Very Valentine's Gift Tags and Treat bags

Since I am up late already I thought I'd share on my blog some items that I am currently listing in my Etsy shop. I am trying to get some things ready for Valentine's Day next month and made some extras of these to put in my store.
These gift tags come in a set of 6. I scooped up some of this Jillibean Soup paper and couldn't wait to use it!

Next, I have some treat bag kits that I just listed in my shop. I love the double sided paper from My Mind's Eye "love me" set. These kits are all ready to go: just drop in your goodies, tie with the included ribbon and address the ticket. Clip it using the included mini clothespin and let them think you spent hours slaving over their goodies!

I put several different styles up in my shop and I thought they'd make cute baby shower favors or wedding favors.
Thanks for stopping by!

Christmas gifts for Teachers - Homemade Body Scrub

I absolutely {love} Christmas time! I think that it has to be my favorite holiday. I love the snow we get here, the time spent with family and the fact that my kids are out of school for a couple of weeks. There are so many things to do leading up to their Christmas vacation that I end up vegetating most of their Christmas break till I catch a second wind. I get overwhelmed and race around like a mad woman beforehand, though. I promise myself each year to get more organized, cut back on volunteering, shop early, etc. and each year I find myself in the same place. LOL Oh, well!

I love making handmade gifts to give to my kid's teachers. This year I tried something different. I like to make baked treats but I know that teachers can get so many of those things that they regret it come January. I made some body scrub for their teachers this year, instead. I got the idea from a blog called Deliciously Organized. I made a scent I called Christmas Candy because it reminded me of candy canes. As a funny side note on of the teachers said her daughter tried to eat it because she thought it was a dessert. It came out wonderful and I even had some left over for some gifts for friends. I had to snap a few quick pictures before I sent them on their merry way to their new homes. So forgive the picture quality. I like the way the tags came out.

 I cut the tags out using a seasonal Christmas Cricut cartridge. On the back side I used a Christian stamp from Stampendous. It's hard to tell but I got to use my Papertrey patterned paper to make this tag; it's from their Flourishes and Swirls set. it's such a pretty set. I tied on some lace ribbon and added two tags to each jar. One was the pretty one above and the other was a tiny tag that I punched out with a MS punch to add the "To and From" stamps. Add a rustic jingle bell, a tiny safety pin, some twine and cream seam binding and there you have it!

This could be a great gift year round, just change out the fragrance. I put them in some quilted mini mason jars that you find with the canning goods. It was the perfect size!

Thanks for looking!

Little Lamb Cookies

It is such a fun time of year, this thing called December. But it is also so filled with things to do that sometimes I wanna scream! I have been busy with all sorts of crafty things in the past few weeks and haven't had time to share them here on my blog. Sorry!

I did want to share with you this cookie adventure I did this week. I am not a pro when it comes to making iced cookies and try not to laugh too much at my first attempt! ;0) Why did I try it now when clearly I already have lots on my list of things to do? Simple. Because I thought it would be fun and it had to do with volunteering at my son's school.... which I can almost never say no to! The opportunity came to do a read aloud book that had to do with the true meaning of Christmas. It is such a new and wonderful thing that my kids are in a Christian school this year and that we can talk about Jesus during the year and especially at Christmas! So I loved the idea of reading a Christmas book to the kids and providing a snack for them. The book that I read to them is Max Lucado's "Crippled Lamb" which is a story of a little lamb who isn't like the others and always feels left out. He is left behind in a stable because he can't make the trip with the others to a new pasture in the valley. Yet he becomes one of the first to greet the new born king! God had a special purpose for him and he looks at his plight in a whole new way.

So, I just had to make a matching snack to go with the story! I went with my son to Michael's to see if I could find a lamb cookie cutter. I couldn't so I sat there searching through the ones available until invention struck me!

I purchase a cupcake cookie cutter instead. My thought was that I could just make the face of the little lamb with the top of the cupcake being his wool and ears and the bottom being a spot to put his face.

I also purchased some fun pre-made eyes as well as some premade cookie icing for all the outlining I would need to do. I had some mini marshmallows that I would use for the wool.

And here's what they came out like. I put this picture in here because they didn't all come out perfect like I was hoping. And that's okay. I learned alot while making these guys and still think that they came out cute. The kids in the class loved eating them and my son was especially happy to see what his mom came up with (it was a surprise to him because he was at school while I baked these up all morning). And that was all worth it to me. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Puppet Time

Hi there! Sorry it has been a bit since I last posted. I have had lots of things going on here that have kept me from posting on my blog. My kids were off for fall break which got extended thanks to a snow storm. It was extremely fun to have a snow day and we spent the day doing fun things together while it snowed.

