My Time Made Easy: A Year in Review and Just Us Girls

Hi everyone! It's the weekend! So excited about that! Today is a busy day on the ol' blog. I have a two-fer for you today. My Time Made Easy is doing a Year in Review group post and Just Us Girls has a sketch challenge this week for you...and a great one it is. Let's start with that.Kristin is our hostess this week and supplied this sketch for all of us. Using My Time Made Easy products, I created this card. I used several MTME products on this card. The gingham digi paper is from the Fluttering By digi pack. The daisy is from the Flutters and Flowers cut file. I cut out the smallest one, ran it through the swiss dots embossing folder, and added a yellow crystal bling. The leaves are from the same cut file. The sentiment is from the newly released Keep Strong stamp set. (You'll see why I chose this sentiment in a minute.) I paired all this with SU's Daffodil Delight yellow cardstock. What a pretty color! Here's a closeup of that great sentiment. I just love it!

As many of you know, I'm a teacher. Many school districts are facing major cuts in budgets and my school district is not being spared from these cuts. They are restructuring the entire district and many are losing their jobs. This week, I sat in meetings with my principal and superintendent during which three of my colleagues were told they were losing their jobs...not fun! They are all fantastic teachers and team players. It is such a shame that we are losing them. I wanted to give them something that conveys a "keep strong/stay positive" message. So I created this to go with the card. MTME has a couple of tea themed templates, and I chose to use this one called Tea Tabbed Box. The base of the box is the daffodil yellow, and I decorated each side with the pink gingham digi paper. I purchased some tea bags that are supposed to encourage a positive mood. Here's the original box (you can see my color inspiration) of tea bags I purchased.

Now for the top of the box, I added a beautiful flower using the same Flutters and Flowers cut file.I cut two of the flowers in white and one in the daffodil yellow. They were run throught the swiss dots folder and the petals were curled. The leaves were cut using the same cut file. I added another yellow crystal in the center. I put the tea bags inside and tied it off with a pink grosgrain ribbon.

And finally, here they are together. I have only made the one set...I'll have to get busy and make two more so I can give one to each of the girls. The box comes together surprisingly quickly (if you have a Cricut it's even easier). I hope they like it.

You can stop by the JUGs blog to see more cards using this great sketch and participate there as well. We have a new guest designer this month, Alyssa Scritchfield, too! Please stop by their blogs to leave some love.

Lauren has the entire MTME DT linked up at her blog (or you can see the links on my sidebar), so please stop by there as well to see what the girls are reviewing from this past year.

Whew! Another long post! I hope you enjoyed it. I'd love to know what you think.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!