Season's Greetings and Christmas Cards

Crafty Kid got an offer to have her cards in a local store. She's SUPER excited. I'll show you the cards we worked on the other day below and talk more in depth at the end about our new adventure.

For this project we used the following:

• Cards
• Scrapbooking Paper (Holiday Themed)
• Decorative Scissors
• Crafting Glue or Hot Glue (we used a glue gun)
• Snowflake Punch Out
• Scissors or Paper Slicer

For the two cards above it was really simple. We used the paper slicer to cut the scrapbook paper. Then Crafty Kid used the decorative scissors for a more interesting edge. We had some scrapbook paper that had holiday phrases on it so we cut those out as well. Then we hot glued the cut outs onto the card. (Use the glue of your choice to adhere it.)

We used silver star brads for the card above. Taking the tip of a sharp scissor we made a small puncture in the card. We put the star through and bent the flaps through on the other side. Then we glued the cut out holiday phrase scrapbook paper onto the card. 

This one above I had so much fun with. We had scraps of paper left over from other cards and cut them into different stacking block shapes to make a tree. For a finishing touch we put a punched out snowflake as the star. The Merry Christmas card on a polka dot green background seemed like a nice modern twist for a holiday card.

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Ok. So back to the entrepreneur adventure.... There have been a lot of talks in our house as to what to make, how much to sell it for, and how much work goes into it. I'm proud of her, and I think this opportunity will help her understand things from a business perspective. I want her to be aware of the time, energy, and money being put into the creation of the cards, but at the end of the day I just want it to be fun. I think it will make her appreciate what it takes to be a hard worker.

She's already mentioned to me that sometimes she just doesn't "feel like" crafting. She also said that sometimes she doesn't feel like she does enough. (For example I hot glue all the pieces because our new glue gun heats up to 380F. Very effective. Not so good for kids.) I remind her that she is the creativity behind the crafts, and to be excited she has naturally intuitive vision when it comes to things of an artistic nature. (She draws and paints in addition to what we work on.) I've explained to her that the construction of the craft can be improved through repetition, and that her creativity will only expand as she uses it. Bottom line is to have fun and spend time together. I think she gets it. She's a smart kid after all.

We'll be sure to keep you updated!

Holiday Ornaments: Part 1

It's that time of year to make the Christmas ornaments. This is the third year the kids will make homemade ornaments for the family. I have to admit the two prior years I picked the projects and I kept it simple and fun. This year with Crafty Kid being so interested in crafting I let her help me pick out items at Michael's that we would use to decorate and fill our ornaments. I have to take advantage of what little time is left where I am "cool step-mom" and she wants to spend hours on end with me seeing where our creativity will take us.

Below are a list of items we picked up to use. Other than the ornaments themselves this is just a suggested list of decorative items you can use:

• Ornaments (plastic is best for kids to work with)
• Punch outs (Star, Snowflake, Heart)
• Scrapbooking paper
• Glitter
• Epson salt (looks like snow!)
• Crafting glue (dries clear)
• Glitter glue (silver, gold, & white)
• Embellishments

We chose clear plastic ornaments that were flattened so the items didn't have as much room to move. However round, square, or any size plastic fillable ornaments would work for (most of) these projects.

I had found some Mickey Mouse scrapbook paper on sale for $.07 and thought it would be fun to use different punch shapes with this paper. I started to punch out the paper and realized filling the ornament was going to be very hard to do. Since the paper had a white backing this made for a great snowflake cut out. I decided to glue some of the snowflakes and some carefully cut out Mickey's to the inside of the globe. Through trial and error I found that crafting glue (for foam, wood, or plastic) works best as it dries clear. I used a Q-tip instead of the brush in the glue jar, as that was too messy, to put the glue on the cut out paper. I then put the cut out on the top of my pinky and carefully put it inside the ornament. Each time before the glue would dry I would swirl the glitter around so that it would stick to the sides. Hopefully you can see in this last picture that it turned out great once the glue was fully dry.