One of the things that we did during their break was to make some puppets. My oldest son is in a puppetry class in his middle school (it was an elective that was picked for him and when I saw it I have to confess that I groaned a little). Turns out that he LOVES the class and adores his teacher!!! Who knew?! Anyway, as a result, he has been interested in puppets and how we have used them recently in TV shows and such. It also spurred my youngest son to be interested in it, too. So one day during their break we looked up a how-to tutorial and I found myself working with my two boys to create two puppets. It was so much fun to create something with them! And the best part was that they didn't watch any TV or play video games for hours on end that day. :D

The puppets turned out nicely and the boys had so much fun messing around with them. They even took them with them when they went to church (the puppets had to stay in the car). They were excited to show their friends their creation. And then I got an order to make two more puppets from some friends of theirs. LOL. I never thought the puppet thing would catch on.

So that's what I've been up to lately. Making puppets and not cards. I really want to make some cards this week but because of the school's bookfair I may have to yet again put it on hold. We'll see.

Hope you have a great week!

Where Has the Time Gone?

I guess that should be the name of my blog since I always feel like time slips away from me so easily! I have been so busy with my boys' school that I haven't had much time for crafting. I am helping out with the book fair for their school, going to meetings, trying to meet other moms since we are new to that school, setting up "playdates" (not sure what you call it when they're in 4th and 6th grade), and going to parent-teacher conferences. Whew! And when I do have time to hit the craft table, it's to make gifts for their teachers or for friends. I never remember to take those pics in the wee hours of the night when all I can think of is how tired I am and how hard it will be to get up in the morning... I hate feeling like I rush from one thing to the next but that is how my life seems to be right now. It's just a season and I know it will slow down again.

Here is a card that I made to play along with a couple of challenges. Over at Card Patterns they have a cute sketch that I used to make my tag. And the color scheme came from ColourQ challenge #108.

I wanted to try a distress stain resist element to my project. SweetSteph Card Creations has a tutorial here. I am loving the Tim Holtz distress stains and couldn't wait to try this out. Remember what I said about not having time to craft in the last two weeks? I had some of these distress stains that have been sitting there, unopened! so sad...

Anyway, I used a stamp set from Tim Holtz since I liked the grunge look these stamps had. I used versamark to stamp the starburst image on some manila paper. After heat setting some clear embossing powder, I got out my stains and started to apply them. I have to play with it some more because dabbing straight from the bottle is just too heavy for me. If you have any tips, I'm all ears.

Once I got that all set with my heatgun I looked through my scalloped dies and realized that it looked kinda like a shell. So that is the theme I went with. A beach/surf theme of sorts. I made the card to be a sort of encouragement card. A reminder to get up and try again.

Thanks for looking! I hope you have a fantastic weekend. My kids are on Fall break starting today so I'm not sure how much time I'll have to craft. I have some ideas of some projects I'd like to get started but we'll see. :D

Final Post for Tonight!

Whew! I feel like I am on the home stretch of a blogging marathon. I usually do a post or two over the course of a week... but I'm on my third one for the night!

This last card that I made combined two more challenges. One is from the folks at CAS-ual Fridays and the other is from Sassy Lil' Sketches. Both were a blast to use!!! For CAS-ual Fridays CFC24 I had to make a halloween card without using the color Orange. Seriously?!!! okay, I always like how OTHER people can think of non-traditional color schemes for holidays. Me, however?! I'm hopelessly traditional.

I tried, folks. Really I tried. Not including orange was bad enough but I couldn't think of any other colors that looked right to me other than purple and black and charcoal and green.
The second part to my card is the lovely sketch SS0S8 at Sassy Lil' Sketches. Sometimes that is half the battle right there coming up with a LO for a card... and with creative minds over at SLS they did some of the work for me. I took the sketch and turned it on its side. I framed the tree silhouette with a piece of burlap for texture. I used some cream tulle, a stitched felt pumpkin with metal flower doodad, and some stitched leaves to add a little more femininity to the focal point. And that's it from me for one night!

Have a great evening!

PS. I found out that it wasn't too late to enter the Paper Issues 31 Days of Halloween. So I did! Hop over there to see some amazing projects for Halloween.

Sweet Day!!!

And while I was feeling quite creative, I decided to go ahead and make two more cards! This one is for two challenges, Mojo Monday and ColourQ. I love it when I can combine a sketch and color challenge all at the same time.

For this card I needed to use grey, black, tangerine, and yellow. Not terribly difficult, right?!! My first thought was to make a cute card with a giant candy corn on it. See, it's that fall thing that I told you I'm addicted to. But when I thought about it some more, I wanted to make something that wasn't fall themed after all. But what to make with all those colors? A little light bulb went on and I thought Citrus fruits!!! They are happy and orange and yellow. So here's what I ended up with:

I really liked the way it came out. It reminds me of those old encyclopedias that I used to look at when I was little that would have a black and white picture next to the text of the item I looked up. I didn't want to emphazise too much color but just enough to make it all pop.
The sketch that I incoporated is Mojo Monday #210.