Hidden treasures

For Christmas my hubby gave me a gift card to my favorite craft store, coincidentally his parents did also, I wonder how they knew.  😉  My husband made this even sweeter though by offering to keep the kids while I went, a trip shopping with no kids!?!  This hardly ever happens so I jumped on it.  I rarely get a break from the baby.  She is so attached to me that no one likes to keep her.

One of the things I wanted to look for was something different I could put scrap paper in.  I had it in a file container and files for every color.  This seemed like the idea storage solution but I found it kept my scraps put up and forgotten.  I added to it all the time but never got into to use anything so it pretty much just took up space on my desk.  I found an awesome wire container that looks old, not sure why I love the old look so much but I do.   I couldn’t wait to get home and switch out my paper!  My girls liked this too because they got all kinds of scraps to play with.  And I found paper that I didn’t even know I had!  I seriously found paper that I couldn’t believe I wasn’t making cards out of.

Since my New Year resolution is to send a card to everyone I have written down on my calendar on their special days, I thought it would be a good idea to restock my cards.   Lately I have been creating other things more than cards so my stock is pretty non-existent.   And I had found the perfect paper, well 3, these were already cut and I honestly do not know where they came from!  I’m thinking they were probably donated to me by some wonderful person.

I wanted to attach some embellishments and I had the perfect thing in mind.  Over the summer my friend and I had went to a church sale, and I had found these clip on earrings.  My friend thought I had lost my mind at first for buying them, until I told her I had no intention of wearing them but putting them on cards.  With some minor adjustments they were easily attached to the cards.  I only had two of these though, which worked out well since I wanted each one to be different.

So I went into my pretty bowl of things with no home and found a hello tag that was saved from another card as well as an antique looking button leftover from my brother’s wedding invitations.

Since I was adding the hello tag under the button that left the darker strip open and plain so I attached some pearls to it.  I then attached it onto a Kraft cardstock base.  And if you look closely to the background, that is my new container for my papers.  🙂

Next I moved onto the card that had the medallions on them.  I had to make them different somehow, since I wanted to keep these cards simple I decided the best way to do that was with a different card base.  So I went with an elegant looking ivory card base with this one, I also took a scrap piece of the card stock to make a banner for the sentiment.  I hand stamped the “just for you” onto this and added a little distressing ink around the edges.  I had to make the banner long enough for the sentiment but that made it cover the other part of the card.  So I curled it a little to make sure nothing was overshadowing anything else on the card.

That left the other card with the medallion.  I went with a “happy birthday” hand stamped sentiment for this one.  I also took some distress ink to it, for some reason the photo isn’t showing that too well, it looks like the paper is just wet.  I need to work on my photography skills too in this New Year.

I love how pretty these cards turned out, I also can’t believe that I had them hidden in my stock and didn’t know it.

Birthday party prep

Bed bugs makes you paranoid. For some reason our room stays the hottest in the house in warm months, and the coldest in the cold months. So we run a fan a lot in our room. I lay in bed and the air from the fan can hit your skin just right to give it a little tickle that feels like something crawling on you. Or blows your hair a little to make it feel like something is in your hair. When this happens I jump up grab my cell phone and start shining my flashlight app it all over the bed. I never usually never see anything but it is those rare occasions that I do that keeps me paranoid and has me sleeping so lightly and unrested.
Another week of cleaning top to bottom, we didn’t see as many bugs this week as we have in the past. Score one for us! I can say that the tension between hubby and I was at an all-time high and I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m crazy. Since we burned our headboard and box springs last week hubby cut some wood slats to lay the mattress on. While cleaning this week I found four bugs on the slats, they were trying to make a new hiding place there. We had two options from here, get rid of the boards and put the mattress on the floor or figure out how to keep the bugs out of the wood. Since I have read that having the mattress on the floor is one of the worst things you can do when you have bed bugs, we decided we had to come up with a way to keep the bugs off the wood. So I asked if the huge trash bags that he keeps in the garage would work to wrap up the slats. So he wrapped the board up with the bag and duct taped it, here is where he thinks I’m crazy. “Do you think that is sealed up good?” I asked. “Should be” hubby says. “Call me paranoid, but I’m afraid they are going to be able to get in and out of the seams. Think we should seal the up?” “You are paranoid” he said. I got called away to deal with children drama, when I came back he is holding the slat and asked “think this will work?” Oh I wish I had a photo of it, he had duct taped every inch of the board. “I think it should” I said with a big smile. But now he is out of duct tape and we had four more slats to go…
So I sent him to the hardware store for more tape and some painter’s plastic drop cloths. He came back without the tape, he is a very forgetful person. So we cut the plastic drop cloths and wrapped each slat and taped them up with packing tape, nowhere near the way he taped up the other one though. But we got the new mattress encasement on our mattress, which means I don’t have to do as much cleaning next week. From what I read these bugs can live 12-18 months without blood from a human. These encasements traps them to where no more can get in and the ones in can’t get out. So it will have to stay sealed we’ll just say 2 years to stay safe.
Now onto crafting, my baby girl is turning three next month! It’s so crazy how fast they are growing up. She loves Peppa Pig! Being in the US though, it is hard to find Peppa Pig things. Thank goodness she has a crafting mommy though. I was up until 3 am making my daughters and the baby’s two best friends Peppa Pig bottles to use for her birthday party. They will also double as a party favor for her friends. Her face lit up this morning when she seen them. My friend and I also went and got the girls rain boots (wellies is what they are called in the UK, I believe) that I am going to dress up for them. I’m not exactly sure what I am going to put on them but I have some ideas. And since it is going to cold and they won’t be able to go out and jump in muddle puddles, I thought about getting some brown felt and cutting puddle shapes. What do you think? I designed the invitations. I thought designing them on my computer and then just printing them out would be less time consuming then hand making each one like I did my daughters TMNT ones, it was, but still a lot of work! I still have some decorations to do for the party, print and mail invitations, and the boots. I’m on a mission though to find a Peppa Pig item to give to my daughter though, if I can find something to give her I now I’m going to see that face light up and that is why I do all of this 🙂

