Washi wreath

Today I have another fun project I made for a Soul Sentiments class - this project didn't even start like this. It wasn't working the way we'd planned so I adapted it in a way that would use materials already prepped, cough, cough, 80 paper feathers. 

I wrapped a Styrofoam wreath with some MME washi, and then glued on these fun feathers and flowers that I cut on my Cameo. All the papers were from old MME 6x6 pads that have been hanging around in my stash for a long time. 

Super simple, right?! But oh so cute! I'm so over winter and ready for spring and this wreath makes me smile every time I see it.

This class will be on February 22 at 10:30 a.m., call the store for more details.

Winter Platter

On Use It Tuesday we're featuring Winter/Holiday themed projects. Some of you might remember this Fall project that I did for Practical Scrappers a few months back, well for today's project I updated it for the new season!

Check out all those chipboard pieces - the letters have been in my stash an average of 3 years and the snowflake and clock for just over 1 year. 

I used modeling paste to white out the space around the letters, using the letters as a mask. After it'd dried a bit, I removed the letters and misted them and the burlap/modeling paste separately. While the letters were drying I rinsed some of the blue off of the burlap so the color would have some variation then I put the letters back into their spots. 

Those of you who saw the Fall version might remember these pinecones I'd made using my Silhouette Cameo, well I've brought them back with "snow" for the winter theme. Snow was created with good ol' Elmers and some white flocking that's at least three years old and hardly touched. 

What are you going to make to celebrate the new season?!

Now go link up those wintery projects on the Use It Tuesday page! It's been a good run, but the team is closing up shop after this challenge and I'd love to see us go out with a crafty bang. More details are on the blog, but let me just say that UIT really got me digging into my stash and using instead of hoarding and I'm sad to see it go. It's been an honor to play along with the challenges both as a participant and design team member.

Silhouette gift making

Hello there, it's my turn to share on the Scrapbooksteals blog. This week has been "Gift Week" across the Steals sites so Melodee asked me to create some giftable things using my Silhouette Cameo. I couldn't stop with just one project so there's a few projects and a lot of photos and I hope you can hang with me and get inspired to make some of your own gifts this season!

First up, is a Christmas present that I made for my hubby's graduate studies advisor. She is a huge Harry Potter fan so I bought some of the files and used the Cameo to cut vinyl stencils for etching glassware. I was pretty excited to get started because even though I've owned Silhouette machines for years I've always wanted to etch glass and never buckled down and did it.

I etched the Harry Potter logo on one side of each glass. On the opposite point on the circle I etched some of the more iconic images that were available as cut only files - snitch, quidditch player, the house creatures.

I made eight "finished" glasses, and these sets of four will give you a good idea of the end result. 

I confess, I made a little gifty for myself too because I was dying to use the Hazel & Ruby Chalk It Up that I snagged while at the Scrapbooksteals Retreat. 

The frame/tray was something I picked up at the thrift store and have been wanting to find reason to alter it. I used a couple of different files from the Silhouette store for this one - the key and both kinds of banners. 

Each layer is inked and adhered with Mod Podge, then since it will live in my kitchen/dining room area I used a water proof sealer to preserve it just a little longer. With two under 5 in the house you just can't be to careful!

Next up, I made cookie boxes for my neighbors last year and loved doing it so much that I decided to get a head start on the process by making them now! Sweet. I used a Lori Whitlock cookie box file from the Silhouette Studio store. 

I hadn't used this file before so I decided I needed to put some samples in one for the photo, I was pleased to find that it holds a dozen bakery cookies. My kids quickly raided those and trashed the box. Guess I'll have to whip up one more!

I used Authentique Wonder papers I'd gotten in a Christmas kit on Steals last year, paired with some new American Crafts ribbons. 

The plastic opening was made by adhering the thin plastic packaging from paper kits to the frame. I did a quick wipe down with some antibacterial wipes before putting the cookies into the box.

My boys like to sit and help me craft, and they kept stashing my extra Christmas ribbons into boxes that hadn't been tied with ribbons. It did look really cute, and I might just have to cut some more boxes to hold some of their stocking presents. Or maybe use them as organizers.

This may be the last one I'm showing you, but it's the first I've given away - a little hostess gift for dinner with friends a couple of nights ago. The wine box is another fun file from the Silhouette Store. The file's designer, Jamie, has a tutorial on her blog.

Check out that label, three layers of yummy cardstock! And then a big fall leaf from the floral department and an old metal tag.

