2014 Resolutions

Last year I didn't make too many resolutions mostly because I've never been good at sticking to them. But I did want to lose weight and save money for a house. Well I dropped 35-40 lbs total in 2013 AND we have a deposit on a house right now so I'm pretty motivated to make some better resolutions this year and stick with them.

2014 Resolutions

• Make all my cards - I don't want to spend money on store bought ones next year, I have more than enough supplies to accomplish this, especially with my monthly Simon Says Stamp card kit!
• Tone up enough to wear a bikini - Not sure if this will happen. I'm pretty self conscious of my belly post child still.
• Minimal soda - I really cut down on soda in 2013 and it helped me lose a lot of weight. I'd like to cut even more out next year, maybe to none at all!
• Cut the negativity out - I have people who are so negative in my life and just bring me down. Saying goodbye to those in 2014.
• Save money and set a new budget - I don't know who doesn't have this on their list. 
• To Do Lists - I found them super helpful the past couple months and I'd like to continue to use them through the whole year to keep better organized with things that need to be done!
• Keep up with project life - I want to do August to August so I'd like to 100% complete one next year and start the second!

Winter Wonderland/Onederland Birthday Party

I was asked to make a banner plus a few extras for a little girls first birthday! Since everyone I know pretty much has boys I was psyched to get to do something girly. The request was winter wonderland/onederland themed and mostly blue/white with a touch of pink and glitter.

Food tags! 4"x2" when folded and left blank for her to write anything she wants on them. I also included a few extras she can use for other things or in case she messes up on a tag.

Favor tags! 2.5" diameter, I left enough ribbon for her to tie on or she can tape it on and the hanging ribbon will still look cute.

The banner! This banner was probably the most work yet only because I didn't like the way the original colors were. I started just white, light blue, and pink but it looked like a baby shower. I added in the dark blue and dark pink but I thought it was too much pink. Finally I settled on dark blue, light blue, white, and a few sprinklings of pink. The snowflakes were cut out of Doodlebug's lily white sugar coated cardstock and is very sparkly, the penguin was a silhouette cut file from their store. Each square is 4.25"x4.25" so it's pretty large!

January 2014 Simon Says Stamp Card Kit - Valentines Days Card

Materials:

• Silhouette Cameo to cut shapes (flag shape designed by me, sentiment shape from silhouette store)
• Simon Says Stamp stamp set in Only Have Eyes For You
• Mini Heart Brads (source unknown)
• Cuttlebug Embossing Folder in Birds and Swirls
• Paper from Fancy Pants Beloved collection
• Bazzil Cotton Candy cardstock for base, Bazzil Marshmallow cardstock for sentiment shape and background

Adhesives:

• Tombo Perm Adhesive Tape Runner
• Pop dots for sentiment

5 Year Old Birthday Card

Landon got his very first preschool birthday party invite (eek!) and I decided to go ahead and make a card for the birthday girl since her mom said she was super girly and I rarely get to make or buy anything girly. This is my first card I've made without looking anywhere for inspiration beyond my supplies and I'm very pleased with the outcome. I've been going back and forth on if the Simon Says Stamp monthly card kit is worth the price and considering I used most of the materials from this card between last month and this months kit I'll say yes and keep my kits coming for a few more months.

Materials:

• Silhouette Cameo to cut Birthday (My First Crush Hollow) and 5 (Wish I Were Taller)
• Simon Says Stamp stamp set in Love This 
• Hero Arts Gems in Diamond Gemstones 5mm
• Little B washi tape in Silver Stripe Thin
• Paper from Fancy Pants Beloved collection
• Bazzil Cotton Candy cardstock for base

Adhesives:

• Tombo Mono Multi Liquid Glue for "birthday" 
• Glossy Accents for gemstones
• Pop dots for "5"

December Daily Haul

It seems like everywhere you turn there are sales galore this weekend post Thanksgiving. I did jump on the Silhouette sale - 40% off plus free shipping over $25! I ordered 2 new blades to keep on hand, transfer tape, and a roll of white vinyl. I wish I could say I picked up more exciting things but I have so much Silhouette stuff I haven't gotten a chance to play with yet already. By the time I get to play it will be Thanksgiving 2014 and hopefully they will have the sale again.

