crafting this and that

I think Edward was one of the very first stamps that I bought from TGF.  After reading the Twilight series, I thought this was so cute.  Anyway, I found a tutorial on how to make this bookmark.  It's really simple.  See HERE .  This was also the first time I tried coloring with Copics.  I only had about 4 or 5 different colors.  I made Edward's vest look like a different shade of blue just by adding more layers.  I still need a lot of practice.  The sentiments on the side are from Stampin' Up rub-ons.  I gave this one to Cheryl.  I just recently bought Bella, actually Camille so hopefully I'll stamp the 2 of them together soon. This bookmark I made for my daughter who loves to read.  When I saw the Annika stamp from TGF, it reminded me of her.  Sentiment is also from Stampin' Up. That is it for today and probably for a little while.  Now that school is out and summer's here, we'll be a bit busier.  Hopefully,...

These are little boxes I made for my daughter and son's main teachers.  It's a little caddy box.  I was inspired by this picnic caddy.  See HERE .  Problem is I didn't have any nice 12x12 cardstock so I made mine a little different by using 2 pieces of 8.5x11 cardstock.  I scored each 8.5x11 cardstock at 3 inches all around, trimmed off the extra bits to be able to fold the ends into a rectangular box.  I glued the 2 finished rectangular boxes to make a square caddy.  I didn't make my caddies with a handle like the picnic caddy tutorial.  I basically followed the tutorial to make the inserts except cut the paper to 3.5x7 and scored at 0.5, 3.25, 3.75, and 6.5 inches.  Hope that makes sense.  I made these some time ago and sometimes when I'm making stuff I don't always write things down because I think I'm going to remember but I don't.  The labels are PTI's Fillable Frames stamp set and die and alphabet stamps are PTI's Simple A...

I was very fortunate to win some blog candy recently from Jen at Pieces of Me .  She was having a very fun giveaway, 5 in total and you had to take some pictures to participate.  I thought it was very original.  You can see my post HERE .  I was really happy to get some cute stamps, ribbon and flowers.  Check out her blog and see her cute stuff. And Then You Lose Some ... My layout didn't win for Rockin' Rebel 2 over at Club Anya and Friends.  The waiting for the winner announcement was just killing me cause it took a while longer than expected due to some internet trouble.  But it was disappointing that they didn't include any honorable mentions like they had said they would and that the announcement was mentioned in their newsletter instead of their blogs.  Okay, I will stop whining and get over it.  Well, I guess I gotta just buy the Roll Call kit then. Thanks for reading and have a great week! 

I finally finally finally got my Big Shot!  Can you believe I ordered this on May 2nd and I just got it yesterday, May 21st?  It took 19 days to get here!  But I got a great deal on this.  Cheryl emailed me a free shipping code from Joann's and the Big Shot was on sale for only $59.  So I got a great price cause shipping was free but I had to wait forever to get it.  I almost forgot it was on it's way.  We either pay a fortune for shipping or wait forever for our orders.  Now that I'm done with most of my projects I don't know what to cut with this yet.  I've been using my Wizard that Cheryl bought for me (she buys me lots of great stuff!) but sometimes it's a little scary when the plates just pop out at you.  So I thought I'd give the Big Shot a try.  Now I just have to think of something to make!

Yay!  I'm finally all done with end of the school year teacher gifts.  I made 8 mini magazine holders for my daughter's Nihongo teachers and some of the teaching aides/former teachers at my son's preschool.  I found the template for the holders HERE .  Mine are just a little smaller cause I wanted to put little Bath & Body Works pocketbacs in them.  The great thing is that each holder only uses one piece of 8.5x11 cardstock.  The stamps on the tags are from PTI.  I love the Fillable Frames stamps and die.  So cute and fun.  And the Hello Kittys are sizzlits.  And they are all wrapped in cellophane.  I bought all those BBW pocketbacs while they were having a sale and special promotion online.  I even bought some of the holders (pink in photos) that you can attach to your bag.  But living in Hawaii, we always get the worse shipping deals.  I signed up for emails from BBW to be notified of their sales and they ha...

