Sunday, June 30, 2013

Lollipop Holder - File Available!

I have heard about some dies that are available that are for lollipop holders and I thought that was a cute idea. My problem though...well why would I get a die and have to do one at a time when I have machines that cut paper and I could cut a whole passel of holders just with a push of a button!

Maybe it was a little more work than pushing a button since I did have to make the file. It's amazing what a trapezoid, circle and rectangle can make! I did a little extra work and made a mat for the holders and I also made a few different "buttons" and even one tag.

Oh and notice the nice "texture" layer I did on the file! I played around with Make The Cut the other night and figured out how to do that and it makes it nice so you can see more of how things will look when patterned paper is used.




Here is the front few of the lollipop holder. I used Stampin Up cardstock for the base since it is a good heavy cardstock but I think any good cardstock would work good. The pattern paper is some scraps of a Basic Grey Lemonade pad I had and when I say scraps I do mean scraps! So if ya do have some scraps laying around this might be a great project to use them on instead of just tossing them in the trash.






I threaded the ribbon through the holes and just tied a bow on the front to keep the lollipop in place.


I think these would be great for favors for class parties, showers, or even just a little "thank you" or "thinking of you" treat. I wanted to really come up with some clever sayings and get some fantastic things done with these to post but I was too excited to share the file to take my time and come up with something cute!

The file includes the pieces that are in the first picture.

File Downloads -

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Cupcake Cherry - Group Card

**I got my scheduling wrong, yesterday's card was the last card we made but we made this one during the previous session**

One of the images that my clients wanted was a cupcake...well of course I have about 200 cupcakes to choose from *okie wonders if she exaggerates a little at times* but I wanted something new so I got to work with a clipart image and came up with a new cupcake cut for their cards. I fell in love with the fluffy looking frosting on this one.

I try to keep the cards fairly simple because I really don't trust my lack of patience in trying to help 6 people in putting cards together. One of the options they had this time was using either side of the double sided cardstock on the card mat, which by the way they do know what it is to mat a card now! LOL Most opted for the words but a few opted for the polka dot pattern.

They used the Stampin Up scallop punch and then I punched out the sentiment they stamped. The inside of the card has "celebrate one cupcake at a time".

You can download the file for the Cherry Cupcake below -


Friday, June 28, 2013

This was the last card my groups made and by this time I was doing a long sigh of relief! Like I said before I love doing this for my groups but it sure takes a lot out of me, not to mention a dent in my cardstock LOL.

While we didn't put a sentiment on the outside of this one I did let them each choose a sentiment for the inside and of course everyone one of them wanted a different sentiment and different ink color, so that did take some time to do.

On this last day I had there other 3 cards bagged up in a ziplock bag with their name. This way they could have all 4 cards together and if they dropped them or spilled something the cards wouldn't get ruined. Had each of them sign the back of the card and told them that way the receiver would know they made it. I think I need to get one of those "handmade by:______________" stamps for future card making sessions.

I am now looking forward to starting on some projects for myself but yet they are already asking about Christmas cards *okie smiles and laughs softly*, I guess they really do enjoy our little card making sessions!

Download the file -

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Happy Birthday Balloon - Group Card

I'm posting the next birthday card my groups made during our little card making marathon. I took my computer with me one day and one of my clients helped me with designing this one. She told me how big to do the happy birthday and how many balloons to use, this particular client is also quite proficient with the Cuttlebug and gives a great tutorial to the others when we make cards.
 
Once again I did assemble the image pieces due to time constraints and while this was a fairly fast card to assemble they did get to choose their sentiment for the inside and that took some time since each client seemed to want a different sentiment on the inside. 


The files for this card include the cuts for the image on the card.

Download MTC file -Happy Birthday Balloon
Download SVG file - Happy Birthday Balloon

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

12 Card Kits - All Different But All The Same

I posted about never having too many supplies a few weeks ago in my I Am Able To Prove post and about how one of my clients wanted to make a sympathy card instead of a birthday card. I thought I should post a few pictures I got of the cards they made.


