handmade cass

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.