Dec 28, 2009 | Big Shot, Chipboard, Create with Connie & Julie, Designer Series Paper |
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I know I did. We had a fairly quiet Christmas eve. Greg’s mom joined us at our house for dinner and opening of presents. Santa came over night and filled stockings and left some presents for the boys. Greg’s mom came back (she lives near by) Christmas morning and ate breakfast with us. In the afternoon we packed up all of us and the dogs and headed to my parents house. A much more chaotic evening as my brother and his family and his wife’s family all came to my parents house. There were 15 of us for dinner and more exchanging of gifts. Noah, my 4 year old nephew was unwrapping gifts as fast as he could only to discover that we got him (and my parents too) the same lego set that Santa brought. What a sad little face when he realized both lego sets were duplicates and he had nothing new to play with. Ally, my 3 year old niece was a little bit slower with opening her gifts and happy with her doll, books, and the little bag I made her.
The non-toy gift that I got them were these Alphabet Letter frames – well they aren’t really frames but I added pictures to them. This was a project that my friend Wendy designed for her gift making class. I decorated an ‘A’ for Ally and an ‘N’ for Noah.
For Noah’s letter I used the Pawstively Prints Designer Series paper to cover chipboard stars. I sanded the edges and sponged the stars. The stars were cut using the Big Shot and the Stars #2 die using the Long Board chipboard pieces that you can order from the Stampin’ Up! catalog.
I stamped sailboats – colored with Stampin’ Write Markers on Whisper White card stock and cut those out. The ‘N’ was stamped with Black StazOn ink using several stamp sets – Extreme Elements, Priceless, Lovely Letters Alphabet, and Just Perfect Alphabet.
The photos are matted with Pumpkin Pie, So Saffron, and Ballet Blue card stock. I printed the photos using a collage format so it printed a variety of small sizes that worked great for this project.
For Ally’s letter I used the Tea Party Designer Series Paper to cover chipboard flowers. The flowers were cut using the Big Shot and the Stampin’ Up! Blossom Party die from pieces of the Long Board Chipboard. The flowers were sanded and sponged.
The ‘A’ is stamped with Black StazOn ink using the Priceless stamp set. The name is stamped using the Lovely Letters Alphabet and the Just Right Alphabet. A Rhinestone brad accents the center of the large flower.
The pictures are matted in So Saffron, Pretty in Pink, Certainly Celery and Almost Amethyst.
The letters set inside the stand so you can put them on a shelf or dresser in each of their bedrooms. They turned out very nice and I hope that they will like looking at them. I tried to choose photos that I had taken so that they were photos that their mom and dad hadn’t seen before.
I gave several hand-made gifts this year. This was one of them.
I need to clean my craft room – I have lots to do in here – working on projects for the Create with Connie & Julie class. Don’t forget to sign up for early bird pricing!
Dec 24, 2009 | Big Shot, Christmas, Designer Series Paper, In Colors |
It is here. It is Christmas Eve! And I still have so much I want to do but I wanted to take a quick break to share this project I just finished.
I found carved wood icicle name ornaments when I went to the craft fair in Virginia – yes that was October so I had what at least 2 months to make these little boxes – but I waited until the last day…
In this photo you can see Noah’s ornament – I took it out of the box so you could see one. I added the Riding Hood Red ribbon to the tops so that they would have a hanger. The boy ornaments I tied in a knot and the girl ornament I tied in a bow.
The ornaments are long and skinny and I decided to make a little box to put them in. Most of what I used is retired from last year. Riding Hood Red card stock, Ski Slope and Holiday Treasures Designer Series Paper, Little Felt Flurries, and the 1-1/4″ Riding Hood Red Grosgrain Ribbon.
Since they were so skinny rather than make tags I decided to use the felt flurries with their initial as the tag. I used the Big Shot and the Stampin’ Up! Billboard Sizzlits Decorative Strip Die to cut the letters. 
To determine the size of the boxes I used my grid paper. I laid the ornament on the grid paper and drew around it – then added sides for the box that were deep enough to hold the ornament, and a lid and a flap. I extended each end the same amount as the sides. Cut and score, snip the flaps, glued it together with Tombow adhesive.
Yesterday I did baking and wrapping. Made a trip to the Honey Baked Ham store (it was packed full of people), the bank (that was empty), one more trip to the grocery store (also crowded) and I’m sending Kyle back today because I realized I’m still missing one thing. I made more M&M treats because I gave all the ones I made away to the teachers last week and the kids still wanted some. I think I have made probably 800 of those things this year. Each tray holds at least 100 because I put as many pretzels as I can on the tray. I made a Rum cake yesterday – I had to go to the store to buy the rum – they were also pretty busy. I also made Cinnamon Sledges – an old recipe that I got from one of my mom’s friends when I was probably in college.
The other night we had dinner at my mother-in-laws house. It was wonderful. My parents came to join us and Tyler’s girlfriend came over too. Now she has met all of Tyler’s grandparents. Here is a picture of me with my boys and Tyler’s girlfriend, Haley.
