Trendy Bow Card

Bows seem to be trendy these days and when I saw this 3d bow on the SOS I thought I had to get it and make a card with it. I really wanted something trendy and classic so pink and black color combo came to my mind. This card is super easy to make, here is the instructions:

Determine size, I decided I wanted a big card, at 5x7
Find a cute bracket shape, whatever you think would be cute for the black background, cut it, I think I got two on a 12x12 sheet

Cute the bow to the length of the card. I used the base part of the ribbon as my guide, I (used basic grey pink paper) staple the bow together, then glue the small cover around the bow and then add some small rhinestones to it. and then add a sentiment if you want to.

Easy!

Thank You Card Set

a set of 8 Thank you cards are a nice gift to give to a couple that is getting married.

The card measure 5x7, so I was able to emboss some purple card stock, and use that as a simple back ground. The brown paper were just scraps from a different project that works well for this card. I cut out the Thank you shape on my Silhouette and stamped the Thank you. pretty easy and fun to do. I left the card simple so if the couple wanted to they had room to put a picture of them on the front of the card.

Printed and water color Sketched Birthday card

Yep at it again with a printed sketched card, I really like how easy and simple they are. the first picture is pastel, it gives it a more lighter look. I liked it but I wanted something with more life and color to it, so water color pencils came to mind, and I am very happy with the effect it has.

it's a simple card, the hardest part for me was to let the color flow from one candle and cup cake to the next, I wanted something that would tie in all the colors and not make it feel so over power with lots of different colors, so I used a lot of light and dark mono tones with complementary colors to hold it together.

Perfect for a simple Happy Birthday note to a friend or a co worker.

sketched Thank you

 What a super easy way to make a thank you note card, let Silhouette do all the work! choose a cute back ground and let the sketch pen holder with your favorite pen do all the work. I loved the Metallic blue ink from the pen I used for the card,  I used these cards for my baby shower I thought it was perfect for the little baby shower my besties gave me for my sweet baby Harrison.

Gate Fold Butterfly Card

I love butterflies and flourishes so when I found this super cute paper from DCWV I was smitten. it's a pretty easy card, I made the butterfly in the designer studio. basically I put a scalloped frame around the butter fly, and then cut it out. then cut out a frame that is the same size of the butterfly frame in a different paper, added pop dots to the butterfly frame and inked it then stuck it to the back frame for depth. then tied a ribbon on, and called it done!  I also cut out the gate fold card from an SOS file, one of the ones that were on clearance then inked the edges

Gate fold cards are always so nice, I feel like it gives more of a formal and sweetness to the card that regular folded cards give.

sketched flowers

I asked on a Face Book group why every one loves copic markers and if they prefer the markers over water color pencils, I couldn't bring my self to buy $3 for a marker, when my amazing Prisma Color Pencils and Water color pencils would do just the same, but for a fraction of the cost. I got a 50/50 split so apparently there isn't a right or wrong way to color in a stamped image or in my case a print sketched image I bought from the SOS.  Yep I cheated and printed out the sketch image on my inkjet printer. I loved the results. the main thing that you have to do is make sure  your line is at .pt or more and it will print. these card were easy. here's my instructions

find or design a sketch design for your card. make sure your line thickness in designer studio is at lest .5 pt or higher. I then did 2 up on an 8.5x11 piece of card stock. Print. (note you are not using your silhouette for any cutting.) I used my paper cuter to cut, which was easier to do then to run it through my Silhouette for one cut.

Cut and score the cards, and round the corners if you want.

On to the coloring. The blue flower card I used shimmer pastels, I used a lighter blue for a base color and then went in with a purple to make the colors pop, and give it some depth. I did the same for the leaves, starting with a lighter green and moving into a deeper darker green of shimmer pastels.  for the Red and Yellow I started with a lighter color and then went into a darker color. Remembering that you can always add to color but can't take away any.

I think these cards are just perfect for little note cards for thanks and thinking of you. I love being able to color a whole bunch at a time, I feel whole while doing these. And who gets a hand colored card anymore? They are just perfect!

Bottle Cap magnets

Don't you just love easy simple projects that wow you, well this is one that wowed me, I have fell in love with UTEE Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel by Ranger. it's a 3 step process that takes about 5 min. 1 more step for putting on the magnets.Super easy.

Notes:
I did purchase the bottle cap stickers and the bottle caps from Hobby Lobby. however if you wanted different ones you can use a 1 inch circle punch for the inside of the bottle cap. Also I love the melting pot, I am just starting to play with it and I am amazed at what all you can do with it. If you are a crafter this should be in your with your tools.

