I am the leader of a 4-H club and we do several community service projects every year. This time we created cards for Valentine’s that we will donate to a Assisted Living Facily. I made a few sample cards for the kids to see from the selection of materials I chose. Here were my examples…
And here is what the kids came up with…
Supplies: card bases, big box of paper scraps, heart punch, scallop punch, paper trimmer (and due to requests a circle punch and a flower punch). It is pretty easy to craft with kids if you give them a finite collection of materials to choose from.
I got word in the mail last week that our dentist has decided to retire. She ran a one-woman dental office with very personal service. The staff has been fabulous and knows us by name and asks about our kids and our vacations. It is sad to have her go but know that she has given much service over the years. I decided to make her a happy retirement card and turned to The Paper Variety’s current sketch challenge to come up with my design.
Check out the sketch
And my interpretation…
Recipe stamp, cardstock, blue pattern paper, paper flowers: Stampin’ Up
punch: Martha Stewart Crafts
resin flowers: Making Memories
pearls: Want 2 Scrap
ink: Ranger
other pattern papers: stash
I scaled the sketch down to fit the size of a card and eliminated a few elements to prevent overcrowding. As you can see I replaced the stars with flower elements for a feminine feel and I chose colors and patterns with a more vintage feel since her whole office was decorated in vintage items: doll houses, curios and wall papers. I will drop it off in her office for the staff to deliver to her as a new dentist has already taken over her practice. Here’s hoping the new dentist is just a nice!
My kids are not thrilled with the typical Valentine’s cards for kids that get exchanged every year. This year we decided to forgo the work and paper waste of Valentine’s cards and cut to the chase. The candy! So I pulled out a bunch of file folder labels, stamped them with a sentiment, had the kids sign them and wrapped them around some candy sticks to make them into little flags.
Recipe
Stamps, ink: Stampin’ Up
labels: 3M
candy: Pixie Stix
You could use traditional candy sticks for these little flags. You could also cut a triangle out of the end of the label to make it more banner like. Easy, easy!
I have been following all the news coming out from the winter CHA (Craft and Hobby Association) 2012 event this past week. I’m always excited to see what is new and hot. Even though I am not a particularly trendy person, I do like new ideas and get bored of the stale trends. I have followed the news at Scrapbook Update as well as at Write.Click.Scrapbook. I also just found coverage of CHA from Paper Crafter’s Corner. You should check all of them out and see what their coverage was like!
I especially enjoyed the Write.Click.Scrapbook coverage as they laid out some of the trends happening at the show. I’d like to point out a trend that I noticed that I didn’t see anyone else mention and that is the blue/aqua and yellow color scheme.
Studio Calico‘s Take Note collection is sporting aqua, blue and yellow along with some neutrals and a bit of green.
Photo Credit: Studio Calico
And Authentique also is clearly defining blue and yellow in their Genuine collection.
And one more from you is My Mind’s Eye Dilly Dally.
Photo Credit: My Mind's Eye
I’m sure I could find more examples, but I think you get the point. The reason I am noticing all this new blue and yellow is because that is exactly the color scheme I just painted my new laundry room! We had the laundry room constructed in our basement last month in order to move the washer and dryer out of the garage. I now have a whole room with pretty colors and a folding table. Previously, the laundry would just be dumped on our bed, or more likely just piled up in baskets on our bedroom floor. I’m glad to have a new space for organizing this daily chore. Check it…
Because it is still under construction the utility sink has not yet been installed. The sink is a wonderful addition to our laundry setup which will now allow me to wash all my messy craft stuff right next to where I work! In the past I had to drag everything up from the basement and wash it in the kitchen sink. It really prevented me from doing too many messy things because I didn’t want to do the cleanup! That will change now. The other great thing about this area is that I will have a little better organization for my sewing projects. As you can see in the photo below the folding table can double as a fabric cutting table.
I have plenty of room to store tubs of fabric under the table. And there is room to open up the ironing board right next to an electrical outlet where I can plug in an iron to iron my seams and hems. That will make for tidier projects! See that fabric on the table? It is for three sets of curtains. One large set will cover up the plumbing area/storage closet that was built behind the new washer/dryer wall. I also bought enough to add little curtains to each of the laundry room windows. I was excited to take my paint chips to the fabric store and find a pretty nature print that used my blue and yellow color scheme!
As I was about to toss that CD that came in some junk mail, an idea struck. What if I tried to die cut it with my Sizzix? Hmmm. Would it just crack or would it work? Guess what? It worked! After I tried this cut I realized that the Moxie Fab World blog is having an innovative die cut challenge. What a perfect entry for this challenge! I am very excited about this technique. The CD adds a really fun shine, iridescence and thick texture to a project. Check it…
Notice all the color reflecting off the butterfly? So awesome. Here is another view. Notice that even when the CD isn’t iridescent, it is still very shiny, like glass.
I do have a few tips for you if you want to try this yourself. First, only steel-ruled dies will work. You will not be able to use wafer thin dies. You need the strong, chunky blades for cutting this thick material. You’ll need to roll the die through the machine slowly to prevent the material from cracking. I only have a manual machine so I don’t know how an electric one would work. And the biggest tip about working with CD’s is that you have a rather small usable area on the CD. As you’ll notice in the photo below part of the inner text ring of the CD was cut out by my butterfly die. It didn’t bother me. I added a bit of black ink around the whole butterfly to help incorporate the “mistake” a little better. You’ll need to use a fairly small die if you want to avoid the inner ring of the CD, like I did with the flowers. I did use a pair of craft scissors to trim the CD down to a size that better fit through the die cutting machine. I cut the CD slowly with the scissors, again to avoid the material cracking. Finally, the CD material did stick in the flower die when I pulled it out of the machine. I just used a pair of needle nosed pliers to gently pry the material out.
