A Skater's Dream

Hello Hello

How is your week gettin' on?

Fabulous I hope! And how many of you out there are gearing up for Thanksgiving next week? I'm getting there, my goal is to have all of my December Daily pages ready by then so that I am completely ready to go the 1st of December with a bit of headway for any last minute changes/additions and also to have all of my Christmas cards done by then as well. I think that this year I'm going to forego the traditional family photo and just hand make a few cards for my closest friends and some of our family so that I can get them out early this year. If I do a family photo it'll have to be done this weekend most likely and I'm not so sure I can pull that off.

So for today I wanted to share with you a project I picked up at the Pazzles craft room. For those of you unfamiliar with Pazzles it is a software based electronic die cut machine and I picked it up a little over a year ago at the Creating Keepsakes Expo. I had never had an electronic die cutter before this one and as I suspected, I hardly ever use it. I love my CuttleBug and I love, love, love my Tim Holtz' dies so that's what I use and am use to.

However little I use it though, I find it is fairly easy to 

come back to and pick right back up plus they have great customer service so when I do have questions/issues someone is always there to help me through it and that's very good. Now you may be wondering why I went with this brand and not say the Cameo...? Well they got me in a weak moment and I knew better but bit the bullet anyways. I do have some home decor ideas in mind for this little guy using wall vinyl and the what not...now if I could just find some extra time...lol.

As for the project idea this Ice Skate is the first real thing that I actually cut out and put together. This is what my oldest daughter wanted to do on her birthday earlier this year, so I jumped on it. We went to Hobby Lobby and I let her pick out her papers and her friends papers, then we picked up a couple of embellishments, and a ribbon...we were ready...or so I thought. We weren't, not at all really. I hadn't thought through all the ins and outs like I did with my youngest daughter's mini book kit and so needless to say the whole die cutting and cutting again and then again and then one more time for good measure took waaaayyyy more time than I ever dreamed and so nothing much got done at the party. Lucky for me I only had two girls to worry about, my daughter and her friend who stayed the night that night.

(photo is the backside of a different skate but they are set up the same on all of the ones we created)

Since I knew I could work on my daughter's later, I concentrated on getting Emma's finished so that it would be ready for her when she left the next morning. What I ended up having to do was finish assembling the skate first, then I had to make the box stand, then I decorated it for her while they continued with other party activities...

which included watching movies and having popcorn...both very important things to get done at a birthday party/sleep over.

So the final outcome...? I think I did a fairly good job. Emma really liked what I did with hers but next time I will be prepared so that the girls can do the FUN decorating part instead; I think that my oldest still really likes hers as well and for that I am grateful. Next time I'll know and next time we'll rock this!

Thanks for stoppin' in!

 Enjoy the coming weekend, keep calm and craft on.

just B