Cute Foxy Baby Shower Card

I made this quick card for a baby shower.  I love the pinks and greys together.

I cut the four rectangles out of coordinating patterned paper and inked the edges with grey ink.  I stamped the fox on white paper with grey ink and added the little heart with pink ink.  Then I inked the edges of the white paper and mounted it on grey paper.  I stamped the circle with grey ink and the words & heart with pink ink.  After cutting out the circle, I added it to the card with dimensional adhesive so it would stick up a bit.

Patterned paper: Lollydoodle from Close to My Heart
Fox stamp: Wild About Love from Close to My Heart
Circle stamp & words: Express Postage from Close to My Heart
Heart stamp: You're The Bomb from Close to My Heart
Inks: Slate and Cotton Candy from Close to My Heart

End of the Year Teacher Gift - Movie Theater Gift Card

I decided to get my son's teacher a gift card to the local movie theater.  But I didn't want to just hand her a gift card without dressing it up a bit!

So I made a card that looked like a popcorn bucket and put the gift card inside with my note of thanks.  Then I stacked the card, some Milk Duds, and some microwave popcorn and tied it all with a ribbon.  Because, have you tried eating Milk Duds and popcorn together?  Perfection.

And here it is all put together!  Another successful school year is almost over.

Simple Graduation Card

I work with the youth group at my church so I attend a lot of graduation open houses every year.  When I make graduation cards, I like to keep it simple.  It doesn't get much simpler than this!

I started with a blank white card base. Using scraps of grey, black, and pink glitter papers, I cut little banners for each card.  Then I stamped the word "Graduate" and the mortar board hat directly on the card base.

The supplies are from Close to My Heart and my CTMH consultant gave me the design for the card and taught me how to make those little banners symmetrically.  Love her.

The "Graduate" stamp is from the CTMH "Congrats Graduate" stamp set.
The mortar board stamp is from the CTMH "Kudos" stamp set from the Cricut Artiste Collection.

Minecraft 8th Birthday Party

My son just turned eight and wanted a Minecraft-themed party.  There are plenty of great ideas out there on the internet.  Here's what we ended up doing.

Decorations:
Minecraft papercraft -- We used free printable templates found at instructables.com.  My boys chose several things they wanted to make, I printed them out on white cardstock and they went to town cutting and assembling. They made this lovely Minecraft display for the party all by themselves!

Birthday Banner -- I cut 3-inch squares out of kraft cardstock as the base, punched holes in the corners and strung brown ribbon through the holes. (For a few of the blocks, I used dark brown and green cardstock instead of the kraft just to keep things interesting.)  I found a "grass block" image online and used Photoshop Elements to create one 2x2 block for each letter I wanted for the banner.  The font for the letters is a free download on dafont.com.  Type the letters on the grass block, print them out, cut them out, and glue on the cardstock squares.

Torches -- I used a Minecraft wall torch template that I found here. I resized it for 8 1/2 x 11 paper and printed out two of them.  Once they were cut out, folded and assembled, I stuck them to the wall using straight pins and tape.  I crumpled up some yellow tissue paper to stick in the top of the torches to make them look more like they were on fire.

Pixelated Window -- My husband drew on the window with window markers to make them look like the glass you use in your Minecraft houses.  He also drew a creeper and a zombie face as well as a few blocks.

Steve and Zombie heads -- one of the talented guys in our youth group at church was Minecraft Steve for Halloween.  He let us borrow his costume for Steve and a Zombie made out of cardboard and paint.  (These became part of a game later!)

Food:  The world of Minecraft includes food so I decided our party menu should include things available in the game.

We served carrots, watermelon, apples, chicken (nuggets), and potatoes (french fries). To drink we had water bottles and "creeper juice".

The Choose Awesome blog has a fabulous blog post about hosting an epic Minecraft party.  The blog made my life so easy because she posted many of the free printables that I used for our party.

The "creeper juice" was some kind of sour warhead green drink that I saw on sale.  I used the water bottle labels from the Choose Awesome blog post and then modified them a bit to make the creeper juice labels.  The boys at the party were very excited about the creeper juice.


