Teacher Holiday Gifts

Happy Thursday all.  We are having a blast down here in the warm weather.  Today I took the kids to the local zoo.  They love doing the zip line adventure and seeing all the animals.  Now we are back and taking a rest from our adventures.  I wanted to share some cards and a cute inexpensive gift I made for the Kindergarten teachers this year.  I admit the gift is ripped right from Pinterest, but really is a practical gift for the teachers.  Here are the cards that I made ... 

I made these cards with some of the scraps that I had lying around from working on my December album.  The sentiment on the front of the cards, I did with my Silhouette and the print and cut feature.  I think it took me a total of 30 minutes to put these two cards together they were so simple.  Here are the gifts I made for the teachers ... 

Super simple and like I said taken right off of Pinterest.  That's what I love about Pinterest, anytime you need a quick simple idea, you can always find it there.  And who doesn't need more wrapping paper at this time of year.  
That's all I have for today, hope your week is going well.  

Baking and Crafting - All Night Long

Hi all, hope you are all doing wonderful.  I am officially on my Holiday Vacation.  I have no access to any crafting whatsoever, so I thought it would be a good time to update the blog on all the Holiday projects I have completed.  
I thought I would start with the baking and crafting that I did a couple days after Thanksgiving.  My girlfriend came over around 9:00am in the morning and we went to a spinning class to get our blood flowing.  After that we spent 13 hours baking and decorating 2 dozen each of 12 different types of cookies.  Basically we bake our own cookie swapp.  It is a really fun day/night with lots of wine, laughter, and of course great tasting goodies.  During the afternoon, her family came over to have a sleep-over.  The next morning is spent packaging the cookies into gifts.  Her is what that looks like:

This year we let the kids help with the crafting.  They each made some gift tags to go on the packages.  They came out cute and the kids were really excited that they got to use adult crafting supplies.  Here are what the packages looked like when we were done:

We used a variety of different packages.  I think one of my favorites was the mason jars.  They were easy to embellish, with just a little scrapbook paper for the top.  Another one of my favorites, was the tubes of cookies that we did.

This is actually and up-cycling project.  The tube is the packaging that Silhouette uses for its premium vinyl.  It was the perfect diameter to fit cookies that were made with a tablespoon scoop.  We just chose some pretty scrapbook paper to wrap around the outside, some ribbon and a tag.  Easy and a great way to recycle packaging.

Well that is all I have for you today.  I will have a couple more projects to share before the holidays.  Oh and I am super excited because I got my December Daily Album done!!!!  Can't wait to share that with you.  Have a great day.

Silhouette Tutorial on Modifying Shapes to make a Christmas Card

Hi all, Happy December!!!  I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  It was a quiet one for us, as it was only the four of us.  But it was very relaxing that way.  On Friday we went out and cut down our first Christmas tree.  It may be a little bigger than it looked in the open field, but I love it.  It was so much fun to go out and pick a tree and then actually cut it down.  My husband and I had never done that in our lives!!!  
So onto the post.  I mentioned last time that I actually got my Christmas cards done this year.  I love that all I have to do is address them and put them in the mail.  I searched high and low for some inspiration this year and finally decided to come up with my own design.  Here is what I came up with ... 

I made this card with my Silhouette Cameo and the Designer Edition software.  I had to modify a label shape and weld it to a rectangle to get the exact fold and look I was going for.  I decided that I would make a video tutorial on how I did it.  The video really explains how to use the knife tool to modify existing shapes.  This tool took a while for me to learn, so I thought I would try to explain it.  

I hope you enjoyed the video and got some inspiration for your own Christmas cards.  I will be back later in the week to share some more fun that I had this weekend!!!  Have a great evening.  

Thanksgiving Decor using Heat Transfer Vinyl

Good evening all.  I hope your week is going well.  It is pretty busy here, but when is it not with two kids.  I had mentioned previously that I really wanted to make some more Holiday decor for my home.   Well today I have some tea towels I made for the Thanksgiving Holiday.  

I have been looking for some plain white tea towels for a while to decorate.  I looked at the Dollar store and couldn't find any without a ton of texture.  I found these ones at Target for $3.99 for a pack of 4.  Pretty good deal I thought.  I used a couple text shapes from the Silhouette online store and some Expressions Vinyl heat transfer to create these.  The hardest part was weeding the subway art.
Well that's all for tonight.  I do have some exciting news though.  I am done with our Christmas cards!!!  This is a big deal for me as I have not sent out Christmas cards in two years.  I did send New Year's cards, just couldn't get Christmas ones done.  Well not this year.  I will share those later, and may even do a video explaining the more complicated design aspects.  We will see.  Have a great night and rest of your week.  