Here is the Tutorial I used.

paper flower arrangement

 Did you know that the Silhouette online store has a ton of 3d flowers to use? I love them. I could spend all my nap times making these cute flowers... but then I remember that supper has to be made and clothes folded and baby needs to be nursed... bummer back to reality right? Really I love paper flowers, I used a lot of different paper flower shapes, too many to mention, (some are mentioned at the end.)  Little Hut has some really pretty paper flower shapes that I love, so does Jamie Cripps, and Lori Whitlock has some cute rolled flowers that I used.

I used a paper vase and cut that out of some sturdy card stock. (DCWV brand) and then found a small Styrofoam ball that fit nicely into the vase and glued that into the vase, just in so the ball suck out just a tiny bit. My goal was to cover the ball with flowers so we couldn't see it.

onto the cutting of the flowers. I have about 6 different flowers that I have saved on a file, so I can get about 6 to 9 up on a 12x12 sheet. of different flowers. Same with the rolled flowers, like the roses you see in the last picture. I cut the rolled roses at about 5 inches, and once they are rolled they work perfectly for a flower arrangement. You will have "create" the flowers, I use  hot glue and glue dots for this, lots of folding a paper sculpting, it's fun, you will need give or take 20 flowers. I inked some of the edges, and curled some of the pedals to make it look more realistic,

It was super easy to assemble after this, I just used a pearl pin to pin down the flower to the Styrofoam ball. I would use one of two of my favorite flowers at the top of the ball, my focal flower and then filled in the rest of the room with different flowers.

Onto the finish the project. I wanted a sentiment and I saw the perfect sentiment on the SOS. It was a free shape not to long ago, and it worked perfectly, I measured the space I wanted to use up for the vase and then designed and print and cut it with a cute frame around it. then add a ribbon around the vase, tape it on and then use some pop dots to add to the vase, I cover up the tape with the sentiment

Some notes that might help you:
pick out about 3 different types of paper in three color/ pattern. I used double sided paper by K and company and then medium thickness card stock.

Like I said I love making paper flowers, so when I want to make something but don't know what I will cut out flowers in the colors of the seasons and have some paper flowers handy when I need to make a gift fast. I made this in less than an hour because I had some paper flowers left over from a different project. All I needed to do was to create this wonderful gift for my Grandma C and it came together quickly.

Essential Oil mini album

I wanted to make a simple album with cute floral paper that reminds me of Essential oils, This paper from Micheals fit the project perfectly. The file I used was super easy and simple I was able to make two albums in an afternoon. The hardest part was picking out the paper to work with the album. I used some simple flower stickers to embellish it a big, I hope that the recipes I used for my Essential oils will be the focus point of this album.

for the SOS File it was Carina's Essential Album 4x6 Vertical Bracket. she uses hot glue, which I did too and enjoyed using it.

For the clasp I just used some removable poster Velcro hangers.

I love Mini albums to give as gifts to new moms, and their babies. I used Lori Whitlock's Chip Board album, You can't go wrong with this file, I use it all the time!  The front subway art that I used is the Rivka Wilkins Personalized Word Art.

The Album file is really easy to cut, I like that you can cut two pockets per 12x12 and the tags you can get 4 up on a 12x12 sheet. I then just used some simple stickers I had laying around (thanks to friends that find stickers at a sale and give them to me) to make the pages cute. I wanted to leave a lot of room for pictures and journal space for the mom to put in the album.

For the front of the album I just used some different blue ribbon taped in a loop and then used pop dots to adhere the subway art with the ribbons onto the album. pretty simple, got it done during a nap time.  

From the Silhouette online store:

Design ID #42457 
Design ID #39043 


  

Flower Head band

I love crafting with my kids and Silhouette has some really cool files for kids to make, wear, assemble. You know all you have to do is cute and let them do what they want with the cut out? This Flower Head Band from Snapdragon Snippets Design was perfect for a winter projects, we then danced to all the Disney princess music I could find, I love my Pk daughter for all of her whims and creativity.

My notes on this flower head band is that instead of having holes cut out in the flower leave the holes in and put some gems or some bling where the hole would have been at. I didn't use double sided paper or card stock, but would recommend it as it broke easily.

Happy crafting with you kidlets!

Birthday cards

I love making birthday cards, and hate buying them, so every year I make a batch of birthday cards, to last through the summer. Thank you Silhouette for the inspiration and files!

