Merry Christmas!

Hello everyone!  I feel like I still have a lot to do including cleaning the house again because I've been neglecting all the cleaning so I can finish all the Christmas stuff.  Today, I got a lot of organizing done and donated 4 bags of clothes, toys and books to Goodwill.  But our poor bathrooms and kitchen are still neglected.  Hopefully, I can get onto that tomorrow. 

I wanted to share the goodies I made for my son's Kindergarten class.  I spent about 4-5 days to finish these.

I used the stocking die from Sizzix to cut out 19 felt stockings.  I hand stitched them and added a loop so the kids could hang them on their tree.  I hot glued the red pieces.  Originally I was gonna do red stockings with white trim but the green felt was on clearance so I went with those and changed the trim to red.

Then I used the gingerbread die from Sizzix to make 19 felt gingerbread men.  They are double sided since the die cuts all the eye and button holes, and the mouth.  I glued black felt for the eyes and red felt for the buttons and mouth under the body so those colors would peek through.  I tied 38 bows using my bow maker.  It was fast to cut all the pieces and tie the bows.  The longest part was probably sewing and stuffing these.  I didn't stuff them a lot and realized they looked better being a bit skinnier.

So because the gingerbread men are double sided, we added a candy cane to each side.

Here they are all packed up and ready to be passed out.  I think the kids in my son's class like them.  I did hear some positive comments!  Though I think next time I need to start earlier! 

Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope you have a wonderful Christmas!

candy cane mice

Hi again!  I had plans today to take my boys for a haircut but the weather didn't agree with me.  It has been raining all morning and not just a light drizzle either.  It's pouring and the water is puddling around the yard.  So we decided to stay in and make our traditional ornaments that I'll share another day. 

Today, I want to share the treats I made for my boys' classmates.  My daughter doesn't pass out class treats anymore but just a handful of gifts to close friends.  They all got calendars this year!  While I was looking for simple crafts to do with my youngest one's class, I came across candy cane mice.  I'd never seen them before and my boys loved them.  Of course, because they like rodents.  I wasn't too sure if girls would like them but I thought since it is their treats to give I would let the boys decide.  There are tons of templates online.  I used this one HERE and found a cute poem HERE. 

If I had oval or egg shaped dies, I would've just used that but I don't so I ended up finding a circle die that was close in size to the template.  I cut out all the felt circles and then used the template to trim the excess off.  I sewed 2 pieces of felt together and left a small opening for the candy cane.  Because I used 2 layers for the body, I didn't cut out the 2nd pair of notches shown on the template.  I like the way this looks better.  If you want to just make one layer then you would need that 2nd pair of notches to hold the candy cane in place.  You can also make these out of paper too.  I sewed on the inner ears to the big ears also.  My boys helped with sliding the ears through the cut openings.  Then I did the hot gluing of the eyes and pom pom nose.

My youngest one wanted the mice bodies and ears to be mismatching.  Kind of more whimsical, I suppose.  He was able to put all the candy canes into the felt bodies.

My older boy wanted all matching bodies and ears.  I ended up making 45 mice.  I started early so I didn't have to rush.  Sewing them was fairly quick too.  They hang nicely too on the tree.  Just have to make sure the hole for the candy cane isn't too loose or the mouse will slide off.  After Xmas, these felt mice might look cute on pencils. 

I packed them all in clear bags and tied the poem around with yarn.  I love using yarn to pack up goodie bags.  My boys said their classmates loved them especially the younger ones.  I'm glad they thought the mice were cute.

Thanks so much for stopping by today!

Last of the Christmas cards

This is probably the last Christmas card I will make since Christmas is nearly upon us.I finally used a Hero Arts card for the base. I should have used one sooner because it's nice and white on the inside to write a message. This year I have been reading along with Tim Holtz's 12 tags of Christmas and in the video, he was demonstrating a neat way to ink the embossed image with ink directly on the embossing folder. Except I didn't visualize it correctly and actually inked the back of the Cuttlebug snowflake folder, oops! Luckily the ink wasn't too dark and I could just turn it over to use the other side for my card. I also tried the distress ink as embossing ink with clear embossing powder for the sentiment which I also saw on a Tim Holtz video somewhere. The candy cane is a Sizzlit, don't look too closely, the leaves and berries were hard to cut out nicely for layering. I colored the candy cane stripes with a "cherry" marker, I didn't realize it was going to be such a dark red.

And now I will leave you with gratuitous Santa pictures from our Polar Express train ride experience.It was fun! I told my son that I think that bell is his Santa present for this year. He wasn't impressed, saying he didn't even write that on his list! Well, hope everyone has a nice Christmas holiday! Long weekend, yay!