Merry Christmas Everyone! If I have time today I’ll set up a couple of posts to go up this weekend. Otherwise it will be Monday before I post again. Have a wonderful Holiday with your family, travel safely and enjoy.
Dec 22, 2009 | Christmas, Designer Series Paper, Holiday Mini Catalog 2009, Rub-Ons |
I have more 3×3 cards. I should have bought this snowflake punch earlier – I have used it a lot since I got it. 
For these 3×3 tags I used Chocolate Chip card stock and a strip of paper from the Designer Series paper called Autumn Meadows in the Stampin’ Up! Holiday mini catalog.
I punched a snowflake from Very Vanilla card stock and glued it to the front.
The greetings are from the Chit Chat Rub-Ons. On a few of them I cut off just the word “thanks” because I wanted these tags to say thanks but a few of the phrases with didn’t exactly say what I wanted. So if you have the rub-ons you could cut apart the saying that you aren’t using or don’t suit your needs and put together with other words to say something that might work better for you.
I always cut out the rub-on that I am using so that I don’t mess up the others that I’m not using. Place it on the card and then burnish it with the little popsicle stick that comes with your rub-ons. The white shows up nicely on the dark card stock. There will be a new pack of Rub-ons similar to this set in the upcoming Stampin’ Up! Occasions Mini catalog. These are a great deal – you get more than 200 greetings in each pack.
These will be tags that go on orders that I have right now. If you are in my stamp club your orders are here.
Merry Chritsmas!
Dec 17, 2009 | Christmas, class, Designer Series Paper, Holiday Mini Catalog 2009 |
Well yesterday got away from me and by the time I was ready last night to try to post our internet connection wasn’t working….so I’ll try to post twice today once now and again later.
This Friday (well I guess now that is tomorrow) I have my December class and it is themed “Holiday Tags & More” – I wanted everyone to make some quick little projects to finish up their gift wrapping. So we’ll be making some tag projects, a cute ornament and a little box. I designed the tin full of Ornament Tags for the class – but unfortunately it won’t be part of the class on Friday. Why? Well when I went to get out more tins I only had 2 left – I don’t know what happened to all the others that I had. Actually, now that I’m thinking about it those were the tins I used for the holiday bazaar a couple of months ago – that must have been where they went. Well darn – it is a beautiful project so you will just have to recreate it at home. I suppose you can just make the tags without the tin maybe we’ll do that instead – once it was empty you could use it to hold a gift card. So it was a double duty project – tags and a gift card holder…..
Stampin’ Up! Supplies that I used:
- Christmas Cocoa Specialty Designer Series Paper
- Delightful Decorations stamp set
- Ornament Punch
- Real Red card stock and classic ink
- Soft Suede card stock and classic ink
- Stampin’ Dimensionals
- 3/4″ and 1″ circle punch, 1/16″ and 1/8″ handheld circle punch
- silver cord
- Real Red Grosgrain Ribbon
- Tombow Multipurpose Adhesive
- Corner Rounder punch
Other Supplies:
- metal tin – like an Altoids tin
- white embroidery thread
This project features the Ornament Punch – if you don’t already have this punch and it is on your wish list order soon – it is in the Holiday Mini Catalog which ends on January 4th. It may not be available again after that – Stampin’ Up! hasn’t told us yet. I hope it is because there are many other things you can do with this punch. And I haven’t had the chance to try them all or share them all either.
For the Late Night Stamper’s 12 Days of Christmas challenge – this is my Day 6 project.
Happy Stampin’!
Dec 10, 2009 | Christmas, Designer Series Paper, Scrapbook Pages |
For my last scrapbook class I designed a two-page scrapbook layout that look likes an Advent Calendar. The idea came from an ad I saw in a magazine. I also remember when I was young and when my kids were young we would buy (or my parents would bring) the flat calendars that had all the windows with the chocolate behind them. This layout is basically that same idea but instead of chocolate behind the windows there will be photos.
In order to design the page I used my Stampin’ Up! Grid Paper and traced out my square – the Real Red card stock is 11 x 11. The windows are cut out of the Real Red and that is glued onto the Very Vanilla which is then glued to the 12×12 Chocolate Chip card stock.
I mapped my windows out on the grid paper – since I needed 25 windows I planned for 13 on one page and 12 on the other. I wanted several larger windows – and then a mixture of medium and small. I drew it all out on my grid paper until I had a nice fit – there is 1/4″ in between each of the squares.
I then used my paper cutter with both a cutting blade and a scoring blade to cut and score each window. I cut three sides and scored one to create each window. Some open on the top, some on the bottom and then some on the left or right. They are all different. When you use the Fiskars paper cutter that Stampin’ Up! sells you can position your cutting/scoring blade on the cutter without pressing down so that it cuts the paper. You position where you want to start – then press the blade down, slide the blade until you need to stop, then lift the blade up. There is a ruler on the guide that holds the blade and the little arrow points on the blade show you where the center of the blade is positioned on that ruler. This allows you to cut within the center of your card stock with out cutting it end to end. I made all the cuts and scores in one direction then turned the card stock and did them all in the other direction.
