gift for a crafty mom for Mothers Day? Well look no further than Cricut! Their incredible Explore Air™ machine takes cutting, writing, and scoring to a whole new level. Itll be the Mothers Day gift that keeps on giving!

For starters, it has built-in Bluetooth technology, which makes it wireless. That means that mom can take her projects wherever she goes and save her projects to the cloud. Its also compatible with Cricuts Design Space iPad app, so mom can lay all of her cuts in the Design Space and see everything shes cutting all at once on her iPad. Adios paper-based handbooks! 

Here are a few other neat notables of the Explore Air™ machine:

• It can cut over 60 different materials, including leather, balsa wood, fabric, vinyl, tissue paper, craft foam, and even silk! Mom just sets the dial to the material that she needs to cut and the machine keeps track of the settings.
• For cutting layers, mom can just print them on her printer and have the Explore Air™ cut it out.
• Fonts and images can be uploaded for free so projects can have writing on them that looks just like handwriting.

The Cricut Explore Air™ machine has an unbelievable amount of helpful, time-saving features. And if that werent impressive enough, Cricut is taking $50 off their Explore Air™, officially making this one of the best gifts to give crafty Moms this Mothers Day!

Read More..

Some Odd Girl Fairy Tag

It has been SO LONG since I have crafted! I miss my craft room so much!

 The other day while I was organizing some photos, I realized that I made this project before I had my surgery but never posted the photos.

I did this back when I was still suffering from extreme back pain, and I wanted to craft but needed to do a project where I could sit with the heating pad on my back for a while . . . so coloring these cute little fairies from Some Odd Girl seemed like the perfect project.

These are from the Fairy in Flight set.  I saw this set at CHA.  I love to stop by the Some Odd Girl booth.  My daughter had so much fun there when she came to CHA in 2014, and she was even featured on their blog . . . and the girls in the booth remembered her when I stopped by the following year!  

I did some playing around with colors, and I ended up really liking the fairy in the green dress with the orange flower.  I colored the orange flower with a glitter Sharpie, so it has some extra shimmer and sparkle.

I have this little tradition going with one of my co-workers, where I make her little tags to hang in her cube for each month of the year.  This was for the March tag.  I thought this little fairy had an Irish feel to her, with the green dress, orange flower and reddish brown hair.

I cut a large circle from a Jinger Adams cardstock pack that I have, and offset the circle and trimmed the edges to match up with the tag.  In a gold ink, I stamped the word believe.  The finishing touches . . . a glitter vinyl shamrock I cut out and a yellow mini dimensional butterfly from Little B.

I think she turned out pretty cute.  My co-worker really liked her too.  It is fun to make quick little projects like this . . . especially when they brighten up someones day.

Read More..