She's Making Lists......

.......and more importantly, CHECKING off on the lists!!

Order invites for Newest Kiddo's graduation party:  CHECK

Individual Senior Boys Baseball collages put together and ordered:  CHECK

Coach's and Team Baseball collages put together and ordered:  CHECK

Teacher appreciation gift card (yes, I admit that that I caved to the convenience of a gift card. Survival is what we are aiming for in the month of May!):  CHECK

Cute presentation Teacher's Mug to give gift card:   CHECK, CHECK, CHECK!!  

Thank heavens for those paper crafter's who are willing to share their talents and templates online.  It is those saintly souls who make harried mom's like me not look quite so lame in in our gift giving.

Traci Cornelius has a wonderful video that demonstrates how to make this cute little mug. Since she did such a fabulous job, I skipped the step by step photos. This is truly easy  peasy to make!! You can find her video here.  

It actually took me longer to figure out what papers I wanted to use then the making of the mug itself.  The gift card peeking out the top will give you an idea as to the size of the mug.  It's tiny, but CUTE! 

I made the mug and handle out of Gina K's pure luxury 120# card stock as I wanted the cup to be more sturdy. You will notice in the last picture that the handle started pulling off the mug due to the stiffness of the paper.  I had used Scor-tape originally to adhere the handle, but had to resort to TenSecond Studios Humungo Killer tape to get the job done correctly.  The decorative papers are from Graphic 45's An ABC Primer line.  

Using up hoarded paper stash:  CHECK

I'm off to try and accomplish more check marks off my list before an afternoon of watching the Oldest and Newest Kiddo's baseball game.  To all you wonderful and under appreciated Teachers:  a HUGE THANK YOU!!

And to all you mom's (harried or cool, calm and got it together) HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!

'Till next time......................

Tea Time

Happy Friday People!  It is getting close to the end of the year and life has been shifted into 5th gear in this household!! Now if only this life was a high performance sports car!! 

This past week was Teacher Appreciation week.  The Youngest Kiddo die cut an apple and wrote a sweet note on it for his teacher earlier this week, but wanted to give a more formal type gift too.  His teacher loves her daily tea and a bite of chocolate so we went with that as our starting point.  This teacher also loves the little packages and class room treats that the Kiddo and I come up with for his class so we wanted to make sure that the packaging was a bit special too.  I gave myself a break and went shopping for a couple of templates to accomplish the job versus trying to come up with my own.  I ended up buying a few templates from Lauren Meader's My Time Made Easy web store.  

Seriously, what ever took me so long to utilize her talents?!!  First, allow me to commend Lauren on her customer service.  I emailed Lauren late at night with a question as to how the templates would size on a regular 8.5x11" piece of paper, as I am the last person in the crafting world who still does not own an electronic cutter.  She replied promptly the next morning.  Bonus points for her!!

Second, her templates were not difficult to hand cut!  Step by step instructions with pictures are also provided with the downloads, which took any guessing out of the assembly process.  So far, I have been more than pleased with my purchase and expect that more of her templates will find their way to my downloads!! FYI:  I have not been asked to promote Lauren's products.  I am just pleased as punch with my purchase and will not have a problem ordering from her again!!

As I said earlier, the Kiddo and I decided to give his teacher a gift of some special tea and chocolates.  Using the My Time Made Easy  templates, this is what we came up with:

The box holds some full leaf Vanilla Rooibos tea from Starbucks.  The cup holds some specialty chocolates that I actually found at my LSS.  The box template has the option to make a slit that tea packets can be grabbed from, but with the tea bags, that wasn't needed.  

Basic details:  Templates for tea box and cup from My Time Made Easy Pretty Packaging. Paper was SU's More Mustard and Basic Black and Vanilla.  Design paper is My Mind's Eye Lost and Found Sunshine.  Spellbinder Dies of Fleur de Lis Squares, Spiral Blossom One and the leaves from the Daisy Head set were used for the accents.  Flowers and leaves misted with Tattered Angel's glimmer mist in Old Lace and Honey Dew.  The sentiment was computer generated.  

That's it for me today!  I have shopping to do for a class party at the beach tomorrow, plus some extra food to feed the additional boys that will be staying the weekend here so that they can attend the party!!  

Enjoy your weekend, Happy Mother's Day to you that are mother's and remember to take some time to explore some creativity!!

From the Desk of......

