Gearing up for Mother's Day

In preparation for Mother's Day, I have been adding new items to my Etsy shop as gifts for mothers, but are generic enough to be used for other events for women. The latest additions are sticky note holders for 3x3 sticky notes. I kinda just started with one or two and then the next thing I knew, I had made 8, lol. I also used the opportunity to play around with taking pictures of my creations with our new camera. It is great having a good camera now because we have no good lighting in our apartment and it is really hard to get good pictures.

The flowers I used were a really random fine in a dollar store in Baltimore. All of the packages were like a dollar and a few were $1.25. I bought like 15 packages while I was there because I didn't know when I would come across such a good deal again.

Etsy

Happy New Year All! I hope that you all had a very blessed Christmas and New Year with your families. I just thought I would start off this new year by sharing some projects I have been working on to add to my Etsy Shop. I found some 5x7 clear acrylic frames on sale at Michaels a few weeks ago and wanted to try creating something that had a 2015 calendar, as well as sticky notes. I had a very feminine paper collection that my mom had sent me from my birthday so I thought I would pull that collection out to work with. I am pretty happy with my results. All calendar/sticky note sets come with a small pen or pencil to make notes with.

Enjoy!

Super Simple, Yet Thoughtful Gift Ideas....

Hello everybody, Happy New Years Eve!!!! Can you believe that this is the last day of 2013?!?!?!?! Honestly, I will not be sad to leave this year behind. While I have learned and accomplished quite a bit this year, this has been a year of hard trials, both for myself and ones very dear to me. But anyhow, to a brighter topic, today I thought that I would share a gift set that I made for one of my three new sister-in-laws for Christmas. She is an English teacher and her favorite color is blue, so I thought that I would whip her up a nice, coordinating desk set.

For the Post-It note holder, I simply used a clear, acrylic frame from Dollar Tree and decorated it with a 6x6 paper pad from My Mind's Eye, some small white Basic Grey letter stickers, a blue Prima flower and a Post-It note stack.

 

 For the magnetic notepad, I took some basic tan cardstock and layered some patterned papers to add some interest behind the blue paper pad, which I picked up from Dollar Tree as well. (Side note: Dollar Tree is a great resources for picking up base materials for projects, like mini notebooks, notepads, photo frames, etc.) I used some letter stickers I got in the dollar aisle at Target and some gold pearls from Q&Co. The pen is a gel pen from a Fiskars jumbo pack. 

To attach the pen, I took a 1/16 whole punch and punches a little hole in the top left corner of the cardstock and then looped some twine through the hole and then hooked the pen cap through the twine. I used a hard core magnetic strip that I cut off from a large roll I picked up at Ace Hardware a couple of years ago. I do usually have to put some hot glue behind the magnet to get it to stick permanently to the back of the cardstock, but once the hot glue hardens, it does not come off.

 

I also whipped up a mini notebook with patterned papers from the same My Mind's Eye 6x6 paper pad, used some small white glitter Thickers from American Crafts and some ribbon from my stash (I believe the ribbon was originally wrapped around a pack of washcloths I picked up at TJMaxx a couple of years ago. The scalloped circle was punched out with a Fiskars punch.

While I did make this as a gift set for a Christmas gift, it could easily be replicated for a gift for just about any occasion.

I hope that you all have a wonderful New Years!! See you in 2014! ;)

This Post Needed a Title.... and a Giveaway!

*** I forgot to add a title to this post, sorry if anyone had any trouble linking to this post!

Hello All, can you believe it's Thursday already??? (For that matter, can you believe its almost the middle of October?!?!?!!?!) Where does the time go?!? I just thought I would pop in and share a project that I whipped up a few weeks ago for my new sister-in-law (my brother's wife). She is in the midst of student teaching, so I thought that she might enjoy some office cute office supplies to stay organized. She really loves canning, so I thought I would use a Dear Lizzy paper from a 6x6 pad I picked up a couple of weeks ago. I also used some old Amy Tangerine papers  from a 6x6 pad a dear friend sent me a year or so ago and Dear Lizzy Fifth and Frolic paper pad, as well as some labels from Heidi Swapp and some October Afternoon Butterfly and small doily stickers. I finished off the projects with some white Basic Grey mini alphas, Q&Co rhinestones and pearls and My Mind's Eye Cut and Paste enamel dots. I used some small flowers that my cousin sent me to finish off the clothespin magnets I made. So that the paper would not peel off the magnets, I used some Modge Podge Acrylic spray to finish them off.

(If you stick with the pics to the bottom, I'm sharing a small giveaway!)

I also wanted to do a small giveaway. I put together a small kit for making Christmas tags and a small card making kit. For a chance to win, become a follower and let me know in the comments and for a second chance blog about the giveaway and put a comment with a link to the post. The giveaway will be open until October 25th and I will post a winner on the following Monday, October 28! I will be picking two winners, one for the Christmas tag set and one for the card kit!

Hello Friends!