Recipe
cardstock, sentiment stamp: Stampin’ Up
steel ruled dies: Stampin Up (butterfly), Tim Holtz (tattered flowers)
ink: Ranger (distress), Tsukineko (StazOn for butterfly edges)
tissue tape: Tim Holtz
gems: Want 2 Scrap
foam dots: Therm-O-Web
other: junk mail CD!
I hope you find this technique as exciting as I did.
I made these two cards really quickly to give to some young friends to congratulate them on their theater performance. I wanted the focal point to be a great big star to represent their starring roles in the performance. However, I don’t have a great big star stamp so I grabbed my Provo Craft stamp material and cut one out on my Circut. Using the new stamp I heat embossed the star in white onto cardstock and inked over it with three colors of distress ink. The process of heating and inking added a warped texture to the cardstock that I liked. So I pulled out my scissors and frayed the edges a bit to add to the distressing. When I adhered the card front to the card base I only used adhesive in the center to allow the layer to curl up at the edges for more texture. With a bit of tissue tape and a small sentiment, the cards were ready to go.
Recipe cardstock: Stampin’ Up
white emboss powder: Stampin’ Up
stamps: Provo Craft (star); Stampin’ Up (sentiment)
ink: Ranger (distress)
tissue tape: Tim Holtz
Tip: I found that cutting the stamp material on the Cricut required a deeper blade depth than what the package suggested. So do a little test before you try cutting a full image.
I’m still chugging along with getting my kids scrap albums caught up. I am having a really good time too. After not crafting for so long I forgot how good it makes me feel to play with paper and ink. It is calming and satisfying to create something pretty. I’m not getting complicated with any of these layouts which makes it easy to get them done and that ups the satisfaction quotient! Hope you enjoy these next couple of layouts.
We attend an annual homeschooling conference each May and these photos were taken of my middle child at the conference. It is a weekend full of whirlwind activity and I wanted to highlight some of the favorites.
I was tired towards the end of this next layout for my youngest so I just hand wrote a title. I gave a little more emphasis to the word MAY by using block letters and coloring it in with a very light brown ink. I am really a fan of photo collages with number journaling items and so took that approach with this 12-photos on one page layout!
This layout for my son captures a sweet and funny story. The only two photos I had for the event were blurry cell phone photos. In order to get the most impact out of these poor quality photos, I used repetition to indicate action. Then I emphasized the action with a bright, playful title. The title has even more impact since it is placed on a monochromatic background. You can use these techniques to draw more attention to the story when you have bad photos!
I’ll be back in a few days with more layouts. I’ve got a bunch of items already complete I just have to prepare photos and such for blog posts.
Yes I am a chronological scrapper. I know there are so many “names” out there who say not to scrapbook that way. But I just can’t help it. It is my need for organization. In the past I have used scrap calendars for each of my kids to keep things manageable. It was just one layout per month per child for a total of 3 layouts each month. Sounds totally do-able, right? Well, even with that relaxed schedule, I did not get my pages done this past year. I made it to March and then dropped off the face of the scrapbooking earth.
Well, the change of the new year has got me motivated to get things done and I am happy to say that I have completed about 8 layouts in about 5 hours this past week. I will be posting photos of those projects over the next few days.
Here are my layouts for the month of April.
This one I posted back in September with the thought that I would be getting the rest of the series done shortly. That never happened.
So here are the next two for the series. This first one was made with a bunch of scraps from my stash. I just slapped down torn strips of pattern paper and boxed it all in with sheet of cardstock that had a hole punched out of the middle of it – cut out the middle and the pattern paper turns into a tidy frame.
This layout was super fast since I used a sheet of pre-layout-designed pattern paper with coordinating stickers and epoxies that have been hiding in my stash. Throw in a thickers alphabet and I was good to go.
Hope you all rang in the New Year with joy. Our family got together with a bunch of other families and had a bash. It was nice. Then I got to work on my New Years Cards – aka Belated Christmas cards. I think a seasonal greeting is a nice expression even if it comes after the traditional greeting times.
For my cards I was inspired by The Paper Variety’s challenge of black and white with “a kiss of color”. They have changed their challenge protocol for the new year and I think I am going to like it. They have fewer challenges but are offering more time for inspiration and tutorials between challenges. Fewer challenges means I will be able to better participate with more time to work on things. I am especially happy since I had troubles with the old deadlines for some reason. They just fell at awkward times in my week. At any rate, I had fun getting some to-do items checked off my crafty list with help from this color challenge.
Recipe
cardstock: Stampin’ Up (black), Bazzill (blue bling), white (stash scraps)
stamps: Stampin’ Up (greeting, snowflake), Boxer (swirl)
punches: Stampin’ Up (border, circle), Fiskars (snowflake from Teeny Tiny Cassette Punch kit)
ink: Versamark, Ranger
embossing powder: Stampin’ Up (white, crystal clear)
ribbon: upcycled from old gift packaging
other: foam adhesive
TIP: It is hard to see in the photo but the clear embossed swirls on the plain white layer add texture and dimension without adding any color. A great way to add depth without distraction. Also the punched snowflakes are the negative space and have glimmer paper layered behind them for more depth without too much bulk.
I have been doing small amounts of crafting here and there but have not been saving them in any way. Well for this card I decided to go ahead and get out the camera and record the whole process. Of course I edited it down so you don’t literally have to watch paint dry! Hope you enjoy.
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