Monday Madness.

Today my photos and Edie’s photos are up on the Sunday Shutterbugs blog.  We doubled up this week because we missed last week.  I just couldn’t get it together last week.  Today we did INCANDESCENT for “I” and JUMP for “J”.  Wanna play along?  Go here to see our “I” photo and show us yours.  And go here to see our “J” photos and leave a link to your photo.  We love to see what others come up with too!

How To Make a SnowMama and Her Baby.

This was my project that I did for the design team at Practical Scrappers last week.  Our job was to use stickers.  Which actually was kind of hard for me, because I don’t use stickers usually ever unless we’re talking about letters, and I use those for my titles a lot.  Back in the early days of scrapbooking when Creative Memories was the only choice out there, stickers were used on all of my layouts because that was all that was available!  ha ha  But nowadays things have really changed.  I did find some Imaginisce stickers that had caught my eye because of the little Christmas trees that were included on the sheet, but I used the snowflakes from the package for this particular layout. 

I applied the sticker onto white cardstock, cut out around it, and then inked up the edges to make it stand out a bit better.  I used 3-d foam squares to attach them to my page so they’d stand out also.  I used them as accents and also made them the “O” in the words of my title.  And here it is:

(did you see that silver snowflake trim on the right?  I got it at Creek Bank Creations)  Here’s a closer look at it:

Here’s a close-up of my snowflake stickers:

(i love the pink sparkly chipboard heart from Crickleberry Cottage on etsy)

(those letters are my all time FAVE Thickers from American Crafts.  They’re called LAX.)

Oh, and in case you are wondering how DO you make a snowmama and her baby, here’s my journaling on the page which tells you how!

1.  Roll up 3 snowballs, small, medium, and large.  Look super cute while doing so.

2.  Stack snowballs up and give them a good pat.  Look super cute while doing so.

3.  Decorate the snowmama that Daddy built.  Look super cute while doing so.

Fun with vinyl.

I made some projects with my Pazzles recently.  I started out with a project for my dad.  He lost his dog, Hobbes (Hobbie) a while back and had her cremated and keeps her ashes in an urn in his garage (his man cave).  He asked me about cutting her name out for him so he could put it on her urn.  After a few attempts at getting the correct size, this is what I came up with.  Dad loves it! 

(*side note….Dad is the only person I know who named his dogs Calvin and Hobbes.  How cute is that?)

While I was playing with the vinyl, I also made my daughter a little decoration for the lid of her Nintendo DSi. 

I love this “gothic butterfly” from a Pazzles image CD called “Inked Up”.

I started out making the butterfly too big, and was not about to throw it away, so I started looking around for somewhere to use it and came up with my coffee mug.  In hindsight, it may be a bit too large for the cup also but it’s stuck on there now and that is where it’s staying.  I put it on the side that will be facing me when I drink out of the cup so that I can appreciate it’s prettiness.  ha ha    And here it is:

Do you love it?  Oh, I just love it!  I inherited my daughter’s old Nintendo DS when she upgraded to the DSi, so I’m gonna find something cool to decorate it too. 

Have any of you done vinyl projects?  I would love to see them!  Leave me a comment with a link to yours so I can check it out!

Teacher Appreciation Week.

I usually find out about this kind of stuff after the fact, but this year I actually read online that it was going to be Teacher Appreciation Week this week starting May 2.  I read lots of crafty blogs and websites for ideas and inspiration, so the subject has been talked about quite a lot lately. 

I used an idea from one of them (can’t remember which) to tie a tag to a Milky Way candy bar that said “Ms. So-and-So, you are out of this world!”.  I asked my hubby to pick up a Milky Way on his way home from work, and instead of looking right there at the cash register he looks in the candy aisle at the grocery store and can’t find a regular size Milky Way (of course not….they’re all by the REGISTER), so he buys an 8 pack of fun size or whatever you want to call them.  Really?  I’m telling you, this is how my life goes.  Murphy’s Law.  (but at least I didn’t have to drive to the grocery store myself, right? I’m not ungrateful!)  So I worked with what I got and I put the Milky Ways into a ziploc sandwich bag and punched a hole in the top and tied the tag onto the bag.  It was cute, and I can’t believe it but I forgot to take a photo. 

My original plan was to make and send something in every day this week, but it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who knows me that it just didn’t happen that way!  ha ha

For yesterday, I used an idea from Skip To My Lou for another teacher gift.  Very simple but really nice in my opinion.  And Skip To My Lou provided a free printable to print the tags, and I love her for that!  Go to her blog post here to see her bouquet and the free printable file.

This is what I did.  I sent my daughter to the local IGA grocery store for the flowers, so there was no choice really.  It was this or nuthin’.  ha ha   And I love the way Cindy used a scalloped circle punch to make her little flower tags, but I don’t have one so I had to settle for a regular ole circle punch, which means I like hers better than mine but I just worked with what I had and it was okay! 

(the flower was already wrapped with that pretty yellow paper….and don’t you love the American Crafts ribbon I tied to it?  I do!)

 Cindy had used long skewer sticks I think for hers, but, again, working with what I had here……I had lots of popsicle sticks because when you buy packages of rub-ons there is usually a stick included and I keep them around just for such a project as this one!  I used foam squares to attach my tags to both sides of the stick.

I also differed from Cindy’s in that I made some little leaves for my “flowers.”  I just drew one freehand onto the backside of My Minds Eye (I think) paper (this used to be a 12×12 sheet of fancy edged paper but this was the last tiny scrap I had left) and then I used it as a template to cut the others out.  Just glued those right onto the stick.

Okay….I don’t mean to gush, but I love the Skip To My Lou blog.  She always shows the CUTEST projects and ideas for everything on her blog, and I love that she provides free printables for lots of different things for poor folk like me.  I think it’s nice when someone is providing something really cool and not asking you to pay for it.  It seems to be getting rare these days.  Thanks Cindy!