Showing posts with label Crafts. Show all posts

Craftaholics Anonymous's 2013 Summer Gift Exchange

Posted by Anonymous on Thursday, July 11, 2013. Filed under: ,
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I love making crafty projects, but after awhile I run out of people to give them to.  Or, I just don't have anyone to give something to.  And while I love decorating my own home, since many of my rooms are "in a transitional phase" right now, I don't want to spend a lot of money creating something that I'll just have to re-do and/or donate once I finally get around to decorating that room.

Enter Linda, the fabulous mind behind Craftaholics Anonymous.  Twice a year, she totally rocks it out and sponsors a handmade gift exchange.  I wanted to participate during the one last winter, but I kind of lost track of time and missed the sign-up date.  Shame shame on me.  So, I've been (im)patiently waiting for the past 7 months for the summer exchange to roll around.  As soon as I got the e-mail in my inbox, I bounced on over to Elfster to sign up for this summer's exchange!


I was paired up with Melissa from California, and I immediately got excited when one of the items on her wishlist was a large vinyl wall decal of song lyrics.  I've had my Silhouette for about a year now (you can read about the search for it here, here, and here) and while I've used it for small basic tests and to cut out things from the Silhouette store, I'd yet to really create anything of my own.  I'm a member of a Silhouette group on Facebook and seeing all of the awesome projects that those ladies and gentlemen create really gave me a kick in the pants to start experimenting with the capabilities of this machine even more.  After all, that IS why I bought it, right?

So to start off, I opened up my Silhouette Studio software and kept an open Safari window next to it, so I could reference back to the original vinyl decal Melissa had included on her wishlist.  Then, it was just a matter of picking a font and re-creating what I saw!

It didn't occur to me until much later that a screenshot would have been much more effective than taking a picture of my computer monitor - sorry :(

I designed it using one consistent font since that's how the original was and despite my love of unique fonts, I actually used one of the stock Apple fonts on my computer.  I sized it to 12" x 36", loaded my vinyl in to my Cameo, and clicked cut.


Not gonna lie, while it was cutting I was freaking out a little bit since I'd only ever done vinyl designs that were about 4" x 6".  But hey, computers know what they're doing, right?  Most of the time?


But hey, any day you can see the cut lines is a good day, right?

Here's where I'm going to share the most common sense advice ever with you.  Do not attempt to weed black vinyl at 11:30 pm when you are tired in a poorly lit room.  You will lose letters and apostrophes, then go to bed feeling flustered.  Admission:  this photo from above is from the second time I cut the design, when I got smart and worked on this project around 10:30 am.  You know.  When it's light out.

So after my duh moment and using the second piece of vinyl that I was smart enough to buy in the length I needed (hope for success, plan for failure?) and about an hour of weeding, my decal was looking pretty awesome if I do say so myself!


So then I just popped some transfer tape over the top - I chose to put the transfer tape on right away to help prevent the letters from shifting during shipping.  I had to layer two pieces of transfer tape since I only had sheets that were 12" x 24", so I hope it worked out okay.

After that, still making use of my awesome Cameo, I decided to play around with the print and cut feature.  Using some sticker paper I had, I created a cute little shipping label.

Sorry for the blurring, but I'm pretty sure Melissa wouldn't appreciate me plastering her name and address all over the internet

And then I also used the print and cut feature to make up a little note.  You know, hey, hope you like your gift, how to attach vinyl to a wall, if you hate it or there's a problem e-mail me.  That kind of thing.  Nothing too special, but I thought they were cute and it was feature of the Cameo that I hadn't ever played with before.  Turns out I'm completely in love with it and want to make all sorts of stuff using it now.

It also turns out that I desperately need a pedicure.  Poor little toes.  

Anyway, thanks Linda for hosting the exchange!  And Melissa, I hope you like your gift!



If you'd like to see what some of the other "exchangers" made/received, check out the Handmade Gift Exchange Linky party here or go here for info about the exchanges and to sign up for an e-mail reminder for the next gift exchange!





Project Life Organization

Posted by Anonymous on Wednesday, May 1, 2013. Filed under: ,
1 Comment

Happy May everyone!  Spring has finally decided to make an appearance here in beautiful old Wisconsin.  It's sunny, about 80*, slightly breezy...couldn't ask for more!

