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.

Watermelon Cookies

 

Watermelon is the perfect little slice of summer.  So I recreated that look with some sugar cookies.

I used my circle cookie cutter to make the cookies and I sliced them in half before baking.

To frost them, I started with the green "rind" part.  I wanted the green to be somewhat two-tone just like a real watermelon rind.  In order to get that look, before I loaded the frosting into the piping bag, I drew some stripes on the inside of the piping bag with gel food coloring.  Each cookie comes out unique.  I outlined the curvy part of the cookie with the green icing.



Then I added a red line of frosting to the straight part of the cookie.  Then I flooded the interior of the cookie with red icing.  While the red flood icing was still wet, I added three drops of black icing to mimic watermelon seeds.

Once that was dry, I added an outline of white icing on top of the other icing along the curvy part of the cookie.

A little slice of summer. And they're so small you can eat two!

It's Pop's Day! father's day celebration

We decided to celebrate Father's Day a week early because we'll be travelling next weekend. I built the theme around the word "Pop" as another word for dad.

For breakfast, I served lemon POPpy seed muffins.  (I was going to do Pop Tarts but those are a bit sugary for my diabetic son!)

This is the only picture I took and it's all washed out, but oh well.  (You can see the "Our Pop Rocks" super hero card in detail in yesterday's post.)

For lunch we had POPcorn chicken, a spinach-strawberry salad with POPpy seed dressing, caramel and cheese POPcorn, and fancy soda POP in bottles.  (I didn't take a picture because I was too hungry!  The blog takes a backseat to real life.)

But the highlight for all the boys were the chocolate moustache pops.  They had fun posing with the moustaches, but it was so hot that the pops melted quickly, and they were all walking around with chocolate on their faces.

(Another washed out photo - ugh.  The little red pails are from the Target Dollar Spot, FYI.)

Here are the little signs I made if you'd like to use them for your Father's Day celebration.  I liked the red and yellow color scheme with the little black moustache.

Pop Rocks Father's Day Card (with superhero theme)

I just got the Superhero paper packet from Close To My Heart and knew it was perfect for making a Father's Day card for my husband.  He really is a super hero.  And the boys think he rocks -- so I had to incorporate Pop Rocks into the card. (Get it?)

Here's a (bad) photo of the inside of the card.  I put in a recent picture of my husband with my sons and the phrase "our pop rocks" with the Pop Rocks candy.

I started by measuring the Pop Rocks packages and built the card around that.  I cut a strip of black cardstock that was 6x12 and trimmed it to 6x9.  I scored it at 4" and 5" to make the 1-inch thick "spine" for the card.  I used the extra 6x3 piece of black that I cut off in the previous step to make a little sleeve for the Pop Rocks.  Then I embellished with the Superhero papers and some messages printed from my computer.  (Download the font "Masked Marvel" from dafont.com for free.)

I love how it turned out!

End of the School Year Teacher Thank You Gifts

At the end of each school year, I like to make little thank you gifts for my boys' teachers, aides, and the school secretaries.  Here are this year's gifts.

For the teachers, I bought them each a gift card from amazon.com.  Did you know you can buy a printable gift card from amazon that your child can color in?  Easiest teacher gift ever.  But I couldn't just give them the gift card, right?  I had to make something cute as well.

I found these cute boxes in the Target Dollar Spot and thought they were perfect.  Then I put in a few summery things like sunscreen, lemonade mix, gum, trail mix and a fun pen (also from Target) that matched the colors on the box.  I made the little "enjoy your summer" tag on my computer and taped it to the front of the envelope that contained the gift card.  I sandwiched a fat popsicle stick between the tag and the envelope so it could stick up out of the box.  The kids signed the tags, and that was our teacher thank you gift this year. 

My diabetic son has an aide at school and she has a Tim Horton's coffee addiction.  So she got a Tim Horton's gift card packaged in a reusable pink cup with some pink lemonade mix.  The tag says "Thanks for being my 'ade'."  (You can see the cup in the top picture in this post.)