Have a Joyous Holiday!

I actually made another holiday card! Kind of the same idea as the other one, pretty much using the same things. I used the same snowflake stamp set from Hero Arts. However, this time I used white embossing powder on PTI Pure Poppy cardstock. Again, it was a little messy, hopefully the little specks of white, aren't too obvious in the photo. Again, same Sizzlit die cut set for the sentiment. This is the one I initially tried to emboss in black but it came out way too spotty with black embossing powder all over the place so I just stamped it in black ink. The sentiment also came in the Hero Arts prize package.
I just noticed Jennifer McGuire's blog entry about a powder tool that she said she uses prior to embossing. Maybe I'll just try more baby powder next time.

The snowflake is a chipboard piece from Maya Road that I pressed into the versamark ink then sprinkled with white embossing powder. I think the embossed layer wasn't thick enough, but I covered the whole thing up with some Stickles. Then there's a button from PTI and some sheer white ribbon tied on. I guess the whole snowflake looks a little white, but oh well, I didn't have any red buttons and I didn't look too hard for red ribbon since the white one looked easy to thread through the button.

Gee, where has November gone? Now I have to remember to buy our Christmas tree at some point soon since Eva reminded me with her already nicely decorated tree!

Enjoy the Season

Finally, I started on some Christmas cards! Which is unusual in itself because I pretty much send only Christmas photo cards...just have to make one, then print out multiple copies. Again, reminds me that we haven't even taken our family photo for this year yet. But I thought I should make something because I actually won the Hero Arts prize from Kristina Werner's blog! I couldn't believe that, that was totally shocking. I randomly enter things like that here and there, but I don't really expect to win anything. So here's a card using the snowflake set, "Enjoy the Season." It is just PTI cardstock in Aqua Mist and Hibiscus Burst. (I should have used the Hero Arts cards that I also received, but I thought if I messed up, at least I have relatively more sheets of cardstock than wasting the real cards). I was mostly playing around with embossing powders, which got a little messy. I don't know how people keep their powder from sticking to the cardstock. It came with instructions to dust cornstarch over the paper prior to using the powder, but maybe I didn't use enough. I was being a little stingy with the baby powder since I have a cute little mini bottle which I don't think is refillable. Whatever the case, the sentiment is in a distressed type font so most of those extra specks of white are actually supposed to be there, I realized afterward. Not so much for another sentiment I tried to emboss in black, but that's another story for another day.

The snowflakes were stamped in Versamark ink, then I used Ranger embossing powder in Holographic. It's hard to get a photo of it, but it's kind of a cool effect. It's glittery and when you angle it in the light a certain way, it does indeed look shiny and holographic! So of course I didn't want to cover up my cool snowflakes too much (not, actually I didn't know what else to put on the card). But I figured a sentiment might be nice, and then remembering Eva's cute pink gingerbread matchbook, I picked pink. The die cut is from a Sizzix Sizzlit set that I got from Michael's on Thanksgiving Day. Yes, Michael's was open for about 4 hours in the evening and I was crazy enough to go shopping with my 30% off (mostly) everything coupon. Plus who am I to pass up an opportunity to go shopping without the kids! When I got to the Sizzix section, there were signs that said 40% off, so I'm thinking wow, plus an extra 30% off. But then when I got home, I realized they only gave me the 30% off. So on Friday, I thought I might as well return it and possibly use my 50% off coupon. But then I thought maybe I should ask if the Sizzix's were supposed to be on sale the day prior. Which the cashier didn't know so the manager or whoever that was actually there on Thursday had to come over and said the signs were mistakenly up...but they actually gave me both discounts! Maybe I should have bought more stuff then! Although I think they gave me the discount because I only bought that one Sizzix. I'm so bad, I'm a crazy shopaholic!

Anyhow, I'm going to try and make another card (while the hubby is home and at least one kid is napping). Bye!

Merry and Bright

Hello again.  I actually made a card for The Greeting Farm's Monday Fun Day #8.  The weeks are flying by, I guess it's been a while since I participated in a Greeting Farm challenge.  Anyhow, here's the sketch...

And here's my card...

I printed a background paper from Cosmo Cricket's Jolly Golly pack that I got from One Buck Wednesday on Jessica Sprague's site.  That was an event in itself, because the colors look different depending on if you pick PSE to manage color or printer to manage color.  I tried to match Vivi's clothes to the paper, it turned out a bit colorful.  I think all the stripes were getting me confused.  I colored her face again with copics.  I think it's hard not to leave a dark rim when adding the darker color for shadowing.  I think I just colored over everything with the lightest color and when it dried it didn't look too bad.  Added some stickles to the fur trim and jingle bell.  The sentiment is from PTI's Tag It, the snowflake is a Martha Stewart punch that I used on some Doodlebug glitter paper.

