crafting this and that

Hello!  Trying to stay motivated!  I always feel like I'm a step behind.  Like a step behind creating cards for upcoming holidays.  I made Mother's Day cards and graduation cards.  Now I'm trying to make cards for teachers and Father's Day.  But I feel like I should've made them by now.  Maybe I'm a bit slow or I need to think ahead more. Today, I got around to listing my first teacher thank you card.  Mostly I am also thinking I need to make a few for my own kids' teachers!  My middle child will be moving on to middle school too so that is kind of sad for me.  And also because I will again be driving to 3 schools.  And they'll never be in the same school again. This is the card with no personalization.  I printed the sentiment onto the cardstock using this swirly brush font that I really love.  The apple is a diecut created from MFT's Red Delicious die.  I don't think they sell this die anymore. I stamped...

Hello!  I have one last teacher gift to share and also an idea I came up with for my youngest one's classmates. Here's a little jar I decorated with one of those plastic domes.  I ordered a whole bunch of these domes from Amazon cause I guess they are kind of seasonal at our local crafty store and they didn't have them in stock.  I used PTI's school themed petite places stamp set and matching dies.  I think this little school house is so cute.  Then I added a personalized stamped aluminum circle.  Inside the jar is a gift card and I'm so glad I saved the yellow Easter grass my kiddies had in their treats. Here is a close up of the school house. This is what I put together for my youngest one's classmates.  I wanted to use a sentiment with a-maze-ing.  First I thought I could buy those little toy mazes but after looking around online for a while, I found this neat site that generates mazes of all sizes.  Check it out HERE . ...

Hello!  Hope everyone had a happy Easter!  With our 3 kids we receive tons of Easter candy.  I don't know quite what to do with it all because we definitely can't eat everything.  I still need to sort through all the goodies. I've started on teacher gifts for the end of the school year. Here are 3 keychains I made for some Japanese language teachers.  I stamped each teachers name and an apple onto an aluminum circle.  These aluminum circles are on the thin side so it's pretty light weight.  I attached a split ring through it and onto the heart shaped keychain.  I love the heart shaped ring!  So cute!  I think next time I will look into a thicker aluminum.  But I think I am getting the hang of metal stamping, and I think I stamped the names pretty evenly and not too lopsided.  Oh, did you notice my clothes pins?  I made something to hang my jewelry and chains on to make photographing them easier.  Just took an ...

Hello!  I have another sewing project to share today.  I have been looking all over the internet for a good tutorial on how to make fabric composition book covers.  I found a good one HERE .  I made this cover for my youngest one's teacher.  This fabric is called Hello Tokyo from Robert Kaufman and I purchased it from one my favorite Etsy stores, Stitch Stash Diva .  I added the personalization by using some Heat Bond ultrahold and PTI's alphabet dies.  Usually I would print the name out and cut it all by hand but the letters had to be smaller to fit on the cover so the dies were pretty handy.  I also added some fray block on the letters to keep them more secure. Here is a side view.  There are a lot of different tutorials out there.  I made this one just a bit different from the tutorial as well.  I wanted to use up the fabric I had already cut into so I made the flaps using the same print.  You can see that in the pho...

Hi everyone!  Wow, tomorrow is the first day of school for my boys!  I can't believe how fast the summer went.  They are all packed and ready to go and boy, do they have a lot of supplies to take the first day.  I'm gonna have my daughter help me carry everything. During one of my blog stalking days, I came across this cute tutorial on how to make an apple pin cushion.  I thought maybe I can't really make it cause I didn't think I could follow the curve of the apple nicely but it's really not too bad.  I thought they would also make cute gifts for the teachers.  So I spent most of yesterday making these apple pin cushions so my boys could take them on the first day of school.  I think they are cute even if the teachers might not sew or actually use them as pin cushions.  Maybe they could just sit nicely on the teachers' desks? I'm giving the 2 larger ones to the teachers.  I made the smaller one first and didn't realize it would b...

Hello!!  I'm hosting The Greeting Farm's Farm Fresh Friday this week!!  I think I'm getting the hang of this -- can I do this, um, forever??  Haha!  Since tons of kiddies have gone back or are going back to school, I went with a Back to School theme. I chose Do Si Do Anya!  She looks all ready for her first day of school!  Though by the end of the school day, her hair might be all wasted.  My daughter used to go to school with cute hair in the morning and come home a mess!  I finally got to used my school embellishments like the mini ruler and chalk cardstock.  I was gonna write a little more but my kids only had the super fat chalk and that was hard to write with so all I could scribble legibly was A+.    Oh, surprise!  It's an easel card to hold a post it pad.  Okay, that little pencil looks cute but it's totally only decorative.  Next time, I will use velcro.  It's pretty stuck on with tape....

Hi!  I made a little something for TGF's Which One Wednesday Sketch #10 , Ribbon Carousel's Challenge 18 All Tied Up (use more than 1 spool item) , and Some Odd Girl Challenge Paper Piecing . When I saw the sketch, it reminded me of a Double Pocket Card.  See HERE for a tutorial.  But I didn't follow the tutorial.  I made the bottom boxes in the sketch into pockets.  One to hold a gift card and the other to hold a little card for a message. I used TGF's Vivi.  She is popped up a bit on the first pocket. Vivi is paper pieced and I found my stash of bells after searching all my crafting bins.  I tied one on to the end of her cap with some twine and added some flower soft too. This is what the inserts look like.  The smaller one will hold the gift card.  I just used some removable tape and an old gift card I found for reference.  The larger one has a label (from PTI) so my son can scribble his name on it.  Both the inserts hav...

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!  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!  So I guess the theme this year was calendars!  I made a whole bunch.  Last year I made a whole bunch of little notepads and note cards for Christmas gifts.  This took me a while to do.  I made some for teachers, friends and family.  Above is the CD insert using the PTI Calendar Basics set. The teachers' ones looked like the one above.  I used PTI's Teacher's Apple stamp set.  The calendar pages are die cut with their calendar die and all the individual calendar pages are from PTI also.  A lot of cranking of the Big Shot. This was the first teacher calendar I made.  It was also the last one to use patterned paper cause after doing all this I couldn't fit it into the CD case!  It was too thick.  So only a few pages will fit at a time in the CD case if you embellish too much.  That's why I decided to just stamp on the cardstock instead. I made a couple of sets using PTI's All About You stamp set with fresh snow i...