Christmas Gift Sneak Peak

I have been hard at work this month making some Christmas gifts.  I haven’t blogged about them because I don’t want people receiving said gifts to find out about them early.  That being said, since I KNOW my mom doesn’t read my blog (for lack of internet access) I don’t mind posting what I just finished making her.

** WARNING** For those of you reading this and are going to be with my family for Christmas…your gifts are not in this blog posting…so you will still be surprised when you open your gift.  J

So for my mom this year I decided to take the family photo we just took earlier this month at our family Thanksgiving/Christmas/ Birthday weekend get together, and make a nice wall hanging.  So here is what it looks like finished.

Really all it took to make was a stretched canvas, scrapbook paper, and some foam core board.  I covered the stretched canvas in scrapbook paper, cut my foam core board to the length I wanted and covered that in scrapbook paper, made a what I like to call a “frame pocket” to hold the photo (this way the photo can be changed out), and there you have it…a nice wall hanging with the latest family photo.  There were a few stumbling points, like last night when I did the glued the red paper to the stretched canvas I had MANY doubts that this project would even turn out as nice as I was hoping because of all those stupid wrinkles in the paper after gluing.  But after sitting all night paper side down I think some of the wrinkles worked their way out….or maybe it just looked better to me this morning since I hadn’t been staring at it for hours.  Either way…it turned out pretty well I’s say. Oh, and I will have to say that hand cutting out the lettering was a pain...would have been much faster if I had a Cricuit cutting machine (maybe I will get one for Christmas  :).

And since my side of the family has already done Christmas I can now post what I made my brother’s family for their “family gift”.  I have been wanting to make an advent calendar for the last few months now and finally got around to doing it.  I made this one completely from scratch. 

I used chipboard to make the frame and the grid (note to self, next time don’t glue the grid, I’ll explain later), cereal boxes for all the cube inserts, and then scrapbook paper and accessories to decorate it all.  Now, I say NOT to glue the grid down because I found that even though I made a template for the grid pieces so they would all be the same size and cut the same way, and even though I made another template so all the little boxes would be the same size, because I glued the grid down (not square mind you) not all the boxes fit in every spot (some of them were kind of a snug fit).  Kind of annoying, at least to me.  But I think they will be fine once they are pulled out and pushed in a few times.  And one more note, I would say Hersey kisses would be the perfect candy for this because I used bigger pieces of candy and when you have to put 4 in a box….that advent calendar gets HEAVY.  So I hope my brother and his family are enjoying their new, custom advent calendar….made with lots of love.  J

More Christmas gifts will come later...after Christmas when everyone has gotten them.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Holiday season!!

3-D Snowflakes

Leave it to me to start a blog right before the busiest time of the year.  I have been so busy trying to get Christmas gifts made and school done with for the year that I really haven't had time to blog about anything...plus with some of the things being gifts, I can't really blog about them and run the risk of the receiver read the blog about their own gift.  So…I will try to take pictures of the things I have made and do one big post featuring all of them.

Any who, today I went to BloomingMoms and it was a craft workshop day.  So today I learned how to make a 3-D snowflake!!  I thought they were so cool and stopped at Joanns on the way home to get glue dots to make more at home.  I didn’t take any pictures while I was making mine but I did find a tutorial (click here) to show you how they are made.  One thing I did differently than this tutorial is I used glue dots for EVERYTHING.  I did NOT use any tape or staples. Here are some pictures of the ones I made.

 These really are easy to make and would be great for kids to make and hang.  I hung mine above our counter between the kitchen and living room and I LOVE them. 

Till next time,  Happy Holidays and Happy Crafting!!

No Time Like the Present & Super Why

So I have finally broken down and decided to start myself a blog.  Yes, I am one of those people that used to think blogs are things people did when they didn't have anything better to do, or something people did when they had to much to say but really said nothing at all in their blogs.  I guess I never thought they had much use.  But, over the last couple of weeks I have been giving it some thought.  The more I thought about it the more I realized how many sites I actually visit were blogs.  See, being a crafty girl I look on the Internet for ideas and the majority of craft ideas out there are on, you guessed it, blogs.  So I finally decided that if other people out there could make a blog and post all their craft ideas then why couldn't I?  So this is what my blog is going to be about: all things crafty (either things I make or things I find and I would like to make) with maybe the occasional blurb about the family (because let's face it, as a mom I tend to make things for the little guy or the house).

