Candle Holder Cookie Tray

This project was something I've wanted to try for a while. I really wanted to do something like this as dessert trays for my wedding. The few times I went to the thrift store last spring I wasn't able to find the right plate or I couldn't find a candle holder that was heavy enough. By chance, a couple months ago, I found two silver candle holders with a nice base and some decent weight to them. Not too far away, on the same shelf, I found matching China with a pretty blue flower pattern.

I used my hot glue gun on high heat for this project. The truth is I had a "win" and a "fail". I was able to get one of the plates to stick to the candle holder and maintain a grip. The other one wouldn't no matter how many times I tried. (Good thing about hot glue is if it won't stick it's pretty easy to peel off.) 

I'm not really sure what the solution is... possibly gorilla glue? or super glue? If I ever find the time I'll try it again. If this project interests you there are lots of other "pins" on Pinterest that might be able to provide additional insight.

Valentine's Day Cards

I warn you in advance that this is going to be an entry where I gush about how proud I am of Crafty Kid. Everything you see in this entry she made herself, from start to finish, with no help from any adults. 

I was out all day yesterday and came back to find these beautiful cards and a wonderfully laid out crafting work area. Talk about being impressed! She even had my 13-year-old stepson helping her because she showed him how to use the Cuttlebug embosser and he loved it. If that isn't enough, today I showed her how to use Photo Grid and she made the collage image you see above for the blog :)

As you can see she had her crafting area laid out nicely. The biggest problems any crafter faces is the issue of time and space. Nobody wants to waste a lot of time setting things out or cleaning them up. Or waste even more time digging through things to find what they need. And most people have to use their kitchen table (like we do) and so you have a limited work space. I taught her to create work stations for the cards so that she knows where everything is and can easily go from one step to the next. 

She set up the following stations: Paper, Cutting, Embossing, Gluing, Embellishments, and Stamping. Everything was laid out on the kitchen table lining the perimeter, like a horseshoe, and she worked off of the clear space in the center.

Obviously taking time to set up was not her favorite thing in the beginning. She just wanted to get right down to crafting, and this always left a big mess. Scissors lost under paper, embellishments on the floor, no table space when you needed to emboss. Of course that lead to frustration, and let's face it, at 11 you kind of just give up on it at that point. I was then stuck cleaning up everything to make sure it got back in it's place, which could take up to 30 minutes. (Again, goes back to knowing where things are so you don't waste time digging through everything.)

So this breakthrough she had is a big win for everyone! She's productive and happy making the cards, and it took me all of 5 minutes to get everything back where it belonged the next day.

As far as card design, it was her idea to buy the doilies a few months back. Look at how creative she was with using them! I was also super impressed that she mixed and matched so many techniques. (Layering paper & doilies, stamping, embellishments, embossing, shape punching)

Making these cards takes time and patience. I'm proud of her for following through with her creativity and learning at the age of 11 how important it is to be organized.

Holiday Ornaments: Part 2

So the Holiday season has come and gone yet again. I may have been quiet on the blog the last few weeks, but we sure have been busy crafting, party planning, and decorating! I'll have lots to share in the coming weeks.

I figured it would be best to start with the second half of our ornament project. I had held back on blogging about them because the Disney themed ones were a gift for my family. Crafty Kid had a great time making these and I was glad I came up with the idea because they were easy to make as well. We really loved making the spiral paper ornament! It was a lot of fun to do and such a beautiful result.

For this craft you will need the following:

• Double sided scrapbooking tape
• Mickey scrapbooking paper (or character of your choice)
• Paper Slicer or sharp scissors
• Q-Tip or a pencil
• Styrofoam or Epson salt (if you want to add "snow")

The first round of ornaments Crafty Kid and I were having trouble deciding what looked best inside the ornament. Some of our issues were that in order to get bulkier items to stay we needed glue, which was difficult to use due to the small opening on the top of the ornament. The paper items often just fell on their side and again gluing them to the wall of the ornament was a bit of a process. Not to mention only one side of the paper had a print on it so if it flipped over it just looked like white paper.

