Valentine's Week - Day 1: Wedding Card

Happy Monday all!!  And I am back.  I have taken a break from the blog for a while I know.  I haven't stopped crafting, just been taking some time off to get things in order around the home.  So I thought I would kick off my return with a week of Valentine's crafts.  I have been very busy working on outfitting the kids with their Valentine's and some home decor decorations for "Holiday".  
So for today, I don't have a Valentine's item per say but it does have to do with Love.  I needed to make a wedding card to go with a gift being delivered.  Here it is ...

I chose go with a black and white color scheme because the wedding was black tie.  I used the cuttlebug to emboss the card frame with an embellished fleur-de-lis pattern.  I then chose to make a flag shape with some black paper with the same pattern on it.  I cut the label shape with the Cameo.  I then used the Cameo and a black glitter sketch pen to write the sentiments on both the front and inside of the card.  
Well that is all I have for you today.  I will be back tomorrow with some real Valentine's crafts.  Thanks for stopping by.  

Happy New Year

Hi all, wanted to wish you a Happy New Year!!!!  I always love the New Year holiday.  It is a sort of personal fresh start where anything is possible.  Not that I have very big resolutions this year!!!  I haven't even really though about it.  Maybe after my kids go back to school on Monday I can sit down and jot some things down.  Kinda ready for the kids to get back to school, if you can't tell.
So for New Year's Eve we had a family that we are close with over for a sleep over.  We had four adults and four kids running around acting crazy!!!  So to spruce up the house for the party, I made a couple New Year's inspired decorations.  
First I made a banner, for some reason no party seems complete without a banner!!

I used Lori Whitlock's banner shape from the Silhouette store for the shapes and letters.  The patterned paper is from Heidi Swapp's holiday collection.  The letters where cut from Silhouette double sided adhesive and then covered with some Martha Stewart gold glitter.  

Second, I made some table decor for the food table.  

These are some 3-D top hats.  Interestingly, I couldn't find just a 3D top hat in the Silhouette Store.  I had to purchase the Snowman Top Hat with Face file and remove the snowman face.  I then added the 2014 from the Lori Whitlock photo props file, some feathers and ribbon.
Finally, I made some photo props.  Wanted to have an excuse to take a fun group photo to remember the night by.  

I used Lori Whitlock's New Years Eve photo prop files found in the Silhouette store.  Just used a variety of different papers and colors to cut the props.  I then glued a skewer to the left side and wrapped it with some black washi tape.  They were super fun and the kids especially had a blast with them.

Here we all are with the fun props.  So that is all I have for you today.  I hope you have a fabulous New Year and accomplish all your goals and dreams.  

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.