The first one is very girly, (love the color scheme) I did sketch the birthday cake and sentiment but I think it would be faster and just as effective if you did a print and cut, I wanted to try out the sketch pen holder out, sketching it seems to make sense. I used what seemed a ton of pop dots for these cards, but it's all about the pop so I went with it! The file is the a2 birthday step card by Lori Whitlock from the SOS.

Next birthday card that I made I wanted to have a feel of fun and brightness. I use my kids as insperation alot of times and right now we love bright colors, (we might be ready for summer also) So I went to the Fiesta Paper Pack from DCWV.  The Silhouette file I used was Tri-fold balloon card

 I decided to cut t to fit an a2 envelope, I used the back part of the paper as the front since I like the simplicity of the white, and I was going to cover most of it up with patterned paper of the balloons. I used pop dots the balloons which I thought made the balloons have some depth. I also inked the edge with some distress int that  blended well into the paper.  I like this file/project because it was a simple assembly and once you had the size right and the paper picked out you could make a bunch in no time, it looks like you took a long time to make it.

MIni Almums and why I love them and are addicted to them!

It's baby season at my house, I am due in 5 weeks with my third (having a boy) and it seems that all of our friends are having babies, I thought I would make some super cute mini's for them.

My philosophy on Mini albums is that time can go by to fast and we don't capture all the small things that make up our life so I started making Mini Albums to fit all those small things that melt your heart from the day to day moments. I started making two for each of my children and were surprised at just how fast they fill up with little moment's that I didn't really know what to do (you know the kind that you don't want in you scrap book but they are to precocious to throw away at the moment.) Maybe they did something that you just had to write down but you don't want to take the time to get our your journal, and all you want to do is write what they did or said and be on your way, I believe an Mini Album will serve that purpose well.

So I have been making albums for all my friends that are about to have some babies. I hope they use them as much as I use mine.



Baby Boy, I wanted a bright colored all boy album with a feel of fun and cheerfulness to it.
This album is sort of based on Kathy Orta's Envelope Mini Album you can find the video tutorial on you tube here I didn't use gussets and the main thing I did was the envelope pockets and library pockets.

The print and cut  on your Silhouette is going to be your best friend with mini's, Rivika Wilkins Personalized boy word art has come in very handy for baby boy albums. I re sized it to fit as a cover for the album.

Each page has three pockets, so you can stuff a bunch of things in it, including gluing pictures down, journal cards and embellishments
.

I love the happy are the days I spend with you print and cut file from Echo Park Paper, it seems to go with a bunch of albums I make. I also think it would work well for a card and for scrapbook pages. A must have in my opinion in your Silhouette library.

 I used Boys and Their Toys paper from Paper studio. I loved the bold colors, it screamed boys to me!

Gotta love putting a library pocket on the page of your Mini to add more room to put fun things in!

I had a lot of fun making this for my dear friend's first child. some of the other stickers that I didn't print and cut out were also from the Paper Studio at Hobby Lobby. Instead of using Gussets or an accordion fold binding I thought using my Cinch to bind it would work out well,, to finish it add some ribbon if you like. 

baby scrap book

This is a simple cute book that worked out great for a baby shower gift for my cousin. I used the Album for Baby file and the Echo Park Boy Subway art file on the Silhouette Online Store, and Little Safari from paper studio to make this album, in a nap time It was made and finished.

My tips:

I played with the type of paper that I thought would work well for the book, I am not always a fan of big bulky patterned paper, so I was going for a subtle pattern paper.

I cut out the flip side so the paper could be double sided, I used my xyron machine to adhere the pages together.

The scraps that I didn't use I cut to size and rounded the corner to add some design elements to it, (this is where I figured pictures and mementos would go, and it adds to the page.

I bounded the album with bind it all system, and it turned out awesome!

Easiest science sensory activity ever

This is a two ingredient sensory activity that my kids absolutely love, super simple and cheap (lol) ok ready: baking soda and vinegar! (can you hear the excitement and sarcasm from my voice?) for my two cute kidlets they love it because We get to make our own bubbles  mommy! This is what I do, I sprinkle the .29 cent box of baking soda I got on sale all a round the tub, inside dishes, and cups, poor some vinegar into a container, for added fun I add what ever color they want, and give them a dropper and let them play, I don't tell them what to do, I just let them explore. eventually they start pouring the vinegar all over and to see just how much bubbles they can make, and I then give them more vinegar to play with. this play time will last about 20-30 minutes for a 2 and 5 year old!