Wow, well it's been a few weeks. I've been a very bad blogger this year and especially this summer. There has been quite a bit going on. In June we went to Florida (Hubby had a business trip that I tagged along for) and then Michigan for my brother-in-law's wedding, then Georgia in July to say goodbye to my mom's best friend who died suddenly from cancer and who was like an Aunt to me and then to Erie last weekend for my brother's wedding. Oh, and I got a job that I started two weeks ago!It's been rough getting used to working on reduced medications, I've had some really bad days this summer with all of the things going on and I would greatly appreciate prayers. 

I haven't been doing much crafting, but I have done a little. I did several scrapbook layouts for our own albums. I shared several pictures of these on Facebook, but, since the layouts have pictures of friends and their children, I really don't want to share them in an open forum. I did however create a few notepad holders with a place for a pen/pencil.

I am really pleased with how much of my stash I have been able to use this year, between my mom's scrapbooks, my scrapbooks, and the various other projects I've done. I've used over 1/2 (probably closer to 2/3) of my stash of patterned papers. I found a couple of ladies on youtube who were always talking about how they just made themselves cut in to their papers and play with layouts and projects to combat their desire to just hold on to all the pretty paper and not do anything with it. Their videos gave me quite a bit encouragement to take that approach. Now, I just grab some coordinating papers and start cutting things down to size and layering until I find a design that works and it's really been working for me. Now I can look at the pretty papers in albums with memorabilia and pictures that are dear to me. :)

To make these holders, I simply measured the size of the the notepad and then marked off the paper where I wanted to score lines to be able to fold up the papers properly. I used my Martha Stewart score board to score the edges. I used an 8 1/2 x 11 paper for the base, and so I placed the paper on the score board so that the long edge was up against the top of the board. I then scored the paper at 3 1/2 inches, 4 inches, 4 1/2 inches, and then 8 inches. I then got out my paper trimmer and cut off the excess 3 inches of paper that I would not need. I then flipped the paper and measured the length of the paper pad and then cut off the excess width of the paper at 6 inches I believe (The measuresments will be different, depending on what size the notepads are. I always just get out my ruler and take the measurements of the notepads I am using and then add about 1/4 of an inch to each measurement because I've found that it looks nicer.) I then cut lines across the center between the 4 and 4 1/2 inch score lines and then after folding up the other score lines and adhering the card stock base together, popped out the two sections where I cut the lines to have something to slide a pen in with the notepad. 

(Those are really horrid directions, if anyone is interested, I could do a step-by-step with pictures of each step. You don't actually need a score board for this. It could be done by marking off with a ruler and then simply folding the paper at the lines and then use scissors to cut off the excess paper.)

For the first notepad holder, I used basic blue cardstock from Michaels, and layered it with a My Mind's Eye 6x6 paper pad. I believe that the flowers are old ones from Prima, and the gold pearl is from Queen & Co. The sentiment is made of Thickers and the pen is from a giant pack of Fiskars gel pens that my MIL bought me a couple of Christmases ago. The punched designs are from a EKSuccess border punch that I got at TJMaxx for like 4 dollars last summer. I really like how EKSuccess makes their punches. They are very durable, and the flatten out so that you can store multiple punches on top of one another.

For the second paper pad, I used primarily things from my stash. The pink woodgrain washi tape is from Darice and I also used thickets, as well as some old ribbon and patterned paper. The card stock is from a basic color card stock pack from Michaels. I used the same process to create all of these notepad holders. The washi tape is actually to make a mistake I made in cutting out the section to hold the pen. It doesn't look exactly what I intended, but I think that it still looks nice.

The last one is my very favorite. I absolutely love the stamp set (Studio G stamp set that was only $.75 at Michaels, score!). I stamped out the images and sentiment on basic card stock from Michaels with Bahama Breeze blue memento ink and some Studio G blue rhinestones and fussy cut the images. I used a 1 1/2 inch circle punch from Fiskars to punch out the sentiment. The patterned paper is from Crate Paper's "The Pier" 6x6 paper pad. I absolutely love that paper and can't wait to create something else with it. Right now though I like some of the papers so much that I don't actually want to cut in to it! :) In my experimenting with different ways to make these holders, I discovered that two cut outs on the side works much better than just the one, but I got the pen to stay with a little velcro. From now on though, I will be using the method I used from the above holders.

 

PS - Sorry for the novel. LOL. I need to get back into a schedule of posting instead of one ginormous post every few weeks!

Sticky Note holders

 One of the things that I plan on adding to my Etsy shop soon are Sticky Notes holders. The base is a plastic picture frame, with patterned paper slipped in the frame instead of a picture. On the outside a sticky note pad is glued or taped to the frame and I velcroed a mechanical pencil to the front as well. I believe that the paper is from My MInd's Eye, but I don't remember the exact collection at the moment. the "Be Happy" stamp is from the dollar aisle at Target, the notepad from Wal-Mart and the pencil from the Dollar Tree. The ribbon flower on the pink frame was made by someone at my church. She gave it to me on the outside of a gift bag. I wanted to preserve it, so I used it for added embellishment.

Sorry for the poor pictures quality, after the sun goes down it is hard to take decent pictures in our apartment!