We had some scrapbook paper with larger sized Disney character faces on it, and luckily before we went to use it I had a breakthrough. I realized we could glue two of the characters together so there was a design on both the front and the back. In the ornament above we cut out two of the Mickey faces and glued them together with double sided tape. Then we rounded off the edges with a small, sharp pair of scissors.

We then put the double sided Mickey paper inside the ornament. We were super happy to see it stood up inside the ornament. We had some packing styrofoam I saved, so we broke it into pieces to put inside the ornament to create a snow globe effect. Crafty Kid really LOVES her glitter glue so she put some drips of it on the outside of the ornament.

For the Minnie and Pluto ornaments above we followed the same initial steps. Once the Minnie paper was inside the ornament we used Epson salt as snow and Crafty Kid dotted the top with white glitter glue. For the Pluto ornament she decided she wanted to dot the entire ornament and leave just the Pluto paper inside.

This ornament above is hands down my favorite! We were messing around with some smaller strips of scrap paper and came up with the idea to spiral it. I showed Crafty Kid that she could use a Q-Tip to roll up the paper and she ran with it! We used a couple different shades of silver paper. I cut the thin strips and she rolled them up. Some we stuck inside at that length, others we cut to different lengths. It came out so pretty.

Note: We put some glitter and flat white gems inside. I don't think it's necessary. You can barely tell unless you look very closely at the bottom, which is where they sank to. That's the beauty of the paper is it's so light as a spiral it has a floating effect.

So as promised from my previous Holiday Ornaments: Part 1 blog, above is my melted snowman Pinterest fail. Mine, of course, is the one in the right hand corner. Honestly it doesn't look as bad as I remember, but it still wasn't as cute as what I saw on Pinterest. 

Just goes to show that not all craft projects are as easy to replicate as you think. That's why when I blog I do my best to go step by step. I hope it's helping those reading with some ideas and inspiring you to craft on!

Holiday Magnet Name Cards

This was a craft I made to enhance favors for our Holiday Party at work. The only thing I had to purchase was the magnets for the back. I figured if I was going to spend 4 hours making 30 place card name tags I could at least make them a reusable item :)

You will need:

• Scrapbooking Paper
• Decorative Scissors
• Crafting Glue or Double Sided Tape
• Regular Scissors or Paper Slicer
• Snowflake Punch Out
• Snowflake Brads (if you want)

All of the name cards I made had slight differences. I am just going to show you an example of two different ones. For all of them I used my paper slicer to cut the base paper out, and used the backs of scrap paper for the center piece, which I wrote the names on. The one above I punched out 4 snowflakes and used the scraps as well. I glued all the pieces together using crafting glue that dries clear. 

For this one I used 3 pieces of paper that I layered on top of each other. Again I used the crafting glue. I also used the decorative scissors to create a fun edge. For an added touch I put 2 snowflake brads on the corners.

The final touch was to add an adhesive magnet to the back. I bought a 25ft roll and have plenty left over for other projects. Although this is a simple craft I do have a few tips:

• I found it easiest to stick with the 3 layered look. I just switched up which papers I was putting together. It was fun to play around with different patterns.
• I liked the common theme of them all having paper snowflakes. I only used the brads on my example.
• The decorative scissors really gave them a nice finish. You can even cut it to make decorative edges. (Which you can see in the right corner of the picture above)
• BIGGEST TIP:  I found it was much easier to use double sided scrapbooking adhesive. I use the permanent kind and it sticks together really well. Plus it saves you from waiting for the glue to dry.

Corkboard Picture Frames

A couple of months ago Crafty Kid was with me at Michaels and we picked up a bunch of raw cork for a school project she was working on. It was marked down 60% and I figured I would eventually find a use for it. Flash forward to a couple weekends ago, my sister was in and we went to the Salvation Army. I found a bunch of picture frames between $.50 and $1 a piece. Score! I knew immediately that I could make some pretty cute framed corkboard memo/keepsake holders.