Ever since I found Sunghee's blog Creativity In Progress , I wanted to create a mini album but didn't really know for what occasion.  Originally, I wanted to create a 5x7 photo collage of each child in my son's preschool class and put it in a frame as a graduation gift but then I thought why not make a little photo memory book instead?  So, I made 19 little 3x3 books!  Being a SAHM I'm so lucky to be able to go to a lot of the class activities and field trips even if I have to drag my toddler with me.  So most of the time I am carrying my youngest and trying to take photos of all the kids in my son's preschool class.  I thought about how to put the photos in the books.  If I had a really great printer I could've printed the photos directly onto the cardstock and then just assemble the books but my printer sucks.  So I made 8x10 photo collages (each individual picture was 2x2 or less) on Photoshop and thought I could print them out at Sam's Club or C...

When my youngest child turned one, we had a Sesame Street themed party for him.  He didn't particularly like or dislike Sesame Street but I had just seen on a blog some Sesame Street characters made from punched scalloped circles.  They were so cute!  So I had to search around the internet for more ideas about this and Splitcoast Stampers had a lot.  This was one example . So these were the favors I made using baby food jars.  They were filled with colorful Easter grass that I bought at Target and the top was wrapped with tissue paper and cellophane and tied together with rubber bands.  I had to find something small enough to fill the jars too and bought little bags of kaki mochi. I made about 70 of these.  I already had most of the punches.  The only one I had to buy was the one for the whites of the eyes.  I thought they looked very happy. I made this card for Cheryl using the idea from the link above since I had some leftover charact...

Jen at Pieces of Me is having a fun blog candy giveaway for achieving 250,000 hits!  Wow!  Cheryl & I have a ways to go.  Thought I'd procrastinate some and participate. Candy #1 is something pink.  My daughter's Hello Kitty sidekick which I use a lot too. Candy #2 is something round.  My double sided tape which I use a lot. Candy #3 is something I ate today.  I usually eat PB & J with half a banana every morning. Candy #4 is a plant.  My son's bean plant from school which is already starting to die. Candy #5 is my youngest child's dirty socks.  My younger son's dirty socks aren't as dirty as my older son's socks. Her blog candy ends today at 12 noon Hawaii time.  Thanks to Jen for giving away so much great stuff!  How super generous.  Hope you all get a chance to play and have a great weekend!

I really wasn't going to enter this challenge over at Club Anya and Friends but I had this idea in my head and I knew that if I didn't try it, I'd regret it later.  This is a 12x12 layout and I really wasn't intending it to be so huge.  I thought I'd make a little card but somehow it expanded to this especially because I wanted to recreate watching The Beatles' appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show so many years ago.  I haven't made a scrapbook layout in a while and I don't usually do a topic about my likes but I like how this turned out. I used acetate (again!) to create the idea of a TV screen.  I wrapped some circular card stock with aluminum foil to make little dials and stuck on/glued some alphabet stickers spelling out some lyrics.  I was getting tired of the monochromatic gray, white, black theme (B&W TV back then) so I had to add some bright pink in there.  I put a little of strip of journaling on the bottom with my white gel pen. Here's...

I didn't actually make anything this year, but here's a craft made by my son at school for his Mother's Day present. Although he tells me he just painted the frame and stamped the ladybug bodies. So now I know what he was talking about when he said the teacher took his photo at school. It also happened to be the day after I cut his hair myself! Yikes! He's been going to a haircut place, and everytime I watch them do it, I think to myself, I should be able to do that at home with our clipper set...not as easy at it looks though. Good thing his hair grows fast so I have more chances to practice. Anyhow, he also made a handprint card and wrote out a little poem. I scanned and pasted the whole thing together, so it didn't exactly look like that in real life. Anyhow, have a Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there!