After only a couple of weeks, I fell off of the Project Life bandwagon.  Not because I didn't love it, life just got away from me and I forgot to take pictures as I was going along.  But I figure the first of the month is a great time to wipe the slate clean and start fresh, so that's exactly what I'm going to do.  I'll forget my failure in documenting April (April wasn't that great anyway - the weather totally sucked!) and move forward.  I found some photo a day challenges via Instagram so that I always have some ideas of things to photograph on days that I'm feeling uninspired or stuck, and I realized that some of the projects I work on would also be good things to include in my album.

Since I'm recommitting myself to Project Life, I thought I'd take some time today to share with you all how I organize my materials for it.  I love how much less space this method takes up than normal scrapbooking does.  Seriously.  Are you ready to be astounded at how little space I need to store my scrapping materials? Check it out:


Are you impressed, amazed, and/or astounded?  I sure was.  I saw this metal drawer cabinet at Hobby Lobby weeks before I started Project Life, and I immediately knew I had to have it.  I had no clue what I was going to use this for, but it was so cute, and it was grey so I knew it would fit in to the color scheme of my office + craft room, and it was 50% off...so I bought it.  When I saw the sizes of the Project Life inserts, I whipped out my measuring tape and realized that all of the 3" x 4" inserts would fit perfectly.  So, after i took my cue from A Vegas Girl at Heart and cut up some 6" x 6" paper pads (Uncharted Waters by Glitz Design) to fit the 3" x 4" inserts, so that I could use these as filler cards.  With my awesome metal drawer unit, I have drawers where I can organize my filler cards by color, like so:


And like so:


My filler cards are separated by neutrals, pink + red, yellow + orange, blue + green, and multi, and I have one drawer for grid journaling cards and one drawer for lined journaling cards.  Then comes the fun stuff.  In the column of drawers to the far right, I have a drawer of washi tape that stays with all of my Project Life gear:


And two drawers of embellishments:


And right now there's actually - gasp! - one empty drawer that I have reserved for more embellishments :-)

Any embellishments I have that don't fit in the drawers (or that I haven't cut down to fit) slide nicely under the drawer unit, like so:


Since the 4" x 6" inserts don't fit in the drawers, I have a little plastic bin that I got from the Dollar Tree that fits perfectly on my desk shelf right next to the drawers where I can fit my 4" 6" cutouts that I use to make up week number card, and also holds larger scraps that I kept from trimming down the original 6" x 6" paper pads.  It's also home to some Recollections cards that I got from Michael's, that I'm debating between keeping or using as part of a giveaway for when I grow the blog a little more.


And that my friends is it!  Everything I need to complete a scrapbook layout, all stored on a 10" shelf that's 2' long.  Amazing, no?



Linking up...

@ Remodelaholic




From Oversized T-Shirt to Cute Vest!

Posted by Anonymous on Monday, April 15, 2013. Filed under: ,
2 Comments

One of my favorite blogs to follow is WobiSobi's.  This girl can do some amazing things with Hanes T-shirts and scissors.  I'm amazingly inspired by her fearlessness when it comes to re-fashioning and restyling.

I'm a girl on a budget, but I like to have cute clothes.  Since I'm not a small girl, I don't necessarily feel that comfortable in a lot of clothing designed for girls, since the clothing tends to be more fitted which makes the fact that most of her T-shirt refashions are done using men's Hanes T-shirts.  And those T-shirts are cheap, so if I mess something up I just try again.  No harm, no foul.  Because I live in Wisconsin, which has some pretty crazy weather, I love dressing in layers so I can adapt my outfit as the temperature changes throughout the day.

That being said, I thought WobiSobi's cute 5 Minute Draped Vest #2 would be the perfect candidate for my first T-shirt refashion attempt.  I apologize in advance for the low-quality iPhone photos...it was the only camera I had available at the time I got scissor happy.

I started with a plain grey Hanes T-shirt.  I ordered a pack of 4 from Amazon for like $16, so my cute vest started life looking like this.


I ordered XXL T-shirts because, again, I'm not a small girl, and I wanted to have a lot of "drapiness" to my vest.  So I laid it out flat on the floor.


Then I made 5 easy cuts.  I cut the sleeves off as close to the seams as I could, then cut the collar deeper.  I cut off the bottom hem, the cut down the sides of the shirt.  Duchess had to inspect my work after I was done cutting.


And that easily, I had a cute new drapy vest!



And the back is nice and simple.

I had one helluva time getting a pic of my back, lol

I think this would look really cute with some skinny jeans and my black boots.  I think I'll try that outfit out this weekend!

