making room

as I've been fluttering from this to that, I realized I have a lot of 'works in progress' to finish! and while I have new and exciting projects I would love to start, I just can't move on until these are finished. so these last two weeks of January I'll be making room for the new and exciting.

one of the craft projects lisa and I did together back in december was paper crafting. this year it seemed like I just didn't have enough gift tags...so we started there. we stamped our designs on white cardstock; cut each out with a circle cutter; then matted them. we added a little bling to the merry christmas design with red jewels. when we add a hole punch at the top and string red and white baker's twine through them, they'll be ready for gift giving.

and you know lisa an I love to make cards...so we made a few of those as well. one can never have too many thank you notes, especially at gift receiving time. letting someone know you appreciate them in your own handwriting is a powerful gift.

my inspiration for these thank you notes came from this last-minute card idea on stacy's blog. after purchasing $7.00 worth of ribbon (because I thought it had to be just like stacy's) I exercised my creative muscle and changed course. instead of ribbon, I choose to make the cards out of patterned holiday paper I already had in my stash. there's no measuring to share. just cut the trunk of your tree wider than the rest of the strips and cut the branches at different lengths and you'll be set. I used Lisa's simple 'thanks' stamp on the inside and called them done.
and the Brrrr cards came out of crafting collaboration. I pulled out the winter hat paper and the brainstorming began. after cutting the brrrr with the circut machine, lisa started layering all the pieces together. the snowflake stamped background, inspiration paper, brrr, and last but oh so important the brown line border.

(special thanks to lisa for all the crafting fun and inspiration!

you're the best!!)

and last but not least...my cherish album. I purchased this album and the paper set you'll see inside from my creative memories consultant. after putting the album together last year, I finally added the cherished photos from 2009. the new albums and paper kits available really make scrapbooking so, so easy. and this 9x9 size is my favorite. it's small enough that looking at the white space of a blank page doesn't overwhelm you, but large enough to fit photos and a small amount of journaling. here are a few page samples:

so I've pieced together all my pending papercraft projects and now look forward to making valentine cards!