I live in Dallas. I love football. You got it, I'm a diehard Cowboys fan. Having said that, today I will be cheering loud and long for the New Orleans Saints. Go Saints!!!
(Don't you love my little Cricut made Saints sign? I was taking a break from cutting out the pieces for my kids' valentines for school)
We got this cute little bag and card delivered to our door last night. It's a BOO. In our neighborhood people leave treats on each others porches at Halloween. The people who receive the "Boo"s then make their own treats and pass the fun on to another family. This is all done in secret and is great fun for all the kids. We will put the ghost that came in our bag on our front door so everyone will know that we have had our treats and somebody else is waiting for a surprise.
The funny thing about getting our Boo last night is that we had nearly finished making Boos of our own to start things off. Now we're ready to pass on the fun. The Girlies and I made chocolate pretzel rods, cookies, and mummymallows. I'll let the fun pictures speak for themselves.
This is the sign our victims will hang up in order to tell others they have already been BOO'd and the poem to explain what is going on.
I used Martha Stewart's new tinsel glitter to "liven" up my ghost and BOO a little.
Orange hot chocolate, can you stand it? So cute!
The Girlies picked out pencils and buttons to include too. They are excited to see the people they Boo'd in secret using their pencils in class. What are the odds they won't give themselves away?
Here it is, all bundled up and ready to be left on someone's front porch. We put all the goodies in a halloween sand bucket. The kids will deliver under the cover of darkness tonight.
This is Bitty's fairy from the Paper Fashions Fairy book I told you about last week. I learned two things from working on this with her. One, 8 year olds will make each individual piece a different color and pattern if you let them. Most of the time they don't care if these colors and patterns look good together. Two, 8 year olds may have a hard time visualizing what they are doing if you try to help them draw their stencils on the back of the patterned paper to avoid the pencil lines showing.
This is Bug's "Mermaid Fairy Waitress". I learned a couple of things working with her as well. One, 10 year olds will also put as many colors and patterns as possible together but at least this 10 year old will stress over what goes together and what doesn't. They may not end up making the right call on this. Two, 10 year olds are old enough to understand the concept of mirror image when it comes to drawing on the back and flipping and also making one glove stencil work for both right and left hand gloves.
I also have a word of warning to any of you who might use this with your kids... Kids love glitter glue. This little bit of trouble (it's both glue and glitter, how can that not be a problem on occasion?) is outweighed by the fact that my kids have spent HOURS just playing with the stencils. They love drawing different fashion ideas on plain typing paper over and over. It's wonderful to see how their imagination has been sparked.
Bug actually liked this so much that she spent her own money to buy this...
Don't forget that if you want to win your own Paper Fashions Fantasy book you need to comment with your email address to this post.
Several weeks ago I received this very cute book from KLUTZ. They wanted to know if I'd like to review it. Boy, how could I pass up crafts, fashion design, kid projects, and tiny little clothes hangers all wrapped up in one package? I mean really, look at those tiny hangers!
Things have been totally crazy at my house but I did make time to tear this open and do a little paper fashion design and it was SO MUCH FUN. Here's a synopsis of the book.
"In the Klutz paper fashions tradition, this book comes with everything girls need to design an entire one-of-a-kind wardrobe, including irresistibly tiny hangers to finish the fashions in style. Unique to this book, though, are fashions that are the stuff of fantasy: goddess gowns, pretty princess dresses, fairy finery, and more. Specially designed papers and stencils make it simple to create everything from flowing cloaks and twinkling tiaras to mermaid tails and fairy wings. And we've even added glitter to the glue — a simple way to sparkle up any fashion.
For ages 8 to Adult!"
On my first pass through the book I noticed that it had several types of fantasy fashion to build on.
You can create Fairies, Princesses, Witches, Goddesses, and Mermaids.
The ideas for these different ladies are amazing. Whoever did the designing for the book is very creative. I was completely engaged without having even opened the crafting supplies.
Along with all the lovely pictures and ideas the book comes with patterned and solid paper and some great sheer and glittery paper as well. The embellishments include ribbons, beads, sequins, and sparkly glitter glue. The contents I found most wonderful were the stencils. KLUTZ has broken down the different design pieces into their elements and created nice sturdy template plastic stencils.
I found the kit very easy to use which left me wide open to creativity. I decided to go a little Project Runway for my first fantasy dress. You know what I mean, big collar going straight up on the shoulder. It was so much fun to make. I do have one hint.
I used my stencils on plain paper first to put the different design pieces together so that I could cut them out as one unit. Then I laid the piece that the pattern had been cut away from to lay on my final paper so I could make sure the paper design would show through the way I wanted before I cut on the paper I only had one small piece of. This picture is my white paper laid over my patterned paper for placement.