Mason Jar Piggy Banks

Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, April 14, 2013. Filed under:
2 Comments

I've been craving some new electronics lately.  I want an iPad mini pretty badly, and I also want to go back to my Mac computers.  I use a Windows laptop right now, and I miss my MacBook.  I use an iMac every day for work, and it's so nice to use that I think I want one for myself.

So pretty!


I'm also trying to save for a down payment to get a new car.  I hit a deer with mine early on Christmas morning, and I cracked up the bumper and it's been making some pretty ominous noises ever since.  Plus, it's getting older, and it's a coupe with not a lot of interior space, so I'd like to upgrade to something with 4 doors that's a little roomier.  Trying to bring home 8' boards for projects in a Pontiac G5 is no easy task!  I'd really love to get something like this:

Hyundai Tucson

Or maybe one of these...

Subaru Legacy

So since I'm saving for two different things, I wanted to create some cute "piggy banks" to help inspire me and encourage me to save.  I picked up a couple of smooth sided Bell jars from Michael's, and cut some cute 12"x12" scrapbook paper to about 5" tall.



Then I grabbed my hot glue gun and ran a line down the side of the paper, and wrapped it around the jar.


I ran a line of washi tape down the gap in between the paper, because the 12" wide scrapbook paper was just a teensy bit too small to wrap around the entire jar.  For some more decoration, I also added some washi tape on the top and bottom edge of the patterned paper.


For more fun, I wrapped some thin ribbon around the jar several times, then tied the ribbon in a knot in the front of the jars.


I got some cute Martha Stewart tags on clearance from Staples a few months ago, and I thought they'd make a cute addition to my jars.


So I dabbed the edges of the tags on an ink pad, then wrote on the tag what each savings jar is for.


So in about 15 minutes, I ended up with two cute jars to fill up!  Now I just need to find some overtime hours to work so I can start feeding my adorable jars!





Project Life Planning Pages

Posted by Anonymous on Friday, April 12, 2013. Filed under: ,
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I've been scrapping using the Project Life method for about almost two months now, and I'm really enjoying it so far.  It's so much less work, and it's been much less expensive.  The only problem I've been having is that between work, school, taking care of my home, husband, and dogs, blogging and crafting, and visiting family, I don't necessarily have enough time every week to sit down and finish my layout for the week.  And if I get two or more weeks behind I tend to forget what happened that week, which kind of goes against the whole point of scrapping to remember what's happening.

Because I only use two different layout pages for my Project Life album right now, I decided that an easy way to keep track of what was going on was to make pretty planner pages that I could keep in my planner.  That way, when I got an hour or two free, I could sit down and pull out the planning pages, and scrap away.


To download my planning page for Project Life Design A pages, click here.


To download my planning page for Project Life Design D, click here.

I printed these double-sided, so when I turn each page I'm able to view an entire spread and plan accordingly.  I put them in a special "Project Life" section of my trusty planner, and I write down things I want to remember or make sure to scrap about in the "Photos/Notes" section.  Then in the planning section, I write down brief descriptions of the photos that I want to make sure to include.

Right now, I'm about 3 or 4 weeks behind, but I'm not stressing out because I have notes of everything that I want to include.  I'm hoping to be able to sit down on Sunday and knock a few weeks out so I'm more caught up.  As soon as I get those weeks done, I'll just take the planning pages out of my planner so I'm not hauling around more paper than necessary and I'll have a scrapbook that documents what was happening!

I really do enjoy Project Life, and as soon as I have a few more layouts completed I'll make sure to share them with you!


Decorative Push Pins

Posted by Anonymous on Monday, April 8, 2013. Filed under: ,
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Once I made my pretty new decorative cork board, I knew I couldn't use boring metal pushpins (or worse, those ugly colored plastic ones) on the pretty damask print.  When I was at Hobby Lobby, I found these adorable glittery buttons in both silver and green.  They were cheap, and came in two sizes so I had a little bit of variety to work with.


So I grabbed my cute buttons, some thumb tacks I bought from Target, and some quick hold e6000.  I love E6000 glue, but the quick hold is even better in my mind because it adheres more quickly than normal E6000.  I spread out some wax paper on my kitchen table - because if there is even the slightest chance I can make a mess, I'll find a way to do it - and went to town.


I applied a dab of the E6000 to each thumb tack, then waited a few seconds for the glue to get a little tacky. Then I mushed the thumb tack on to the back of my buttons, and in no time at all I had a sea of button thumb tacks.


With some of my buttons, I glued the smaller sized button on to the larger size in the alternating color, but apparently I didn't take any photos of that step.

