Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Let it Snow!

Well, there's snow on the ground now, and instead of grumbling about the cold, I'm going to remember that snow means I get the chance to take and scrap photos like these:
Keep warm, and keep your camera handy!

Snow Fun Supply List
Paper: Pebbles New Arrival (Peek-a-boo, Brand New)
Accessories: American Crafts Thickers (Giggles)
Tools: Silhouette SD, We Are R Memory Keepers Corner Chomper, Bazzill In Stitch’z template, EK Success Edger Punch Bracket

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Coffee Cup Sleeves

I thought I'd share a quick, fun Christmas gift idea. I'm making a number of these coffee sleeves. I have some plastic, reusable cups that look exactly like the paper ones that you get at coffee places ordered (they haven't shown up yet), but this cup gives you the general idea.

These are really simple. I found funky socks at Target, cut them to the right size w/ my Fiskars scissors, added a little fabric glue to the top and bottom to keep them from fraying, and then sewed on buttons (I love these buttons from Doodlebug!). I'm playing around with the buttons; Some go all the way around the sleeve, I've stacked them vertically in a column of 3, you get the idea. These cups and sock warmers are going to people like the lady who cleans my husband's office, the teacher's aid who holds the doors open and greets all the kids coming into school every morning, etc. Combined with a gift card to a local coffee shop, this would even make a great teacher gift. My kids are a little too young to help out with these yet, but if you have older kids, they're easy enough for kids to make for grandparents, aunts, uncles, and others too.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope you are all having a blessed and safe Thanksgiving. I wanted to share a layout before I headed out the door for some family, food, and fun. This layout may be birthday themed, but it illustrates many of the things I'm thankful for on a daily basis. This layout is based on a card sketch by Allison Davis, and uses Fancy Pants It's Your Day paper.


I'm thankful for my paper crafting hobby. It relaxes me, and reminds me to stretch myself.


I'm thankful that every day I'm greeted by these sweet, goofy, mischievous faces.


I'm thankful God often reminds me to put down the mop, and enjoy my children's creativity.


I'm thankful for my husband who comes home from work and wants to hear all about Teddy's birthday celebration from overly excited children.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Friday, November 19, 2010

Glue Dots® + Weddings = Happily Ever After


I have to admit I was pretty excited when Glue Dots® challenged us to make something wedding themed for one of our projects this month. I love paper crafts, I love weddings, I love making gifts...does it get any better that that!?! What I came up with could really have 3 different uses. It can be part of a gift for the bride and groom, it can be a gift from the bride and groom to guests, or (with a little extra work) it can be a table decoration. Here's the wedding gift version:This is the front and back view of a personalized and decorated wine bottle. Added to a wine themed gift basket, it makes a beautiful gift. Set at the tables, it makes a lovely, personalized party favor. Making the labels is simple.
~First pick out a bottle of wine. Remove any price tags, stickers, etc. from it. Also remove the foil from around the neck and cork area of the bottle. Leave the labels on the wine bottle. It's much easier to cover them up than to remove them!
~ Next measure both the front and back labels, often they are different sizes. Add about 1/4" to the measurements to give yourself enough overlap. For example, if your label is 3" x 3 1/2", your new personalized label should measure about 3 1/4" x 3 3/4".
~Now you get to choose your paper. I chose paper from Imaginisce's To Love & Cherish line.
~Now design a front and back label. The front of my bottle has the couple's monogram on it, and the back has a wedding Bible verse. I designed both labels in my Silhouette software, and printed it out on my printer at home, but any word or print shop type software will do. Just use what you are most comfortable with. Print out your labels on patterned paper. *Just a note, the proper way to do wedding monograms is the bride's first initial on the left (when looking at the monogram), the groom's first initial on the right, and the last initial in the center.
~ Once printed, cut your labels to the proper size. Add Glue Dots® Glue Lines or Glue Dots® Memory Book Dots to the back of the printed label and layer over the label on the wine bottle.
~ Next use a punch or die cut machine (I used my Silhouette again) to cut about 8-10 flowers out of paper that matches the paper you used for your label. Add embellishments to the center of your flowers (I used I-rock Gems and Pearls). Curl the petals of your flowers forwards a bit to give the flowers more dimension. Attach a Glue Dots® Memory Book Dot to the back of the flower and attach to bottle.

If you're using this idea for a gift, you can stop here. If you're using this as a table decoration, you will want to continue with the additional steps to create this:
~ At this point, you'll want a cork-less, empty wine bottle instead of a full one. I've added 6 paper flowers to the wine bottle. There are lots of ways out there to make paper flowers, and you can choose your favorite, and the flower that best suits the theme of your wedding, but here are a few tips to make life easier.
~Make the paper part of your flower using a origami, die, or punch of your choosing (I again used my Silhouette).
~Grab some floral wire and some pliers to make a stem. Twist the wire around the pliers to make a flat spiral on one end.
~Thread the straight end down through the top of the flower.
~ You will now have a nice flat surface to work with in the center of your flower. Put a Glue Dot® Mini Dot on the underside of your wire spiral to keep the flower from moving around on the wire. You can add an embellishment (like a pretty rhinestone) to the top side of the wire to glam it up a bit.
~Finally, to keep your flower from moving around in the bottle, create a second wire spiral on the bottom of the wire. Add a large Glue Dot® (like a Craft Dot, Memory Dot, or Pop Dot) and place into the bottle. The Glue Dot® will stick to the bottom of the bottle keeping your flower in place.

