Great grandma present

Mom and I were discussing all the creative things we've done this year, which made me remember that I never shared the Christmas present that I made for my grandma. And sadly, before we sent it to her (in pretty frames), neither of us took a good picture - this is from my phone on the day I made it. 

The layout had to feature both sets of great-grand boys, be on two pages, and have relatively fair representation of my sister's kids. Thankfully, mom and I are planners and had decided in June that I'd make this present and mom would buy the scrapbook frames, which means that when my sister visited in August there were LOTS of pictures taken for *this*  purpose! My sister thinks we're cray-cray, but that's okay.

There's a couple of scraps in here, but most of the page is American Crafts Chap - paper, ribbons, tabs, accordion flowers, etc. We sewed that red ribbon to the blue, and also the blue ribbon to the photo and then glued the yellow over the seam. The circle border was cut on the Silhouette Cameo. There's lots of distressing - tearing, crumbling, inking. 

Teacher Gifting

Gifts for teachers. Such a broad concept. At this stage, since we aren't doing a preschool, our only teachers are the ones at church. I started planning a project and realized I couldn't figure out where to draw the line regarding which teachers/helpers to leave off the list so I ended up making a little ornament for every preschool teacher and helper who is volunteering this month - 15 ornaments and wrappings made by yours truly! Rylan's nursery workers got a card with a silly kid-craft ornament that Vance helped make, but his teachers got something just a little nicer looking - also known as made by mommy!

All of my teacher gifts. 

The boxes were a file I bought from the Silhouette store during their Cyber Monday sale. It's supposed to be an ornament, I think. I cut them from American Crafts Kraft Cardstock. I also used my Silhouette Cameo to cut the tags, My Mind's Eye Andrea Victoria. Then I stamped a MME All Is Bright stamp in gold and "inked" with Copper embossing powders. 

Close-up of the boxes and tag.

For all the Users at Use it Tuesday - this is my challenge post to make something Christmas/Hannukah with hoarded supplies. The ornaments (and paint on them) were from a project I helped with at church this fall and probably the newest items used. The ribbons have been part of my stash for probably 3 years. Some of the ornaments have buttons inside, some of which have been around for a *very, very* long time.

Stop by tomorrow for a little more about that cute pink tree in the first picture - it's all made from upcycled, scraps and hoarded products. ;)

And don't forget about my Christmas present giveaway that ends Dec. 15 at midnight.

Christmas tags

I've never made my own tags before, but when this week's Scrapbooksteals.com Monday Craft Madness was to use embossing powder I knew that I really wanted to make tags for one particular set of gifts. These gifts are getting packaged into fabric bags that held the boys' twin sheet sets. So they'll look like little blue and grey Santa bags with tags. I'm fairly excited about the prospect!

Here's the tags. I simply "inked" the tags with the embossing powder. It is quite possibly my favorite way to use the powders.

The family has a couple of duplicated first initials so I just wrote their full name in my scribbly scrawl on the backs.

mirror mirror

A few weeks back I was at a thrift store and found a stack of mirrors for a song, so when The Paper Variety Challenge was to create something using paper other than a page or card I instantly turned to my new toys! They were begging to be used after all.

I started by cutting 12x12 sheets of MME Lost and Found (two colors, 16 triangles) into 6x6s and then triangles. Then I inked them all up and folded into ruffles and glued them to the back of the mirror. I used some scrap cardboard and cut a hangar groove out of the back and then Gorilla Glued the cardboard to the paper/mirror. When it was nice and dry I used hot glue and adhered two layers of ribbon to the beveled edge. Then I misted a too white Prima flower with my Wheat Field October Afternoon Sprinklers, layered all the flower pieces together with a MME Lush Orange brad and then hot glued them to the ribbon seam. 

close-up of the flower

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Monday monday

Most Mondays people head back to work and are relatively cranky about it, but for me they are almost always a day off from work and a whole day at home with my little guys! I simply adore Monday because it gives me a day to clean, run errands or do crazy projects without the Scientist under foot constantly or a million people also trying to grocery shop! Yes!!

Today I am in the process of baking some strawberry leather, it's been in the oven almost 6 hours already and looks like it'll need closer to 8 hours for this batch. ETA: That leather never did set right, wondering if my pan wasn't big enough and that made the leather to thick. Some areas turned out quite tasty, but after 10 hours those areas were burning and others were still a warm puree!

I made my second batch ever of bread machine bread (just the white bread recipe that came with it, we'll get fancier later). It turned out significantly better than the first batch did. I had some weird flour stuff in the bottom of one corner and the bread fell while cooking - it tastes fab though and for that I'm grateful because I had to do a quick ingredient swap while putting it together and I thought it was probably gonna be an educational flop. You can see that Squirrel and I already sampled a little as an afternoon snack.

Tasty homemade bread

Also today, I busted out some scrap fabric and made this little iPad display for road trips. I saw one posted on Pinterest and forgot to pin it so I sort of winged this based on my memory of it. Not bad considering I'm about as new to sewing as I am to bread making and I didn't have a pattern! The ribbon helps a lot, because the window was not cut straight. Ooops.

My in-car iPad holder for movie watching

I've also been working on two Christmas presents this weekend. Yes, I realize it's April, but in an effort to not spend so much on "stuff" I decided that I am making most of our Christmas this year and that means starting NOW so that I can enjoy the process. The two projects I picked to start with were kits I bought from Scrapbooksteals.com's archive a while back and having done them each now I'll probably reproduce them with minimal effort for at least one more person. *But* because they are Christmas presents you'll only get sneaky peeks at them.

The first project was My Mind's Eye Decorative Blocks. Decoupage paper to all sides of a cube, sand the edges, ink. Pretty easy and will be super cute sitting on a coffee table. Just need to do a spray acrylic sealer so that they are water resistant!

Nearly completed cube

The second project was a photo frame with decoupaged paper and embellished canvas from Bo Bunny. The kit itself was themed "Noel" and while I really liked the color palette I didn't want it to be a Christmas thing. I tossed some of the holiday themed elements, pulling other components from my scrap stash in instead. Now it is more of a "family" theme. Closer to Christmas I'll take a picture to coordinate with it and seal it one last time.

"Family" corner of canvas - this corner has a lot of MME
Lost and Found Union Square

Time to go squeeze a run out of all this sunshine and then maybe get my MCM knocked out as well!

50 Project Count
Done: 9