Snowflake Mittens

Hi!  Just wanted to share a couple of more mitten ornaments/tags that I made for Cheryl's kids.  Mitten dies are from Spellbinders and the snowflakes from MFT's Die-namics dies.  The snowflake dies are so delicate but I really love how detailed they are, especially the smallest one.  I really had to take care not to pull too hard on the smallest one since it was felt and if I tugged too hard, it would break.

Here's close up of the smallest snowflake.  I tried not to make this one too girly.

This is the reverse side.  I just die cut their initials in felt also.  I love the lace too.

The finished product/packaging. 

My 3 kids also decorated their own mittens since they were on vacation.  The boys even wrote down their Xmas list on a piece of paper and stuck it in their mittens.  My daughter never knows what she wants.  She's always been that way.  She never asks us to buy her anything, not even toys when she was younger.  So different from the boys who ask for something whenever we're out shopping!

We've already undecorated our tree.  After I came home from my after-Xmas shopping, I found that my daughter and hubby had removed most of the ornaments already!  I thought that was so fast and thought we could've left the tree up until New Year's.  Oh well.

Thanks for reading!

September 2012

Hi!  I received my order from My Favorite Things recently so I got a chance to make my next page using their current sketch.  This one is for September 2012.

Here's the sketch. 

I decided to rotate the sketch to fit the image and my scrapbook/calendar better.  The image is Pure Innocence Morning Glory.  I kept the background really simple.  You could call it laziness, hehe.  But I like the way the image stands out.  I taped some washi tape across the cardstock, pretty simple.  I used my new Prismacolor pencils and tried to blend (burnish?) without using OMS.  I will need more practice.  I used my white pencil to help with the blending since I don't have a colorless blender yet.  Then I drew in some grass for her to stand on. 

The other page.

Thanks for reading and have a great week!

merry kiss-mas

Hi!  Wow, 8 kids plus our own 3 for lego robotics practice can get pretty wild.  After hanging out with all the kids, you can really see how great each one is.  But after about 4 hours of robotics, you really need a break!  And boy, can the kids eat! 

Anyway, I wanted to make a card after seeing the current sketch over at the Deconstructed Sketch no. 22. 

The triangle in the middle reminded me of Christmas trees so I flipped it and made a Christmas card.

The trees are made from PTI's tree die.  The little tag plus the sentiment is also from PTI and the snowflake is an MFT die.  I embossed the cardstock with a snowflake folder from Sizzix and the red DP is embossed with another Sizzix folder.

I chose TGF's A Cheeky Xmas and colored her in with pencils.  Can you tell I'm slightly addicted to pencils now?  Though I thought her hat was kind of difficult to color.  I outlined the fluffy parts with a light blue copic pen.  There is a small pompom at the end of her hat and I added flower soft too.

Some seam binding ribbon and a pin which totally remind me of snowmen. 

Also plan to enter this into All that Scraps Challenge--anything goes.

It's back to the school routine tomorrow!

Thanks for reading!

August 2012

Hi!  We had a short black out this morning and I didn't know what to do without my computer and internet, and I couldn't go blog surfing.  I was sad but I did cut everything out for my kids' Halloween goody bags.  Good thing my Big Shot isn't electric. 

Anyway, I made another page to my 2012 calendar/scrapbook using MFT's sketch #39 and Pure Innocence Year of Flowers series Poppy.

Here's my page.  Somehow I'm not loving this one too much.  I love the image but somehow the colors remind me of fall too much and not too summery.  And I think the proportions are a bit off.  But I decided to just stick with it.  It's still cute.

Here's a picture of both pages.

I'm gonna have to wait til I order the next couple months to continue.  But I'm happy I've made it this far!

The kiddies are home for fall break.  It's nice but messy and noisy.  It may be a long week.

Thanks for reading!

July 2012

Hi!  Yes, I'm totally catching up on my 2012 calendar/scrapbook!  I followed MFT's sketch 38 for the month of July.

This is Pure Innocence Waterlily.  I think she's super cute!  Colored her dress like a rainbow.

The pages together.

This is a super short post!  Hope you're having a great day!