Bye!

Happy Holidays!

Hello, hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving.  We tried Eva's method of turkey in a bag, and it actually turned out pretty good.  Although I think the turkey breast could use some butter or something...hopefully one day if my daughter outgrows her milk allergy I can try that.  But finally I had some time to craft while Grandma kept the kids occupied.

Anyhow, here is my first holiday card finally, and the month of November is practically gone.  This Sister Stamp is so cute!  Thanks Eva for getting it for me (she's my Hawaii connection!)  It took me forever to color since it was difficult to get uninterrupted craft time.  Plus I was trying to figure out how to color with Copics.  I actually took the plunge and bought 5 Copics, only in the skin tones and cheek color, although I don't think I colored cheeks in this one.  I went to Michaels practically every day with a coupon to buy one Copic at a time.  I think I'm pretty much going to stop there with the Copics, because I think they're hard to use!  I had to color the faces twice, because I couldn't blend the colors nicely so I think I just used the one color in the end.  The rest of it was colored with pencils.

Pretty simple after that, just cut the image out and mounted it on patterned paper.  I thought the patterned paper was kind of busy so I didn't really add anything else except the banner with the sentiment, although it still looks kind of empty up there in that corner.  Oh well, I had to move on, so many Xmas stamps, so little time!

And here's one of my proud mommy photos.  Excuse the strange disguise, had too much fun in Photoshop Elements.

But my son and I have spent so many weekends going to chess tournaments for the last year or so.  Not that he's Bobby Fischer or anything, but since he started with his school's chess club in kindergarten, he has done reasonably well at our local scholastic chess tournaments.  So surprising since I don't like playing chess and am not very good at it, I feel kind of bad that I can't really play against him at home since he always beats me!  Anyhow, this is him after spending all last weekend at one of the bigger chess tournaments.  He was so happy to win a trophy (21st place).  Lucky for him they gave out 30 trophies, usually it's 20, but this tournament had about twice as many kids as usual in his section.  Anyhow, I was happy for him too since he had to play in the section with 1st through 3rd graders and after the first day, he was bawling his eyes out after losing the last game.  He was even 60-something going into the 2nd day, I didn't know if he even had a chance at a trophy.  I think as a parent, I was getting an ulcer for him.  I used to laugh about those parents who had kids in sports and took things so seriously, but I now I know why!  Even as a chess parent, I'm like checking the rankings after each game and trying to estimate where he and the school would end up for trophies.  It doesn't help when most of the other parents are like that too!  Anyhow, excuse my long rambling, I could go on forever about my kids!  I will actually have more to post later too, I think I got quite of bit of cards done yesterday (well, actually 2 and a half which I thought was great for me).

Yuki ornament

Hello!  I feel sometimes scattered wanting to do so many different crafts.  I wish I had this huge crafty room where I had lots of large tables and each table would be designated for a specific craft.  Like sewing, coloring, paper crafting.  Then I wouldn't have to clean up everything to start another project.  Sewing definitely takes up a lot of space with the cutting of fabric, space for the sewing machine and even ironing.  That is the only ironing I am willing to do! 

Anyway, I finished this cute ornament yesterday.  You've probably seen them around blogland ever since PTI introduced their latest kit with the clear domes.  PTI's kits are so enticing with all the fun stuff included in them but they are just too expensive for me especially if I'm not sure I'd be using them often.  But I had seen the clear domes before at my local Ben Franklin store so I knew I could make those ornaments/tags without spending so much money.  Plus the domes come in all different sizes and pretty affordable. 

I colored up Sister Stamps Yuki.  She is one of my favorites!   I used maybe one of the largest ornament domes at the store.  I wanted to be sure that the image would fit nicely.  For the back, I used one of the largest stitched circle dies from Lil Inkers.  I even bought the fake snow from Ben Franklin's too.  These domes come in pairs cause they're supposed to fit together to make a round ornament.  So I have another one that I can play around with.

Here is a side view.  I used Glossy Accents to glue the dome onto the cardstock backing.  Then I added that ribbon all around.  This was a fun and quick craft.  My kids are gonna be making some of these for our annual ornament making tradition.  I bought them smaller ones and they are excited about what they can include in their little dome.

Thanks so much for stopping by!