Baby Shower crafted gifts - Clothes Dividers

So I told my aunt that I would help decorate for my cousin's shower. My cousin is having a boy and has a jungle animal theme for her baby accessories. I happened across this tutorial http://adreatravis2008.blogspot.com/2010/08/my-second-video.html and just had to make these part of my gift to her.  Please visit the tutorial and leave some appreciation if you like this project.
I used fun foam for the ovals and cut them out on my die cutting machine as I wanted a larger size than the nestabilities I have. I picked colors that went along with the scheme and mostly replicated animals similar to her sets and added a couple more - the bird and the frog.

I decided to use some twine I had for more of a jungle/rustic feel. Did you see how the chick is in an oval (or is it an egg)? And because I had two monkeys I thought they needed to be the next size.

With the cutting I had to re trim the ovals as the fun foam had a bit of a perforated look even using the deep blade housing and a very slow cutting speed.

What I did different from my inspiration is that I used twine instead of ribbon, and I made the oval the entire mat for the piece without having rectangles hanging down as I thought they would be easily damaged. I wanted this to be about making new mom's life easier.

Generally I went with the normal animal sizes for the order. The exception is the frog and I just thought he needed to be on "water" blue!

Truthfully it was a fun project with great impact that the mommy to be loved (once I explained what they are! LOL). All the printing was done on the computer onto card stock.

Apologies for the picture sizes. I didn't want the post to scroll forever just repeating the same project but different color and animal but still wanted to share them all with you.

I was trying to work out how to do some groovy things in my photo editing software and starting losing the will to share so when plain and simple. 

IngredientsFun Foam
Card stock
Cricut Create a Critter
Spellbinders Rectangle Nestabilities
Eyelets
Twine

 

Oopsie "Baby on Board" a little more to the right please.

 This card is fairly CAS in my opinion, but then again what do I know!

In the spirit of telling you the ups the downs and the all arounds this isn't exactly the card I was going to make... I had this vision of a single popped layer with airbrushed shading around the image.  All went well until the mask wanted to permanently attach itself to the t-shirt on the oval.  Sheesh! I'm a time limit here.  Did I forget to say the car was packed and ready to go to the baby shower for set up and everyone was waiting for me!...oh I did? Well the car was packed and I guess you get the idea.  Quickly I decide that there is no saving it.  I stamped another t-shirt and promptly got the letter skewed.  ACK! oh no... I'm just going to have to go with it at this point.  So I color it and mount it and pray that all the decorations and paper gifts I made for her will make up for my skewed "Baby on board".  And yes I will start sharing those with you my next post... I probably will divide it over a few posts in case anyone is inspired by my humble little creations.  Thanks for looking and sharing in my oops!

Ingredients
Card size - 4.25 in x 5.5 in
Cardstock - Neenah
Stamps - GinaKDesigns
Ink - Memento
Color - Copics
Dies - Spellbinders
Techniques - Airbrushing, Dimensional layering, Masking, dry embossing

From your favorite Aliens...

When you have a dear friend that is a plane buff and pilot you can get some pretty interesting conversations late at night and one of them was if they had ever seen a UFO...

Of course a UFO only means the flying object was unidentified.  Right? LOL!  So logically the way my mind works when it came time to make a birthday card for our friend I had to play on this conversation.  We are definitely a bunch of goofballs so I'm sure it really wasn't any surprise for our friend to receive such a silly card.



So do you think this is Out of this World?  I won't pretend it is a piece of art but I do like how it all turned out.  And yes, I do see that bit of marker bleeding at the bottom.  I got ready to spend loads and loads of time and effort trying to eliminate it and then realized that a nice shiney flying saucer would reflect the sky around it.  That's my excuse and I am sticking with it!

TBH I'm particularly proud of remembering to put a bit of pink in the space.  Though honestly I could have spaced the Aliens better.  A fun set from Clear Dollar Stamps that I can't wait to find an excuse to use again.

Ingredients

Card size - 8.5in x 5.5 in

Cardstock - Neenah

Stamps - Clear Dollar Stamps

Ink - Memento

Color - Copics

Other - Embossing (yeah there are some twinkly stars on there)

Techniques - Stamping, Masking, Airbrushing.









A Very Dotty Happy 18th!

Can you tell we are absolutely dotty about our neice and she has a special birthday!  Well in England anyway.  They really celebrate 18th and/or 21st birthdays.  The 21st is more traditional but 18th is really popular too especially as they finish secondary school and don't really graduate like we do in the US (They do national exams and get their results a few months later).

I used a couple of Gina K Stamps sets for this.  I stamped the greeting on the white die cut circles with a rainbow of memento colors.  I then stamped the shirt with the lady bug red on scrap paper and before I cleaned it off I added some metallic Tsukineko ink to the stamp and stamped again to keep the color and add a metallic sheen to the lettering on the T shirt.  I cut out the shirt and put foam tape on it.  I then used my Spellbinders dies to cut out circles in both white and black.  I cut and adhered them together adding the shirt to the front and decorating with rhinestones.  Then I made the background layout and decided to go overboard with the dots theme and emboss the background which meant four passes through the folder and machine with some hand embossing to tease out the dots that get smashed in the sides of the folders.

Time to attach the image circle using some more foam tape and of course I just had to add the rainbow dotty ribbon I already had in my stash!  I don't know if it works or not but I like it.  What about you?

