handmade cass

We had a John Deer birthday party for my daughter's 2nd birthday this year.  She is a little girl that LOVES trucks and tractors!  And this is how it all turned out: I made a little "farm-scape" on a bale of hay at the snack table. Individual portions of popcorn and green M&Ms were a big hit at the party.   Sunflowers were placed in mason jars and tied with natural raffia. Mini party guests received a personalized treat bag with truck books and a green bandana.  See my previous post for more about the party bags. Green bandanas tied together served as party banners.   Green and pink sugar cookies in tractor shapes. Even Frank got dressed up for the party. Yellow cake cupcakes with lime frosting fit the color scheme. It took so much time to get all the different pieces together for the party, and it wasn't perfect, but my daughter had fun and that is what counts!  If you would like to see the sources for some of my party ...

Merry Christmas!  My Christmas cards this year (and every year) are a labor of love.  I had purchased some green honeycomb paper a while back, as soon as I saw this Tim Holtz video  (you can skip to 7:45 to see his tree).  And I'm glad I finally got the cards out this year.  The feedback has been pretty great - they even survived the mail. The cards arrived like this, with a Post-It protecting the honeycomb and giving assembly instructions. Under the Post-It you can thee the honeycomb with an adhesive strip that needs to be removed. And once you fold it over and push gently you have a 3D Christmas tree. This angle shows off the honeycomb dimension a bit better. Every card was different because I hand cut the trees from the honeycomb paper.   Supplies : Honeycomb paper - Inky Antics HoneyPOP Sentiment stamps - Papertrey Ink Background stamp - Hero Arts Ink - Brilliance (Moonlight White) and Stampin' Up (Gumball Green and R...

I am getting so excited for my daughter's birthday next weekend!  I finished up the treat bags for all the kids in record time.   It probably helped that I had borrowed my cousin's awesome Janome Memory Craft 6600 sewing machine that also happens to embroider names.  So each mini party guest is taking home a personalized treat bag. Only downside is that I just had to tell my husband I am going to have a very expensive item on my wish list next year.  I love my vintage Elna sewing machine, but there is a lot to be said for a computerized one that does a lot of the work for you.  

Since most of my blog readers are friends and family that will receive one of my lovely {labor intensive} Christmas cards....I am only going to give a sneak peek for now.  But I'm almost done!   I just put one in the mail that had to fly to Germany and I'll be giving more out in person this weekend.  Hope all you other card makers are almost done too.  It's a great feeling of accomplishment.

I still had all the pictures from last year's Christmas cards displayed in our dining room...I know it sounds crazy.  And when it came time to take them down for all the new Christmas cards this year, I still didn't want to throw them away.   So I made a really simple picture book for my little girl to flip through and see all of the people she recognizes.  All you need to do is punch two holes in each picture and use some ribbon scraps to tie it all together.  I tied the ribbons pretty loosely so the pages would be easy to turn.

I am at least 10 hours into my Christmas card making this year and I have learned a few lessons along the way.  Hopefully it can help someone else in their quest to make a million cards in a short amount of time. stamping with multiple ink colors I wanted to use a new mini stamp set from Papertrey Ink this year, called Peace, Love, and Joy .  And I wanted to be able to use more than one ink color to tie everything together for my cards.  So this is how I did it - quick and super easy with clear stamps! First I laid out the bulk of my message, lining up the stamps on my cutting mat with a grid to get them straight, and then pressing my clear block on top.  I used this block to stamp the message with pink ink 40 times. Then I took one of the stamped images and lined up the rest of the stamps I was going to use.   Once they were perfectly placed I pressed the clear block on top and had everything lined up.  Then I used this block to stamp in gree...

I have a toddler that started sleeping well just recently, so I will do anything to keep her in her bed longer.  When the weather (finally) started to cool off here in Southern California I noticed that she was waking up cold.  So off we went to my favorite fabric store and once she saw this minky she actually started cuddling it on the fabric bolt.  That made the decision pretty easy. It would have been really easy to make a blanket with minky on both sides, but I was worried that would be too warm.  And the only fabric I could find in the coral color I wanted was in the batik section.  So I knew I would have to do a quilting backing for the blanket because the minky is much wider than the batiks.   The lady that was cutting my fabric was super helpful and cut the smallest pieces possible to get the squares I needed for quilting.  One yard of minky measured 60" x 36" so I needed 15 of the 12.5" batik squares to quilt the backing.  And in ...

I have so many active craft projects right now!  December is crazy with both my daughter's birthday and Christmas at the end of the month.  So I am trying to get everything done early this year.  These are the things I am currently working on: Quilted crib blanket Decorations for the John Deere tractor birthday party Sewn and embroidered goodie bags for the party A craft project for the kids to make at the party December Daily mini album Christmas cards I need to have most of these done this month - yikes!  And this doesn't include ongoing crafts like items for  fresh crafts Etsy shop , book of lists, cards, and daily crafting with my mini crafter.