Here are some of my tips when doing this activity, 

Let them explore, sometimes it's best if I just over hear what is going on so they can play.

I do like to ask questions like what do you think will happen if I added more vinegar to this cup, is a different color of vinegar going to change how it bubbles? open ended questions are my favorite.

Have an empty sink when you are doing sensory table stuff like this, so it's easy clean up, I just rinse and dry, since all the containers are designated to be sensory table items I don't care if not sparkling clean, I only care if there are germs and gunk on it.

If you know a bit about science explain to them why it bubbles up, hubby is really good at that, I just let them play. 

stock up on both items, we do this about 4 times a season, they always have lots of fun with it. 

chocolate PB crescent roll

AKA easiest breakfast ever!

You know those mornings in the winter when every one is just like ahh another snow day, and all you want to do is not look out side at the 16 inches of snow you have gotten in the past month, That was the morning I figured why not try something crazy easy on Pintrest. Guess what it worked! best idea ever I wish I came up with it.

you need two ingredients (love those type of recipes)
crescent rolls
chocolate pb (I used Skippy, but Hershey's or Nuttella would also work well.)
I did sprinkle a bit of butter and brown sugar on the top of the crescent rolls but you don't have too.

unroll those crescent rolls, spread chocolate pb on it, roll them up (my 5 year old did most of the work, it was a great way to pass a cold snowy winter's morning) then if you want a bit of sweetness on top of the rolls, brush on melted butter and sprinkle brown sugar on top. Pop them into the oven at 350, for about 12 minutes and you will have one of the best kid friendly breakfast's around! my 2 year old had 3 of them! Yummo!

If you have a dipper in the family warm up some jelly in a small bowl and they could dip that into the jelly, for more of a pb and j style breakfast.

paper flower arrangement

I love making things with paper (big surprise right?) When I realized that I could make a paper flower arrangement I was all ears! This was a gift for my sweet mother in-law for her birthday and I am so happy at how it turned out. It's was super simple here is what I did:

Materials:

2-3 sheets of double sided patterned paper (I used some old Stampin Up paper that worked perfectly It was given to me by a friend at CCAL (camp create a lot at Pine lake in Eldora IA)

Card stock (I used Yellow)

Brads- I used paper studio ones that were clear gems

3 inch styrofoam floral ball

Yellow satin ribbon that coordinates with your patterned paper

pearl boutonniere pins

green pattern paper

Fluff, the tulle and floral accets you see

a quart size mason jar

green patterned paper

Hot glue and gun

Silhouette files: loopy flower, rolled rose, 3d water lily, so Many Smiles Begin with You, and a heart frame.

Cut out the flowers, I cut out 3 loopy flowers, and 5 rolled roses from the paper with a couple of the water lilly inside flowers to add to the arrangements. When rolling up the roses I have found that hot glue is my best friend to hold it together, and a quilling tool works wonders instead of you fingers doing all the work. 

Assemble the flowers, add brads or gems 

once you have that done, get out the Styrofoam ball, and start arranging the flowers, hot glueing them, and pinning them with the boutonniere pins. I started out with the big ones first and then when into the rolled rosses, then added the little inside of the water lily last to fill in gaps, do what ever looks good to you. I then added the fluff to the ball to make it look pretty (I know super technical!)

For the Mason Jar, I just used some simple green paper to line the inside of the jar, cut it to size of the jar and stick it in, 

once I liked how the flowers were arranged I hot glued the ball  with all the flowers on it to the mason Jar.

I added the quote inside the heart frame, and printed it out, then cut it out. I made little slits in the sides so the ribbon could attach to the quote I designed. then add a cute little ribbon to the top of the jar (this was made so it looked polished and so you couldn't see the glueey mess. 

It's was super fun to make, not to much effort, and I think it brightened up my mother in-law's birthday a bit!

Spring cards

I love making simple thoughtful cards, This one was easy to make with the Silhouette file So Many Smiles begin with you phrase, and a Polaroid frame. all I did was print it out, and cut it out then adhered it with some pop dots. Easy-Peasy! (White card stock from Staples was used for the materials)

This card was super fun to make, I had to re-size the file, as it was super tiny to a 5x7 size to fit into my envelope. The SOS File was the Card Kit Flower Pot. I liked it it because it was easy to make 25 cards with one pkg of pattern paper. I did have to ink the green paper around the edges and used some brown ink to ink the scallop pice on the pot, I thought a simple brad worked well since I made 20 cards, but for just one you could use a really cute brad to enhance the card, but I don't think it was needed.