Hey People!  Are you all ready for the holiday?  I'm a bit closer, but still have a list that is long enough that I might need an extra week to get it all done!  Oh wait...that isn't happening, is it?! 

Thought I'd pop in and share the gift that was made for the Youngest Kiddo's teacher.  She loves personalized gifts and just happened to mentioned how much she loves the vintage look.  Sooo, I put the two together and made a vintage theme box that contains 12 cards/envelopes.

Graphic 45's An ABC Primer  8x8 pad was the PERFECT paper for this project.  I made the box to fit standard 4.25" x 5.5" cards/envies.  I made the box from the cardboard that comes in 12x12 paper packs and adhered the paper with Claudine's matte multi medium.  I cut the ruler from one of the sheets and adhered it to a piece of the scrap cardboard to give it dimension.  I used another sheet of the same image to paper piece some of the books and the top portion of the little girl giving a spankin' and adhered with dimensionals for even more dimension and interest. 

For the personalization, I traced the shape of the paper's image that had ABC on it, and traced it around my personalization that was on the computer on Very Vanilla card stock.  The edges of the box and personalization note were distressed with Brushed Corduroy Distress Ink.  I used the same ink to also distress my gingham ribbon.  The apple was die cut with Spellbinders Nested Apples from SU's Riding hood Red paper and shaded with a mixture of Distress Brushed Corduroy and Vintage Photo.  The highlights were added with Inkssential's white opaque pen and then the whole apple was coated in Glossy Accents.

Showing more of the dimension and the sides of the box

I made three cards of 4 different styles.  All are on a base of Pure Luxury Ivory (which matches SU's Very Vanilla very nicely, but is much more sturdy, which I like for a card base) and measure 4.25" x 5.5".  All the papers are again from the ABC Primer.  The apple die cuts are a Cuttlebug die and all were shaded with Distress Vintage Photo, highlighted with the Inkssentials white opaque pen and covered in Glossy Accents. 



These cards had some scored lines made with my Scor-Buddy to add a bit more interest

SU's More Mustard was used for the solid strip

All the card were CAS (clean and simple) as I did not want Ms. White to have pay any extra postage for added embellishments! 

Geesh.  I just realized that these are not the best photos! This is what happens when one takes the photos on a rainy day and forgets to check the outcome! The bases look white versus vanilla/ivory.  The colors are a bit washed out too....I'd love to re take the photos, but. uhhh, I don't think that it would be proper to ask Ms. White for her gift back!! haha!  Oh well. 

Ok!  That's it for me today!  I'm going to go check my list again and see if there is something else I can check off before calling it a night!! 

'Till then...................

Honey Pop, Honey Pop!

(Just insert the words to the tune of  Lollipop by the Chordettes)

Honey Pop, Honey Pop

oh, honey, honey, honey

Honey Pop, Honey Pop.....

(inserty DEEP bass)

bah ump ump bah!

Welcome to another fun blog hop brought to you by eclecticPaperie and the E-Team!!  Today  the Team is featuring the cute and fun Honey Pop line from Inky Antics.  This stamp line is designed with a surprise "pop" that is added with the coordinating Honeycomb paper. 

To add to all the fun of this stamp line, there are prizes galore to be given out!! You will want to leave a comment on each team member's blog as well as the eP blog.  Why?  Because Jackie from InkyAntics gave each team member goodies to give away a chance to win from their blog one of the cute HoneyPop stamp collections as well as the coordinating Honeycomb Paper!!  PLUS~~ Daisy will also be choosing a winner from the comments left on the eP blog for a chance to win a $25 gift voucher from eclecticPaperie!!

Just leave a comment saying what you like about the HoneyPop collection and /or the projects you've seen on each team member's blog from today, Wednesday, April 20th, to Thursday, April 21st.  Winners will be chosen and announced Friday, April 22nd on each of the blogs. 

Broni Holcombe

Latrice Murphy

Linda Duke

Linda Ledbetter

Micki Harper

Sherry Cheever

Starla Nelson (me!)

