Latest Card for my Marine Recruit

Earlier I mentioned that I needed to get another card made for my youngest.  He requested some pictures from home and it was time to send another round of power bars and Gatorade packets anyway.  

By the way, we're a little over a third of the way through.  I miss him so much!  I can't wait to see him again in January!  :)

Here is my latest patriotic card.  I'm sticking with the patriotic theme for his cards, because he's a homebody, and this is actually the last thing we expected him to do.  He has asked us to share his address with everybody so I know he's homesick and wants to connect.  I don't want to do anything seasonal that would cause him to think about what we might be doing to get ready for Christmas without him.  I want him to remember what he's there for when he sees red, white and blue with stars and stripes.  :)

By the way, I couldn't find a manly border so I used the decorative label punch and only punched the edge, lining it up as I went to make it look more borderish.  I'm undecided as to whether or not I like it.  On the one hand, it's interesting and not girly.  On the other, it's not bordery enough either.  Guess I'll have to head back to Hobby Lobby to find something I can use.  There are just some hardships in life we must bear.  LOL :)  

Butterfly Twist-top Box

Tonight's post is a pretty gift box that I've had for quite awhile.  Now that I can, I thought I'd share it.  :)

I'm going to make some more and use them to hold the glitter ornaments I've been working on as gifts (I'll post them soon.).  

Sorry this is so short, but it's time to get dinner on and get my young recruit another card made to go in his care package going out tomorrow.

I hope you like it.  :)

I used Raspberry Tart paper from Stampin' Up! and I cut the butterfly from Wall Decor and More (Cricut).  I don't remember what size I cut it at.  Sorry  :(  The bling is from Stampin' Up! as well and it really made all the difference on this project.  Shiny things usually do, don't they?  LOL

I can't find the original template that I used when I made mine, but I found this video at Amazing Paper Grace that is pretty close.  I don't know why she cut slits, though.  I'll have to try that to see how it is different.  I WILL be cutting windows into my next one, too.  What a great idea!

   

I'm Ready to Take the Next Step

I'm ready to take it to the next level in my craft blogging.  I'm going to enter a design challenge.  I found one I thought I could handle at Digital Tuesday Challenge.  

The challenge is to make a Christmas card using white, kraft, and blue.  The card has to incorporate something digital, whether it be digi paper, a digital image, text or whatever.  My mind immediately went to penguins.  I love penguins in Christmas decor-even though they don't exist anywhere near the north pole.  ;)  

So here's what I came up with:

Isn't he just the cutest thing?!?  I did a google search in images for "Christmas penguin," and this is one of the adorable images that came up.  Then I retrieved it in eCAL as an image and as a trace.  Then I shadowed the trace (kept the shadow but deleted the trace).  I had to tweak the points on his right foot in the shadow, because it wanted to cut a huge chunk out of it (OUCH!), but that wasn't too hard to do zoomed way in.

The paper was a little trickier.  I chose the Whisper White and Brilliant Blue from my Stampin' Up! supply right away and found a piece of Kraft that I got in a Walmart stack a long time ago.  Then what do to.  I had stickled the scarf and eyes of my cute little guy and he just stood out too much from the plain paper.  I decided to tear the white and stickle the edges to look like snow, but that looked odd against the plain blue on the plain kraft.  I tore the blue.  Now I was getting somewhere.  It looked like an iceberg against pretty blue water.  I finally decided to use my Simply Scored diagonal plate to emboss the kraft, and it all came together.  I really love it!  I do think that I'll use Inkscape next time to separate the colors on the penguin and cut them out as layers and piece them together to give him a little more dimension.  I'll try to work on that this week and post him so we can compare the two.  :)

Here's a closeup:

 

Quick and Easy Gift Idea

These are inspired by a project we did in a Stampin' Up! hostess class with Lisa Marie.  I had some paper from Walmart I wasn't sure what I wanted to with.  I do that a lot.  I see cute paper and buy it in case I find a project that would be perfect for it.  :)  Am I alone in this?  I hope not.

Anyway, this is a great project for those times when you need a quick and easy gift.  I made one for the daughter of our grade level chair.  She was in the 2nd grade, I think, and she came to my room during a teacher planning day and helped me with classroom organization that needed to be taken care of.  

A great tutorial on this project can be found at Dawn's Stampin' Thoughts.

Here is the brightly colored one.  I have not embellished the cards yet or stamped any kind of sentiment.  I haven't decided what I want to do yet.  I'm thinking I'm going to just add some bling and leave it sentiment-free so whoever I give it to can make it into whatever they need it to be.  I used the same paper to make the envelopes so that they coordinate.  I love the bright colors!