I was a little disappointed that the file didn't have a closure of any kind, the box itself seemed unstable once I put a bottle in it so I pulled out some twine to wrap around the entire box. Isn't is awesome how it dressed up the box? I think it really says fall now and it didn't feel like it would fall apart when I moved it around the house. 

The ruffle along the edge of the box top was made by folding My Mind's Eye Indie Chic washi along the edge. 

The lid simply hinges back and there's a couple of tabs to hold the bottle of wine, or sparkly juice, in place.

And here's one of the inside of the box. Surprise! Bunnies! You don't say?! I wish I'd considered their orientation when setting up my mat, but I just loved the leathery kraft color that this Authentique Hope paper had and had to use it for the box regardless of the print. 

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Thanks for stopping by, I hope that I've inspired you to get started on some fun gift giving this year!

Practical Scrappers: Fall Home Decor

I'm up today with my first individual feature post at Practical Scrappers, here's just a little sneaky peak at what I'm sharing today. Head on over to see the entire project.

Products used:

Tim Holtz Coordinations Crackled Cardstock - black and brown

Platter

Amy Tangerine corrugated cardstock

Paper Studios chipboard letters

Brown Ink

Floral dept. leaves

Floral wire

Hot Glue Gun

Twine, natural (from the hardware store)

Beautiful wall hanging

Not one who deals with last minute, under the wire, pull it out of my tush sort of stress very well I will confess to having packed my crafty supplies for the Scrapbooksteals Retreat/crop four days early. Four. Now, what in the world was I thinking?  I found myself without the ability to simply adhere two pieces of paper for something as basic as a card. Oops. 

I quickly realized that I could still craft, as long as I was willing to get a bit messy. So I set my mixed media skills to work on this little wooden plaque that I'd picked up at the thrift store. 

It was a lot of fun to make, some of the products I used include gesso, Creative Inspirations paint pots, plastic packaging, scraps of paper, fine point PITT pens, Maya Road banners, Recollections flower, MME wood veneer butterfly and gems, cheap acrylic craft paint, TCW stencils, modeling paste, Unity Stamp Co. Donna Downey stamp. 

Bloom where you are planted - 10 Things Flowers

I have a secret, nay forbidden love of flowers. Probably, it's been exaggerated because as a boy mom there aren't many excuses to bust them out! 

Well, one day recently I wasn't feeling like entering any challenges and thought I should work on some sort of ephemera that I could give as a housewarming present for some friends this summer.  The only mission I had was to use premade flowers (the Ten Things feature today at Practical Scrappers) and to get really messy. 

Bloom where you are planted

I used modeling paste over a stencil from The Crafters Workshop. As it was drying I stamped and heat embossed with gold Zing using a Mini Market background stamp. 

While the paste continued drying I watered down some old grey acrylic paint (read clumpy craft paint) and started washing it onto the page. Then I dripped one of my misters across the top - later it evolved into flower stems. Have to say that I l.o.v.e. the way the ink filled into the cracks in a very moss/ivy/organic way.

Most of the flowers are from Prima's Sprites collection, the netted and sheer ones are from Imaginesce, the big cream ones were saved when my mom did a little destashing. All of them got a little rub down in some Ranger Distress Gathered Twig ink. And some of them were garnished with some Distress Stickles Pine Needle. 

Now I just need to buy a frame the next time they're on sale. 

Other products used:

Large Alphas: American Crafts Thickers

Small Block Alphas: Authentique

Twine: won it in a scrappy challenge, the tag said honeydew on it but I think that refers to the color

Brads: Paper Studio (small) and American Crafts (large) 

Pink Paper Cone Tree Tutorial

I keep seeing these trees pinned on Pinterest, but it seems a lot of people use the foam cones. I'm living under a rule right now - no craft stores so that I can more easily resist the urge to buy even more scrappy supplies! This brought me to a very successful trial run with making paper cone trees from cereal boxes. 

While not rocket science by any means, I thought I'd share with you how I went about making the tree. 

My supplies:

• hot glue gun
• hot glue sticks
• cereal box
• one 12x12 sheet
• lots of scraps cut into .75x6 in strips 
• ribbon

1. Cut open the cereal box and lay flat. I cut that long flappy (one of the two smaller panels) on the far left off first, save it because I use it in the next step.

2. Using the panel as a guide, mark off your next end point, creating two equal sides to what will be our triangle/cone.

 3. I was experimenting remember, so I drew to curves to be the third side. More on that in a bit.

4. Cut the cone. FYI: I cut that bigger section first and then wrapped it into a cone shape. It was to steep of a curve, so I slowly trimmed off strips and ended up roughly where the smaller curve was drawn.The main thing here is that you want the cone to sit flat and not really leaning.