Activities:
We had several crafts and activities planned for the party.  As the guests arrived they got to craft their own chest.  We provided brown paper lunch sacks and pictures of various Minecraft characters.  (Again, I printed the images from the Choose Awesome blog.)  They glued the images on their bags.  These became the party favor bags: I added some square candies (Starburst, Now and Later, Nerds) and the guests put all the things they made at the party into their bags.

The guests could also make a torch like the ones I made to hang next to the banner.  I gave them each a glow stick to put inside their torches, too.

Later, they could make a Minecraft pickaxe.  I found an image here of a diamond pickaxe and had several copies printed out for the guests.  The guests cut out the images and glued them on to cardboard axes we had cut out ahead of time.  Because cutting the cardboard (or foam board) required an X-acto knife, we did that job prior to the party so the kids wouldn't endanger any of their fingers.

Surprisingly more popular than the pickaxes were the perler beads.  Perler beads and Minecraft go together so well because they both have that pixelated look.  I had printed out a few examples of things other people had made out of these beads (thank you, internet), and let the kids use their imagination.  Here are a couple things my niece made.  Aren't they cute?

In between the crafting sessions, we had a game for the kids to play.  First, we had scattered some "diamonds" and "ore" around the yard (vase fillers from the dollar bins at Michael's).  The two teams had to gather up all their diamonds/ore and stash them in little square boxes (dollar spot at Target).  Later those boxes filled with treasure became each team's "flag" in a game of capture the flag.  To spice up that game a little, my husband and I dressed up as Steve and the Zombie and ran around trying to tag the kids.

Here's my niece in the Steve costume after I got too hot.

When it was time for cake, we had one more game for the kids.  In the game of Minecraft, you have to collect eggs, milk, sugar and wheat to "craft" a cake.  We made them find all those ingredients hidden in Easter eggs in the yard before they could have cake.

I made a square cake to look like the ones on Minecraft.

Happy birthday to my sweet eight-year-old.  May creepers never explode your house.

Edited to add .jpg files for the cake crafting activity:

Happy Father's Day

We were travelling on Father's Day so we didn't do anything elaborate.  But I found these free printable Dad glasses and thought they were great!  I printed them on black cardstock, cut them out, and taped them together.  All done!
Printable Glasses for Father's Day from Mr. Printables

My boys with their daddy

My brother and I with our dad

My brother with his two girls

So blessed to be with family on Father's Day!

End of the School Year Card

The end of the school year arrived in a flurry of field trips and soccer games so I didn't have time to make fancy teacher gifts this year.  Hooray for finding free printables on Pinterest.

Our PTO bought iPads for each classroom this year, so I bought iTunes gift cards for my boys' teachers and made a tag similar to this one from eighteen25.

My diabetic son has an aide who helps keep an eye on him at school.  I bought her a gift card from the gas station and made this card to go with it.

I've had the stamp sets forever from StampinUp.  The truck is from the "Loads of Love" set.  The "thanks a melon" sentiment was from the "Little Phrases" set and the watermelon was from "Mini Icons".

Black and White Graduation Card

June means graduation parties and I was invited to seven of them this year!   Here is the card I made for my friends in the Class of 2013.

Since I was making seven cards for grads from several area high schools, I decided to make them all black and white instead of using the grad's school colors.  

The patterned papers are from Close To My Heart (For Always Paper Packet from the Spring/Summer 2013 Idea Book) The stamps are also from Close To My Heart.  I bought the 2013 silver charms from Oriental Trading.

Banner for Retirement Party

My dad recently retired so I made him this banner.

 

 

The scalloped squares were cut from kraft cardstock, the lacy squares were cut from a beige cardstock and the letters were cut from a chocolate brown cardstock.  All the shapes and letters were cut on my Cricut using my Art Philosophy and Artiste cartridges from Close to My Heart.

 

I sponged brown ink onto the lacy squares to give them more dimension.  And I sponged brown ink on the edges of the letters.  I attached the letters with dimensional adhesive to make them stand out more.

 

For the two end pieces of the banner, I chose to use hearts because my dad's last day of work happened to be Valentine's Day.

 

 

The beige hearts were cut using my Cricut and then sponged with brown ink.  The smaller items on the end pieces were stamped into beige cardstock, cut out with scissors, and attached.

