Valentine Blog Hop Stop Number 6!

I love Valentine's Day! The colors are gorgeous and the sentiments are warm (plus you can always make pretty scrapbook pages about holidays!) Whether you love Valentine's Day or you hate it, love is something to celebrate, and it can come in many forms. Just to be a bit different, I will focus here on pages that have nothing to do with romance so we can "think outside of the box" with the CM Group's new Watercolor Love collection. Love for a child or a pet, love of a holiday, love of life, love of travel, love of your grandparents, love of a hobby that fills your soul - it's all a part of our life and should be celebrated. Celebrate with me and this beautiful new CM Watercolor Love paper and embellishments collection!

1.) Love of a child!

The floral paper looks gorgeous with black and white prints - this is actually one of my favorite baby pictures of myself (and the reason I chose to have hydrangeas in my wedding!) What black and white photos do you have that could be used with this paper pack?

What do these circles look like to you? They looked like cake pops to me, so I actually cut a few out to make some homemade cake pops to help tell the story here. Being an older brother is tough and sometimes it's hard to share Mom and Dad's attention. Little C had been having a rough week so I made the spontaneous decision to pick him up after school while his brother had another engagement and take him to Starbucks for some "one on one time." I love this memory, and the Watercolor Love paper combined with CM's brown cardstock look really sharp together! The hearts on the journal box are actually "scraps" from the new Heart Chain Border Maker cartridge - aren't they the cutest?  

2.) Love of a holiday or of a time of year!

I have my own "girly" tree in the dining room, full of pink Victorian bows and ballet dancers - it is my pride and joy and a leftover from my "single days" before my house was outnumbered by fellas! I thought the red plaid paper combined with the new Heart Chain cartridge worked well together. Who knew you could highlight Christmas pictures with Valentine's paper? :) 

3.) Love of a time of year

I am excited about our new Year in Review stickers and embellishments, and I used those here to make a nice "almost summertime" page with lemon and watermelon slices cut using our recently-introduced circle patterns. It is so nice to have such great tools at our disposal. Brotherly love and the beginning of summer, all in one page with our lovely new paper and our cardstock.

4.) Love of your pets! 

Before the children, our pets are our babies (and in many cases they still are!) Tom and Socks actually got a mention at our wedding  (a funny surprise to us and something we will always remember.) They deserve scrapbook pages of their own (actually, I think they deserve entire SCRAPBOOKS, don't you agree?) The pink Watercolor Love paper and border strips are nicely offset by the green punch at the bottom (reminiscent of grass to highlight the pictures of Tom and Socks outside.)

5.) Love of a hobby!

Okay, I cheated here - this isn't Watercolor Love (but it does feature CM's "Shades of Pastel" cardstock, our new Music Notes Border Maker Cartridge, and a title cut from the new Fresh Picks collection's Slide In Pack!) Before my husband, before my children, my love was and still is ballet. Our dreams and our hobbies are what makes us who we are, and love is a state of mind. And I love these black and white photos!

What do you love? Document it and keep celebrating that wonderful life of yours!  

There's still  one more stop in this blog hop but if you are loving what you are seeing so far then plan on tuning into Facebook and joining the Creative Memories Virtual Crop on Saturday, February 6, 2016 where we will be giving out even more ideas (and prizes!) For more great ideas today please hop on over to Noreen's blog for the final stop of today's Valentine Blog Hop (and I have included the links to the other blogs below in case you started here with mine and want to see what you may have missed!) Hope you've been inspired and as always,  keep scrappin'! Fran

Creative Memories Valentine's Blog Hop Kickoff

Stop 1: Sarah Fitzgerald at ClickWriteShare
Stop 2: Candace Bouldin's Scrappin'JPEGs
Stop 3: Julie Tambrini's CM Blog
Stop 4: Diana Miller Brinsley's DBrinsleysBlogspot
Stop 5: Lisa Graham Brown's Lisa's Workshop
Stop 6: YOU ARE HERE!Fran Smitherman at CelebratingYourBeautifulLife
Stop 7: Noreen Smith's Organized and Creative Mom

Circles and Ovals Blog Hop Stop #5

Patterns, Blades and Self-Healing Mat

Creative Memories' Custom Cutting System is a must-have for any serious scrapper in my opinion (they also come in handy for other crafts around the house, as well as homework projects or teachers' bulletin boards.) The self-healing mat and the three blades are essential, and you can collect patterns as you go. The patterns currently for sale are the circles, the ovals, and the jumbo hexagon. It is important to realize that each individual pattern alone yields six different-sized shapes. In other words, you may be buying a pack of four ovals but you are really getting 24 different-sized cuts - talk about getting your money's worth! Because the patterns you cut are identical in shape, just slightly smaller or larger than the previous size, you can make a perfectly concentric mat around your photos with some cardstock and a second blade. You can even make a double mat around the outside of your photo and your original mat, and you can also make miniature circles and ovals by using the hole in the center of each pattern.