Thanks for reading!

June 2012

Hi!  I am slowly catching up with my 2012 calendar/scrapbook.  Just finished June so I'm half way there.  It is super muggy here and I'm trying to get the fan to aim directly at my back while I write up this post.  Here is the sketch from My Favorite Things.

I've used Pure Innocence Rose.  She is the cutie for the month of June.

Here's the other page too.

Short little post today.  Thanks for reading!

May 2012

Hi!  Okay, so I am now really behind making my 2012 calendar using Pure Innocence Year of Flowers series from MFT.  Really, I am going to get on it.  I just wish it wasn't so hot here.  So muggy now that I need to use a fan but that's not so great when there are paper scraps everywhere.

Here is the sketch from MFT.   Week 36 already!

The left side follows the sketch using Pure Innocence Lily of the Valley stamp. I paper pieced her dress.  I think these flowers are usually white but I made mine light yellow.  The right page is my computer generated calendar with space above for a photo so that I can use this also as a scrapbook once the year is done.  Trying to be practical too.

I already have the June and July stamps so hopefully I can catch up making these pages.  I already precut the pages and punched the holes so I can start once I see the new sketch.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

To my middle child

Hi!  So sometimes my older son exhibits middle child syndrome.  He wants to be the baby and wants more attention.  While I was making scrapbook pages of his big sister, he asked me to make a page for him, a prince page since I made a princess page for my daughter.  Sigh.  But I told him not a prince page and came up with a different idea inspired by TGF's Farm Fresh Friday Challenge Get Sentimental.

I got some photos of him printed out at Costco.  They are from last Christmas when his kindergarten class was performing.  They are some of my favorite photos of him because they capture his expressive side.  He does love Justin Bieber!  He'll watch Justin Bieber's videos on You Tube and sing along but he is still shy.  I'm trying to get him to join his school chorus in the 1st grade.

I used American Crafts stickers for the title and stitched together the puffy felt heart using MFT's heart dies and PTI felt.  I hand cut the u from felt too.  I also inked up the edges a bit.  I also curved the stitched imaged from TGF's Sunshine Kit to make the circular border around the photos.

I used the boy image from TGF's Sweet & Toxic.  I added Stickles to his wings.  It's okay for guys to have glitter, right?  Just some simple coloring and done.

I decided to use the sentiments in a letter to my son.  The ones that are matted on red are from TGF stamp sets.  The others are my own handwriting.  I just free hand cut these out.  I didn't try to make them super straight or perfectly matted.

Here's a list of the stamp sets I used:  Oh Baby, Sweet & Toxic, Panda Friends, Happy Day, Forest Friends, Just For You, Special Autumn, My Guy Ian, Grandparents, Spotlight, Sunshine, Creepin, and Roll Call.

I showed the layout to him this morning and I think he likes it though he thinks the Sweet & Toxic boy is scary.  Haha.  I don't know why but my kids think the Creeper line is scary.

Thanks for reading and have a great day!

It's been a whirlwind year!

Hi!  My daughter graduated from the 5th grade and will be moving on to middle school this fall.  I'm sure the next few years will fly by just as quickly.  I wanted to make something for her classmates and for my son's class as well.  I had MFT's pinwheel die and stamp set for some time now so I wanted to put it use.  I didn't think the sentiments that came with the die fit our occasion so I made up my own which is the title of this post. 

These are the pinwheels for just my daughter's class.  Yup, purple and yellow are the school colors.  Yup, do you watch Storage Wars?  And that one guy always says Yuuup!  Can't believe it's creeping into my blog writing!  Anyway, these took me a while to figure out!  Cause what's a pinwheel if it doesn't spin right?  Especially if I want to give it to a kid.  I saw tutorials where they stick a pin through the center and into a pencil eraser but I didn't think that would be very safe for kids and school. 

So I came up with this set up.  I used some beads to string some fishing line through and tied the ends loosely to a pencil.  Then I hot glued just the other side of the fishing line to the pencil and washi taped the ends of the fishing line.  It had to be loose enough so that it could spin.  And it did!