I wrote this blog post while participating on the Glue Dots® design team.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Fall Fun Part 2

As promised, here is layout number 2 from our fun at Pumpkinland this fall:
To get so many photos in different sizes, I just picked the photos I wanted, and put them into a random collage function on my photo editing software. I set the overall size as 8x10, and just let the program work its magic. After I printed the 8x10 photo, I cut the photos making up the 8 x 10 apart. The papers, twine and corrugated alphas are all from Jillibean Soup again today.
I finished up the layout by adding a few stickers and overlays from Little Yellow Bicycle. Boy does it feel good to have all those photos off my desk and onto a few pages!

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Fall Fun Part 1

At the beginning of October we headed out to the local pumpkin farm. That same afternoon I printed out photos from the outing and headed to AWDML. I dicided Jillibean Soup Pasta Fagioli paper would be perfect to scrap those photos, so I grabbed a bunch of it. Needless to say, I got busy and it all sat on my desk until last week. Finally, I got them all finished. I ended up with 2 fun 2-page spreads. Here's the first one: I used twill ribbon to create the striped strip, and twine from Jillibean Soup to create the brown vine like detail connecting the leaves.
The leaves, titles, and pumpkins are stickers and overlays from Little Yellow Bicycle. I used mini Glue Dots® to invisibly adhere the overlays to the paper.
Thanks for stopping by. I'll be back later this week with layout #2 from this fun day.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Lessons in Being Silly

My Mind's Eye is having a sketch challenge on their blog again. There's still plenty of time to play along if you'd like to! The theme this month is lessons' learned. I decided to scrap about my boys and the lesson they've taught me in being silly. Here's the sketch:

Here's my take:
The papers are from MME's Quite Contrary Little Boy Blue line. I spun the sketch 180 degrees. Instead of using 2 photos, I used 1 and used a large journaling tag in the place of the second photo. There were no lines on the journaling tag, so for an extra detail, I hand stitched lines in before journaling.

I made the leaf accents from MME Quite Contrary Little Boy Blue. I just cut them out to the approximate size I wanted and then stitched a border on them. The white pearls are Imaginisce I-rock pearls. The title letters are Prima Flocked Alphas. The started out cream, so to achieve the multi-colored look I used a light green marker to trace around the edges of the alphas. Once they were adhered to the paper, I used a brown marker to outline them one more time.

I was playing around with different ways to use stitching while making this layout. The journaling lines were one way. You can see another way in the picture above. Instead of one continuous line around the bracketed piece of background paper, I staggered my lines inside and outside of the paper. Thanks for stopping by!

Monday, November 8, 2010

Gearing up for Chirstmas

I know Thanksgiving is the next holiday on the list, and believe me I won't skip over that celebration (I adhere very strictly to my rule that Christmas decorations do not get put up until the day after Thanksgiving), but if you're in the Northwest Iowa area you can get a jump start on your Christmas Cards this weekend. Here's the official description:
Get ready for Christmas with this great class from Samantha. Build you stash of Christmas cards by making 20 cards (5 each of 4 different designs) in one class. All you need is your own adhesive. Everything will be cut and waiting for you to stamp and assemble.
Cost: $25
November 13 from 10:15 am - 1 pm
You can reserve your spot by calling A Walk Down Memory Lane at (712)476-3443. Hope to see you there!

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Christmas Wedding


This past week I've been having a blast playing with The Girls' Paperie Tinsel and Twig collection. Some how this line manages to soft and elegant, yet still bright and fun. I don't know how they did it, but I LOVE it. I especially love those great snowflakes (they come layered with the tissue, tinsel, and buttons) and their matching stickers (which they call the Tinsel & Twig Sticker Market). 1 sticker book contains tons of alphas, journaling stickers, border stickers, word stickers and much much more. The photo itself is a picture of my oldest son with his great grandparents at my sister's wedding, 2 days before Christmas.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Advent Calendar

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**I created this post over 5 years ago, and it continues to be one of my most popular. I try to keep the supply list updated with similar products when products become discontinues.
Supplies


Glue Dots® challenged it's Dottesses to make a holiday decor project. As you can see, I decided to make an advent calendar. Here's a step-by-step on how to make your own.

1. Gather the basics: An advent calendar (I used a Karen Foster Count Down Calendar, but Kaiser Craft also makes a great calendar as well), Christmas paper (I used The Girls' Paperie Tinsel and Twig paper and the Tinsel and Twig Sticker Market), Glue Dots® Mini, and miscellaneous embellishments.
2. Cut 13 red 1 1/2" x 1 7/16" squares and 12 green 1 1/2" x 1 7/16" green squares. The drawers slide better if you cut the squares of paper so they are just slightly shorter than they are wide.

3. Add the Girls' Paperie Tinsel and Twig Sticker Market square number stickers to the red and green squares. I alternated colored squares and numbers (i.e. 1st was layered on red, 2nd layered on green, 3rd layered on red again... all the way to 25 which will be layered on red).

4. Cut the finger notch from the squares. I did this by holding the paper up to the drawer, tracing with pencil, and then punching out with a 1/2" circle punch. You can also cut it out with a scissors. Once I had one paper notched properly, I used that piece as a template for the rest of the squares. 5. Embellish the squares with rhinestones, pearls, brads, etc. (I used Imaginisce's I-rock, Prima Flower centers, My Mind's Eye Red Lush Brads, Green Kaiser Craft Rhine Stones, and words from The Girls' Paperie Tinsel & Twig Sticker Market)

6. Attach the embellished squares to the drawers of the calendar using Mini Glue Dots®.

7. Have fun hunting for little treasures to fill up your boxes!

I wrote this blog post while participating on the Glue Dots® design team.