One of the school secretaries is retiring this year and she always did so much to keep that place running smoothly.  So I made her a gift that celebrated her contribution.  The tag (made on my computer) says "Thanks for holding everything together" and the box is filled with things like paper clips and magnets and band-aids.  Get it?  Things for holding stuff together?  We are really going to miss her around the school.

Happy summer vacation to the teachers!

Summer Star Cookies

In honor of Memorial Day, I made some star shaped cookies.

They didn't turn out like I was picturing them in my head.  They rarely do.  And I don't know which design I like best.  What do you think?

Firework stripes, random dots, symmetric dots

The best part was that my son wanted to help decorate!  He said, "You make this look easy, Mom, but it's not really." 

But I think his cookies turned out the best.

Altered Tank Top for Summer!

I am continually frustrated when shopping for shirts these days.  The shirt is either too low-cut so that I have to wear a tank top for modesty on top, OR, it's not long enough and I have to wear a tank top for modesty on bottom!  And summer is just too hot to be wearing multiple layers of clothing.

A few years ago, I saw some cute altered tank tops at a craft fair and thought I should try making one.  If I made my own shirt, I could make sure it covered everything! 

I went through a few trial-and-error phases where I got very aquainted with my seam ripper but, in the end, I got it to work and I produced a shirt that I could actually wear in public. I'd never had a sewing lesson in my life, so if I could do this, so can you!  Here's a tutorial so you can give it a try.

Step 1: Go buy a tank top and two chunks of coordinating material. I went to Walmart where I got the tank on clearance for $4 and 1/2 yard of two kinds of clearance material for $1 each. Plus thread. (Total of $6 + the thread which I still have bunches of for another use.)

 

 

Step 2: Cut the tank top into strips. I put my tank on, and used a disappearing ink fabric marker to mark where I wanted to make my first cut. Then I cut the middle part of the tank into two rings that are 3 inches high. I was totally making this up as I went, by the way.

 

 

Step 3: Cut your fabrics to size. You'll need a front and a back panel of the same size. (I used the floral print for this part, but you could mix it up with multiple patterns if you want.) The panels ended up being 18 inches long (because I bought 1/2 yard of fabric) and slightly less wide than my tank top. Then you'll need two side panels of the other fabric. (I used the pink circle print for this but, again, you could go crazy with additional patterns here.) These you cut into a trapezoid shape that is 18" long. Mine were 3" wide at the top and 11" wide at the bottom. I made these measurements up. The top measurement was enough to make sure that, once I had sewn all 4 panels together, it would be the same size around as the tank top. The bottom measurement was a lot wider because I have big hips and this shirt has to fit over them.

 

 

Step 4: Sew the 4 panels together. Basic stuff - right sides together, straight seams. You end up with a long strip of fabric.

Step 5: Deal with the ruffle. I found working with the tank top material to be quite challenging because it was stretchy. But I took my two rings cut from the original tank top, cut one seam off from each and then sewed it all together to make one big long skinny strip of material. Then I hemmed one side up to make the finished bottom edge of the ruffle. (This was a major pain because of the stretchiness.) Once you get your long strip with a finished edge, you attach it to that strip of panels that you made in Step 4. Because the ruffle strip is longer than the middle-of-the-shirt part, you make little gathers in the ruffle strip as you pin it on, right sides together. Then sew it on. Sorry I forgot to take a picture at this point, because my instructions are probably not making sense.

Step 6: Take your middle panels with the ruffle sewed on, fold it in half with right sides together, and sew that seam. Now it looks like a skirt with no waistband.

 

Step 7: Attach this to the tank top. It took me a while to figure out how to put the right sides together to be able to do this part, so that the seam would end up inside the shirt. Hopefully the picture will be explanatory. Also, take care that you don't sew the thing closed at this point.

 

Step 8: Put on your new shirt!