5. Cute little cone, I glued it into shape with my hot glue gun. (My kids really like that cereal so I happened to pull it out of the recycling bin for this project.)

6. As much as they love the cereal, I didn't love the look. So I covered the cone with some MME paper that's been in my stash for ages.

7.  I ran a bead of hot glue down one side, wrapped the paper around and adhered the other end onto the cone. I tucked the excess that hung off the bottom into the cone itself. If you look at this pic you'll see how it had a cornucopia shape, that's the part I tucked. ;)

8. Loosely fold the paper strips in half and give a dab of hot glue. Stick onto the cone tree, alternating colors in whatever order you fancy. I tried to offset subsequent layers of strips so it wouldn't have obviously lines going up and down the cone. I also decided, on the third layer, to trim it an inch to help give it a more tapered look. So every two layers I went down an inch. 

9. My ribbon topper was made by tying a bow and then using the ends of the bow to tie a second one across the top of the other. I just hot glued it onto the tip.

Thanks for stopping by! 

Don't forget that today, December 15, is the last day to sign up for my Christmas present giveaway. 

Homemade Monday: Wash/Dry

We have a sink at our kitchen window - even better it has one of those mini greenhouse windows! It would be an awesome view if it weren't of our apartment parking lot! Over the years I've dressed it up some, I started with baskets to hold wash cloths and kitchen towels since I didn't have enough drawers. Then I added some  plants in the greenhouse.

Now back when dishes were my chore (Scientist would do laundry) the wash clothes and towels stayed  in their respective baskets. All. The. Time. without fail. And it was super useful, so useful that we stopped using paper towels and in our thriftyness only use cloth.

These days not so much with the organization. Which means they fairly often get used for the "wrong" tasks if what you want is less accessible.

So I made these nifty little tags for the baskets: Wash and Dry. I'd had some plastic tags (ID badge tags from the office supplies area) left from labeling the toy storage containers and sized them to those.

 

At least if they don't help the "problem" they're still pretty cute.

For these tags: MME Lush 2 Orange, MME Lost and Found Union Station, Karen Foster alpha stickers, Colorbox Sour Apple (for inking edges and alphas) and Twine.

Homemade Monday: mirrored, again

Sometimes I get into a design rut. Same thing over and over and over. So I altered a mirror again - rut. Sort of, this was the original mirror project and Squirrel managed to break off some of the spoons so I regrouped and made the papered mirror for the Paper Variety's challenge a couple of weeks ago.

But I still wanted the spoons to hang in my dining area (next to a mammoth one a friend gave me that used paint sticks a la Pinterest) and I really wanted it to still have that starburst effect to complement the one from my friend.

Here's what I had done: Gorilla glued all the spoons to the back of the mirror. In normal, non-preschooler circumstances it would have worked. It was mirror side down and he went under and popped the spoons off of the mirror. Grrrrr

Having learned to never trust my creation when preschoolers are nearby the second time I traced the mirror on cardboard and cut it. Then I started hot gluing the spoons down, more immediately secured that way. When the spoons were two layers deep I squirted a whole bunch of Gorilla glue in the cavity created from the spoon ends as well as across them. Carefully placed the mirror and a heavy object on top of it all and left the house for a few hours.

When we got home the mirror had slid a little and I could see part of the cardboard. Not enough though to need to scrap the project or anything. Instead, I took some ribbons and a flower and gave it a more decorative feel. It had been feeling really empty to me anyway and I think it was a nice touch.

Now where did all those weird looking spoons come from? Well, the friend who gave me the starburst mirror had around the same time discovered Orange Leaf Frozen Yogurt. Our two families went together one evening, and while the yogurt is tasty and the restaurant is tons of fun I fell in love with the unique shape of the spoons. So I started making everyone give me their spoons when we went out. There's 38 there, that's a lot of sharing good times with friends and family.

The mirror I'd picked up for $2 at Goodwill.

The ribbon was leftover from a couple of other projects - some MME Lush 2 Orange and some Paper Studio.

The flowers are Imaginesce with a MME Lush 2 Orange brad.

flower and vase

Sometime last fall Pinterest and I became acquainted. Among projects that caught my attention early on were all the numerous glass bottles wrapped in string - mostly jute. Now for some reason I don't have any hanging around, but I do have some fuzzy yarn thanks to my crochet days. So I wrapped a bottle in this fabulous cheap purple yarn. That day I felt a need to accomplish a mindless project - scrapbooking would have taken to much brain power that I didn't have to give. The bottle's shape warranted some hot glue in a couple of spots, just in case you feel the need to try this project out. I don't know if any of the original projects used any glue, I only ever looked at the pins of those particular projects!