I had a bunch of stamped and die cut leaves from a new Stampin' Up set.  The stamp set is called Wonderfall and the matching Sizzix die is called Autumn Accents .   It is the first time I have tried to stamp onto die cut shapes with a red rubber cling stamp (as opposed to a clear stamp) and it certainly has a learning curve.  Not all of the leaf tips and stems line up but I'm getting better.   And I have been wanting to use a sentiment from the Autumn Kelley Purkey stamp set , so I whipped up this little number today.  As you can see I had a hard time choosing a leaf combo for the card.  The only problem with these die cuts is that they are a bit big for cards. Supplies : Stamps - Stampin' Up and Kelly Purkey for Simon Says Stamp Cardstock - Stampin' Up Ink - Stampin' Up and Color Box Adhesive - Scor-Tape Other - Glitter

We've been busy with pumpkin crafts in our house!   And since my mini crafter is so enthusiastic I have come up with some great ideas for encouraging her artistic flair. Don't get rid of old scrapbooking supplies - let your kids use them.  It's free! Use paper punches and double-sided Scotch tape for quick collages without any glue.  (I used an EK circle punch for the pumpkin eyes and a Marvy Uchida heart punch for the nose.) Stickers make everything better - and Michael's has the best selection.  You can get a book of 300+ themed stickers for $1.  I think the brand is Darice and they are in the kid's craft area. (The stickers on the pumpkin above are from a fall themed sticker book.) I initially started my little one with markers, but that proved to be a disaster.  Crayons were next and work well because they are cheap and easy to clean up.  But this set of colored pencils from Lakeshore Learning is the best option for my almost 2 year old r...

I have had a few ideas about Christmas cards floating around in my head for the past year.  I ended up making very simple photo cards last year, so I still have a bunch of cool supplies.  Now I'm doing testing to see if these grand plans can come together.   So far so good, but now I need to work on our Christmas card list.  I may only have the energy to do about 20 handmade cards - photo cards for everyone else! 11/2/2012 UPDATE: After I got started I realized I had enough supplies to make 40 cards exactly.  And we have 45 people on our Christmas list.  Time to get busy!

It may be a little preemptive, but I wanted to put this out there so I have some accountability.  I am going to make a December Daily album this year.  There - I said it.  And I just finished putting together the kit for it so I'm pretty excited to get started.  I'm planning to have all the pages filled out ahead of time, so I just need to add photos and captions throughout the month. I got really inspired after seeing this video about creating a kit for a mini album .  The kit keeps me from staring at the wall and thinking about all the other bits and pieces I could be looking for.  When I first saw the album she used I thought that it looked like a mini Project Life, which is something I've been wanting to try.  Then I was at my favorite store last week and they had the album.  That sealed the deal! Supplies : Thickers Alphabet Stickers - Amy Tangerine for American Crafts Mix & Match 6x8 Album - Simple Stories Sn@p! Pocket Pages...

I knew that I would have to do it.  But it was still a sad day when I had to cut out a bunch of pages from my EK Smash Book because it was getting too thick.  I have been working on my Book of Lists for over a year but only have half the pages filled out in my Smash Book.  Unfortunately I was having some major trouble turning the pages.  I was disappointed because I am a pretty "flat" crafter - I usually don't use much dimension.  And I was especially careful in this book because the binding was so small to begin with, but there is no way I could have filled up every page and then still been able to turn the pages.  Maybe EK will make the coil bindings a bit bigger in the next version. And I have a couple new lists to add to the book - the tags aren't attached yet. Did anyone else have the same problem with their Smash Book getting too thick?

Happy World Card Making Day to all my fellow paper crafters!  I had lots of fun catching up on all my favorite craft blogs yesterday and even spent a little bit of time finishing up some cards.  I had a couple already started from an afternoon of chatting and crafting with a friend. And I kept my supply list simple because I have been getting too distracted if I allow myself to use anything and everything. Supplies: Cardstock, stickers - American Crafts, City Park collection Thickers stickers - American Crafts Alphabet stickers - Basic Grey Stamp set - Kelly Purkey for Simon Says Stamps

I have been loving all the packaging and branding ideas I see on Pinterest lately.  I got inspired this weekend to make some confetti business cards for my fresh crafts etsy shop , similar to some that you can see in my pins here . For these ones I used small glassine bags, my Crop-A-Dile and a standard hole punch, an Anthropologie catalog for confetti, tiny attacher (Tim Holtz), red StazOn ink, and my custom rubber stamp with shop info. I can already tell that I need brighter colors for the confetti, so I'll be saving some paper scraps for future cards.  Maybe some sequins too!  I also added some Peppermint Divine Twine to finish off this batch.

I think I have talked about my family's tradition for Saturday crafting in the past...and last weekend was no exception.  My aunt and cousin organized an afternoon of bracelet making and my mom was kind enough to distract my sweet baby while I made one too.  So happy with the way it turned out and grateful to my cousin for helping me get it finished quickly. The supplies for these bracelets are so simple: leather cord (about 4 feet for a double wrap), beads (I used cherry quartz), a button, sturdy thread and a needle.  There are some really great instructions with step-by-step pictures here . And if you want to see all the bracelets that my family made you can check them out here on Pinterest .

I saw this pin on Pinterest recently that had me inspired to make some chalkboard painted gift tags.  Unfortunately I saw it the same day I was going to give my mom a birthday present.  Needless to say it was a rushed endeavor. First I sanded the wood tags a bit to make sure all of the bar code sticker residue was removed.  Then I did a thin first coat, using the Martha Stewart Chalkboard Craft Paint.  Followed that with a thick second coat to speed things along.  But the second coat never really dried before I handed over the gift.  The tags were still shiny and a little bit tacky to the touch...with no writing on them! Hopefully attempt number two will go more smoothly.  I also picked up some fun chalk markers for the next time.