One pattern makes six sizes with the use of the red, green and blue blades

Cut on the inside to make small decorative shapes, cut on the outside to make large shapes and mats for your pictures

First, let's talk about the blades. The red blade cuts closest in so it makes the smallest outside circle and the largest inside circle. The green blade is next, followed by the blue. I love the most recent version of the blades - they are very ergonomic and I love their "truffle-like" shape - easy on the hand. The blade actually rotates which helps as you are going around corners. Definitely worth the upgrade if you haven't done so already.

The "teeth" that go into the grooves of the pattern are 1/16 of an inch (the red), 3/16 of an inch (the green) and 5/16 of an inch  (the blue) away from the blade, and they actually swivel as you are making cuts to enable smooth moves around the corners of the patterns

I love the "truffle-like" shape of these blades - they are larger than the old model and are easier on the hands

These guides show you all of the options you have with your circle and oval patterns. You obviously have a lot of choices!

The custom cutting system is easy to use on both photos and paper. The trick is to apply constant pressure all the way around the pattern and to keep going in the same direction rather than reversing course if you make a mistake. Now I'd like to share a few ideas I came up with! 

Our World is Full of Circles and Ovals

Circles and ovals are all around us, and it is fun to see how infinite the possibilities are to be creative with these patterns. What can you think of to do with the circle and oval patterns? Circus balloons? Dinosaur eggs? Easter eggs? Baseballs? It is so easy to add fun embellishments to your pages with just a little bit of imagination, a pen and some cardstock. Here are some ideas I came up with this weekend - I am excited about them!

A caterpillar

A bowl of Neopolitan ice cream

Citrus slices using CM's card stock and the Trick or Treat paper pack with a few lines drawn using a black dual tip pen

A new lemon tree, a shopping trip to the grocery store, making lemonade or even a fun beach page could be made a lot cuter with these tasty "half circle" lemon, orange and lime wedges.

I  love to make gingerbread houses every year with my family, and what better a way to commemorate the occasion than with a scrapbook pages with this cute little design? All of the cardstock in this gingerbread house came from Creative Memories' "Shades of" packs (Neutral, Pastel, Green, and Bright) and I had fun making the meltaway mint nonpareils out of the center of the smallest circle using the blue blade. I used the newest Border Maker System cartridges, Evergreen and Lace Flower Chain, for the bushes in front of the gingerbread house and the royal icing. Fun!

Circles and ovals together in perfect harmony

Scrapping the Obvious

Mats are probably the most popular use of the circle and oval patterns and with good reason. They are an easy way to add crisp lines and a splash of color to your page, and the custom cutting system makes it so easy to be perfect (I can't believe I used to try to cut circles out by hand!)

By using the red blade for the photo, the green blade for the first mat and the blue blade for the second mat, you can have a very crisp look to your page.

In addition to mats, you can also use the shapes you make using the Custom Cutting System circles and ovals as stand alone additions to your page as I did here with some of our beautiful cardstock. When searching for page inspiration, I like to look at what's "obvious" in an event that I want to document - in this case, I was commemorating a birthday party with a pit full of balls. Doesn't get much simpler than that when it comes to idea generation for the circle patterns! 

While the system is accessible, make the most of your time and cut out a bunch of circles at once!

I admit it's very obvious to use circles as balls, but I couldn't resist with this birthday party page. It was just too perfect!

How will you use your circles and ovals? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, and I hope you've been inspired to come up with some fun ideas of your own. Please check out Noreen's   blog next OrganizedAndCreativeMom for more great thoughts and until you're here again, keep scrappin'! Fran

In case you missed anything here is the complete list of blogs:

Stop #1 to get you started on the right foot with Julie Tambrini!Julie'sCMBlog

Stop #2 with our border queen Diana Brinsley!  DBrinsleysBlog

Stop #3 with card and F2F designer extraordinaire Stefani Jones!  CropwithStef

Stop #4 with the very creative Lisa Graham Brown!  LisasWorkshop

Stop # 5 You are here with me, Fran Smitherman! CelebratingYourBeautifulLife
Stop # 6 Meet our newest blogger from Canada, Noreen Smith! OrganizedandCreativeMom
Stop # 7 And last but certainly not least, the amazing Candace Bouldin! ScrappinJpegs