Our Halloween Costumes

Hi all, hope you had a great Halloween.  We had loads of fun.  The girls trick or treated for an hour and a half with no complaining.  It was great.  So just a quick wrap up of the costumes for you today.  My oldest daughter decided she wanted to be Fancy Nancy.  I was super excited that she wanted to be a book character because that means she really loves her books!!  My youngest daughter wanted to be the Tooth Fairy.  I think she wanted to be that because we are anticipating a visit from the Tooth Fairy any day now.  So here are the cuties ... 

And here are the close ups ... 

I made the t-shirts using my Silhouette and some heat transfer vinyl.  For Fancy Nancy, I bought some cat-eye glasses, popped out the lens, and added some feathers and jewels.  For the Tooth Fairy, I made the crown with some 16 gauge wire, toile, and used felt to make the teeth.  The wand was made the same way with a wooden dowel.  The tutus we have had for years.  
Well that is it, hope you enjoy your weekend and can make time to be crafty.  

Happy Halloween Decor

Hi all, Happy Halloween!!!  Hope your week is going well.  It's got to get better today if not, because of the candy.  What a great way to end the week.  My kids are so excited it is contagious.  I love seeing them run from house to house all happy and excited because they get candy.  Last week after all the birthday craziness was over, I made some last minute Halloween decor.  I always say I am going to make decor for the holidays and never get around to doing it.  This year I decided would be different.  Here is what I came up with ... 

I went to the dollar store and bought a couple frames.  Then I chose this subway art from the online Silhouette store.  I printed it on white card stock and cut it out to fit the frame.  Then I found a spider from the store and cut it out and adhered it to the subway art with a pop dot to give it some dimension.  Lastly I added some stickles for the spider web and the ribbon across the top.  Super simple.  

This is another frame from the dollar store.  I bought the Happy Halloween and the spooky tree scene from the Silhouette online store.  Cut them all out of colored card stock and glued or pop dotted them to some white card stock.  I then added the ribbon around the edges.  Again super simple.  I think these two projects took me a total of 45 minutes.  And the best part is I can remove these sheets from the frames and use the same frames for other holidays.  
That's all I have today.  I will post pics of the kids Halloween costumes tomorrow.  They too were easy to throw together.  Have a great night and remember to keep an eye out for the little characters if you are out driving.  

The Big Birthday Celebration

Hi all, it's been awhile I know.  Well finally the birthday madness is over!!  Whew, I didn't think it was ever going to end.  It's not that I don't appreciate the girls birthdays, but it is a bit overwhelming having them in the same month.  So this post is all about their birthday party.  We combine them since they are only two years in age apart, although I think that this may be the last year I get away with it.  They decided that they wanted a pool party this year, and since we have a wonderful rec center with a great indoor pool I went with it.  Here is the invitation I created ... 

I used the Cameo's print and cut feature to create the beach ball cover and the ball with the text on it.  I then used a brad to attach the top to the bottom and allow movement.  I used a tape gun to attach the bottom of the ball to the chevron card stock.  That's it, pretty simple.  

This is the banner I made to hang up in the party room.  I used a flip-flop shape I found in the Silhouette online store.  I had to alter the shape quite a bit to get it to work out.  The shape is designed so that the only thing that cuts is the outer frame and thong part, basically the purple part in the picture above.  Here are the steps to make it cut just the sole of the flip-flop:

• Place the flip-flop shape on your mat in the Designer Edition software
• Select the shape and select ungroup
• Copy one of the flip-flops
• Select one of the flip-flops and then chose Modify and Release compound paths

You do this to both the right and left flip-flop.  Once I cut and assembled all the flip-flops, I used the Silhouette double sided adhesive to create the letters.  I sprinkled each letter with some Martha Stewart purple glitter.

These are the goodie bags I made for each of the kids.  Just a simple print and cut project.

And these are the push-pop cakes that I made.  My husband made the stand for these a couple year's ago.  All I did was change out the ribbon around the edge to match the party.  

We that is all I have for you today.  It was an awesome party, and really one of the easiest kids party I have ever done.  I hope you have a great weekend.  I am off to start the kids Halloween costumes!!!

More Birthday Cards

Hi all, Happy Wednesday.  Hope your week is going well.  I am in the middle of Birthday madness around here.  October always seems like a crazy month because not only were both my girls born in October, but a ton of other family and friends also celebrate their birthday's in October.  So today I have a couple more birthday cards for you and there will probably be more to come.  Here goes ... 