My UK friends, is the wording how Peppa would say it?

A new craft?

This week there hasn’t been any, stop what your doing and grab your coupons, sales going on.  Which is good because I have an upcoming wedding and birthday party to get ready for.  My daughter’s 8th birthday is coming up and we are having her birthday party next Saturday!  You can see her invitations here.  My husband’s aunt and uncle (almost anyway) are going to get married the end of the month.  They have been together for over twenty years and have one child together.  I actually didn’t know they were not married already until recently.  🙂  So there is a lot going on!!

 

My grandma and sister’s birthday is coming up next week also.  So I have to make their cards as well as my daughters and then a wedding card, which I should probably make two of since my mother-in-law might ask me to make one for her.  But even though I have played around with what I want to do for all these, I still can’t force myself to sit down and make them.  I have been trying all week and have only completed one, for my grandma.  I think the only reason why I got that one done is because we are having a party for her this evening and I need it.  🙂  and I say I hate waiting until last minute 🙂

 

The family and I have been busy cleaning up the basement, which it needed so bad!  That is where the hubby and I was doing the building for our shelves for our room.  So we had all these little scrap pieces of wood that I have not let him throw away!  And they have been calling my name all week

“Stacey, come make something out of me…”

Normally I would be down there in a heartbeat but since my injury, see here, wood kinda scares me a little.   There I said it!  They say the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have a problem.  So I had to work myself up to it this week, but I can say I’m very cautious but not fearful any more.  Wanna see what I made????  🙂

SIGNS!!!!  🙂

I have a love for signs.  If you follow me on Pinterest you will know I have a board of nothing but quotes/signs.  It would be a much bigger board if I pinned every sign or quote I liked, but I have tried to keep it down to what I would like to make or one day have.

 

I have a friend that is so wonderful.  Whenever I make something that I don’t think is really that good she is there to give me encouragement.  She’s the greatest!  And her last name just happens to be where we got the name for our oldest daughter, lol.  So since she is always there for me and my most loyal card customer, I thought she should have the first ever Stacey’s signs.  So this one is for her!   And she and her husband loved it.

 

Then I got a little braver and painted a background.  It has problems but I planned on distressing it and the great part about distressing is it sometimes camouflages your mistakes.   I made this one for my sister’s birthday, I hope she likes it, it will go perfect in her patriotic living room.

And since football is starting I made this for my father-in-law who is a die hard Cincinnati Bengals fan.  I gave him this this morning and considering he was taking pictures and sending them to all his family and friends who are Indianapolis Colts fans, I say he likes it.

And I have a new confidence for a old passion.  I see lots and lots of sign making in my future!!

