Multi-color stripe cards

Near the end of April, my kids and I were watching crafting videos during lunch (as usual).  We came across a video from Jennifer McGuire (one of our favorites), in which she created rainbow backgrounds for cards using colored cardstock scraps.  My daughter (age 5.5 years) was intrigued, to say the least, and honestly, so was I!  She suggested that we make those cards, too–which is a frequent refrain, though not always possible.  But today, it was completely possible!

I sliced up some cardstock scraps into strips of varying widths and presented V with a bundle of them, along with two halves of an 8.5″x11″ sheet of paper, pre-coated with adhesive.

During her quiet time, she worked away at adding strips of cardstock to the under-layer of paper, and at the end, she had enough striped backgrounds to make four cards!

She used two of the backgrounds to make cards for her Bible study teachers.  She wanted to mimic some of Jennifer’s designs, and so I cut out some butterfly designs that she chose, using my Silhouette SD– the base layer is vellum, and the detail is plain white cardstock.  She decided on the arrangement and wrote her notes inside.

We have lots of paper strips left, and I am looking forward to making more– with V, and also making some myself!

 

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Princess Party: cupcakes

We did cupcakes for the party!

I thought about doing a large decorated cake for the party, but after thinking about all of the other things we were trying to accomplish (did I mention that we put the whole thing together in a week, not counting the invitations and the thank-you cards?), I realized that was particularly unreasonable.  Cupcakes seemed easier!

In fact, it played (no pun intended!) perfectly off of another one of my daughter’s favorite playthings–Disney Princess Cupcake Party Game (<–similar; affiliate link used).  This game is adorable (and actually has a clever game mechanic), and she loves just playing with the cupcakes themselves!  They’re like little Disney-bounding baked goods.  🙂 I managed to sneak a photo of the Rapunzel cupcake and I recreated it for her party.

The gold frosting is buttercream, and I made what felt like gazillions of royal icing flowers to sprinkle on top.  I cut out sunbursts from light yellow cardstock with my Silhouette and sandwiched a toothpick between two of them as a cupcake topper.  The cupcake wrappers are from Hobby Lobby, and my mother-in-law helped me locate the perfect color!!

I was so delighted: when my daughter saw them for the first time, she immediately exclaimed about how they were the cupcakes from her game!  Highest praise, indeed.

Stay tuned for more about our daughter’s princess party!  

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Layout: our gifts 2009

I think this is the last page for my 2009 scrapbook album!

When I was thinking about how I would arrange this layout, I had originally chosen a different layout to use as inspiration.  However, when I opened my album and looked at the pages around where this one would go, I discovered that one of the layouts just a page or two later had such a similar sketch that I thought it would be awkward.  I went to my Scrap Pinterest board and scrolled through, looking for something that would use my landscape 4×6 and 3×4 photos.  When I came across this one by Stephanie Buice for Crate Paper, I knew it was just right!  I trimmed my 4×6 to a 4×4 and it was perfect.

I’d say that I followed the inspiration layout pretty closely.  I pulled out my (dwindling supply of) Christmas papers and started layering scraps under the photos until I was happy with how they looked.  (I sort of coordinated the colors with the rest of the layouts in the Christmas 2009 series, and especially the layout on the facing page of the album.)  I pulled coordinating embellishments from my (dwindling supply of) Christmas embellishments and tucked them here and there around the photos.

The title is cut with my Silhouette SD– the very same one I’m holding in that photo!  It’s seven years old this year, and I have gotten SO much use out of it.  It is a fantastic little machine.  I used the font “the Nightly Poem” from the Hungry JPEG, and I stretched it a little bit to make the word have a more horizontal feel (the font itself has a very vertical aesthetic, I think).

I even imitated the machine stitched frame around the focal photo+paper+embellishment block, but also added some hand-written journaling under it.  I didn’t add ink splatters (I forgot, plus I didn’t have an appropriate color), and the background was looking bare to me.  I added a simple strip of patterned paper to the left edge and two rows of stitching, and suddenly the layout looked bound and finished.

Supplies:
textured creamy white cardstock
patterned papers: BasicGrey “Nordic Holiday” and Crate Paper “Peppermint”
embellishments: BasicGrey “Nordic Holiday,” Lily Bee “Christmas Town,” as well as miscellaneous other sources
alphabet stickers: October Afternoon Mini Market

 

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Layout: family gifts 2009

Who would have thought that I would go on a Christmas layout kick at the end of September?!  Certainly not me, especially since Christmas layouts are usually what I dread most!

And so, this fourth (and unfortunately final– Friday was filled with non-crafty tasks that really needed to be done during nap time, and even spilled out into other parts of the day!) layout from my scrapbook-every-(week)day challenge to myself in the last week of September is also a Christmas layout.