This card was made for a really good friends husband.  He turned 40 the same day as my daughter so we couldn't celebrate with him, but I think he did enjoy his birthday.  Just a simple man card made with the Silhouette.  

This card was for my sister-in-law.  She also shares her birthday with my daughter.  

This is the card I made for my eldest daughter.  We surprised her with a trip to the circus for her special day.  
The great thing about all these cards is that except for the card bases, they were each made using one sheet of white card stock.  I did this using the Silhouettes print and cut feature.  Just chose and sized all the shapes, including the card frames, color filled the shapes and then print and cut them.  It was super easy and fast.  
That's all I have for you today.  Hopefully you have a wonderful rest of the week.  I am in craft crunch mode for my girl's birthday party.  I hope to share some of that Birthday goodness on Friday.  Thanks for stopping by.  

Birthday Bookmarks

Hi everyone, happy hump day!!  Seems like the weeks fly by lately.  Hope you are having a good week despite the Government shutdown.  Well in this house there is no shutting down, so I have just been crafting away.  My daughters birthday is on Friday, and she wanted to take in something to share with her friends.  Since she is in public school now she is not allowed to bring in treats.  I decided that I would make some bookmarks since they are so focused on reading in Kindergarten.  Here is what I did ...

I think that these stitched bookmarks were a free shape of the week from Silhouette not to long back.  They were easy to cut out and not to time consuming to stitch.  The hardest part was getting the thread through the needle.  I used the Sew Easy floss and needle to do the stitching for these.  Then added some ribbon and they were done.  
That's it for today.  Hope you have a wonderful rest of your week.  

Just some Scrapbook Layouts

Hi everyone.  Happy Monday.  I just wanted to pop in real quick and show you some scrapbook layouts I have done recently.  I have been on a hiatus from scrapbooking and really need to get caught up, but alas this is birthday month around here.  So not to much scrapbooking going on.  Here is what I have for you ... 

These two layouts are from May of last year.  I used my Cameo to cut out a chevron background.  I used the whole background for one page and the leftover cut outs from the background on the other page.  I then cut out the fancy lattice and layered my photos.  Pretty simple.  

This layout is from February of this year.  We played this fun game with our Valentine's dinner and wanted to include the menu.  I cut a pocket using one of the shapes from the Silhouette online store.  Love how interactive this one is.

This layout is from March of this year.  I do believe I used one of the sketches from the Silhouette blog to do this layout.  I really love the colors in this layout, the yellow just pops off the grey.
Well that is all I have for you today.  I am running off to pick up the girls and go to a local fall festival.  Should be a ton of fun.  Hope you have a great week.  

Decorated Mixed Media Notebooks

Good morning, hope your week is going well.  Today as I was waking up I said to myself "Thank the lord it is Friday".  Then I realized that it is only Wednesday.  That is what kind of week I am having.  Not a bad week, just feels really busy.  But enough of that, today I have some decorated notebooks to share with you.  I got this idea from a video Heidi Swapp did on My Craft Channel.  It was the perfect idea for a birthday gift for my daughters teacher.  It was also fast and easy.  Here they are ... 

To do this I just bought some simple Kraft notebooks off of Amazon.  I then used white acrylic paint, color shine, and a stencil to create the designs on the cover.  I cut some frames with my Silhouette Cameo and glittered up some thicker letters.  I then used some Heidi Swapp stamps and black ink to stamp the sentiments and finally added a bow with some zip dry.  It really only took about thirty minutes to complete the notebook.  It was so fast and easy that I had to make another for myself.  Who doesn't mind writing down their to do list in a pretty notebook.  
Well that is all for today.  Hope you have a great day.

Daily Cleaning Charts

Happy Friday!!!  Hope you have some exciting stuff planned for the weekend.  We are going to do our normal, soccer games and general hanging out.  I hope to carve out some time for crafting.  We have several birthday's coming up that I needed to get going on.

Well today I have some cleaning charts that I made a couple months back.  See I had to make a schedule for myself because this is the first time I have had to clean the house myself in a number of years.  Back story:  About a year after my husband and I got married we bought a house.  We were both working at the time but I was doing all the cleaning and it led to many a disagreement!!  So we decided to get a cleaning service.  Best decision ever!!! Fast forward a number of years and we had kids and still kept the cleaning service because that meant I could spend more time playing with the kids.  Well one day my 5 year old came to me and asked when our lady was coming to make her bed.  I was flabbergasted and decided then and there that it was time to cancel the cleaning service and start dolling out chores and doing it ourselves.  You see, I think the greatest crime in this world would be to raise ungrateful and entitled kids.  So thats what we did. In addition to saving money, I am teaching my kids how to contribute to the family and making them self sufficient all with one decision.  So to keep us on track I made these cleaning charts ...