Daisy-eP Blog

*******

 Now, traditionally, the surprise "pop" is of this collection is discovered when you open, what looks like a flat card, and the special stamp that is used with the Honeycomb paper "pops" open.  When I first saw the Caterpillar set in the HoneyPop collection, I immediately thought teacher gifts.  And when I started messing around with the Honeycomb paper, I immediately thought 3D.  Put those two thoughts together along with the fact that I think it is rather fun to start new traditions and you get this:



Obviously, this is a gift set that is meant to be hand delivered! LOL!  Locally, we have apple orchards that sell the most wonderful apple butter, mixes and such.   How fun would it be to give a basket of "apples" that will never rot along with a jar of apple butter and a mix and a fun, 3D card that can hold a handwritten thank you note from a student and/or a gift card?! 

I started this project by first making the 3D apples from the Honeycomb paper.  I stamped the "apple" twice  from the Caterpillar set onto red Honeycomb paper, with the arrows on the stamp lining up parallel with the lines on the paper.  I then stamped it two more times on a scrap piece of card stock. 



After cutting out the honeycomb paper, I cut the scrap card stock inside the stamped lines so that the card stock was smaller than the honeycomb paper.  I then taped the card stock to both "apples" using Scor Tape. 

I then added more tape to the card stock and opened the halves and adhered them together, making my "whole" apple.  I free cut stems from brown Honeycomb paper and tucked them in the top, using some multi-medium to help them stick.  The leaves were cut out of TenSecond Studio's Poison Ivy metal with the leaves from Spellbinders Daisy Heads.  A tiny piece of Hummungo sticky tape holds the leaves in place.



The apples needed a basket to hold them and after a bit of searching I found this template/tutorial online.  I adapted the size to fit my needs.  I cut two circles (approximately 5 1/2" to 6"), from SU's Soft Suede, using my old Creative Memories circle cutter.  The basket strips were cut from more Soft Suede that had been swiped with Distress Walnut Stain ink.  Since the base of the basket was larger, I had to overlap the strips around the "stays" to make it completely around the diameter.  The handle was made from two 12" strips of Soft Suede that were overlapped and attached together with two jumbo eyelets.  Small eyelets were customed colored using my Copics and attached to each "stay" with the Cropadile.  The "straw" was thin strips of some pale yellow (? So Saffron?  Barely Banana?) paper from SU that I ran through my crimper then scrunched up. 

*****

I decided that I wanted the card to have the same 3D effect on the outside versus the inside.  The card base is a 4 1/2" square piece of Pure Luxury.  SU's Real Red is the next layer and another square of Pure Luxury was added with the corners nipped with a ticket punch.  Spellbinder's Classic Circles and Scalloped Circles were used to make the focal area.  More Pure Luxury and Soft Suede (with Walnut Stain Distress ink sponging) was used here. 

The "apple" was again stamp as above and adhered with Scor Tape.  The stem and leaves were done as previously explained. 

The tag was cut with Spellbinders Ribbon Tags Trio.  I used the "Thanks" from SU's retired set So Much.  Red grosgrain ribbon along with black brads were added to the tag and a double layer of dimensionals were used to adhere the tag to the card.  Some small self adhesive pearls were placed in the corners to finish it all off.

And the final gift set again





I had a lot of fun making my little gift set.  I'm already thinking I NEED to collect all the Honeycomb papers to see what other dimensional goodies I can come up with! hehe 

Till then....................





Saying Thanks

Hey Peoples!  Today, I'd like to take a moment to thank all the men and women who have served or continue to serve our country.  I can't image living without the freedoms these men and women have sacrificed so much of their lives for!! AND, a big thank you to their family members!! It is only with your support and sacrifice, that I know these men and women are able to do their job!!

Since the theme of today is THANKS, I thought I'd share a quick thank you that I made for my youngest DS's  piano teacher.  Mr. H teaches music at my kiddo's school.  He is truly amazing, as he has grades
K-12 that he has to try and reach.  While he divides the choir groups by age (usually K-3, 4-6, 7-8, and high school) it requires incredible teaching talent to be able to work with such diverse abilities and ages. In addition, he gives a few private lessons. Both my boys have been lucky to take lessons from him. 

Now being the organized, on top of things parent that I am, I made this card the night before DS's last piano lesson!  It was incredibly hard to get a picture at night that did not glare off the glitter without fading the embossed "music staff lines." You'll have to take my word on this that it turned out pretty good IRL!!  The Cuttlebug notes were die cut from basic black and real red cardstock.  They were smooshed onto my glue pad and then covered in SU's ultra fine black and red glitter.  The "music staff" lines were embossed using my Scor-Pal.  The Rubber Stampede sentiment was stamped with Versamarker and embossed with red embossing tinsel which tied in PERFECTLY with the glittered notes.