I really wish there were pinwheel parts you could buy to put these together instead.  Any other ideas out there?  We made 46 pinwheels!  My daughter helped a lot.  She actually cut out all the pinwheel parts.  Then we tied and taped these to 46 goodie bags filled with some yummy treats.  We'll have to make 19 more for my youngest one's birthday coming up soon.  Thank goodness we have some time to recuperate first.

My daughter at graduation.  Lots of pretty floral leis and candy/snack leis too.  The pink rose lei was from me.  It was such a pretty lei and she loved it.  And that is a Hello Kitty lamb that she's holding. 

Another cute little Hello Kitty with glasses!  Just like my daughter.  It is just hip to wear glasses and be a little nerdy nowadays, isn't it?  So different when I was growing up and had to wear glasses.  Though there weren't many cute glasses for kids back then either. 

Happy weekend everyone!  Thanks for reading!

Teacher Cards & Gifts

Hi everyone!  Yay!  Sister Stamps previews will be starting soon!  Did you see how cute the stamps are for the June release?  I'll be back later to share my Sister Stamps creations.

Today, I have some cards to share that I made for the teachers.  These are all very simple since I made about 12.  Then I realized that I usually don't make special school themed cards.  Most of the time I give the cards I've been making through out the year.  Otherwise my stash of cards is just out of control.

See, simple right?  I used MFT's apple die and cut the apples with some red felt.  The sentiment is from Lawn Fawn.

A couple of other Thank you cards with different sentiments, also from Lawn Fawn.  I really liked how the felt apple turned out.

Then I made some washi paper apples for the Japanese language teachers.  I made 5 of these.  These apples turned out so pretty!

And more sewing!  These are longer than the ones I made for the children and also more complicated!  Instead of ribbon, I cut strips of Japanese fabric which is so time consuming!  Plus you have to fold over the edges and iron them down so they are nice and straight.  Well, sometimes it's not always straight so hopefully the teachers aren't eyeing the stitching too closely.  Ribbon usually has a ridge near the edge so I used that as a guide to sew straight but the fabric doesn't so I really had to concentrate.  But I really do love the look of this key chain.

And this is for all the Hello Kitty lovers!  This one was even more complicated than the above because the fabric is mostly white so you could see through the material when you folded over the edges.  So I ended up using some fusible webbing and a strip of white fabric under it.  But of course that made it bulkier and sewing was a bit trickier.  I have a couple that I ended up tossing to the side.  And yeah, sewing straight and near the edges was difficult on this one as well.  I need lots more practice!  But I think these turned out super cute!

If you're wondering how to make these, there are tons of tutorials, just Google it and etsy has lots of supplies.  Just search for the hardware on etsy and you'll get lots of stores. 

Hope you're enjoying the weekend!  Thanks for visiting!

A+ Teachers

Hi!  It's been a while since I got to play in My Favorite Things weekly sketch.  They are now on sketch 20!  I think I missed a few weeks and I'm behind on my 2012 calendar!  Hopefully I'll catch up next month.  Here's this week's sketch.

I made 2 cards following the sketch and the card on the right was from way long ago following a different sketch but I wanted to show all three cards the kids will be giving to their teachers at the end of the school year.  I let them pick which ones they liked the best to give to their teachers.  They're all a little different.

I like this card a lot.  It's looks fun and bright and my daughter picked it for one of her teachers.  The background uses the graph stamp from Hero Arts.  I like these background stamps a lot too.  Then I used Pure Innocence Make the Grade stamp.  All the sentiments including the A+ is from the set. 

My son picked this one for his teacher.  I crossed out the word student in the circle and wrote teacher so it would read Teacher's Grade Card.  I like this card a lot too especially the papers. 

The third card is going to another one of my daughter's teachers.  I like that one too with the felt doily and ribbon.  Gee, I guess I like all of these cards and hopefully the teachers will too.

I'm still in the process of making something small (and I mean literally small) for my son's kindergarten class.  I have a lot of crafting to do still.  My daughter didn't want to make anything for her class so that lessens the load a bit.  I still have the teachers' gifts to package up.

Thanks for reading and have a great Friday!