Archive for the ‘Crafts’ Category

Can I say something without sounding like I’m knocking my parents? When I was growing up, I kid you not, it was hard to find a blank piece of paper to draw on. I remember looking at my dad’s legal pads from work hoping there would be a blank page somewhere in there.

I’ve kind of taken the opposite approach with my girls. They don’t have permission to use my supplies. But, they have a little table and chairs next to mine. And a cart full of their own supplies.  I let them paint whenever they want to. The only problem is they get really messy. We need to work on clean up time, I know!

My oldest daughter and I had a whole lot of fun making Junk Journals last month. I just have not gotten around to posting the photos on my blog. She really enjoyed watching Tangie’s videos, picking supplies, and following Tangie’s directions. I let her use my Tim Holtz ink pads for this project because her stamp pads are recessed and would not work. You can see even the little one got into the action…I let her glue the “scraps” together. It kept her entertained most of the time we were working on our books.

If you want to learn more about Junk Journals watch these videos by Tangie Baxter. Danielle was so proud of how “fat” her journal is, she kept talking about it so her dad finally said, “I take it *fat* books is the goal here?” Yep, and imagine how fat they will be when they are filled with all the “junk”!

Tangie Baxter’s Supply List:
*Composition Notebook
*Ink Pads
*Scrapbook Paper
*Glue (Aleen’s Tacky Glue, Tombow multi-tip, UHU glue stick)
*Thin Ribbons
*Binder Clips

My comments…I didn’t find the UHU glue stick tacky enough to suit me. Aleen’s glue worked better but it was wet and took longer to dry. I’m a big fan of Tombow, if I’d found the multi-tip I bet I would have liked it. Also, I used some “post it” style plastic tabs…very cool. I just stuck them on and pasted a scrapbook page over it.

Considering chipboard albums have been so hot I guess I’m kind of late on the trend. This is the first chipboard album I’ve done. Actually, my girls helped a whole lot. So, I tried to make it a very simple design, using a purse album from Michael’s dollar bin.

First we applied the solid pastel papers with a sparkly Modge Podge. Then we applied the photos with some flower stickers and photo corners with a glossy Modge Podge. The frames were cut with the Cricut Zoobaloo cartridge but they ended up taking up too much room so we just snipped the corners off.

I’m wondering how long it will take for the Modge Podge to cure?! The “Sparkle” coats were still tacky enough that the pages would stick when we applied the photos with the clear glossy layer. Here the pages are drying in the laundry room over night. I was happy they were “dry enough” to give to Grammy the next morning!

It was a hit with Grammy, we still need to finish Granny’s! Both girls loved “painting” the glue! I’m looking forward to coming up with more crafts to do this summer. They like working at their little craft table while mommy is working at the big table.

Danielle is the “Star Student” this week! So she and I had a lot of fun this weekend working on her star poster. She is very into High School Musical, Camp Rock and Hannah Montana. Since she spends a lot of evenings singing along and knows most of the songs we decided to make a music star themed board. Of course we used black to accentuate the coolness factor!

We made the guitar by tracing hers on Cricut’s 12 x 36 white card stock. The fun part was decorating it with Hannah Montana, Camp Rock, and High School Musical stickers. We went to Target to get the stickers and I was surprised to find acrylic stamps for Hannah Montana and High School Musical! I snatched the last one of each up and made sure Danielle understood that these were MY stamps, but that she could use them for this project. The stamp sets at Target are larger than the ones pictured below. They have a lot of great stars, flourishes, hearts, and music graphics that are very versitile. They do not have the large character stamps pictured below.

I helped her stamp them in black and she worked on coloring the details the rest of the weekend. The huge gemstone sticker “knobs” were the perfect finishing touch, too cute!

The stars were cut with two Creative Memories star shapes. There are a total of twelve cut out with DCWV’s glitter card stock in pink, purple and silver. They made great mats for the photos which were cut and embossed with Nestabilities. Of course you’ll see that two of the photos are not of her. As we were leaving Target she saw greeting cards with John McCain and Barack Obama on them and she just HAD to add them to her star board. If she’d seen a Sarah Palin card then she would have insisted on adding her as well. I bet there are not very many Kindegartners with these “stars” on their board! Obviously we’ve had (FOX) news on pretty frequently in our house the last few months!

Danielle wrote all of the photo captions herself with a white Inkssentials gel pen, my FAV. Of course it took us a while since I had to spell (almost) every word! We disassembled two bows which she picked out at Target and I punched holes on the sides of the poster board. She got a lot of practice tying knots. And finally I let her fill in all the blank spaces with stamped silver stars.

This post is from my first guest-blogger, and friend…Kayna. She did a fabulous job on her daughter’s Halloween costume and doesn’t have a blog so we thought we’d share her ingenious creation here. Hopefully all the other mom’s who are out searching on the Internet for a pattern will find this post!

