Birthday Girl

Grace, my pride and joy and my reason for waking up with a smile every morning, will be 1 year old on Saturday.  I can't believe how quickly the time flew by!  Part of me is sad that I'll never get those tiny-baby-cuddle moments back.  But mostly I am blown away by the spunky personality my girl has developed and can't wait to see who she grows into!  I always knew that I would love being a mom.  But I had no idea how much!  I am in awe of her at every moment, and miss her when I am away from her for an hour!


For this reason, we are going all out for her first birthday!  No pony rides or anything, but we feel like this day is a pretty big deal!  I made her invitations and everything else, including her dress the banner and the cake, are coordinated to match!  My husband (the food crafter in the house!) is making her cake and I am making a cake topper using my Cricut as well as a banner.


Today I am sharing with you the invites that I made.

I made these before I owned a Cricut, so everything is hand cut using a template printed from the Internet.  To make the owl I just traced the outline, then cut away the outside of my template and traced the abdomen, then cut out one eye and traced that, and so on. The flourish that he is standing on was cut with my Sizzix, though.  It is a bit time consuming to hand-cut the pieces, but once I get a sample made up I turn it into an assembly line process and get my hubby to help!  The polka dot papers are all Bo Bunny, which are some of my favorites!


Well, that is it for today.  Now to finish the preparations for the big day!  I will be back Monday with some pictures of the banner as well as all the fun!  Have a great weekend!

Soft and Fuzzy Friends

Grace is obsessed with stuffed animals!  She loves to dive, head first, into a pile of them.  She loves to chuck them one by one from their perch on her rocker so that they litter her entire play rug and then she jumps on the pile.  And she calls every stuffed animal she owns Bear Bear Bear.  So when we saw a giant stuffed pig at Target my husband and I knew it had to become part of the family.  As soon as we put it on the floor she was jumping on it for a cuddle, and it has been dubbed Pig Pig Pig!

As I mentioned yesterday, this layout is based on the same simple sketch that inspired yesterday's post.  It is just rotated 90 degrees clockwise.  The simple photo grid here features a 4 x 6 portrait while yesterday's 4 x 6 was landscape.  This very versatile sketch works with both!

Pig Pig Pig was packaged with a round tag and had a fleece ribbon tied around him.  I wanted to use both items on the page.  The tag is simply held on by a small white button brad.  The fleece ribbon was pleated and attached with liquid adhesive.  Because the ribbon is not flat, I put double foam dots on 3 of the 4 corners of the photo mat to even it out.

For my title I used the Playground Font on my Sizzix.  I journaled using a white gel pen.

For the finishing touches I added two buttons that looked like pig snouts. 

And that is it!  I will be back tomorrow with a mini book I am making for Grace that I should be able to finish tonight.  Thanks for stopping by!

That's Me!

My daughter can all of a sudden recognize herself in photos and in the mirror.  She just thinks it's the coolest thing ever to hold a picture of herself in her hands.  And of course as a scrapbooker, my house is filled with pictures of her!  So every time I turn around she is pointing to a photo, then to her chest as if to say "That's Me!"  I know that some day the novelty will wear off, so I needed to scrapbook this exciting event right away, before we move on to something else.

I used a sketch I found in an old scrapbooking magazine for this layout.  Tomorrow's post will be using the same sketch as well.  I love how versatile it is and I am going to challenge myself to use it in different ways.

I arranged my photos on Microsoft Word before printing them to ensure they would fit on the mat properly.  I also printed my journaling using Microsoft Word.  I don't have a 12 x 12 printer though, so I cut the blue card stock in half and used Word's Page Setup feature to create a 6 x 12 document to print on.  Then I adhered both pieces of blue onto another piece of card stock and hid the seam behind the heart patterned paper.


My title is done with small Jillibean Soup letter stickers and my Cricut.  I inked the "m" and the "e" to make them stand out.

I didn't think the story was complete unless the viewer could see what Grace is looking at.  So I included a small photo of her with the photo of herself.  I matted it on a journaling tag that lists the days of the week to show that this has become a daily occurrence with us!  The journaling tag was a Pinterest find; here is the link where you can find it yourself http://splendidmissm.blogspot.com/2012/01/project-life.html.

Well, I will be back tomorrow with another layout based on this same sketch!  And in the works is a mini book for my baby girl.  Thanks for stopping by!

First Teeth!

Every first is an occasion to celebrate with a baby.  But those first teeth finally breaking through the surface are especially worth celebrating; it means an end to the pain and the middle-of-the-night waking!  This layout shows the progression of my daughter's INCREDIBLY SLOW GROWING teeth that took 2 months to arrive!

I chose to do a grid so the photos would easily show progression.  I marked them with the numbers 1 through 4 and coordinated those numbers with the dates.  I rounded and inked the outer corners of the photos, the solid card stock mat and the patterned paper to give them depth.