I let them dry for 24 hours, and that was it!  Pretty thumb tacks to match my pretty cork board.


I'm not sure what that line is right to the right of the thumb tack, but don't you love the polka dots?  That is actually my desk.  Post on that to come!




Decorative Cork Board

Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, March 31, 2013. Filed under: ,
2 Comments



Now that I'm working from home, a lot of the projects I'm working on revolve around organization for the office so that I can get settled in to my office.  I love having a cork board that I can pin things to that I either need to remember long-term so I have it to refer to quickly, or for things that recently changed so that I have it posted in front of me as a constant flag of something that changed.

But with all of the work I've been putting in to my office, the last thing I wanted hanging on my wall was an ugly, plain, boring old brown cork board.  I was at Hobby Lobby and saw this grey and white damask print fabric and fell in love.  However, it was a little too busy for me to use in a large area.  Then it hit me.  Wouldn't it be cool if I could pin stuff to this awesome looking damask fabric.  Then the skies opened and rays of sun shone down on me and I heard angels singing.  Okay, it wasn't that dramatic, but I did get really excited by the idea. 

I bought a plain cork board that fit my wall space, then taped it off and painted the frame the same lime green that I've been using for an accent color over the entire room.  I'm sure you could get away with painting the frame without taping it off, but I'm messy and didn't want to chance any excess paint showing through my fabric so I took the extra step.


I did two coats of paint on the frame of the cork board.  To be honest, it probably could have used a third coat.  That frame really soaked up paint!  But I lost patience, and the two coats gave it a weathered look, so I stuck with it.  Side note - does anyone else love these foam brushes as much as I do?  They're great for small projects, and I personally hate cleaning brushes so I stock up with Michael's has them like 14/$1 or 20/$1 so I can just toss them when I'm done with them.  No cleaning required!

After the paint was dried, I ironed my fabric and made sure to lay it out perfectly flat.  You want to make sure there are no wrinkles!  I laid the cork board on top of the fabric with the edges of the cork board hanging off of the edges of the fabric.  Then I used my rotary cutter to cut along the sides of the cork board, so I ended up with a piece of fabric that was just slightly larger than the cork board's surface (not including the frame).


Once I had my fabric cut out, I brought everything up out of my basement, where it was cold and clearly has pretty poor lighting, and laid it out on the kitchen table.  I laid the fabric right side up on top of the cork, and grabbed a putty knife to slide the fabric into the space in between the cork and the frame.  I found a flexible metal putty knife to work perfectly for this step- it was slim enough to slide in the gap between cork and frame and flexible enough to catch the fabric and slide it in the gap.  This step is where you want to make sure you don't have a huge "seam allowance" on your fabric.  Too much fabric won't fit under the wooden frame, but be careful if you trim the edges to make sure that you're still leaving enough to cover the cork.  (I hope that makes sense!)  The corner of the putty knife is also perfect for getting small pieces of fabric under that frame, and works well in the corners.


I found what worked best for me was to pull the fabric tight and tuck it under the frame about six inches or so ahead of where I was working.  That way I knew the fabric would stay nice and tight and I didn't have to worry about it pulling or wrinkling, then I could go back after the preliminary "tucking" and use the edge of the knife to make sure all of the material was tucked under the frame.


Once I got in to a groove, I think it took me about 30 minutes to work my way around the entire board.  I used a tweezers to grab a couple of loose threads that were hanging out, and voila!  I had my pretty damask cork board.


Go ahead and grab some push pins and pin away!






My Next Project Printable

Posted by Anonymous on Tuesday, March 26, 2013. Filed under: ,
1 Comment

I have the perfect storm of a 4 bedroom new construction house, close proximity to three Goodwill stores, a love of the oops! paint section at Menards, and a Pinterest addiction that means at any given moment I have about a dozen different ideas for projects swimming around in my head.  Some of these ideas are in the germinating stage, some I have the items for but I haven't purchased, and some I even have the stuff for and I'm midway through completing the actual project!  I thought Pinterest might be a good way to keep track of my crafts and ideas, but all that's really accomplishing is inspiring more crafts and projects.  What that's doing is making the inside of my head appear like a scary attic in some 1800's house that's dusty and cluttered and has crap lying all over the place.

I wanted a way to keep track of these projects, what I have purchased for them and what I still need to purchase, and even more, what steps I've taken and what still needs to be done.  I figured a great place to keep track of this would be in my planner, which is somewhat like a third arm to me.  If I lose it, I'm so toast.

