This weeks busy work

Every year I think I am going to get it together way ahead of time and every year I don’t. I either just delay or come up with inspiring ideas at the last minute. This year it was a little of both… I delayed on my Christmas cards and came up with inspiring ideas for small gifts for friends at the last minute. So here is what I made this week.

First off, I finished off my Little Book of Thanks album that I had showed you the beginnings of. Just wanted to let you see how I finished the inside. I put a photo of each family member opposite their personal word of thanks. Then I went online and found a quote that in some way fit that persons personality and added it to the opposite page.

Next…Christmas cards! I desgined these on the Gypsy and had a bunch of fun doing it. It was also nice that I could just attend the Cricut when it needed loaded/unloaded. All the other work (cutting all those elements!) was done for me while I worked on other things. Because I used just cardstock and a little stickles these cards cost me less than $2 to make 14 lovely, handmade cards. (Yeah, I know it doesn’t take the cost of the tools into account but that is another story!)

Then…9 votive candle holders out of vellum. I scored some really cheap electric votive candles at Big Lots before Halloween and then sat staring at them deciding what to make. Then inspiration struck! I used alcohol ink to blend a background, stamped my favorite trees (from Stampin’ Up) on there with StazOn, added a date stamp and a snowflake cut on the Cricut. Elegant yet simple.

And Finally, these little cocoa treat pouches. Again, designed on the gypsy and left to cut elements out while I was working on 0ther things!

More Advent

So I have been busy working on various craft projects for the holidays. I wanted to show you the finished results of the Advent projects I worked on. First off we have the rest of the earrings my daughter and I made. She managed to design and put together a couple of pairs all on her own.

The earrings, along with our other Advent goodies have taken their place on our Advent wall. You’ll notice a bunch of little boxes hanging on a card on the right side of the photo. Those are boxes I created several years ago. This year we filled them with the earrings.

The other elements of our advent wall: a Countdown to X-mas sign, advent note cards for my son, and down on the bottom right, large envelopes hanging on a binder ring. You can see an example of how the envelopes are simply decorated since a few are sitting up on the mantel. The envelopes are filled with resurrected Playmobil toys that we dug out of storage. They belonged to my older two children and now they are being passed on to the youngest in her Advent calendar.

A detail shot of the countdown sign. This was one of the first projects I used playing with my new Gypsy. It was great to weld letters together to create a continuous phrase instead of gluing individual letters down!

I added a Merry Christmas tag to the bottom of the advent boxes since the original one was missing.

The note cards below I made for my oldest. He said this year he didn’t really need an advent calendar. He is at that age where toys are much less appealing (unfortunately he has moved onto expensive video games!) I was just happy that he didn’t get caught up in the greedy “they get something, so how come I don’t” mentality. He was very mature and understanding. But I still wanted to do something for him. So I made these note cards. Each day has a little message tucked into it. Some are just love notes and some are “treats” (like staying up late). I enjoyed making it and I think he is enjoying finding what his message will be each morning.

Happy holidays to everyone, in whatever way you might celebrate them!

Advent

Every year we do advent calendars with the kids to count down the days to Christmas. Our callendars have ranged from the purchased chocolate packs to Playmobile gifts to our make-your-own-advent-out-of-Lego-pieces creation. This year I remembered that when I was a kid my mom had found an earring advent calendar that was filled with holiday themed earrings. I thought that might be a fun calendar for my daughter who had her ears pierced just a couple of months ago. I mentioned the idea to her and we went out shopping to find 24 pairs of earrings on the cheap. We didn’t succeed. But we did come up with the crazy idea to make them ourselves!

With great sales at JoAnn we went shopping and came away with tons of beads and wire and enough findings to make all 24 pairs with plenty of supplies left over for other projects. All for $20! We decided to throw in materials that we already have on hand such as craft wire, polymer clay, buttons and some other goodies. So that increases the cost (sort of) but I think it is well worth it.

My daughter did most of the design work and I did the manual labor while adjusting her designs to the real world. In the first night we made 7 pairs of earrings in about 2 hours. That is awesome considering neither of us have ever really made earrings before! I have to admit that I was feeling overwhelmed when I first sat down to start working on these. I was wondering how many hours I would be sitting in the basement chasing beads that fell all over the floor. After a small learning curve using crimp beads to secure the beading wire, I felt pretty confident in my jewelry making skills! I think we did a great job. I’ll post more pictures as we complete more items.

