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!

Birthday cards

So I was reading My Pink Stamper blog yesterday and she had posted a Birthday card challenge in honor of her son’s birthday. Since I have several birthdays this month, I thought I would get to work!

This one I created for a friend’s birthday who is a beer brewer. He is really quite the fan and I thought I would make a card based on his passion. It is a bit simple and a bit plain but I had fun making it. I used my Gypsy to layout the card, edit and cut the images and create the phrases with the Cricut markers. It made it really easy to see exactly where my elements would fit on my card with the Gypsy! I’m loving this tool more and more.

And this card I just made for the heck of it. I will add this card to my growing pile of cards I will be donating as a raffle item for our family’s homeschool convention that I talked about in a previous post.

I was wanting to play with my Gypsy some more and made this card. This time I laid out my card so that I knew it would all fit just right together. Then I moved all my elements to their own space on the mat so I could load various papers for each of the elements all at once on one mat. I dug through all my scraps to find coordinating papers that would work for each element. I like the gypsy in that it is easier for me to see exactly what sizes of papers I need so that I can just cut up a scrap to the right size!

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.

Gypsy

I don’t normally fall prey to the Black Friday frenzy. I don’t like crowds and I don’t like the blatant consumerism that Black Friday represents. However… I do like good deals. I actually read all the eamil adverstisments that came through my email inbox this year. And I found a deal I couldn’t resist. Michaels had the Gypsy on sale for $99. That is the lowest price I have ever seen on it (though I have never checked ebay!). I decided now was the time to break down and get one even though I have qualms about it.

What is a Gypsy you ask? It is a hand-held design tool that goes along with the Cricut electronic die cutting system. I enjoy my Cricut as an addition to my scrapbooking tools but I am not a fanatic like many out there. I find the pros and cons to it. And that goes for the Gypsy as well. The major con of the Gypsy is that it loads your Cricut cutting images from the cartridges and then permanently links those cartridges to that one Gypsy. There is no undo for this process. That means that we can not unlink the cartridge in order to give or sell it  to another crafter when we are tired of it. Everyone gets tired of their scrapping supplies and wants to send then on at some point! This will make it so much harder for someone else to use this cartridge. Yes the cartridge will still work in the Cricut machine itself but that person could never use it with their own Gypsy. I think Provo Craft (maker of both tools) really dropped the ball on this one. I hope that an upgrade to the Gypsy will come at some point in time that will change this closed-minded system.

So, if I dislike that business practice, why did I buy one? Well it has features that I find very useful to my crafting. The Gypsy has a search feature that allows you to look for particular images thought out all cartridges that Provo Craft makes. It has a feature that allows you to turn off certain portions of the cutting image. It allows you to combine images for unique cuts. You can even weld images, such as text, together to create one, new continuous cut. It allows you to design and save cut jobs to use later. It is portable so you can design with your Cricut without having to be right next to it. In short, it is a convenient tool. And I like tools!

What I worked on this week…

This week I worked on my Book of Small Thanks. If I were more organized you would have had this idea BEFORE Thanksgiving. But I am who I am! I had this book in mind for about a month but had neither the time nor the supplies I needed until late last week. I rushed to throw it together (and it still isn’t done). I wanted a book where our family of 5 could keep track of the daily, ordinary things. I’m not talking about the big things either, like family, a warm home and food on the table. I am very aware everyday of those big things. I wanted this book to be a moment in time of the things that make us happy right now. It is never too late to make a book of thanks. It is an exercise that you can undertake any time. I hope my project inspires you to make one of your own.

Here is my cover before I did any embellishing to it. I made the whole book with chipboard covered in different papers from the Die Cuts With A View (DCWV) Autumn Stack. The alpha is Thickers (large) and some small letters from my stash.

I formatted the book with smaller inner pages. On the front of the small inner page I plan on putting a photo of each family member. You will notice that the next page is peeking from behind. On the next page is the journaling for each person for each day. I arranged it so that the journaling that shows will match the person in the photo on each and every page.

On the left hand side of the small page I plan on printing and cutting out quotes strips that have to do with thankfulness. I have yet to research what those quotes will be.