Wall-E was the first and only movie that I have taken my daughter to see at the theater.  She loved it, and of course she wanted to be Wall-E for Halloween this year.  I searched online and found Wall-E costumes for $60, which was way out of my price range, and I wasn’t in love with any of the options available either.  So, I decided I would make it myself.  I had a lot of fun making the costume, and I’m really pleased with the end result.  And, it was so rewarding to see my daughter’s face when she saw it.

To make the body, I used two pieces of black foam core poster board that I cut to size using a box knife, and then taped all of the edges with masking tape.  To assemble the pieces I used masking tape to tape each piece together along the seems on the outside and inside.  Then, I used a scrap piece of card board within each corner on the inside secured with hot glue for stability.  I cut arm holes on the sides.  For the top of the box I used poster board that will go over my daughters shoulders with a cut out for her head.  This too was secured with hot glue.  I first tried to spray paint the body, but the paint did not apply smoothly and the black from the foam board was not covered completely, so I ended up painting with primer and then before it was dry, started painting over it with my orange craft paint, creating a weathered look.  I used a sponge to apply the brown paint around the edges of the body, and used the edge of a piece of cardboard dipped in the paint to create the lines and then smudged.  I found the Wall-E words online, copied the image, pasted in PowerPoint and made larger and then printed.  Since the image was fuzzy, I went over with markers, cut out the letters, and glued to the body.  I then went back over the edges with the brownsponge.  I made the “hardware” out of foam sheets, painted gray.  These cost about .30/per sheet at Wal-Mart.

For the eyes, I started with a pair of safety goggles I bought at the dollar store.  I cut out each eye from foam core and painted, and then cut out spaces around the eyes so that my daughter can see out of them.  I glued to the goggles using hot glue.  I purchased all materials at Wal-Mart with the exception of the goggles, and think I ended up spending about $20.We also made Wall-E’s friend, the roach, that my daughter calls “buggy” out of brown felt and pipe cleaners.  We’ll attach buggy to her shoulder once ready.  She will wear a black sweatsuit underneath.

At this point, I don’t think we will make the wheels, and we still need to decide what we will do for her arms and hands.  I think we will use the foam core and create black and white striped strips to Velcro to her sweatsuit for the arms and for the hands use a cereal box to cut into three strips for each hand and attach using a safety pin to her sleeve so that she will still have complete use of her hands.

I will provide a picture from Halloween after the holiday to show the finished product modeled by my daughter.  Happy Halloween!

THANKS Kayna for being my first guest blogger!!!! (Updated with picture of Kinsey & arms completed!)

I ran across this site yesterday and thought I’d share. I’m not one that needs t-shirts, I have two drawers full of them. But, most of my t-shirts are not that cute! In the last couple of years though they’ve started making ladies fitted shirts. I have just a few and they are actually fun to wear. These fall into that category and they are especially for scrapbookers.

Ranger’s crackle paint was an industry first, and now they’ve come out with four new colors. Usually in order to get the crackle effect with acrylics you have to apply a crackling medium. This formula enables you to achieve that look with no compromise, in a single application. Try applying it to chipboard, Tim Holtz’s Grungeboard, and maybe even some heavy duty card-stocks.

My first objection was, but only scrapbookers who are into other crafting with paints will have brushes! Well, set your worries aside because the paint brush is in the lid, a brilliant rubber cement style applicator! I think this is a great way to add a rustic masculine touch to some layouts.

The thicker you apply the paint the wider the cracks will be as shown in this card.

And, thinner applications have fine lines as in the tree in this layout. Don’t dry with a heat gun or it will bubble on you!

If anyone is a Facebook user and has the “My Family” module displayed on their profile then Me and My Peeps will look familiar. Except their illustrations are in color and adorable. They have a moderate selection of characters. A toolbelt wouldn’t have been my first choice for my dh, but the other options were wearing a tie, definitely not him! He is more of a Levis and polo shirt guy. I thought the kiddo characters were very cute, and since they didn’t have a scrapbook mommy the shopping mommy is perfect….especially considering how much I spent at CHA!

The iron-ons were so easy, I looked for some other iron-ons. I love the rhinestone ones, which I tried at another make and take, and these baby ones would be so cute on a onesie!

Every once in a while if I’m working on something while the girls are coloring they’ll ask me to stamp them something to color. I found the cutest stamps I’d like to get. I’d be interested to know if any of the teachers out there have seen these? I’m not in the education field so I don’t know if these are kind of unique or old hat?

They are finger puppet stamps by Center Enterprises. You can stamp them then let the kids color them. And, you can’t see the “holes” very well here but there are circles that you cut out for their fingers. There are 14 sets with 56 characters in all. Many are nursery rhymes, but there are community helpers and Christian sets as well.

I have not been able to find links for the finger puppets, but I did find several of their products. The first link is for these great 6? stamp pads, perfect for the kiddos. I tried to take a picture of these at the show and they stopped me! There are also several “lifecycle” stamps that would be perfect for an elementary student’s science project.