The black and cream looks elegant (it's even better in person, let me tell you).  I made four of the same card.  That's why there's only one picture of the card.  The envelopes for that one are just like the ones I made for my last post so no picture.  Hope that's okay.  :)

 You can't tell it, but the ribbon that it hangs from is a cream grosgrain.  Sorry about that. 

By the way, the 6 x 6 page protectors are no longer available from Stampin' Up!, but one of the ladies in my scrapbook group used regular 8.5 x 11 and just cut them down to 6 inches in height.  I've also see them done with 8 x 8 and cut down to 6 inches in height.  This is one of those projects that there are no rules for.  You use what you can find and make it work.  I love those kinds of projects!  Don't you?

Addition to Previous Post.....

Okay.  I couldn't stand not having envelopes for the cards and gift box I posted earlier today, and I was NOT going out on Black Friday just to get some.  So, what does any crafter worth their Staz On do?  They make their own, of course!  

I used Very Vanilla (Stampin' Up!) and my Simply Scored tool with the diagonal plate to make 8 perfectly-sized envelopes for my project.  I'm very happy with the results.  I put a couple of pieces of red sticky tape on the tab of the envelope for whoever gets them so they can be sent in the mail without worrying that the card they send will come out and end up on the floor of some USPS sorting center somewhere.

I lost the scoring guide that came with my diagonal plate, but that's okay.  Thanks to Mary at Stampin' Pretty I printed out a new one. 

Sorry for the shadows, but the lighting in my work space is not good for pictures.  If you look closely towards the bottom, you can see that I also added a half circle of velcro to keep it closed.  

I'm so happy with how this turned out that I'm going to work on a few more to give as gifts.  :)

Easy Breezy Set of Cards

The cards featured this time are from a one-sheet wonder that a friend shared with me.  I don't know where she got it from, but you can find OSWs by doing a google search.  There are a lot of free ones, and some that are sold for a small fee.  I don't usually buy things I can make on my own, but OSWs are worth paying for.  :)

This one is cool, because it is digital.  She gave it to me in a PDF file so I used some of my digital paper from MyGrafico and the turned the paper over and printed out the OSW on the back.  Cutting it was a breeze this way.  Then all I did was raid my Stampin' Up! card stock supply for matching colors.  I was so happy!  I found four perfect papers.  That doesn't always happen, but this set must have been meant to be.  :)

The base of the cards is Very Vanilla and the coordinating colors are Close to Cocoa, Old Olive, and More Mustard.  The box is from a great craft blog called Jill's Card Creations.  What a great marriage between projects!  

Here come the pictures!  Enjoy!  Leave a comment and let me know what you think.  :)

The cards:

This one has bling issues.  I'm going to have to reposition them.  Somehow they didn't get set right on top of the adhesive.  :(

The box:

I think I'm going to find paper for the sentiment that is a little closer to the color of the background paper.  It matches the base of the card, but it stands out oddly here I think.

 

The tutorial says that it will hold 4-6 cards and envelopes, but I have 8 cards in there and there is room for 8 envelopes.  The invitation envelopes from Walmart don't fit, so I'll have to get some smaller ones.  This is going to be a great gift!  :)

Post-it Note Holder

So, at the school where I work, each grade level has their own aide that runs copies, laminates, and does various other helpful things that make our lives as teachers easier.  Also at my school, is my best friend.  As she revealed in her comment on my first blog post, we are a little competitive.  So, anyway, we have been teaching the same grade level since last school year and have made it our business to competitively suck up mercilessly to our grade level aide.  She gets a kick out of it, and it gives us a chance to fit in little bursts of creativity throughout each week of the school year.  We do it all:  brown-nosey notes on the copy request slips, poems, drawings, song parodies, and now this.  I think I will thrust myself back into first place after this one.  Good luck beating this one, Bestie!  The gauntlet has been thrown down.  Nay nay.  It has been emphatically cast down.  Will you pick it up?

The inspiration for this project came from a pencil cup she has on her desk at school that has a black background with large white dots and the bright pink and green trim around it.  

The pink and green paper is from an 8 x 8 pack of bright colors I got from Michael's I don't know when.  I've had it forever and have hardly ever used it.  The colors were just too pretty to pass up, but I don't do a lot with brights.  After this, I'll be using them quite a bit more.  Who knew?  That brings me to the black and white flowers.......you'll never guess where it came from.  I can hardly believe it myself.  I have bought a lot of paper from this source.  It's cheap and a lot of scrapbookers turn their noses up at it.  Walmart!  It was a $5.00 pack of 8.5 x 11 scrapbook paper.  Can you believe it?  I mean, look at it!  It just blows my mind how cute it turned out with "cheap crap" paper.  I can almost hear you asking yourself why she buys paper she thinks is "cheap crap."  What can I say?  It's an addiction.  I don't care where I am.  When the craving comes on, I get whatever is nearby.  ;)

So Excited About This Card!