 

Skylanders Elements Cookies Plus a Birthday Banner

My ten-year-old requested a Skylanders-themed birthday this year.  I made him some sugar cookies to take to school for his class birthday treat.

 

The designs on the cookies show each of the 8 elements in the Skylanders universe: Life, Undead, Earth, Tech, Magic, Water, Fire, and Air. 

To make the cookies, I outlined each circle with black royal icing using a pastry bag with a #3 tip. Then I filled it in with a dark blue flood icing from a squeeze bottle.  (To make the dark blue, I mixed some black icing into my royal blue icing.)  I drew the designs using a light blue icing. (I only used a little bit of the royal blue food coloring to get that shade) using a pastry bag with a #3 tip.  The consistency of the light blue icing was somewhere in between outline and flood consistencies.  Some people call it "20 second icing".  It's thick enough that you don't need to outline first, but thin enough that it spreads a little.

 

I also made a birthday banner to match the Skylander's theme:

 

The ends of the banner are a cloud shape I cut on my Cricut (Artiste cartridge from Close To My Heart).  I modified the Skylander's logo to say "Aaron's Adventure" instead of Spyro's and glued that logo to the clouds.  The banner's circles and letters I also cut with my Cricut (Art Philosophy cartridge from Close To My Heart).  In between the words, I put a picture of Zap -- one of my son's favorite characters from the Skylander's game.

 

 

 

Since turning 10 is a big deal, I wanted to add some more 10's to the banner.  I cut out some more clouds, circles and numbers and hung them with baker's twine to make these little accents.  Then I hung a Skylanders character poster on the wall.  This poster comes with the game for Wii, or you can do like I did, and print it from Skylanders.com.

 

 

Our Elf On The Shelf wanted to get into the birthday action, too, so he decorated Aaron's door with a "10" made out of crepe paper and then draped some more crepe paper on the stairs!  You can see his little red hat sitting on the stairs in this photo.

 

 

I'm busy planning a Skylander's party for a few of Aaron's friends and I'll post more Skylander's fun soon!

 

 

 

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part 2 Party Invitation

Only a few weeks left until the premiere of the Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2!  Whenever a "part 2" of a movie comes out, it's almost required to get together with friends and watch "part 1", right?  Yeah, I think so, too.  So I'm planning a little black and white soiree next week for all my Twi-hard friends.  Here is the invitation I made for the party.

 

To make these, I purchased a package of blank black cards and envelopes from the craft store.  I layered a piece of grey cardstock and a piece of black & grey dotted cardstock on the front with a lacy ribbon where the 2 pieces join.  The flower was made by punching circles from pages in my Twilight book. (Yes, I destroyed a book.  But I still have the digital version on my e-reader!)  I found a tutorial for making the book page flowers on Under The Table and Dreaming by Stephanie Lynn who actually made book page flower ornaments!  Then, to finish it off, I hand-wrote the word "forever" on a scrap of black cardstock with a white gel pen, snipped the ends like a little flag, and tucked it in under the flower.

For the inside of the invitation, I typed up the party details in Photoshop Elements and printed them out on white cardstock.  You need a white gel pen to address the envelopes, or maybe white stick-on address labels.  Obviously, regular pen won't show up on black envelopes!

The invitation is just a preview of the party to come!  I'm sticking to a black-and-white color scheme and I plan to use some other book page crafts for the decorations.  I'll be sharing more over the next couple weeks.

To see last year's Breaking Dawn part 1 party, go here.

(Edited to add: to see this year's Breaking Dawn Part 2 party, go here.)

Halloween Mini Album

One of the main reasons I scrapbook is that I have a horrible memory.  If it's not in the scrapbook, it's like it didn't even happen.  So when the kids and I were discussing what their past Halloween costumes had been, I was having a very difficult time recalling what they wore!

 

I decided to make an 8x8 album to hold pictures of the kids in their Halloween costumes each year.

 

Here's the title page:

 

 

This is my favorite year - when Aaron (jaguar) was 3 and Spencer (Tigger) was one:

And here they are last Halloween as a Special Agent and a Ninja.

 

 

With two simple pages for each year, this is an album I can easily update as I get new pictures.  And this mini album will now become a part of my Halloween decorations!

Strawberry Lemonade Party

We had a little Strawberry-Lemonade birthday celebration for my mom-in-law at our house last night.  I made this banner in honor of the occasion.

