Christmas Cutie.

I know it’s past Christmas, but seriously how CUTE is the face on this kid? 

Summer was only 3 in this photo!

I used American Crafts cardstock, Imagination Project paper (distressed the edges around the way around), the tag with the year on it and the tag with the word Christmas on it are from Shabby Chic Tags (love them).  The trees are a digital stamp that I printed on white cardstock and cut out.  I can’t remember where they came from and I hate when that happens!  I think the jewels I put on it are from the $1 bin at Michaels (my favorite spot in Michaels- ha ha)  I also used GCD Studios black glitter letter stickers (LOVE) and a Fancy Pants glittery photo overlay.

Review: Fish Foam!

I was the guest blogger on the CSI Project blog yesterday!  I make stuff with photos and pretty paper, but I also love to DIY things all over my house to save money so you’ll find projects like that here too.

I know, doesn’t the name Fish Foam  just make you wonder WHAT IS IT?  ha ha!  It’s window cleaner!  I was excited to get the opportunity to try this out, because we got new windows in my house a while back and were told to NOT use window cleaner with ammonia in it (I don’t know why).  Which means now I can’t use my go-to cleaner of Windex on them, so it was great to have something to try with no ammonia. 

Anyway, I tried this stuff out on something way more disgusting than my regular windows first.  I recently uncovered from the dungeon that is my basement a door that must have at some time years ago been the door to my studio/office.  When I moved into this house, there was a louvered door on my studio/office that I have never liked.  When I found this one, I was thrilled!  It has 10 panes of glass and is wood, but I’m going to primer and paint it white.  However, it had been in the dungeon of my basement the entire time I’ve lived in this house (12 years!) and I didn’t even know it was there!  And it was absolutely disgusting!  I previously cleaned all the glass panes.  We stripped the stain off of it and sanded it, and in the process of the stripping my husband got the paint and thinner all over the windows, so they were dirty again.  Check them out:

Gross!   Now, here’s what I like the most about the Fish Foam cleaner.  It’s FOAM.  It doesn’t run down my window panes.  It just sits there and works.  See?

How cool is that?

And here are my after photos.  I tried to take them standing in the same spot so you could really see the difference.

(left side pane)

(right side pane)  See that light fixture there at the top?  That’s on the opposite wall!  The darn window is so clean you can see the light fixture in the reflection, which of course you can’t see in the before photos.  ha ha!

I also tried it out on the windows in my office/studio.  I have counters installed at the level of these windows, and there are kitty cat nose prints all over the bottom part of the glass.  ha ha!

Here’s before:

(soooo embarrassing!)

Here’s during, again showing the foam (I really love this part):

And here’s after:

 It’s so clean you can see the reflection of the Fish Foam can in the window!

 
Okay, this is probably the worst one to show for me. I’m in this group on facebook called 52 challenges or something like that, and every week you’re assigned an area to organize. Recently it was your bedroom dresser, and after I uncovered all the “stuff” off the dresser, I really got a good look at how absolutely filthy this thing was. I thought I would try the Fish Foam on it and see if it could clean things that were NOT glass. These are my results.

Edge of dresser before:

and same edge of dresser after:

Looks pretty good, huh?

Overall I am extremely happy with this stuff, and I look forward to every window in my house being sparkling clean! You can find out more info about them on their website here.

You can buy Fish Foam on their website here.

*I was not financially compensated for this review.  I was sent a free sample of Fish Foam to try it out and give my honest opinion.  When that runs out, I will totally be buying more!

Christmas card display!

So I took some American Crafts double sided tape and tried it for the first time.

I stuck the tape onto one side of THESE:

and then I dipped them in THIS:

And this is what they looked like afterwards….

Okay….LOVE them.  And this is what I did with them:

I used them to clip my Christmas cards onto some branches I bought from Goodwill (that were gold and I spray painted them silver!)

I actually need 2 of these card trees, but I bought all the branches I could find at Goodwill so I worked with what I had!

I’m sharing my project here:

Blue Cricket  Design

Have a Jolly Holiday card.

Here’s another example of trying to use up my older Christmas stuff. The pretty metallic tree sticker is from Imaginisce. And on a side note, sooo hard to try to take a photo of a metallic sticker! ha ha

Yeah….so how many of you noticed the darn thing is crooked?  I didn’t notice it until it was all finished and glued down, and there was no way to fix it! 

But how about we forget that and notice how I distressed the edges ever so slightly….. see?

Celebrate the Season Christmas card.

I’ve been trying to use up my older Christmas stuff, and for this card I used a BoBunny Christmas sticker.  I like that it looks layered but really isn’t.  I added a little extra to it by outlining it in green Stickles. Love my Stickles!

Brooch Shadow Boxes Art.

Today I’m going to show you a special Christmas gift I was hired by my aunt to put together for her sisters. My great-aunt died early this year and while going through her house and cleaning we came across a huge amount of old pins or brooches, you might say. My aunt immediately had the idea to put them together in shadow boxes and I took it from there. Now, my aunt is not a rich woman so this had to be on he CHEAP.