Supplies needed for this project:

• Raw Cork Pads (4x4 size used here)
• Picture Frames
• Cardboard 
• Crafting Knife (exacto)
• Hot Glue Gun

First thing I did was take out the glass in the picture frame. (Consider keeping it for future projects if you have the room to store it.) I then took a cardboard box and cut it to the size of the frame since this is what you are going to glue your raw cork on to. Make sure to put the unmarked side of the cardboard facing up because the color closely matches the raw cork. Close the back of the frame up. Now you can start to space out your raw cork.

I glued a solid 4x4 square of the raw cork in the top corner with hot glue. From there I started to measure out the pieces that would fill in the rest of the space on the cardboard. I have no tip or trick here. I just eyed it up and tried to be precise. The crafting knife cuts the raw cork nicely. I scored it and then gently cracked the raw cork in half. I then used the crafting knife to clean up the cut edge. I glued these pieces into place until all of the cardboard was covered.

As you can see above they turned out nice! Don't worry about small gaps in the cork puzzle pieces you've now connected. The cardboard underneath is such a close color you can barely tell. Also, if you are truly using these for their intended purpose they will soon be covered in memos, pictures, and keepsakes.

I think this could make a great gift as it can be utilized in both your home or at the office.

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.

*****************************************************************

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.

Halloween Card & Treat Bags

Crafty Kid and I made two different Halloween projects a few weekends ago. The first was a card. 

We took a blank white card and stamped it with some dancing skeletons. The bottom of one stamp had a spider and the top of one had a cat, so we inked only that part to get the desired look. Then we took scrapbooking paper and cut out parts so you could see the stamps poking out. After we glued down the paper we placed the spooky stamp on top. (See below)

The second craft was making treat bags. You can pick up plain bags at any local craft store and there are many great ways to decorate them. Below are just a few examples of what we did.

The bag above we decided to make the skeletons "dance" up steps.

This second bag we put a ghost on one side and a cat stamp on the other.

To get the desired look we put black ink on a Q-tip and smeared it around.

You can start off with light strokes and press harder to make it darker.

The third bag we used the Spooky stamp.

We cut out a border with the scrapbook paper and glued it on.

Below are the finished products.

As you can see, it only takes a few crafting tools to make lots of different designs.

If you try this project at home let us know how it turns out!

It's a jolly holiday with Mary...

So we've already talked about my love of Halloween, so it should be no surprise that I go all out with my costumes!

So who I am being this year is someone I've loved since I was a kid... Mary Poppins! Now anyone who knows me well knows I'm a BIG Disney fan. And Mary Poppins, my friends, was the start of my Disney experience.

It was the first Disney music I was exposed to as my Mom used to play the record for me when I was a toddler. She said I'd dance around to it for hours, so it's no wonder that this story has stuck with me all these years. I even took my family to see the traveling Broadway production of it in Philadelphia a few years ago and cried like a baby at the end! (Mostly cause she flies away with her umbrella! So cool to see live... a real flying Mary Poppins! Ahhh, I'll never grow up.)

Now I've been other Disney characters in previous years, including Snow White and Wendy Darling from Peter Pan. Mary, however, has been on mind for a long time and I just couldn't wrap my head around how to pull her costume off. That was until my friends and I did a clothing swap this Spring and I found the perfect Mary skirt! It was off to the races at that point as I knew the rest would be easy to put together if I set my mind to it.


So here in this post I'm going to show you how I made my Mary Poppins hat....

Luckily for me I already had a black bowler hat from a previous costume when I was a clown. The first step was to get rid of the rainbow strip on the original hat and replace it with a black strip of ribbon. Two reasons using the black ribbon works out really well for me:

1) The black ribbon covered the glue that was left behind from the original strip of ribbon.

2) I glued all the remaining pieces needed for the hat onto the ribbon. If I ever want to use

this hat again for something else it will be easy to take off and start again.

 

 

Below you will see the fake flowers and berries I picked up at my local Michaels. (Lucky for me Christmas stuff is out already so I didn't have any issues finding the berries. On the flip side, they didn't have any daisy flowers so I had to create my own.) 