I've had this card in my mind for several weeks now, but I wasn't sure if it would turn out the way I wanted to so I procrastinated.  I gave myself permission to just go for it and if it didn't turn out it would be okay.  I have to do that for myself sometimes, because I'm a perfectionist and will drive myself to distraction to get something right.

Anyway, turns out I didn't need permission to accept that it might not work out, because it worked out just like I had hoped.  Leave a comment and tell me what you think.

 
The background was printed from a photo file I got from Google after searching for "marines digi camo."  I placed it on my mat in eCAL and set it to cut the mat size I wanted.  The "dog tags" I printed the words in reverse on the back side of silver paper and then cut them out.  Then I used my scoring tool to trace the words so that they would 'pop' out on the front side.  I cut out the black as shadow layers larger and smaller than the silver and then did back minus the front to have a cut-out space.

If you have SCAL or eCAL, you understood all of that.  If not, you need to get it.  It's awesome!  It will rock your world!  I kid you not.  I mean, look at the proof.  :)

Classroom Bulletin Board

I like to carry over my crafty-ness into my classroom to make it more homey place for my students.  It also looks more organized when it's decorated in a uniform way.

I used printable, digital paper that I bought from MyGrafico.  I really like it.  I have used it for several different things.  Sometimes I just print it out and cut it for a project like the bulletin board and the organizer caddy.  Other times I arranged it digitally using either Microsoft Word or Publisher and then printed it out like the signs on my white boards.  

I know what you're thinking.  "Doesn't it cost a lot to print the paper out?"  Actually, it doesn't cost any more than buying paper as far as I can tell, and it's so much more versatile.  Also, have you ever spent a lot of time trying to find a great paper for a project and then there isn't enough of it?  This way, you print what you need.  If you have SCAL or eCAL, you can fill a shape with the digital paper patterns and then print-to-cut for your own personalized embellishments.  Awesome, right?

Don't get me wrong.  I'm all about some scrapbook paper, but this just gives you another option and a little more freedom in some of your projects.
 

This is the district's theme this year.  I'm working on another bulletin board that's all about me and it's going to say "Know me, Learn from me."

 

There are actually words on my word wall now.......

The words were cut using the Curlz font on my Eclips.  Oh, that reminds me!  Another cool tip is one I learned from Pinterest.  The silver staples were really standing out on the black letters and killing the effect.  I learned that you can use Sharpie paint pens to paint the staples before putting them into the stapler.  Who thinks of these things?  Geniuses, that's who!  Not me........  I painted a row of staples black and re-stapled.  Now you can't even tell they are there unless you look really close.  Some of my students have noticed it, though, and have asked me, "Mrs. Kinkey, did you know your staples are black?"  I just looked at them innocently and said, "No, I didn't know that.  What a convenient coincidence." You can imagine the eye-rolling that took place.....

Simple Birthday Card for Father-in-law

Hey, everyone!  I wanted to share a cute little card I just did for my father-in-law's birthday.  He'll be 81!  He's just a lively and energetic as a 60 year old, though.  LOL!

It's hard for me to make cards for men, because I love cute, lacy, flowery, butterfly-y kinds of things and men don't typically go for that.  Go figure.  Well, their loss.  Anyway, I didn't have a lot of time, because we took a trip over to where my oldest son lives this afternoon, which is about an hour and a half away.  As soon as we got home this evening, I got to work, and this is what I came up with.  I hope you like it.  I hope HE likes it!  :)
 

 

The paper is Whisper White from Stampin' Up! and the patterned paper is one of their old basic designer paper sets that has been discontinued.  You could do it with just about anything, though.  I couldn't find my Chocolate Chip ink and was too lazy to get my Stampin' Marker out so I used my walnut distress ink pad to stamp the sentiment, which was also from Stampin' Up! The punch I used for the sentiment is the decorative label punch.  I punched it in the brown designer paper and in Whisper White.  The brown piece I cut in half long-ways and then trimmed off the little points on the ends.  Then I glued it off-center so it would give a little bit of a shadow effect.  It probably would have been better if I had not put brown on brown, but I think it's still looks pretty cute.  I don't think my father-in-law is going to quibble over that.  ;)

  

This is the punch I got from Hobby Lobby last week (on sale 40% off, OH YEAH!).  Isn't it cool!  It's what I used to make the lattice border on the card.  I tried it out on some gold foil paper when I got home with it the other day, it was GORGEOUS.  I foresee a card with that paper in the future.  I can hardly wait!  :)