After I put the layout together my husband said it reminded him of a dentist office.  That was not my intention, but it's pretty cool that the patterns do in fact look like wallpaper you might see in a dentist office!

I kept it simple to keep the focus on the photos and the title.  I included a piece of packaging from some letter stamps to show the theme of growing.  The stamps were called "foot longs" and included a printed ruler.  Perfect!  Think twice before throwing your packaging away; you never know what you might end up using!


The title is my favorite part of this layout!  I used tiny letter stickers for the first part because I thought they looked a bit like Jack-o-Lantern teeth.  For the word Teeth I cut 5 banners, added die-cut letters, then covered the pieces with Glossy Accents.  When it dried it had a hard, shiny coating...like tooth enamel!

Now my daughter is working on teeth three through six, all at the same time!  Not as exciting the second time around!  But at least we know what to expect.


Well, be back tomorrow!  Thanks for stopping by.

My Flower Child

I LOVE spring!  It is like seeing the Earth wake up after a really long nap.  And it always amazes me that the buds on the trees and the flowers in the ground just know.  Like they whisper to one another, "It's time guys!"  Spring has always been my favorite season and I want Grace to experience all of the joys!  So on a beautiful 70 degree day we went outside, sat in the grass, and looked at the wildflowers growing in my side yard.

Now this child DOES NOT sit still.  But she was so entranced by the flowers that she sat there patting them until I brought her in so she wouldn't get sunburn.  And she picked a flower and gave it to me.  My first flower from my baby!  I took a picture, of course, and on the layout used rhinestones to draw your attention to the flower.  (I also put the flower in a cup of water on my counter until it wilted!)

I wanted to use this great striped paper I picked up at AC Moore for the page, but the rest of the page needed to be subtle so I picked a tone on tone pattern.  I used some yellow velvet ric rac to separate the two.  The doily was cut on my Cricut and I used the Night and Day font to make my letters on the Sizzix.  I in led the doily and the letters with a pen to help them stand out.

This page is currently a home decor item in my living room, where it will remain until I make a page I like better!

Have a great weekend everyone!  I will be back on Monday!  Thanks for stopping by!

It's a Colorful Life

I do not love laundry.  Therefore, it piles up until I am missing more items of clothing than I have left and I need to stay home just because I have nothing to wear.  That is when it is time to do wash!  Well anyone with children knows that when the family gets sick the laundry seems to multiply.  But here in the Mutchler house, even a pile of laundry can become a plaything for my baby girl!

These photos show a game of peek-a-boo we played with the giant pile.  I decided to embrace the crazy miss-mash of colors in the photos to show that real life can be messy but is ALWAYS colorful!  So I punched circles from a bunch of different scraps I had and arranged them and the photos in a grid.  I matted the whole piece on some Bella Blvd striped paper.  I drew some stitching around the photos with a pen to make them stand out despite the loud colors.

I hand-cut some triangles from some of the less intense patterned paper and stamped the title on them.  Then I put them up on pop dots to give them some dimension.

I hand cut some clouds from patterned paper and stamped a fence and tree that I had just bought to create a little scene that reminded me of an outdoor clothesline.  I then completed my title and added my journaling by hand.

This page was lots of fun to create and makes me laugh every time I remember!  Every day life is my favorite scrapbooking subject!

Thanks for stopping by.

Spring is Swingin'

I have mentioned before my obsession with my daughter's cute little bum.  Well I also have an obsession with her tiny little feet (really all of her tiny parts!) so I frequently take photos that contain just her feet.  My husband thinks it's strange.  I think it's art!  In this case I just thought her little feet hanging so far off the ground from a little bucket swing looked so cute!  Of course I figured I should add a photo of the whole Grace as well!

This layout was one that came together quite easily (rare for me!) and as an added bonus used mostly scraps!  I wanted to base my colors on the shirt my daughter is wearing, and the peach plaid paper I actually found in my fall stash as I was doing some Scrapbooking Spring Cleaning!  The cloud paper, which I had just a half sheet of, is a recent purchase. The rest of the patterned papers are scraps left over from a fun project I posted on March 29 called Hooray Chevrons.

I added some borders to the photos in Microsoft Word to save time on matting.  I left space in the middle for my title which was cut out on my Sizzix with the Night and Day font and arranged in a back and forth way to show movement.

I fussy cut a few of the clouds, inked the edges with black ink to give a shadow effect, and put them on pop dots.  I purposely made some overlap the photos to unify the design.

I cut four long and four short banners, inked the edges of them, and put the short banners on pop dots to make them stand out.


And that is it!  Thanks for stopping by!  Leave me a comment to let me know what you think!  Be Back Tomorrow!