I started out using a layout I admired for inspiration, but in the end, the only evidence that remained was the block of patterned paper in the top half of the layout!  Ha!  The amount of shifting and maneuvering of photos and patterned papers was ridiculous for such a simple result, but I must say, I really, really like this layout.

I had no clever ideas for a title, so I relied upon a cardstock sticker from the Crate Paper “Peppermint” collection kit– it was quite large, much larger than I would normally use for a sticker on my pages.  I used some lime green striped washi behind it (it looks yellow in the photo above, but it really is green) to tie the brighter yellow-green into the more leafy green of the main block of patterned paper.

I embellished my otherwise simple layout with leafy sprays and pine branches die cut with my Silhouette.

At the bottom of the page, I made another little embellishment cluster around the gift tag I wanted to showcase– the journaling on the page tells the story of this funny label that says “Dad wanted no part of this”– my mom had picked out a black, white, and hot-pink-patterned purse for me, and my dad didn’t want any of the credit, haha!

You may also notice that I included some doilies to embellish this page– they are not from my (in)famous box of 1000!  I recently acquired my Grandma’s paper doily stash– it seems as though my infinity for paper lace is hereditary 🙂

Supplies:
patterned paper: Crate Paper “Peppermint”, BasicGrey “Nordic Holiday”
creamy white cardstock
embellishments: Crate Paper “Peppermint” cardstock stickers; BasicGrey “Nordic Holiday” cardstock stickers; washi tape from Bella Blvd and the Paper Studio; the Paper Studio enamel dots; paper doilies
Silhouette SD: Silhouette Design Store “sled and sprig” #52368 and leaf_1033
other: Scotch ATG, craft foam, Project Life 0.3 black journaling pen

 

 

 

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Vacation travel notebook and kit

Husband and I just got back from vacation celebrating our tenth(!!) anniversary.  He treated me to the most wonderfully luxurious week for just the two of us in Grenada!

When I was preparing for the trip, I knew I wanted to bring some sort of journal along.  When we went on our honeymoon, I deliberately did not keep a journal, because I just wanted to enjoy the trip… however, I immediately regretted it.  We ate some phenomenal food on that trip, and I didn’t have any record of it (it was before I had large memory cards for my digital camera, and at that time, taking photos of your food wasn’t really a “thing,” anyway!).  I planned to scrapbook the trip, so we did take as many photos as we could, but I have forgotten many of the details (it was before I even knew about metadata!)

This time, I was determined to have a written record.  I decided to make my own notebook (goodness knows I have enough paper in my craft room!), and I followed my own tutorial to construct the book.  The only variations were that I used my long-arm stapler to bind the pages into the cover, and I used lightweight cardstock for the pages rather than printer paper, since I knew I’d be doing a little stamping and using felt-tip type journaling pens–I didn’t want to have to worry about bleed through or ghosting.

 

To embellish the cover, I pulled out some very old Studio Calico alphas and layered them on a journaling card from the June Cocoa Daisy pocket scrapbook kit (thank you, Cocoa Daisy! — I won this kit in the iNSD giveaway on the Scrapbook and Cards Today blog).  I added the “adventure”** die cut with my Silhouette from Ali Edwards’ Pinterest Passport freebie series earlier this summer– it was cut from kraft cardstock, but I colored it with a blue permanent marker to give it the navy color.  I added the date stamp, a little piece of washi tape, and a few enamel dots to finish it off.

I also had the idea that perhaps it would be fun to have a little scrapbook-y kit along, just in case I decided I really wanted to do some crafting while I was away.  After all, papercrafting is one of my main passions!

I gathered some supplies.  I added some stickers from the Clementine Project Life kit, as well as some other random bits and bobs I collected from my scrapbook stash.  I also added a roller date stamp, the stamp set from the Cocoa Daisy kit, and my black ink pad.  I learned a trick from Online Card Classes’ chat with Kathy Racoosin that you can use the lid of an ink pad as an acrylic stamp mount!

I wound some lengths of washi tape around a Project Life card (from the yellow baby edition, I think!) so that I could have a large variety without the bulk of all the rolls.

I chose some die cuts from the Cocoa Daisy kit and turned them into “stickers” by adding

adhesive and placing them onto some plastic packaging.

I cut some more of Ali Edwards’ Pinterest Passport files with my Silhouette and turned them into “stickers” as well.

I fitted all of my embellishements into this cute Craftmate Folio by Webster’s Pages (thank you, Megan!).  It seriously was the perfect size to pack in my bag and carry to the beach (but more on that in a later post!….)

I used another little zipper pouch to carry my journaling pens and a small pair of scissors (I put the scissors into my checked bag so that I didn’t have to worry about them as I went through airport security).