5 minute card

My plan was to show you what 15 minutes and all this could make

An anniversary card for my in-laws to go with the glass block from my earlier post.  So first I cut my cardstock and chose my background

Since this is just paper and I wanted to tie some ribbon around it and cut some strips of cardstock that was left from the card base and attached them to the back.  Like this…

Now to tie the ribbon on. Which is when I get the message that my in-laws just pulled into the driveway, its here that my original 15 minute plan now has to be altered.   With my 7 year old daughter stalling for a couple more minutes…  I tie the ribbon and attach a small tag that I wrote “love” on…

Then I quickly threw some adhesive on some wooden letters spelling love, and said a quick prayer that they hold at least long enough to present it to them. I then quickly punched two hearts out of the first two pieces of paper I could grab and threw some adhesive on them to add to the background.   More adhesive and pressed onto the card base.   For a total of 5 minutes.

Not my original plan for it but it works and they seemed pleased with both the card and the gift.

And that’s how you make a card in 5 minutes!   🙂

Wow it’s been awhile

Sorry it has taken me so long for another post.  I have been busy with planning and hosting a bachelorette party and making wedding things, my brother is getting married for the third time this Saturday.  That would be a whole different post to explain all that, lol.

This week however I have done some things I’ve been wanting to do for awhile.   I have been wanting one of those personalized glass blocks.  I had made one that I had etched but didn’t like it, luckily it didn’t have our first names on it and I’m able to give it to my in-laws (I added their first names).  Their anniversary was last week but they were on vacation so they will get when they get home today.

So I was going to do the same D with our names and thought, no I want to make the first names larger so they stand out more.  And I thought I would do it with vinyl this time.  So I etched the whole front so it would have the frosted look.  Then I really spent some time trying to find a D I wanted.   Then I thought, you know we have a lot of chevron print in our bedroom and I could tie it into that if I could find a chevron letter.   I found some but none from a silhouette file and when I tried to trace them with the program it just didn’t look good.  So being the clever girl I am and not wanting to give up just yet, I found a chevron print and put it behind a D.  This did cause some problems like when I went to take out a line, it took it all there was no outline of the D.  There was also a situation with the lines, I wasn’t able to take every other one for it to look right.  So I started out at the top and did a few taking one row every 2, then started at the bottom doing the same.  When I got to the middle I did every other one.   And then, so I would have an outline I got out my trusty knife and cut just a little bit.  If you look close you will see all these mistakes.   But I’m happy with it considering all the work I put in it to get what I wanted.   I also added our wedding date in the same color as our first names at the bottom.

I then added a light.  Here are some more pictures with the light on/off and me playing with the camera flash.

I love it and it is much more our style than the first one I did.

Hope you have a good day.  Since it’s been awhile I may be back later today with another post.  I’m getting unpredictable since being so busy.  I don’t like it much, I like routine.   🙂

Operation watermelon was a…

Success!!!!
All the time I spent stressing over the watermelon was crazy. It was just like carving a pumpkin! It was so easy that I decided to not only do the “2014” one but also one wither name on it, both turned out nicely. I spent all morning carving, peeling, cutting, slicing, skewering, and chopping fruit. But it was all worth it when I surprised her with it all and her beautiful face lit up. Wish I had taken a picture of that. So without further ado here they are in all their glory.

 

 

I also took some pictures of some of the decorations, I wanted to take pictures of it all but people were starting to show up and I didn’t want to look like a weirdo.

 

 

And of course her card I made her, complete with a cash diploma.  Here it is with the closed envelope…

And here it is with the envelope open and showing congrats!

Craziness!

I’m well aware I haven’t posted anything all week and missed Share Sunday. I’m sorry.  I had a crazy week last week. And this week doesn’t look any better.
As “the crafty one” of your family do you get nominated to help with everything? I do. Don’t get me wrong, I love helping, but I have limits. My niece’s graduation is quickly approaching, this Saturday, and I’m really trying to do my part so my sister doesn’t get pushed over the edge of insanity. But I’m also now convinced that my sister sees me as some kind of crafting miracle worker.

So although I’m crafting up a storm, it seems nothing is really getting accomplished. Ever have those days, weeks, or months? It happens to me quite a bit. Out of three father’s day cards I only actually made one for the day, then I ended up filling it out and giving it to my father-in-law before taking a photo. My dad and hubby’s card I dug out of my “stock”, technically I made them just not made with them it mind. If that makes sense. And I did make some father’s day gifts but once again forgot to take photos of them. Except for one, a framed photo collage of my kids. My teenage son kind of just left this project up to me and my girls but we managed to pull it off!  Thank you photo editing app on my cell phone.
These are the photos of the kids that I used. The picture of the frame isn’t that great, but my husband loves it though.

 

we                                           love                                   you