This is a Leigh's Wishing Well stamp from years and years ago. I also have a CD of clipart (I think we bought it at a craft fair a long time ago), which I now realize the black and white images are technically digital stamps! Although I haven't really looked at the images for a while. Anyhow, I had bought BIC markers and wanted to try coloring something. The tips were a little broad, and the ink can bleed into the cardstock quite a bit. I think I also embossed the image before coloring. Anyhow, that was too much work so I decided to go back to colored pencils. I had almost given up on colored pencils until I tried the baby oil. A lot of people talk about odorless mineral spirits, but my husband uses that as a cleaner and the fumes give me a headache. Anyhow, it was taking me forever to figure out how to make the watermark brush again. Apparently the size of the selection can't be larger than 2500 pixels. (Thanks, PSE 7 The Missing Manual). Well, I guess I should get st...

This is a simple birthday card I made for Cheryl's birthday.  I won't tell you how old she is though.  The sentiment is from a Stampin' Up set.  The flower I crocheted myself after finding a tutorial on PTI's site.  See HERE .  I crocheted it with embroidery floss from when I used to cross stitch.  I still have a lot of embroidery floss and good thing I saved them cause now I can crochet. These are some other flowers I crocheted with yarn and embroidery floss using 2 different basic patterns.  I gave this set to Sunghee after I got the Sizzix die from her. I also crocheted these bunny cozies for my kids for Easter.  Cute, yeah?  The pattern is from Lion Brand Yarn's site.  See HERE .  You have to register to see the pattern but it's free and they have lots of cute patterns and some are very affordable to make.  So far I've been able to crochet a couple of small blankets and a little cap for my daughter.  Knitting loo...

ME!!!! Yay!!! I'm so excited--I won a Wild Card Wednesday challenge over at Club Anya and Friends.  See HERE .  A picture of my card is on the post below this.  So that was fun and exciting.  I have some thinking to do about which digital stamp to choose.  So many cute stamps, I'm gonna have a hard time deciding. So I thought I'd just share a short little project.  This is a variation of the notepads I'd made for Xmas last year.  This one I made for a little girl so she can keep herself busy while her Mommy takes care of their new baby.  I had written her name on the heart but covered it in the photo.  And what little girl doesn't like Hello Kitty?  The template is from PTI.  See HERE . Here's a picture of it opened.  Lots of paper for her to doodle in. By the way, our watermarks on our photos have been incorrect!  I didn't get a chance to fix these photos--it should read www.craftingthisandthat.blogspot.com.  G...

Well, I finally did it and entered a card challenge over at Club Anya and friends.  I made this card on acetate that I bought over at PTI.  I wanted to make Mother's Day cards with acetate but I haven't finished so Cheryl's not the only one behind.  Then I found a tutorial on Papertrey Ink's you tube channel HERE about using acetate so I thought I'd give it a try.  The stamp set is TGF's Hope and Grace.  I love the girls in this set.  So adorable.  Took me a while to buy this set though but I finally did when Auntie Lianne at Cute Stuff had her 20% off sale.  I always think this little girl is wearing a flower for a dress so I thought it fit the Spring/flower theme that the challenge called for.  I must stop procrastinating now and get on with finishing the rest of my projects or they'll be late.  Still gloomy today but hopefully you're having a nice day.  Thanks for stopping by!

So it was a really productive weekend in terms of crafting and shopping!  Yay!  First let me share a picture of the cute Lesportsac bag I bought yesterday.  It's one of their newest prints and I had a 15% off coupon.  It was surprising that my hubby was okay with me buying it.  I think he still feels guilty since I missed out on the tokidoki bag that was a really good deal on hautelook.com. On to my Boys' Day post.  Boys' Day is May 5th and I ran across this post on Dandelion Designs.  See HERE .  It inspired me to make these for my son's preschool class.  Just stamp, cut and tape.  I put a little label in the back with who it's from. Hello Kitty pencils for the girls. Car pencils for the boys.  Originally I had wanted to buy Toy Story pencils that I had seen at Price Busters but when I went back they were all sold out.  Should have bought them when I first saw them.  I bought these at Price Busters too. There ar...