Even though I went to all of this trouble to assemble a little kit, I really gave myself permission NOT to use it if I didn’t end up wanting to do extra crafting.  It was just plain fun to put the kit together.  At the very least, I wanted to have one place where all of my notes could be jotted each day.  At the best, this journal could become its own little scrapbook-y record of the trip!  I didn’t place any expectations on myself other than writing some facts about each day.

In a future post, I’ll let you know how I actually ended up using the notebook!

 

**Really, “adventure” might be a bit strong of a word– we went to a lovely resort with the expectation of lazing on the beach for the majority of the time.  We did do some fun activities, but “relaxation” or “vacation” probably would have been a better word choice.  But I had this cute png from Ali… 😉

Supplies:
cover: kraft cardstock-The Paper Studio, yellow tropical floral patterned cardstock-Bo Bunny
embellishments: June Cocoa Daisy pocket scrapbook kit, Ali Edwards’ Pinterest Passport freebie png files, enamel dots-The Paper Studio, washi tapes (the Paper Studio, Bella Blvd, Recollections, Queen & Co.), stickers: Project Life and other
journaling pens: Project Life, Shimelle
date stamp: Project Life (original edition)
zipper folio: Webster’s Pages Craftmate Folio (grey)

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Costumes 2014

One of our favorite family projects is our costumes each year.  As fall progresses, we inevitably begin discussing what our family costume could be.  This year, we had our idea pretty early, but without a real reason to put the costume together, we had sadly decided to just let it go this year.  With a 4-month old and an almost-3-year-old, our time was too valuable to spend on a costume that we’d never really wear anywhere.

But that all changed when an invitation to a Halloween party arrived from our friends!  We had about a week and a half to put together our costume, and we forged full-speed ahead!

Introducing: Lego Movie family!

We decided to be the “real-life” versions of the characters (rather than make ourselves into minifigs/blocks).  P.S.  Thanks, Amanda, for your help taking photos!

I absolutely love this annual project that Husband and I do together (in the future, I’m looking forward to our kids’ increasing involvement!).  I really feel like we work so well together for our costumes; it is a true collaboration, and we have so much fun!

Husband was Emmet, of course.

We made a construction vest for him out of orange felt and reflective duct tape (with drawn-on pocket and pen, just like Emmet’s vest!).  Husband also made an ID tag for himself.

I was Wyldstyle.

I found an image of the graffiti-style artwork on her jacket by doing a search online, and we turned it into a Silhouette cut file so that we could make a freezer-paper stencil.  Husband did a fantastic job tweaking the stencil to fit properly on my jacket and lining up the two colors!

The part of the costume I was most looking forward to was adding color to my hair!  Unfortunately the inexpensive “hair mascara” we found wasn’t quite as vibrant as we’d hoped, but it did an okay job.  Now I think we’re going to have to find more costumes with colored hair for me! 😉  I’m considering just putting colored streaks in my hair from time to time…just for the fun of it!

Our daughter was Princess Unikitty.

The most important part, of course, was a headband with ears and a unicorn horn.  We created the horn based on some photos of cute unicorn horns on Etsy, and made the ears with stitched triangles of pink felt.  The horn is attached to the headband by a “strap” of felt sewn into its base, and the ears attach with loops of elastic.  It’s a bonus that the horn and ears are removeable; it just worked out that it was the most effective way to attach them.

I also made a tail.  I spend hours (literally) nursing my son, so I have a lot of time to visualize these sorts of things in my head, and I was pretty excited that my idea to use a gusset to give it a squared-off shape worked the first time!  The waist straps are based off of a tutorial for adorable dinosaur/dragon tails that I have pinned (I really, really want to make some more tails now! ;-))  I added the pink tutu at the last minute because I am convinced that if Unikitty were a human girl, she would most definitely have a tutu.  Plus it made V’s outfit more “costumey.”

What had clinched the idea for this particular family costume was that we had a hat for our little boy– it was Husband’s when he was a baby, and it was absolutely perfect for Benny the Spaceman!

We found a blue onesie at Hobby Lobby and purchased some blue pants elsewhere.  I did another search online for the Lego Space logo and turned it into a cut file for my Silhouette.  We stenciled a solid white layer first, then added the yellow and red once it was dry.

How about some action shots?

Spaceship, spaceship, SPACESHIP!!!!!

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Rustic and vintage French themed thank-you cards

For the other showers that I’ve helped to throw, I have loved providing the guest of honor with coordinating handmade thank you note cards.  So of course, it was no exception for the bridal shower for my friend!

I designed little “Merci” tags (partly in PSE7 and partly in the Silhouette Studio software to utilize the print-and-cut feature) that coordinate with all the other “paper goods” for the shower, and I attached the tags to the front of a cream-colored card atop a knotted ribbon and half a paper doily (I love the look of white-on-cream.  It looks even better in person!).

The design is quite simple, but that’s because I made three dozen cards!!

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