Thanks for dropping by again today!! We are going to take advantage of the GORGEOUS weather and head up to the mountains for a family mountain bike ride.  This will be good for me (other than bruised pride) as I am sooooo out of shape and can't remember the last time I rode!! 

I hope everyone has a safe and CREATIVE day!!

Cooking with 3rd Graders

(grrrr.....don't know what I hit...but I was almost done with my post and POOF!! It's gone! Why am I telling you this? Because I want you to know how much frustration I'm willing to go through just to give you some eye candy!! Aren't I just the greatest?! BWHHAAAAA!!)

Ok...enough jabbering, on with the goodies!!

The second week of October was the birthday of my son's 3rd grade teacher. On the fact list that was given to me (because somehow I ended up being room mom by default, i.e., no one else volunteered to to do!) the teacher listed her interests as 1) Grandchildren 2) Cooking 3) Crafts. This got my ol' brain turning. Hmmmm.....what could be better than kids coming up with their favorite recipes to share with a grandma wanting to cook for her grandkids? And, if it was put together in a cookbook to treasure forever, all the better!! So I snuck home a note along with some pre cut recipe cards (that would fit the size of book I had in mind) asking the kids to write down one or two of their favorite recipes and to decorate the cards if they wished. Luckily, there are on 11 kids in the class so it wasn't a huge chore to call everyone and make sure we had 100% participation! Here is the outside of the cookbook:


I pulled out my SU set of Voila and stamped the chef on Gina K's 120# pure luxury white. He was then highlighted and colored with my Copic Ciaos. I cut and adhered the checkerboard patterned paper to some chipboard. I then cut out the chef and layed him on the DP. OH! MY POOR EYES!! Yikes!! That DP was just waaay too busy!! So I cut a piece of SU textured white cardstock, leaving just a small border of the checkerboard. Ahhhh!! Much better!! The title was cut using Real Red cs and my Cuttlebug/Olivia word set (originally, I had cut out "Cooking With 3rd Grade". Uhhhh....too big for the cover! Had to modify the title!). I then used self laminating sheets to protect the front and back covers (the back cover is just the checkerboard dp over more chipboard). The inside recipes were also laminated to protect the kids art forever. A couple of examples for you:



I then used my Bind it All and put the whole thing together using red binding. I think it turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself. It is kind of funny how some of the kids wrote their recipes~when you flip them, they are "upside down". And I love their handwriting (for the most part, there were a couple that the parents did) and how they chose to decorate their cards.

OH! For those of you who might care~the book is 6" in length x 5" in width. I wanted to give the kids more room to write out their recipes if needed.

Wellll....I will have another post for you tomorrow. While I had considered sharing more today, I decided that I owe you some steady eye candy spread out over a few days vs a stomach ache from too much all at once!! Aren't I just the most considerate blogger ever?! BWHHAAAA!!

With that being said~Thanks so much for dropping by! For those of you who will be hitting the streets in search of goodies, have a SAFE Halloween! I think we will be heading out to the church's Fall Festival. My oldest has never been real fond of Halloween (hates the "scary" costumes. When he was younger I would explain it was just someone like him dressing up. He would tell me "My head knows that, but my heart forgets when I see them!"). My youngest (age 9) informed me that "he and his brother were really too old to trick or treat". When I asked him why, he told me that he really didn't "get" the purpose of Halloween. "All you do is go door to door begging for candy that isn't good for you. What's the point?" How do you fight THAT logic?!

Have a SAFE one and we'll chat again tomorrow!

Altering Dreams

The end of the school year is just around the corner and since I was such the flake for Teacher Appreciation Day (*I did send a plant....just no card....no tag.....nothing handmade. Is that allowed when you paper craft?!) I decided to alter some clipboards that I have sitting around. I wanted something that was a bit different than the usual altered clipboards that I have seen. Then inspiration struck (yes, it about knocked me over).