My local scrapbook store had a great sale this weekend too, I didn't even stop in for Christmas stuff but I needed to pick up a roll of washi tape to finish a card and walked out with a bunch of stuff. In my defense this will be perfect for my December daily that starts tomorrow. I think most people do this in a mini album but I'm going to put it right in my project life 2013-2014 album because I don't do weekly, I do by event. I haven't decided if I'm going to put it throughout or do all the events then DD. Since it starts tomorrow I really should figure that out... But on to my haul!

My LSS had a Bo Bunny "kit" sale for $6 per kit. In the kit I picked up was 10 sheets of double sided cardstock as shown below (2 per design), button set, jewel set, and a sheet of cardstock stickers. I also picked up the red chevron washi tape not on sale, and the Hero Arts Circle Ornament Tree stamp at 50% off. The green glitter thickers were a Hobby Lobby purchase a bit ago.

I also did a few hauls on jessicasprague.com during One Buck Wendnesday over the past month or so. I use the kits in the Silhouette software using the Print and Cut feature so some of this will be in my DD as well. I wish they were still offering OBW but it's been on hold until the new year at this point. Bummer! The kits I picked up were the Carta Bella Merry and Bright, Echo Park's A Very Merry Christmas, and Echo Park Holly Jolly. 

Anyone else doing December Daily? Tell me how you are doing it! 

Birthday Banners

Over the past few months I've done a few banners for friends I wanted to share and am currently working on a "one-derland" themed banner which I will show once it's finished.

Tea Party Banner - The most fun to make because it was so girly

One of my very first banners 2 years ago, an Octoberfest themed party

Blackhawks birthday banner. I used print and cut for the Blackhawks logo

Batman Theme - Also did a Superman but don't have a photo

Thankful For...

I'm a day late on this post but Happy Thanksgiving! I was so busy yesterday I didn't even stop to reflect on what I was thankful for. Of course I'm thankful every day but there is a certain something about the whole day of giving thanks that makes you appreciate it so much more.

Of course my top of the list thankful for would be my son. Every day he amazes me and sometimes I just can't believe I actually MADE him, it blows my mind. I can remember his first Thanksgiving well, it wasn't easy to have a crowded room of people and a baby who just wanted to crawl and had no interest in food. And those were the "easy" days, I just didn't realize it yet! :)

I'm also thankful for my husband, I've been under the weather and if he's home and I'm not feeling well I don't even have to ask, I can stay in bed all day and he'll take care of Landon. He's not perfect, and I'm not perfect, but on Sunday we'll celebrate 4 years of marriage.

And lastly I'm thankful for the rest of my family and friends. Lots of good health and fortune this year and I'm hoping 2014 continues that way!

Buzz Lightyear Felt Wings

For Halloween this year my toddler wanted to be Buzz Lightyear which was an easy enough costume to find but none of the options came with wings! What is the point of BL without wings? Amazon sold some for $8 plus I have prime so no shipping but I thought it was the perfect opportunity to try and make some. I don't have a step by step photo breakdown but I did my best to explain how I did this!

Materials:

• Felt in purple, lime green, white, gray and red
• Thin cardboard (I used a cereal box)
• Ribbon or elastic
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks

Instructions:

1. I sketched and cut the basic shape out of a cereal box. I mostly eyeballed sizing this with the exception of the sizing from the middle to the edges so the "jet pack" wouldn't look lopsided in the middle. For the lines I did use a ruler to sketch to make sure it was straight when I cut.
2. I completely covered the back of the cereal box with white felt and hot glue, trimming off the excess around the shape. 
3. For the details on the pack I took my sons doll and copied it. Everything was pretty simple to eyeball and I'm not good at things like this, just take your time on this part. I did not glue anything down until all the pieces were cut out and arranged how I liked them. For the green side pieces I did take a separate piece of cardboard that I cut into oval shapes and covered to make them pop more. Hot glue everything down.
4. I used ribbon to tie on my son's shoulders but you can use elastic as well. On the side that touched my son's back I hot glued a piece of ribbon on each side of the jet pack in the places I felt it would sit on his shoulders and be tied on. Over that I glued purple felt and cut around the excess. That's it! You're done! 

Things I would do differently: I would get thicker ribbon as I felt the smaller ribbon didn't hold as well and slipped more than I would have liked. 

