Well, I'm just tickled pink with new addition of Patti to the design team. Her work is fresh and fun and I love all the neat things she finds to do with her Cricut cartridges. Welcome aboard, Patti!

So I snatched up Basic Grey's Nook & Pantry line for my daughter's 5th birthday mainly because of the sheet of cupcakes. I thought it would be the perfect border. A tip for those that don't prefer single photo layouts is to split your sheet in two. I find I often make one page layouts because of the time factor but I don't want every layout to have only one photo or I'll never come close to only being "far behind" in my scrapping.

I usually leave a bigger top half and put the central photo up top and then 3 smaller photos along the bottom. Putting some type of border, to separate the two gives a nice finished look, as I did with the cupcake border and maroon ribbon. This design will give you a lot of photos on one page and still leave room at the top for embellishments...such as a gigantic number 5.

And I hope you didn't toss all those shaped scissors you bought 10 years ago. With the onslaught and popularity of border punches, your shape scissors can come to the rescue when a tiny design is needed such as the mini scallop border on my bottom photos. Everything old is new again, right? I freshened the look up a bit by punching holes in each little scallop.

Finally, a funny birthday story to wrap up. My oldest daughter asks for a Strawberry cake every year....what? no chocolate? Not anywhere. So I work to make this Strawberry Barbie cake for her and would you believe the rascal only wanted the pink fondant balls around the bottom. Next year, I think it will be a chocolate cake with dark fudge chocolate icing and I'll throw a strawberry on top for her to eat!