Now with all those past ideas about blogs running through my  head I have decided that I will start this blog with a goal in mind.  To keep it interesting and to keep people coming back...I hope.  So my goal is to create at least one crafty thing a week and blog about it.  This way I am feeding my need to be creative and being hands one and I will be blogging with a purpose...not just ranting about stupid things like "OMG, I spent like 6 hours on my hair and it like got messed up just like that!"

So let's get started!

So with the little guy's birthday right around the corner (next Friday on the 19th...he's going to be 2...can you believe that?!?!) I have been trying to think of ways to make a small, family party fun for him, even though there won't be any other kids there.  The theme is Super Why, a PBS Kids show that he just absolutely loves to watch.  I made the invitations (yes, I made invitations and sent them out even though I know these people are actually going to be there, I thought it was the nice thing to do) already and now, today, I decided I was going to make him a little game that had been floating around in my head for the past couple of weeks.  The invitations I made to look like the Super Duper Computer on the show.  So this idea I had was to make a big Super Duper Computer for A. to play with.  And here is how it turned out with a walk through on how I did it.

The main idea with this is to get A. learning more words or at least be able to place words with pictures and being able to recognise more words.  So the base of the project is the Super Duper Computer and the main part is changeable.

First what I had to do is find a picture of the computer, which wasn't easy.  None of them were big enough so I ended up taking one of them into Illustrator and re-doing it all so that way I had a nice, clean, crisp image to work with. (No pixelated image here folks.)  Really I did this for the invitations but I can still use the same image for the big one.  So here are the steps for the game.

1. I printed out the computer image, tile format, in Publisher and taped it all together.

2. Then I traced it on a red poster board sheet and cut it out.

3. Once I got that done I could use the big print out and cut all the smaller pieces out and glue them all to the red poster board.



Traced and cut out red poster board.



Traced and cut out top white part.



Cut out, traced, and then cut out top color pieces.

Top pieces all glued down.

Top part glued down.

All the pieces are now glued down.

4. Then I designed on the computer the "screen" part of the computer and printed that out, taped, glued onto white poster board and cut out.


The two "screens" I made...for now.  One animals and the other food.

  You will notice that I changed the opacity to the letters on here.  They are set to about 30%.  The pieces that are put on top are at 100% opacity.  Those are just there as a guide.  If you make this and think your child doesn't need those and you just want to put the pictures on there that is fine too.

5. Then I put Velcro dots on the back of the white "screen".  I put the soft side on the "screen" part and then put the rough side on top then place on the red poster board paper where I wanted it to go.  That way I knew the dots would line up.

Velcro on the "screen".

One finished "screen" on the computer.

 6. Then I took the words I printed at 100% opacity and glued them on some scrap chip board I had.  I did this in hopes that it will make them last longer.  I also Mod Podge over them to help protect the ink since I printed it on my ink jet printer....but alas, that just make the ink smear a bit so some of them have a little reddish, pinkish color where there shouldn't be, but oh well, it's for a 2 year old right?

Word pieces drying after being Mod Podged.

 7. Once the words were all dried I cut them down more and figured out where to put my Velcro dots.  I didn't want to cover up the letters...well cover them as little as possible anyways, so I put the dots on the "screen" part this time.  Rough side on the "screen" and soft side on top then layed my chip board words on top of that.

Velcro on the "screen" and the word pieces.

 And here it is all done.  I only had enough Velcro dots to do one "screen" today so I'll have to finish the food one later. 

Finished game.

But I thought this will be a nice new puzzle so to speak for him to play with while all the adults are talking.  And he can even watch Super Why on the TV while he does it.  I also liked this idea because I can make several "screens" with all sorts of words on them.  I have thoughts for one with opposites (up, down, over, under, left, right, light, dark and the like).  You could also do one with shapes, colors, the whole alphabet or numbers...the ideas are endless for this.  Oh, and as for hanging it up, I was just going to use some thumb tacks, but you could also tape it, or even glue the main part (red paper) to a piece of wood and hang that up.

So, that is it for my first blog post.  I hope it wasn't too long and that I explained things well.  I also hope that you guys don't think I posted too many photos.  I think good explanations and good photos to show your work are what make good instructions. 

So until next time, happy crafting!!