I found a printable from Perideau Designs that was for "My Next Project."

Source

I love the information she had included on the printable, but it was a little unadorned for my tastes.  I respond well to bright colors and patterns, and I love to surround myself with them.  This is what I ended up with, and I'm making it available to share if anyone would like to use it.  Enjoy!


Click here to download this fun printable.

Washi Tape Tab Dividers

Posted by Anonymous on Friday, March 15, 2013. Filed under: ,
1 Comment

So, I'm not sure if I've mentioned it or not, but I'm a senior at UW-Milwaukee right now.  I'm double majoring in Communication and Organizational Administration.  I thought I was going to major in Sociology, but I apparently have some pretty bad ADD when it comes to my major.  The Com and the OA was the original major, and it's interesting and relevant so yeah.

Anyway, the Sociology class I'm taking this semester is divided in to units.  Because of my love of organization and pretty things, I wanted a way to nicely divide my binder for the class in to the units, but they didn't sell pre-made tabbed dividers in the quantity I needed.  Plus, they aren't pretty.

Enter everyone's new favorite craft embellishment: washi tape!  You can make anything pretty with washi tape.

So I gathered up my supplies:


A rotary cutter, manilla file folders, my labeler, a self-healing cutting mat, and a few different patterns of washi tape.  I also had my three-hole punch on hand, and a three-ring binder.

I cut the manilla file folders in half down the fold, and kept the side with the tab, then ran a line of washi tape down the right edge of the folder, like so.


Then I added a second strip of tape to the tab of the folder, then used my rotary trimmer to cut the tape to match the rounded edges of the tab.


Then I used my labeler to print out the unit names, attached the label to the middle of the tab, and three hole punched the left side of the divider.    See?


Since those file folders come with the tabs in three locations, I just alternated the tab locations for each unit.  It makes my Sociology binder look prettier than it would have otherwise, and I feel much more organized, and it will be easier to find the information I'm looking for while I'm taking an exam or writing a paper.


Washi tape makes the world a prettier place!!





Project Life: 2013

Posted by Anonymous on Thursday, February 21, 2013. Filed under:
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I used to love scrapbooking.  All through high school I documented everything, and I put together scrapbook pages to the best of my ability and the best of my high school budget.  Working a part-time job at Michael's helped subsidize the cost of my scrapbooking addiction, but it was still a fairly expensive hobby.  I carried this addiction through college, although not as fanatically as I did in high school.

After Husband and I got engaged, I ventured in to the world of digital scrapbooking (kind of) by making a Shutterfly book of all of our favorite engagement photos.  After our wedding, I designed a 10 x 10 photo book that I had printed by AdoramaPix with all of the amazing photos from our wedding.  Then, I did an actual scrapbook of our honeymoon.  And that's the last scrapbooking I've done.

On Facebook, I like the Craftaholics Anonymous page, and someone asked a question about the Project Life scrapbooking system.  A lot of people responded positively in the comments, so I decided to check out what Project Life really is.  Designed by Becky Higgins, Project Life is a photo and journaling based scrapbooking system that is more simplistic than traditional scrapbooking.  There are pre-designed kits you can buy that have filler cards and journaling cards that all compliment each other, and everything is pre-cut and printed.

I'm trying to decide if I love the clementine kit...

...or the seafoam kit

You can also purchase binders that color coordinate with the kit that you choose.


And Becky has also designed page protectors with pre-designed templates that are sized to fit the cards from the kits (the openings are 4 x 6 and 4 x 3, or variations thereof).


The nice part about the page protectors is you can buy a multipack of the different templates, or you can buy large packs of the two more popular templates, depending on what you think you may use most often.  

I've been wanting to get back in to scrapbooking, but with school, work, blogging, and house/craft projects I was hesitant to add another thing to my to-do list.  Project Life is the perfect alternative to that!  I can start with the core kit, and there are tons of free Project Life printables available on the Internet.  There's a huge amount of Project Life pins available on Pinterest - I've even started my own Project Life board!  And with Photoshop Elements, I'll be able to create my own journaling and filler cards, as well.  All I have to do is add my own photographs, and my scrapbook will almost make itself.

I'm thinking about buying a traditional scrapbook rather than buying one of the binders, because most scrapbooks use the same three-hole layout and I like the look of scrapbooks better.  I was thinking about doing a digital Project Life, then printing it at the end of the year through Adorama Pix, but I think I'll try a traditional book this year and see where it goes from there.

So, wish me luck on my return to the world of scrapbooking please!

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