I went to Staples and bought some cork on a roll vs tiles (since this was just an idea, I needed to give myself plenty of material to experiment with!). I made a template to go around the clip and cut the cork. I used a mixture of acrylic paints in two/three different shades of brown (I put a bunch on a paper plate and dabbed my brush here and there in the paints). I tried using mod podge to adhere the cork board, but that wasn't working so I ended up using 1/2" red sticky tape along the cork board edges (between the two, it's sticking good!!). I then covered the bottom half of the clipboard with My Mind's Eye "Backyard "Just be You" Paisley/Teal designer paper. Used1/4" red sticky liner along the edge of the cork board to place the ribbon border. Using the patterned side, I made a "frame" for a photo that the ribbons can hold in place. I am still playing around with the grunge look that Tim Holtz does so well (actually, I believe he calls this "wrinkle free distress". Sherry Cheever just did a tutorial for this on SCS this week also. So, I decided to use this technique to alter some small, plain notepads that I had bought in bulk. I took some whisper white card stock, cut it to make a "cover" for the notepad. Using distress inks in Peeled Paint and Faded Jeans, I spritz them then placed my cover in the wet ink. Dried using my heat gun and repeated. I then stamped my French Script using the Faded Jeans and off stamped it before stamping over the cover. The hummingbird is from Tim's set Flight of Fancy (it was still out on my desk from the last project. Sometimes it works out not to clean up in between creations! hehe). I then used the "spray" from SU's Garden Silhouettes and stamped using Encore copper and embossed with copper EP. Stamped the sentiment (and yes, it is slightly crooked!! grrrrrr!! Hate when I do that!! That is what happens when I don't use my stampamajig!) Here is a close up of the note pad/photo area:I used a small scrap of the dp to make the RSVP pen look "purdy" and matchy. The ribbon to hold the pen is looped with glue dots and adhered. The final touches were using a large flower from the Pretties Kit and dying it with the distress ink (I swiped the ink on my craft sheet, spritzed with water and laid my flower down in it and "smooshed" until it was covered). I used one of the "diamond" brads for the center and added a couple of ribbon leaves. All were adhered using Glue Dots Super Strength dots. I thought that the cork board needed a little sprucing up so I found a couple of swirls from my grunge board collection and covered them with distress stickles in Peeled Paint and after finally letting them dry completely, I adhered those with glossy accents. Supplies: Paper, MME, Whisper White, Chocolate Chip. Inks: Ranger Distress Inks in Peeled Paint, Faded Jeans, Vintage Photo, Encore copper. Accessories: Copper EP, Pretties Kit, Grunge board accent elements, Distress Stickles in Peeled Paint, ribbon, glue dots, red sticky tape, heat gun.

I have another one of these to make. I'm trying to decide if I take the "easy" way out and just CASE everything I've already done or pull out all the papers and go for round two in a different pattern. Guess you'll know what I decided if I post another one or not!! hehe

Thanks for stopping by!! Hope that you all are having some free time this long weekend for some creativity!!

To Teach is to Touch Lives....

..........and come in contact with lots of kiddo germs!! BWHAHAAA!! So, for the teacher valentine gift, may I present, HAND SANITIZER with a lovely altered bottle?!!

Once again, I wish I could take credit for this project, but alas!! NOPE!! I "borrowed" it from here:

http://j-a-girl.blogspot.com/2009/01/teacher-gifts.html

(DH keeps telling me that there are no "original" ideas, just adaptations of the ideas already born....going to keep telling myself that since I haven't had an original idea in a while!!(snort)

Once I figured out what I wanted to do this was easypeasy (yeah...I first had thought of doing smaller scalloped circles in two different shades....then it just seemed like too much work. But, of course, I didn't decide that until after cutting out several small scalloped circles first (insert major eye rolling here_________). I used a Spellbinder large scalloped circle in my Big Shot, then did direct to paper with my ink pad to give it some "leaves". Tree trunk is hand drawn with some DTP (direct to paper) and squiggle lines. Used my cuttlebug/apple/book die for the apples and leaves (yeah~those little, tiny, ittybitty leaves were put on there by hand!! Can we say "fine motor skills required?!"). The sentiment was found online and printed out on my computer (and I just cracked myself up with the irony of it!!). The "grass" was just hand squiggled (the word for the day) and cut out. Everything was adhered with red liner. Added a little twine and WAH-LAH!! A cheap (and now quick) teacher gift!!

Supplies used: Paper: SU Gable Green, Close to Cocoa, Real Red. Inks: SU's Gable green classic ink and Chocolate chip marker. Accessories: Spellbinders large scalloped die, Sizzix Big Shot, Cuttlebug (machine and apple die), red liner tape. sponge daubers