The most time consuming part of this is cutting out all the details of the wings but it is worth it and really I only spent 1.5 hours total on this project over the course of 2 nights. My total cost ended up being about $3. I only had to buy felt and I bought a lot more than I needed. And the best part was my son's face when he saw the wings and found out I made them, he loved them! 

Craft Night - Vinyl Wine Glasses

I'm actually not a big drinker anymore but I love having decorated wine glasses in my house because they are too cute. Back in October we had friends over to watch the Red Sox game and for us girls to mess around with the Silhouette. Originally our plan was etched wine glasses but I cannot find my etching cream so plan B was two tone vinyl decals with our names and initials. The result was awesome and I think I sold my friends boyfriend on getting her a cameo for Christmas too!

Excuse the cell phone photo, I did not have my digital camera handy

A few tips:

• Pick a thicker font, thin fonts will not cut well out of vinyl and they look much better with the two tone look
• There are many different types of vinyl, if you're putting this on a wine glass that you put through the dishwasher make sure you pick an outdoor grade vinyl
• For small transfers like this I've been known to use painters tape instead of the transfer tape to apply to the glass but painters tape can go "bad" and be too sticky so test on a small piece first
• Wash and dry the glasses completely before applying the vinyl, it will last a long time this way

Thomas The Train Birthday Party

For my son's first birthday I did not have a Silhouette machine and looking back I'm a little sad about that but for his second birthday I did have a Silhouette. Not the Cameo, but the the very first Silhouette ever made passed down from my mom to me. Although it's not as fancy and I couldn't do the print and cut feature I still think everything fit the theme pretty well for a Thomas the Train party.

The banner was probably my favorite of all the things I cut. I made it pretty large and don't make my banners this large anymore but it worked great in the space where we had his party. The Silhouette store did not have Thomas cut files so I used a regular train file for the banner as well as the train crossing sign. I do recommend planning the colors you want first and figuring out what letters will be what color. Makes cutting so much easier when you know exactly what needs to be what color.

For the cake/cupcakes my mom made an amazing Thomas cake and cupcakes. I made cupcake wrappers to go around them which I will admit were not the best idea! They took FOREVER to cut, dulled my cutting blade super quick, and used a lot of paper. I took a regular cupcake wrapper file from the Silhouette store and reduced the train file to fit inside the wrapper, there were 3 trains per wrapper. I did not waste the cut out trains, I used them as "confetti" for the tables! I don't think I will ever do cupcake wrappers again, I much prefer the cupcake toppers I've done for other parties.

The other DIY I did for this party were the favors, Thomas crayons. I took molding putty from Michael's, you can find it in the adhesive or clay aisle, and my son's wooden Thomas train and went to work. I ended up getting 5 molds out of one kit, since you are bending them to get the crayons out you may bust one or two of the molds like I did so try and be as gentle as possible when removing the crayons. Once the molds set I preheated the oven to 325 degrees and chopped up some crayons. A few notes about the crayons: soak them in water the day before to get the wrappers off without killing your hands and do go with Crayola crayons they work by far the best with melting and remolding them. I put similar colors together in the molds and just kept an eye on them in the oven until they were fully melted, I didn't leave them alone for even a minute because they melt pretty quickly. The house will probably smell a bit, it's normal. Let cool completely and then pop them out. I had one in each favor bag and I put them on the tables with printed coloring train pages.

Welcome?

I am not a very good writer honestly but I created this blog because I have a Pinterest board called "My Crafty Things" where I upload photos of my current crafts and they've been getting a lot of repins. I wanted a place where when people clicked on the photo it took them to an actual place not just the photo with no instructions/information. I will do my best to put up some tutorials of things that aren't from somewhere else on the web. I'm thinking of also posting my pinterest "fails" as I know some of the things you find on there just don't work out.

You'll probably find lots of paper crafting here. I do a lot of party banners/extras for my son's birthday and children of my friends. Another paper craft I am loving lately is Project Life but not weekly, I do it by event. I'm not big on using the PL premade cards however, I like making my own or using digital kits. I use my Silhouette Cameo to do pretty much all of my crafts. I'm also pretty handy with a hot glue gun, if I do say so myself!

So I hope you'll stick around and see what I post. :)