Here's the final product hanging on it's teeny tiny hanger.
See the big collar? So PR, Non?
Tonight I am going to let the Girlies play around with me and I will show you how that goes on Monday. Oh, and I can't forget, KLUTZ has generously offered to give three of my readers a copy of this cute little book and kit. Leave me a comment and be sure to include your email address and next week I will draw three names.
Bitty's birthday is this Sunday. Bug is a week later. As you can imagine, it is birthday party season here at the house of Sunshine. Last year both Girlies were starting a new school and didn't know anyone so we didn't have birthday parties. Instead we waited until months later and took one kid each to the American Girl Cafe. This year we decided to make up for the lack of full on party last year by doing it up big. We are having a Carnival at our house.
I am making the invitations myself based on what the Girlies asked for. I printed the info (including the No Gifts disclaimer, we are having far too many kids to have all those gifts) on cardstock. I used my Martha Stewart circle cutter to cut them into disks.
I used my Cricut to cut out flower shapes to put behind the disks. Even with the bad lighting my Cricut looks good in photos, doesn't it?
I sandwiched a tongue depressor (why would you want your tongue to be sad?) between the invite disk and the cute little flower die cut.
I'll have pics of the final product next time. Check it out though, I only made THIS MUCH mess working on this project.
Aren't these the cutest things? They were in the Doodlebug Designs booth too. As soon as I am done with my massive stack of birthday invitations I am going to have to make a few of these. They will look great in Bitty's room.
In the midst of all this crafty reporting I thought I would finally show you a project I did months ago. I was the room mother for Bitty's 2nd grade class this year so it fell to me to get the teacher an end of the year gift. As a class we spent nearly all of our money on parties and fun for the kids so I decided to make the teacher a gift instead of the standard gift card.
I started with one of the Girlies' old board books as the base of a memory album for the teacher.
I roughed up the book a little and painted the spine before glueing in paper.
My corner rounding punch matched the book edges perfectly.
A little embossing resist on the front cover gave it a nice depth and a little sparkle. I used Tim Holtz stamps on this project.
I thought this quote suited 2nd grade as if it were written for it.
My new Crop-o-dile made punching a hole and setting an eyelet in the board book as easy as pie. The book was quite thick by the time I was done so it is good I could tie it closed.
The inside of the book was all about the kids. Every kid in the class is featured being themselves. I also included the kids' names on each page but you don't get to see those.
The last two pages were signed by all the kids. I can't begin to tell you how much they loved being included in the project and being "in the know" before the teacher got her gift.
This was my first board book covering project and I learned so much. I can't wait to do it again.
The Craft Critique reporters split up duty at CHA so that we could get everything done (I'm not sure we did, even with that) so I didn't look at the product of too many scrapbooking companies. It was impossible to miss some of their booths though. As an example, I thought Tim Holtz's Idea-ology booth was fantastic. You can see some pics of it here.
My very favorite booth design was from a company called Dooldebug Designs. So obviously, since I call my daughter "Doodlebug" that drew me right in. But how could I not also fall in love with the bright colors and clever ideas?
Also, I'm a sucker for a sweet shop.
And cupcakes.
This birthday tree was my favorite but they also have them for seasons and holidays.
I'm pretty sure I like the birthday tree most. Which one do you prefer?
I may need to make Bitty's room look like this last one. What do you think?
CHA Summer 2009 is over and I have returned home. These are not listed in order of importance. Getting home was hard, I missed my kids, and boy am I happy to be here on my couch with my (sore) feet up. What an amazing trip I had.
I met some really important people in the world of crafting while I was in Florida, which was so much fun. To tell you the truth, it was just as much fun to get to meet my Co-Craft Critique ladies and also to get to meet so many day in and day out crafters.
I also got to see many lovely things. These are Tombow's waterbased markers. And these are alcohol based Copic Markers.
Aren't they so pretty? I do love markers.
How about these marbles made from Pardo Clay by Viva Decor? Pardo Clay is made from Beeswax, cool huh? The sun holding the marbles drew me right in.
This is my friend Jenny of Craft Test Dummies wearing a ring made from Beadalon's new Stainless Steal wire for wire wrapping.
Clark Kent left his glass sitting out in the Cricut new releases area.
So there's your eye candy from CHA. We've been covering the trade show fast and furiously over at Craft Critique. I didn't get home from the airport until nearly 4am this morning so I think it's time for me to hit the sack. Don't forget to check back for more on CHA.
Want to learn more about this project? Want to read my review of the lovely paper you see? Go take a look at Craft Critique.