The banner was made with layered shapes cut from the Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge from Close To My Heart.  I cut out circle tags on white cardstock, flower tags on yellow cardstock (resembles a lemon slice) and letters on pink cardstock.  To assemble, I threaded yellow ribbon through the white circle tags to form the structure. Then I glued a yellow "lemon slice" on each circle.  I sponged pink ink on the edges of the pink letters and attached them with foam dimensional tape.

It looked a little plain, so I added the pink tissue paper flowers and the yellow crepe paper streamers.  Tissue poms are cheap and easy and quick to make.  My kind of craft!

Tissue Paper Flowers:
Started with 20" x 20" pink tissue paper.
Stack 5 sheets.
Accordion fold into 1 long strip
Cut folded  paper into two halves
Round the edges with scissors
Staple each in the middle
Carefully separate the layers of paper
Fluff
Tape to wall

(If you want to make a full sphere, I'd suggest starting with 10 sheets of tissue instead of 5, so it would be nice and full.  Also, you'll want to add the hanging string at the same time you add the staples -- BEFORE you fluff.)


Because it was a Strawberry Lemonade party, all the food had lemon or strawberries in it.  I made little labels for the food on my computer (font = Minya Nouvelle) and printed them out on white cardstock.

Life has handed us a few "lemons" lately, and it was refreshing to pause and celebrate some sweetness.

Wedding Shower Card with Christmas Supplies?

I attended a wedding shower this week after being out of town and I had literally fifteen minutes to make a card. I knew I'd never have time to search for papers that matched, so I pulled out my paper packs from Close To My Heart.  They come with coordinating cardstock and patterned paper.  Love them.

Then I rifled through my stamps.  Surprisingly, the paper and stamps that caught my eye to use on the wedding shower card were originally sold as winter holiday products!

I thought the blues in the paper were very pretty, and the "happy for you" sentiment was perfect. I chose the patterned paper without snowflakes and put this card together in a matter of minutes.

I cut the scalloped circles out of white cardstock using my Art Philosophy cartridge for my Cricut, and I inked the egdes with twilight ink from Close To My Heart.  The "happy shower" stamp is from Stampin' Up from a set called "Tag Time" that I bought years ago.  I colored it in with colored pencils.

For the inside, I used another scalloped circle with my sentiment stamped in twilight ink.  I layered a couple other little images from the same stamp set along with the sentiment. 

If I had more time, I would have added other layers and embellishments to both the front and the inside of the card, but this was the quick version!  I attached a Target gift card (no time to shop for a proper gift either!!) to the inside of the card and rushed out the door.

Box of Sunshine for my Grandma

My grandmother is a practical woman.  She's 91 years old and she doesn't *need* any gifts for Mother's Day.  In fact, she gets a little miffed when people spend money on her.  Well sorry, Grandma.  You are the best grandma ever, and I'm sending you a gift.  But I made sure it's practical.

I'm sending my grandma a box of sunshine.  This idea has been burning up Pinterest lately and I think it's adorable.  The concept is simple:  fill a box with yellow things and include a tag saying that you're sending some sunshine.

I got my tag from HappyMoneySaver.com.  (You can never be too sure with the internet, but the "box of sunshine" idea may have started here, too.  I try to give credit where credit is due, but sometimes it's hard to find the original!)

My boys and I searched the aisles of Target to find yellow things and here's what we came up with:

• Kleenex box
• Travel size Kleenex
• Burt's Bees bar of soap
• Antibacterial hand soap
• Zone bar (chocolate peanut butter flavor)
• Sunflower seed packet
• Butterscotch disks candy
• Butterfinger candy bar
• Peanut M&M's (I know she likes almond better, but peanut had a yellow bag!)
• Splenda Flavors for Coffee
• Lemon scented wipes from the "Dollar Spot"
• Travel size Wet Ones

See? Practical stuff.  She can't complain about that.

Then I made her a sunshine-yellow card and attached the fabric peony I made earlier.  (See this post for the peony instructions.)

I packaged it all up in a box with some yellow tissue paper and paper-punched sunshines.  How could you not be happy if you received this box in the mail?

Happy Mother's Day, Grandma.  You are such an inspiration to me.