Thanksgiving Wreath

I created this project to take to share with my kids’ homeschool group last week. I pre-cut all the elements on my Cricut (Storybook cartridge) and let the kids (and moms too!) assemble their wreaths as they wished. The wreaths were cut in two shapes: an outer ring shape and an inner solid circle shape. This was really just one cut on the Cricut. I set my Cricut to the center point function, cut a 6 3/4″ circle and then immediately cut another circle at 4 3/4″. This left me with the ring shape and the circle shape. I cut leaves at 2″ (I think) and used the fill page function. This gave me 25 leaves on one 12×12 sheet of pattern paper. Add in a couple of fall sentiment stamps, twine and glue sticks and the project is good to go! A more elegant version could be created using a bigger wreath layered thick with larger leaves of more varied shapes. I think this project would be great too if you add a favorite fall photo to the center. Try this one with your own kids or make a lovely version for yourself. If you make a wreath, post it on your favorite online gallery and share a link to your file in the comments!

Day 5 of back-in-action

Okay, day five of my planned week-long back-in-action eye candy. This treat bag was created for another magazine call. I really had fun with this one. I don’t tend to use a bunch of flashy embellishments but the Valentine’s day them of the call got my bling flowing. To creat the heart I simply hand drew a heart shape and covered the drawing over with gems. And I enjoyed the color scheme. One of my favorite color palettes is rich brown with pops of vibrant color. I reversed this one a bit and went with vibrant pink with a pop of brown. In the past I hated pink, but in the past few years I have come to really like it! It is funny how tastes and styles can change. So pretty, but one of the things I realized is that I don’t really like working projects out of season. I admire the magazine industry for preparing all the holiday goodies 6 months in advance! I used to want to work in magazines, but doing these winter season calls in the summer left me feeling a bit out of sorts.

RECIPE

envelope: Office Depot
cardstock: Stampin’ Up
alpha stickers: Cosmo Cricket
spray ink: Tattered Angels
gems: Want 2 Scrap
hemp twine: (can’t remember!)
punch: Ek Success
adhesive: Terrifically Tacky Tape (Provo Craft), Tombo liquid glue (for gems)

HOW TO…

To create the pouch, seal a regular A2 size envelope along one short side and the two long sides at about 1/2 inch. Trim off the remaining short side to create the top of your bag. Use the score lines to fold the envelope into a bag shape. This will leave two little triangles at the bottom of the bag that must be adhered down. I used a very sticky adhesive to keep it in place.

Hair Clips

I got my hair cut (finally) back at the end of May. I love having the new shorter do. The only problem is that I used to keep my long, long hair up in a big clip to keep it out of my face. I hate having hair tickle me in the face. The old clips wouldn’t fit my new short hair. I just had to have something new. So I made some sweet little clips!

The clip there in the foreground I made in about 5 minutes. I used a flower punch (Stampin’ Up) to punch 2 thin chipboard shapes. I then punched 4 of the same flowers out of pattern paper (Basic Grey leftovers). Glue one piece of pattern paper to each side of each chipboard flower. Glue one flower on top of the other. Bend top petals up slightly. Add a puddle of glue to center, place pearls (Stampin’ Up) in center and sprinkle the whole thing with a bit of glitter to fill in the excess glue. I glued the finished flower to a small hair clip I already had on hand. Lovely!

The second clip was a recycled flower. I made the flower for a bookmark a couple of years ago. I never really liked it as a bookmark because it was just too bulky. But as a clip I love it!

I’ve got a few more flower clips in my future. I’ll share them with you when they are done.

Father’s Day

Whew, it has been a very busy May and June here. I haven’t been able to get as many posts in as I wanted. I am lining up some new posts for the coming weeks. I will have some book reviews and some product reviews as well as a few layouts for you.

This past weekend we were camping with 5 other families in the woods. It rained and was cold and muddy, but we had a great time anyway! Since I knew we would be camping on Father’s Day I prepared some goody boxes for all the Dads to enjoy. These boxes were really quick and fun to put together — and my girls helped me out. You can adapt these boxes to any event. Use a different stamp saying, cut an appropriate image, like a cupcake, some balloons, or a graduation cap, fill with treats and make someone smile.

Recipe:

Pattern papers: Scenic Route
Cardstock, stamp, ink: Stampin’ Up
Cricut cartridge: Tags Bags, Boxes & More*; A Child’s Year**

*The box and the black background shape are from TBBM. The orange foreground is the same cut as the black background. I simply stamped my greeting, trimmed away the excess cardstock and adhered it to the project to line up with the edges of the background.

** The father holding the baby is actually an image from A Child’s Year of a mother holding a baby. I simply trimmed off the mother’s long hair and it substituted for a father just fine!

NSD Challenge 5: Color challenge

Okay, here is a color challenge for you. Use fuchsia combined with navy blue and gray. Any type of project. Go!

Remember to post your project to your favorite online gallery and leave a comment here with a link to your post. I’d love to see your project!

This is a little gift bag I created to stuff with mall goodies for my friends who are coming over to scrap for NSD!

Recipe

cardstock, ribbon: Stampin’ Up
die cut machine: Cricut (Storybook, Tags Bags Boxes & More)
glitter products: Stickles, Glimmer Mist