Anyway, so I had this purple vase on my desk since a couple of days before we converted it from the crib. In my world, that's a long time for a project to not have a home or a purpose so today's project was to make some flowers for it.

I logged into the Silhouette store and found some lovely 3D tulips. After cutting them on pink card stock (why did I feel a need to buy so many solid card stock packs when I started scrapbooking? I have tons of solid that I.NEVER.USE) I used the instructions with the file to layer them. The first two looked eh, but then I got the hang of it and went ahead and inked up the rest of them. Scrapbooking tape was okay, but you really had to hold it in place. I gave up and used hot glue since it dries so fast.

For the stems I wanted something psuedo realistic - the floral wire I had was to thin and pipe cleaner was fat and fuzzy, so I used wooden skewers that I shaded with two green markers.

I'm quite happy with the result. Next time I do a glass bottle project from Pinterest it should probably include fire - I'm really feeling the need to do one of those cut glass projects...

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

Add caption

new space

Squishy for some time now has been able to climb like a mountain goat/monkey. We've been waiting for him to scale the baby gate (he so totally could!) or to launch himself over the side of the crib (he climb up the sides a bit from the front and it wouldn't take much to get him on top). Given that we don't know what's holding him back, other than our prayers, we decided that the best way to train him to sleep in his big boy bed (think August birthday, brother's December birthday and Christmas) was to have a few months of accessibility to toys without the allure of a ladder. Yep, we put the mattress on the floor.

And in so doing created my new creative space.

We spent several hours on Memorial Day disassembling and reassembling it to get it from one room to the other, and after a trip to the hardware store for some particle board I was ready to make a desk like this one I'd seen on Pinterest. The picture takes you to the original blog. ;)

Since I wanted a desk for me, we positioned the springs on the infant (highest) setting. I spray primered that particle board, then spent the next two days painting on the layers. After painting the orange base color, I achieved the chevrons with the help of my handy dandy Silhouette by using vinyl to create a mask. Not quite happy with how some of them still became uneven (uh, hi, no surprise here that even with help I couldn't achieve a straight line) I took a Sharpie and edged all the stripes to sort of finish them off. That helped a lot. And then after a coating of spray acrylic to seal it all in I set up my new craft space. 

new desk

You'll notice in the picture my sewing machine, Silhouette Cameo, laptop (with Target Washi keyboard, another idea from Pinterest) and my Silhouette advent calendar that I've already repurposed to hold all those little things that I used to avoid using because I hated pulling out their containers all the time. Now they're decorative and accessible! Time to make some flowers for the vase and it'll be ready to go. Much better than that rickety old card table I'd been using.

Scrapbooksteals Turquoise 5

 It's crazy to think that we're already on Turquoise 5! Wow!

For this MWM I took my scrapping outside of the "book" and designed it on an all wood but canvas-styled plaque. Last weekend I found the plaque at Goodwill for $3 and knew it'd be perfect for scrapbooking on, went home and proceeded to glue this paper down for no other reason than that I really liked that paper. It sat on my desk naked for four days. And then Wednesday I was flipping through pics to match the sketch and didn't like any of the boys and decided that I'd just do something with some of my extra wedding pics (I did my scrapbooked album nearly 3 year ago, eek! my style sure has changed, good thing I wasn't a scrap every picture taken sort of bride). Anyway, I came up with this and now it's hanging in the "red bathroom" and looks quite nice.

Basic Grey Origins
American Crafts Thickers, Lullaby
Prima Flower
MME Miss Caroline "Lucky" sticker, brads and stick pin
MME Follow Your Heart Happy Day Tag/Brad and twine
Glitz Designs "Follow" sticker
Girl's Paperie Toil and Trouble 3D embellishment
Paper Studios Affinity Blue and Cream papers
Color Box Chestnut Roan
Vellum and gemstones, stash

In between family moments with my in-laws Memorial Day weekend I snuck time to make the card last week too (#85). I made several of them like this as reminder cards about a girls night I was hosting at my house. The inside reads "Breakfast at Tiffany's and Dinner at Jessica's" plus the date and time. Catchy, huh!?! I'm such a dork.  

MME card
Authentique Gathering 6x6 paper, alphas and "gather"
WRMK twine
Colorbox Chestnut Roan
Brads, stash

More about Memorial Day weekend to come. Next time, darling, next time.