We have a three story townhouse that if done all at once would take about 6 hours to clean properly.  I decided to break up the task over the week.  Not so overwhelming that way.  I actually used the Designer Edition of Silhouette Studio to create these and then sent them to printer.  It is really cool that you can do that with the software.  The clipboard was my first attempt at Mod Podge.  I used two different pieces of scrapbook paper and then used some ribbon at the seams of the paper.

Well that is all for today and probably for the weekend.  Thanks for stopping by and hope you have a great weekend.

Fun Birthday Card with the Silhouette

Afternoon all, I hope you are having a fun week.  I wanted to share with you a quick birthday card I made for my daughters teacher.  Her birthday is next week, and Charlotte can not stop talking about it.  Probably because it is close to her own birthday.  So here is the card I made ...

I used some paper from Heidi Swapp for the A2 card base.  I then made a fun frame for the card with the Silhouette, kinda hard to see in the picture.  To do this, first I created a square.  Then used an outline of a cupcake shape and put it in the middle of the square.  Next you select both those shapes and choose subtract in the designer edition software.  Then I created the Happy using the font Digs My Hart.  I overlapped it onto the cupcake.  I then select all the shapes and choose weld.  It created this cool frame which I sprayed with some Gold Lame color shine.  I cut the Birthday with some more Heidi Swapp paper and pop-dotted it onto the card.  Easy as pie.

That's all I have for today, hope you have a wonderful finish to your week.  Thanks for stopping by.

Kids Room Decorated and Done (Finally)

Hi all, I hope this Monday finds you well and you had a great weekend.  We did some hiking at a local park since it was so beautiful here.  This past week, I spent most of my kid free time finally finishing my youngest daughters room.  Back in the spring we decided that it was time for her to move to a full size bed and also get rid of the baby room.  So we bought her a matress, converted her toddler bed to a full size bed and bought the paint.

She wanted a purple room, as that is her favorite color.  We chose this shockingly bright purple, that I thought was a mistake because it made the room so dark.  Once we moved the furniture back in, it became a little less of a shock.  So we couldn't just paint her room, we had to decorate it.  She wanted a big rainbow on her wall.  I tried hard to give that to her, but after ruining two whole rolls of Silhouette vinyl trying to cut each of the colors, I gave up and decided that fairies would be much better.  So I used the remaining vinyl and cut some fairies I bought from SVGcuts.com.  It is amazing how smooth the Cameo cuts this vinyl.  Here are the pics of the fairies ...

We also wanted to give her a place to draw on the wall.  She is notorious for drawing on the walls in the house.  It is fantastic that she wants to be so creative, but a pain to clean up.  To combat this we used some Silhouette chalkboard vinyl and created a drawing space.  We framed it with some trim pieces from the hardware store.

As you can see it is already well used.  Finally I wanted to give her plain pink lamp shade a fun update.

I went to the home goods store and bought a lamp shade for about $7.00.  I then spent every evening after my kids went to bed for an entire week hot gluing this ribbon to the shade.  It took so long because to get the ruffle look I was going for, I had to glue each individual ruffle and wait between ruffles for the glue to set.  I found the butterflies at Pottery Barn Kids and love how they match the colors in the room perfectly.

Thanks for stopping by and getting through this long post.  Hope you have a wonderful week.

Girly Birthday Cards with the Silhouette

Hi all, hope you are having a great day.  We are in our second week of school here and adjusting to the new schedule pretty good.  This past weekend was a busy one for us.  We had two birthday parties and a soccer game.  The birthday parties were for two pretty special girls.  One is the daughter of good friends of ours and the second was for our little niece.  I made them each a special card, here is how they came out ...

Both cards are 4" x 4".  The first card was made with a mermaid purchased from the Silhouette online store.  I embossed the card frame with the flowers Cuttlebug folder.  I then added the decorative ribbon and stamped it with the Birthday sentiment.  The second card is made with the fairy ballerina purchased from the Silhouette online store.  The card frame is stamped with two different sentiment stamps from My Pink Stamper.  I added the ribbon and some pink stickles to the ballet shoes to complete the card.

Oh and I wanted to leave you with a picture of my littlest daughter on her first day of school.  No special dress for her as it was game day for the Eagles!!

Hope you have enjoyed these cards.  Have a wonderful day and make sure to try and fit in some crafting time!!!