Once my windows were cut – I glued the Real Red card stock to the Very Vanilla – be sure the adhesive is only on the strips around and in between the windows and not on the windows themselves. To decorate each window I cut pieces of the Merry Moments Designer Series Paper about 1/4″ smaller than the size of each window. The numbers were stamped on Very Vanilla card stock and punched with a 1/2″ circle punch, then backed with a 3/4″ circle punched from Chocolate Chip card stock. I arranged my numbers pretty randomly – I wanted 1 in the upper left corner and 25 in the lower right and then just arranged them based on size of the window – so if I knew I would have a photo or an event on a certain date I put that on a larger window. I also stamped some images to add to some of the windows for decoration.
I plan to add photos of things that we have done throughout the month of December. We had Greg’s birthday, Ryan’s band concert, Tyler’s band concert, the Christmas Parade, Christmas eve, Christmas day, getting the tree, baking, parties, etc. I’ll fill in with pictures of us and things like our stockings which I hand made years ago in counted-cross-stitch.
In case you are wondering how to put it in a sleeve in your album and be able to access the windows – what I plan to do is cut the front of the plastic sleeve on the sides and the bottom at the 11″ mark where my Real Red card stock will be. I will add a little accent with velcro behind the two bottom corners so that the sleeve stays shut until someone is ready to look at the page and open the windows. Then they just lift the cut portion of the plastic sleeve to open each window and view the photo.
Another option is to just cut the windows off and have the open space for you photo – then place the number accent directly on a corner of your photo.
I hope all that made sense! I think it will be fun to have a glimpse of everything that goes on during the month leading up to Christmas.
And for those of you that asked what will be in the Advent Matchboxes – those will have candy in them – the drawers are big enough to fit most of the holiday candy. And the big box on the top has a chocolate Santa that I found at the store – they are flat and tall and fit in there at an angle.
Have a wonderful day – tonight we are going to the High School Band Concert – I love to see them all dressed up in their tuxedos!
I hope you’ll join me in January for the Create with Connie & Julie class – see the link on my side-bar for more details.
Dec 8, 2009 | Big Shot, Christmas, Designer Series Paper, SU Ribbon |
On Sunday I made another Matchbox Advent Calendar. They take a while to make – a lot of cuts on the Big Shot and then all the assembling but they sure are fun and I really like how they are turning out. Here is the second one I made:
This one uses some retired paper – Frosty Day Designer Series paper (item# 113057) – but the good news is that you can order this paper on the Clearance Rack which you can order on my website through the online store. The stamp set is Mr. Twigster which is retired but another snowman set like the Snow Buddies hostess set would work just as well. 
And the Felt Flurries (item # 13697) – the felt snowflakes are also available in the Clearance Rack on my website too.
The main colors that I used for this one are Close to Cocoa, Bashful Blue, Kiwi Kiss, and Tangerine Tango. But you could use Old Olive in place of Kiwi Kiss and Pumpkin Pie for the Tangerine Tango. In fact the ribbon I used was a retired Old Olive and retired Chocolate Chip twill ribbon but they match just fine even though the aren’t exactly the same colors. The third ribbon is the Bashful Blue 1/4″ Grosgrain ribbon – which also comes in Old Olive and Chocolate Chip.
I used Rhinestone Brads in the center of the Felt Flurries.
The numbers are from Calendar Alphabet & Numbers set. The numbers are stamped in Close to Cocoa ink and punched out with 1/2″ Circle punch. Then backed with Close to Cocoa card stock with the 3/4″ Circle punch.
The snowman is stamped with Black StazOn ink and then colored with a Bashful Blue Stampin’ Write marker and then the blender pens and Kiwi Kiss and Tangerine Tango ink. Then I carefully cut out the snowmen and the trees and attached them with Stampin’ Dimensionals.
This project works the best using the green bottle of Tombow multipurpose adhesive. I used just a little to hold the boxes together. You don’t necessarily need any on the drawers but I had a few flaps that kept coming back up so I’d just put a small dab where I needed it.
This box I worked more on lining up the stacks and used a little bit of glue to hold the backs and sides together so they wouldn’t sag in the middle – my first one had a little bit of that going on.
I have the DSP paper cut for my third one. Then each of the boys will have one. The nice part was that the drawers from the matchbox are big enough to hold most of the candy that is out there for the holidays. I have another wooden advent calendar that I bought a couple of years ago but the drawers on it are so small I can’t find candy to fit inside. These are a really nice size!
Thanks for stopping by today and for the nice comments about my Guest Designer opportunity with Create with Connie & Julie. I have placed my pre-order for the Occasions Mini Catalog and for the Sale-A-Bration brochure – I can’t wait to get some of my new stuff to start creating.
For Noah’s letter I used the Pawstively Prints Designer Series paper to cover chipboard stars. I sanded the edges and sponged the stars. The stars were cut using the Big Shot and the Stars #2 die using the Long Board chipboard pieces that you can order from the Stampin’ Up! catalog.
For Ally’s letter I used the Tea Party Designer Series Paper to cover chipboard flowers. The flowers were cut using the Big Shot and the Stampin’ Up! Blossom Party die from pieces of the Long Board Chipboard. The flowers were sanded and sponged.