Here are a few of the pins/brooches:

I went to Michaels looking for the shadow box frames, and they had a set of 3 for $20 plus they were 40% off.  Score!  There were plenty of pins to do 3 boxes and I still had lots left over!  I had the plan of lining the back of the box with some type of black velvety fabric or something, but when I was at Michaels I saw the T-shirts were 2 for $5 so I had the idea of going with those.  I bought 2 of them in XXL size and only used 1 to do all 3 boxes.

I worked for a few days here and there laying out the pins in different arrangements until I got to something I liked.

So I took the back off the shadowbox frame, cut a piece of black foam board (from Hobby Lobby) to size, covered it with the black T-shirt and secured it with double sided tape (I just didn’t peel off one side of the tape).  Then I took each pin and stuck it into the foam board until it would stay put and hang straight where I wanted it.  When I was satisfied with how each one looked, I put the backs back onto the frames and voila!   Here they are:

Okay, do you have any idea how difficult it is to photograph something inside glass?  ha!

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All in all, I am very happy with how these look!  What do you think?

I’m sharing my project here:

My buddy Bandit.

Look at that face.  Look at those eyes.  His name is Bandit, and he’s adorable!

It was hard to get a photo of him because he’s always running around and jumping up so I was very happy to get this one!

Redo porch light fixtures…or I love spray paint!

Last month while we still had a little bit of warm weather left, I got real motivated to get my front porch projects finished because I knew I would have to look at it all winter in whatever unfinished state it was in.  So I got real busy.  Back in February our porch roof (which was really just a huge metal awning) got overloaded with too much snow and ice and collapsed onto our porch, and it took out the 2 light fixtures on either side of my front door when it went.  I actually wasn’t toooo heartbroken, since they were probably 50 years old anyway (I live in an old house).  I was about to start looking for new ones at Lowe’s in our budget when my stepdaughter mentioned she had 2 that she had removed from her front porch when she bought new ones and did I want them?  Um, YES.  Free equal fabulous!

This is what they looked like when she gave them to me (you seriously have to click on the photo to see it larger and really appreciate the yuckiness! ha ha):

 I used this spray primer on them for 3 coats:

Then I used this glossy spray paint on them for 4 or 5 coats. 

AND then I also sprayed them with 3 coats of clear gloss spray paint. Felt like it took forever, but totally worth it!

Here’s the after shot of my lights:

It’s very hard to take photos of your porch lights in the dark!   Doesn’t it look like some huge monster’s eyes?  ha ha!

I seriously love these soooo much I could just stand outside all day and admire them!

I’m sharing this project here:

30 Handmade Days

Review: Synonyms game (just in time for Christmas!)

It seems like forever ago I was sent this game to review for the blog, and I feel terrible it has taken me sooo long to finally get around to it.  It shouldn’t be that hard to sit down and play a game with your kid!!  Since I received it, it has won a whole bunch of awards, which is pretty cool (most recently the 2011 Parents Choice Award).  Anyway, if you’re looking for a fun game to get your kids, keep reading.

So what I liked about it was it’s a family game.  I always try to get all 3 of us together to do stuff.  I also like that it was created by parents!  It’s for ages 10 and up……although I’m in my 40s and I’ve gotta tell ya, I felt like a complete idiot multiple times during the playing of this game.  Yeah, that’s not in the description on the box!  However, it does say THIS on the box:  The Word Game That Gets Your Mind Racing!   (and they are not kidding…unless your mind is old like mine, in which case it might just draw a blank!)

 The board is made up of letters, and the first person to get all the letters in the word SYNONYMS wins.  When you land on a letter you can earn that letter by coming up with a certain number of synonyms  from one of the cards.  There are easy, medium, and hard cards.  Summer and I just played with the easy deck, and we were challenged!  I don’t even want to see the words in the hard pile of cards!  ha ha  

You can find out more about this game at Synonyms’ website here.  It’s being sold on Amazon.com here.  

All in all, I would recommend it.  I wouldn’t say it’s an EASY game, but that’s one of the reasons I like it, to challenge my kid’s brain! 

disclaimer:  I didn’t get paid to write a good review about this game.  They sent me the game to try it out, and this is my own opinion.

Joy Christmas card.

I had an assignment at Practical Scrappers of doing a Christmas project for last Saturday and this is what I came up with.  I went with very simple, using scraps of things I already had and trying to use up what I have too. 

That’s American Crafts Christmas paper that I used as the base, an OLD Dude Designs journaling card, then an American Crafts thicker metallic Christmas tree on top.  The JOY is a really old Deja Views rub on.

And here’s another one:

This one actually uses packaging from Imaginisce products (maybe rubons…can’t remember) .  I also used a metallic Christmas tree sticker from Imaginise (very hard to take picture of this!) and a sticker from BoBunny.