 

I carefully removed the flowers from their stems and used scissors to cut the berries off. Notice I left the stems of the berries long so that I would have an easier time arranging them before gluing them on.

 



 

 

I chose to stack the petals to give the flower more depth. I learned from the first flower I did that the best way to achieve the look I was going for was to hot glue the center of the first petal to the ribbon. I then hot glued the center of a second petal on top of the first petal.

Now I could position the berry where I wanted it and hot glue it, making sure to press down on the petals and seal the berry stem between the ribbon and the petal. Once it dried I put a third white petal hot glued in the center to cover up the hot glue marks on the petals below.

Final touch was to the small yellow center flowers. Again, I stacked two yellow flowers to give it more depth.

 

 

 

Now the clown hat had come with a flower sticking out of the side. This was amusing to me as you might have already noticed from the picture I posted above of Julie Andrews, that Mary Poppins also had a flower coming off the one side of her hat. I didn't think the original flower worked so I altered it to make it a white flower with a yellow center.

 

 

 

So that is how I turned my cheap clown costume hat into a pretty decent replica of Mary Poppins hat. I can't wait to share the final look of my costume! Only 3 weeks until Halloween.... stay tuned for pictures :) 

 

 



Card Crafting

Today I spent the afternoon with Crafty Kid making homemade cards. We used a variety of supplies, some of which are in the picture posted below. The thing I like about this project is that anyone truly into crafting will have most, if not all, of the supplies necessary to do this project in their craft box. It's all the things you acquire and reuse time and time again, especially if you are into scrapbooking.

To follow along with our project I suggest you have the following tools:

• Cards that are blank on the inside
• Color or pattern on the outside is up to your personal preference
• A sharp pair of scissors
• Decorative Scissors are great for fun edging
• A paper slicer can help make clean lines
• Stamps and ink pads
• Decorative hole punches
• Double sided scrapbook tape
• Hot glue gun
• Card stock or scrapbooking paper

I am going to take you through building one of the cards step-by-step and then show you pictures of some of the completed projects. I think once you have all your supplies out and get started you'll see how easy it is to make a variety of cards for all kinds of occasions.

STEP 1 & 2

Pick your card. Then pick an accent color with the card stock that you think will be complimentary.  I chose a mint green card, so I thought a powder grey would pair nicely. If you have a paper slicer use it to cut a strip of paper about an inch and a half wide and for now keep it the length of the scrapbook paper. (With a steady hand you can use a pair of regular scissors. Make sure they are sharp to avoid frayed edges.)

STEP 3

Select a whole punch that you would like to have cut out in the strip of paper. I chose a heart. Use the cut out as many times on the strip as you would like. I decided to space out the hearts as evenly as possible down the row. I also wanted the heart to be centered so after I finished my cut outs I trimmed the top of the strip to make it the same amount of space on the top and the bottom.

STEP 4 & 5

Cut the strip to match the length of the card and use double sided tape to adhere the strip. In this case I decided to put it at the top of the card so I could do a different embellishment on the bottom. This is how you get a layered look for your card and as you can see the cut out hearts reveal the color of the card beneath it.

STEP 6 & 7

Use the cut out pieces of hearts on the bottom of the card. I used a hot glue gun for securing these. Quick and easy. I suggest arranging the hearts on the card to get the look you want and then pick them up one by one and glue them down. This also helps you figure out where the best place is for your stamp, if you are using one. I couldn't resist using this cute stamp since it fit with this design so perfectly.

Step 8
Finished card. Blank inside for you to use for any occasion.

Parting Thoughts

If you try this at home I hope you find it as fun and easy to do as we did! To make the 5 cards below it took 2 hours. (Including set-up and clean-up)

I am so proud to say Crafty Kid loved this project and was very good at it. She made 3 out of the 5 cards featured below with little input from me other than to ask if I liked certain stamps and/or color combinations.

TIP: There are so many ways to decorate these cards. Check your local craft store often for cheap or on sale embellishments. You never know when they will come in handy for your next project :)