And when you turn the small page, the book opens up to see everyone’s thoughts of thanks for that day. I did one day for each weekday during the week of Thanksgiving.

Like I said before, it isn’t done yet. But I had a chance to give the cover some embellishing with leftover ribbons from my stash before typing up this post. Enjoy!

Crafting for a cause

There is a lot of buzz in the scrapbooking industry about using our crafting abilities for charity. That could be as simple as donating our scraps to our kids school, to as heart warming as making a scrapbook for a Make-A-Wish child. We all have ways we can help! I’ve decided what two of my charitable contributions will be for the next year.

As a small contribution I will be making lots of handmade cards. I will compile a stack of general occasions cards and donate them to a silent auction for a homeschooling conference that my family attends every year. The silent auction raises money to use as scholarship for families that can’t afford the conference otherwise. This idea started because I have been making cards for challenges, contests and just for fun and now I have some cards I don’t have a specific purpose for. So I made a purpose! It is funny that it took me so long to think of this idea because last year I did donate cards to the silent auction. But it was a last minute idea that I could just pull a bunch of cards that I hadn’t use in a long time to donate. Now I’ll be creating cards on purpose for this function. It should be fun.

The second donation I plan on doing this year is for my local YWCA. The YWCA supports women and children in domestic violence situations (among other things). This is a need that is close to my heart. I’m not sure how my donation will look yet. Will it just be donating supplies to help with emotional healing through crafting? Will it be teaching a class on scrapbooking a personal story? I’m not sure yet. But this idea has been on my mind for a while. I don’t know where it will go, but I know it will help someone, somewhere at some time.

So, what can you do to help? I’d love to hear your comments on causes you have helped or plan to help!

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 7 Back-in-action

Okay. It is day seven. It was my goal to give you a straight week of projects to welcome myself back to my blog. I hope you are enjoying. My goal is to post things about once a week. But you all know how life gets in the way sometimes. I hope to not go for months without posting again though!

So my final post for this run… Cutting a mask with the Cricut! For those of you who don’t know, a mask in an object that you lay over your project in order to prevent that portion of your project from being inked.

Sorry the picture is bad. Just trying to get photos fast to share with you. This is supposed to be a photo of a 6×6 page protector. I used a scrapbooking page protector as opposed to a regular office 8.5×11 page protector because it is slightly thicker. The page protectors are inexpensive and readily available. To create a mask, trim off the three sealed edges. This will leave you with two sheets of plastic. Place one on your Cricut mat and choose a shape to cut. I set my blade to 6, pressure 3 and speed 3. You may need to experiment with your settings. Here is what my mask looked like after I cut it (it is inked already for greater visibility).

This material is thinner than a commercial mask but it much cheaper, just the image you want and easy to make. Use it like you would any mask. However, if you find it is curling a bit, then add some re-positionable adhesive to the back. I laid mine on the corner of my project and sprayed with Glimmer Mist. This left the tan, uninked shadow of my image behind. I then spayed my mask a little more, turned it over and stamped the image over my misted section. This gives two distinct versions of the same image.

After allowing it to dry I finished my layout. Enjoy!

RECIPE
cardstock, flower punch, ink: Stampin’ Up

pattern paper: Scenic Route
spray ink: Tattered Angels
die cuts: Cricut (Storybook cart.)
marker: marvy
from stash: stamps, silk flower, crystals

Day 6 Back-In-Action

Whew. I almost didn’t get a post in today. But I am squeaking it in here. I had planned on submitting the following layout to Creating Keepsakes Magazine as a “scrap lift” from a previous issue. But I can’t seem to remember what issue and who the original layout was by. So I will just share it here with you! The original layout featured a large focal on top and lots of detail photos on the bottom of a vacation layout. I seperated out my detail photos based on categories such as people and nature. It was a fun layout to do and goes to show that sometimes scrap lifting can be very inspirational and prevent brain-freeze when dealing with so many photos! I’ll have one more day of back-in-action posts for you tomorrow!

RECIPE (sorry I don’t have everything)

cardstock, tab punch: Stampin’ Up
large alpha: American Crafts
small alpha: Cosmo Cricket
bracket punch: McGill
pattern paper, camping stickers: ?

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.