While I worked on my Mickey ornament, Crafty Kid was up to her own projects. She really loved using the glitter glue as you can see below. She thought it made everything look nicely "frosted". The glitter glue bottles were a $1 a piece find. Go figure it was her favorite thing after all the money we spent! (LOL) The Epson salt we are still deciding if it's as cool of a "snow effect" as we want. Full disclosure that we originally wanted to make "melted snowmen" but that didn't turn out as nice and easy as what we saw on Pinterest. I might share my "fail" with you in the next blog. (Hence part 2 of Holiday Ornament's coming soon!)

Below are some of the ideas we came up with using what we had on hand. It's always great to save what you can from previous projects. Those yellow flowers and the red cherries are left over from when I made my Mary Poppins hat!

Hope you enjoyed seeing some of the things we made. Stay tuned for Part 2.

Creepy Science Lab - Halloween Party

I know Halloween is over, but i just HAD to share this blog with you even if it is late. I did promise you in my last blog post about the DIY Fake Blood - Tablecloth Decoration that I would follow up with other Halloween decor I was working on. The friend who offered their home up for the Halloween party really wanted to have a Creepy Science Lab theme.

The first part of this blog I will talk about some of the DIY stuff I put together to match her theme. The second part of the blog will show how the overall theme turned out when everything was put in place. (Please note that the lab stuff was borrowed and so i can only share with you the cost of things I helped to make.)

This first one was really easy and cheap. You will need mason jars, yellow food coloring, and rubber bats, rodents, spiders or whatever other creepy realistic rodents/pests you can find. Rubber rodents are $1 a piece, Mason jars $1 to $2, food coloring is around $3 and so it should cost about $10 to make 3 "mad scientist jars".

We left the rat alone in one jar. His beady red eyes looked awesome in the yellow water. The other jars we cut off the bats wings and put each wing and the body in separate jars. You just drop in around 10 drops of yellow food coloring and fill the jar with water.

Tip: A lot of sauces you buy at the store come in mason jars. Peel off the labels and reuse them for these kinds of projects.

Ripped up black curtains help set the mood for the room, which of course is always "dark and creepy" when it comes to Halloween. We took old curtains and shredded them using scissors. (If you don't have any black curtains lying around I suggest checking out your local thrift store.) In the above picture I'm showing you how to create realistic wear and tear on "50 years left behind" curtains. 

One method is to twist a piece of the curtain with your fingers, then cut a chunk of that off and that will make a jagged hole in the curtain. Another way is to get a pair of scissors (preferably dull blades) and instead of cutting straight, pull down tight on the curtain and rip up with scissors. This makes it so that your tears and cuts aren't all in a straight line.

We really scored when we found these mirrored wall candle holders at the thrift store. I believe we paid $1 a piece for these and $.20 a candle. We took black Plasti Dip ($10 a can) and sprayed that over it to get our desired look. The bonus on Plasti Dip is it peels off if you want your item to go back to the way it originally looked. We taped the mirrors before we sprayed them to get a clean look.

Well that about sums up the DIY projects I worked on for this party. I will point out things in the pictures below that we were able to find at a cheap price. Again the lab stuff is real and was on loan :)

Thrift store items: gold tray $1, candle holders $1 each, gray metal box $2, gray yarn $1 (and seriously what a cool "dust" effect that made)

Loved the use of the electronic tea candles. You can get a 12 pack of these on Amazon for around $10. Great thing is you can use them for many other events too.

There are some real brains and some fake brains in this picture above :)

Bought those pop up paper wall spiders you see above for $2 at Michaels. It was on clearance right before Halloween and was Martha Steward brand. The sconce was $2 at the thrift store.

Gold candle holder was $1 thrift store find. The light and cabinet above are covered in "creepy cloth" and bought at the Dollar Tree. Hard to tell from the picture but the purple light bulb was a cool effect in person.

Our guests even made "creepy" snacks and bought wines that had Halloween fitting names. It was a great night out and we had a lot of fun with this party.