Ingredients

Card size -8.5 x 5.5 inches

Cardstock - Neenah, The Paper Source, Georgia Pacific

Stamps - Gina K - Just So Sporty & Little Tees

Ink - Memento, Tsukineko

Accessories - Embossing Folder, Die cuts, Ribbon, Crystals

Red Hearty Happy Anniversary

So I got creative block and got to trawling Etsy one night, well lets be honest one day & night and got inspired by loads of graphic letterpress cards.  I had wanted to make a Clean & Simple card for my BIL & SIL for their anniversary and this is what I came up with.

I don't know if it completely works.  What do you think?  I like all the components and I really liked it when I sent it.  I think I'm just second guessing myself now.

Anyway at least I used some dies that I have had for a few years and have never used! Oopsie!

Ingredients

Card Size - 8.5 x 5.5 in

Cardstock - Neenah, Archiver's open stock linen texture, The Paper Source

Stamps - Kitchen Sink Stamps

Ink - Memento Tuxedo Black

Accessories - Spellbinders Heart Dies, Cuttlebug Male & Female dies, Ribbon, Heart brad.

Rainbow Butterflies

Isn't it amazing how sometimes the simplest cards to make are the most striking cards to view.  I decided that as this was a get well card I wanted it to be cheerful.  What is more cheerful than a rainbow after the rain and better analogy.  So basically I cut out 12 in strips with the butterfly punch in each color of the rainbow.  I then cut them to length for the card.  Next I sent the strips through my sticker maker.  I did then send them through my die cutting machine with an embossing pad to ensure all the glue was adhered. 

With the excess strips I cut out some of the individual butterflies and then adhered them to each color for some movement.

All that was left was to stamp the greeting with my Big Juicy rainbow inkpad.  The sentiment is Inkadinkado.

Ingredients

Card Size - 8.5 x 5.5 in

Cardstock - Neenah

Paper - The Paper Source

Punch - Martha Stewart

Stamp - Inkadinkado

Ink - Big Juicy

Accessories - sticker maker

"Fezzes are Cool" - how to make your own Fez

Subtitle - "how to make your own fez". - it's handmade not blocked nor perfect.

Our household is a big Dr Who house - now we are are bit subtle about our Dr Who love.  No conventions or outward appearances but if you know us you know we love the Doctor in all his incarnations.  That said it came as no surprise when my eldest gets a prom invite for a masquerade and promptly says - I want a fez.  Simple right?  Well you would think so, especially with all the steampunk related sites around.  It seems that Fez's aren't that well documented in the How To Category unless you want to find a bucket to fit your head and put a tassel in it.  I knew I wanted something a little more durable than that and I believe I have come upon the answer to all those steampunkers who need a fez.

First I measured my son's head - yeah it IS big 22.5 inches  (that's the easy bit)  Then I took some scrap cheap cardstock and fashioned a conical cylinder (is there such a thing?) with it and put it around his head for a fit.  From pictures on the web I knew it wasn't a cylinder, though was only a slight slant. Had to decide how tall the fez was going to be at this point, and truthfully mine is probably a tad on the tall side. If I did another I would probably shorten it by an inch. I took it down to 21 inches circumference by trial and error.  Lots of cutting and trimming and I had my cardstock pattern to cut my fabric. 

I had bought a yard of red felt from the fabric department of Hobby Lobby (very wide) and some medium stiffness Double Sided Fusible Package Interfacing. I needed the stiffness to keep the fez upright but I did want some flexibility so it would survive more than one event.

I did the math (thank you internet) for the radius of a 21inch circle for the top and drew out a circle with the string method.

I cut out 2 felt circles and 1 Interface circle.  I then cut out 2 felt sides and 1 Interface side - I had to piece this together for about an inch.

I then attempted to iron the felt to the interfacing.  It did work a little bit but it isn't a super sticky hold and don't panic when the felt pills up a bit.  Just peel it off and keep going.

Now I got my sewing machine out.  I did a short wide zigzag stitch and attached the circle to the top (21 in) of the side.  There really is no good way to pin it and use a sewing machine.  After I had gone all the way around AND liked how the top looked, I then sewed the side seam together. I won't lie at this point I was praying it was going going to turn out ok.  I went up and down the side seam a couple of passes.  Then I bound the bottom of the side sandwich of 2 felt and 1 Interface together so you couldn't see the white.  Again with the good ol trusty zig zag stitch.

Now the tassel.  I couldn't buy one that would work so I used black crochet thread.  It took a lot of looping for the length.  Then a few knots to ensure it was stable.  I then cut the ends to make them fringe and passed the knotted thread to the top and started binding the tassel to the knot.  This took fabric glue and some patience to get a nice neat appearance.  I did pass the thread through the knot a couple of times in the process to secure it and keep it tidy. Once I had finished I sent the thread with a lot of effort and brute force up through the middle of the tassel to so I had a length to tie onto the hat.  I used a hole punch from my craft stash to create the hole.  I knotted it and glued the knot to stablelize it.

I know this was wordy but I hope it helps anyone out there trying to make their own Fez.  It survived the prom with just about every attendee having a "fez" picture in great shape.  I have a feeling this will become his staple accessory for many, many social functions in the years to come.

Ingredients
Inspiration - Doctor Who
Pattern- Internet, and Trial & error
Cardstock - cheap but sturdy to stand up to make the cone
Pencil - to draw and make the pattern
Felt -
InterfaceThread
Sewing Machine with a zig zag stitch
Crochet thread
Large blunt needle
Hole punch
Glue