crafting this and that

Hi!  It's that time of the year again for teacher gifts.  I love making gifts for the teachers.  This year I wanted to package up some Bath & Body Works stuff.  We finally have one where we live.  I haven't gone into the store yet because it is so packed.  I bought these items online. For my kids main teachers, I packed up all this stuff and a little hand gel holder too (which for some reason my photographer seems to have left out) into the basket in the back.  The basket, called Pack a Picnic is a Lauren Meader My Timeless Template available at Papertrey Ink .  The templates come in 2 sizes and the large one really is large.  I could fit everything into it even with that big poofy flower scrub. This is a large basket and I used the papers from Pink Paislee Butterfly Garden.  The papers are so pretty. Top view.  I lined the cardstock handles with some twill ribbon. Group shot.  I made three large ones and 4 small on...

Hi!  Late last night when my hand was cramping and my eyes started playing tricks on me, I wondered why did I agree to color in all these monkeys and make all these pizza boxes?  Hmmm, because they're cute and my son some how talked me into it.  This is the last week of school for the kids and decided to make something for my son's kindergarten class. I had all these mini playing cards I had bought from Walmart last Xmas.  A couple bucks for 10 so I bought 30 and needed to use just 22 for my son's class.  These are super cute and small.  But I didn't want to just stick them in a bag.  I thought about making playing card cases for all of them but that kind of cutting seemed too tedious.  Then I saw All That Scraps pizza box challenge (which these will be entered in) and the tutorial link .  I thought I could manage that. So I made 22 mini mini pizza boxes.  These measure 1.75 x 2.25 inches (and .25 inch deep) and I changed them to be...

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...

Hi!  I would've started writing this post earlier but I'm a little addicted to watching The Voice so I had to watch that first and I even washed all the dinner dishes in 30 minutes so I could just sit on the couch.  But I'm slightly disappointed.  Nothing really stood out tonight.  Last week I really loved Pink's Perfect.  I mean Javier was good tonight but we kind of already knew that.  Anyway, on to my project. A couple of days ago or so I got my Lion Brand e-newsletter and they had this cute grad owl amigurumi (pattern number 80282AD) so I had to check out the site.  But then I found an even cuter owl (pattern number L0256AD) so decided to go with that one instead.  Plus it was smaller so I thought it would be faster for me to make.  Then I thought I'd make a matching card for TGF's Farm Fresh Friday Challenge to make a Congrats card . Here's a pic of the owl.  Isn't she the cutest?!  She's just 3 inches tall without the grad...

Hi!  This is my last traveling summer journal.  I made this for my older son.  He loves this TGF stamp of Oliver holding the dinos because he loves dinos too.  I used the sketch over at TGF's Farm Fresh Challenge Which One Wednesday for the cover of his journal. I had specific instructions from my son to color Oliver's dinos just like his.  So I used my son's toy dinos as inspiration. See?  My son and his dinos. Here's the title page.  Similar to the one I made for my daughter.  I used some fun green binding instead of silver though.  I also used this Oliver stamp to make a bookmark for my younger son.  And he wanted to copy his brother so pretty much used all the same colors to color Oliver and the dinos. The bookmark in action.  He had been asking for a bookmark to copy his older siblings. The days seem to be flying by.  I can't believe the school year is almost over and I haven't done everything yet.  Tim...

Hi!  Here is yet another travel journal that I've bound with my Cinch.  This one is for my daughter.  She picked TGF's Fancy Anya which I just bought.  She is just like my daughter who would rather wear a dress or skirt to do everything including traveling.  I decided to case TGF's Mystery Monday card for the cover of this journal. I didn't want to make the cover too dimensional since we'll be taking it during our summer vacation so I tried to keep the cover as flat as possible and used some tape to add some fun. Here's a close-up of Fancy Anya with her little camera ready to take some pictures.  I also used PTI's note die and Text Style stamp for the background lettering behind Fancy Anya. This is the title page.  I got to use a lot of my American Crafts stickers that I bought a while back from Peachy Cheap.  The camera is a coordinating stamp with the papers. One of the inside pockets with a little scooter stamp too.  I added some ...

Hi!  I used my Cinch again to make a stamp journal.  Just a little 6x6 inch book to scribble notes or what not. I used TGF's Stamping Anya.  I thought she would be perfect for this journal.  And I got to use my new Wonky Rectangles nestabilities.  Now I want the Reverse Wonky Rectangles too.  I also stamped tiny hearts from Lawn Fawn behind Stamping Anya. Here's the inside.  There are 45 pages and 3 sections with tabbed folders.  I included a "shopping list" tab to keep track of all those stamps and other goodies we all want to buy.  The tabs and stamps are from PTI. I'll be entering this in TGF's Throwback Challenge and All That Scraps Anything Goes . I have some other goodies to make so I'll keep this post short.  Thanks for reading and have a great week!

Hi!  TGF is having a scrapbook challenge in honor of NSD so thought I'd get out some pictures and actually make a page.  I wanted to do a page that reflected something cultural so I picked a Girls' Day theme. Scrapbook pages are difficult to photograph.  This is my daughter's first girls' day some 9 years ago.  Heehee.  I love these photos of her because my daughter wasn't really a giggly kind of baby.  She was more serious but these pictures show her laughing so happily. Here's TGF's Geisha Anya.  It's the very first time I've used her and the first time I've colored black hair.  But I like it!  I wanted her kimono colors to match some of the colors in my daughter's baby one (which was past down from her aunty).  I also extended her smile so she looks a little less serious.  I thought about altering her eyes and smile but decided to leave it.  Less work, you know? I used stamps from other TGF kits too.  The happy s...

carved your initials into a tree?  That was the inspiration for my card that I made for PTI's Make It Monday Impression Plate Tricks #2 .  I was really afraid to try this technique because I didn't want to make a mistake and ruin my dies or plates!  But I tried it and it's way easier than making all those frames from cardboard and what not from my previous posts.  This time around it didn't leave any markings on the back of my dies like it did when I tried it before.  I don't know, maybe I did something different?  I guess I'll have to play around more with this idea.   Sorry, picture may be a bit dark but my photographer is sleeping already.  I finally got PTI's woodgrain impression plate.  I love it!  The letters are the initials of people who are getting married this year.  The letter dies are from Quickutz.  I used some chalk to fill in the letters a bit so they look more "carved." Hmmm, this photo may be a bit blown ou...

Hi!  I used my Cinch again to bind some small coloring books.  I had some leftover paper after cutting them for my larger 6x6 journals.  I thought the small scraps were a good size for small hands. This one uses TGF's Surfer Anya.  She is so cute! Here's one with Surfer Ian.  These books measure 2.5x5.5 inches. The cute couple together. There are 25 stamped pages in each book.  This shows me that I have way too many stamps.  I'm planning to let my youngest color in these when we're on the plane.  Hopefully, he'll just sleep and give me a break.  I better get going on lots of projects.  It's almost the end of the school year here! Thanks for reading!