I am always amazed at the compassion my clients at the ICF/MR have for others, especially those who work with them and when someone they know feels pain they are the epitome of sympathetic emotion and compassion. While making the cards they did discuss their feelings about what happened but mostly the discussed how they wished they could help their beloved job coach during her time of grief.





They poured their love in each card they made and carefully chose each stamped image and gave reasons they wanted that particular image. They also were able to choose the sentiments I had printed for the inside of their cards. The lady holding the card she made told me "take my picture with my card" and I explained to her once again why I couldn't take her picture and she said "well here, I cover my face and it is okay". Don't ever let anyone tell ya that my clients don't know their way around confidentiality! I also promised to show her this post on the internet after I got it posted, which I will do in a few days.

Here is another close up picture, wish I would have gotten pics of all the cards but since they all basically looked the same you can see the basic idea with just a few. I took several Cuttlebug folders and they each used that on the mat of their cards.





Now a little side story about this card making event...
After all the cards were made I went to find the director of the workshop and couldn't find her. I went into the lunchroom to see if the lady that works in there could call and find out where she was as the cards were to go to the grieving mother that night. When I was showing the lunchroom lady the cards a dollar bill fell to the floor. I quickly looked to see whose card it was. The lunchroom lady said "you gotta put that back in there" and I told her "Well I wasn't going to keep the dang thing!" and we both laughed and then we discussed the compassion that was being shown. A few days later the lady whose card held the dollar bill came up to me and said "oh I put a dollar in my card. I wish I would have had a five, but that is all I had at the time". I inquired why she put the dollar in the card and she told me "I know she is going to have to be off work for awhile and she is going to need some money. I just wanted to help as much as I could". Talk about having to choke back tears, which seems to happen to me a lot out at the little place called McCalls Chapel School, I thought I wasn't going to make it down the hall before she saw tears running down my face. I went outside and composed myself and went and reported to the lunchroom lady what my client had said and guess what...she had to choke back a few tears herself!

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Hip Hip Hooray! Card From Group

A few months ago I asked my groups if they would like to do some birthday cards. In the past we have done Valentine's, Easter and Christmas cards and I thought it would be nice if they had a few birthday cards on hand to give to others. I am not sure why I asked because I knew the answer would be a unanimous YES! I did agree to let them each make 4 birthday cards.

During one session we discussed cooperation and that is when we decided what kind of things they would like on their cards. This first card wasn't really thought up by them but I thought it was one they would like, well actually they did think of a birthday hat!

Since I only have an hour to for group I did assemble the hippo and hat before hand. Since I thought it would be nice to have some Stickles on the hat I figured that was another reason to assemble the image beforehand. We sure wouldn't have enough time to let those dry by the end of group. The group then put all the card mat, image and sentiment pieces together. They alsodid their own stamping.

I did punch the sentiments out so we could get them lined up most of the group members punched their raspberry colored pieces. We used the following Stampin Up punches -
Word Window
Modern Label
Scallop Oval
Large Oval

The file for this card includes the hippo and the birthday hat and it is available in Make the Cut and SVG formats.

Download MTC - Hip Hip Hooray
Download SVG -  Hip Hip Hooray

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Joining Shapes to Letters - MTC Tutorial

I was skimming through the Make The Cut forum the other night and came across a post where a woman was having some problems with joining a shape to a letter. I of course thought it was a quick fix but it wasn't! I tried to boolean join *okie still really wonders what in the heck that means* and all the options for it didn't produce the desired effect. After trying several other things it finally dawned on me what to do...I know this might seem time consuming and complicated but it really does go fast and I am including pictures since I have a hard time explaining things.

Step 1 - Choose your letter and image, set objects to desired size and position. In this case I used the letter M and a baseball.








 
Step 2 - Click on the baseball (or object of your choice) and do a "break". After the images is broken then select the inside of the image, or guts if you will *okie cracks up laughing*. Now hit "copy" and then delete. If you are unable to get all the pieces then just do a "copy" and "paste in place" to a new mat until you have all the pieces removed.










Step 3- You should be left with the letter and what is now the base layer of the image.









Step 4- Weld the two objects together.









Step 5 - Now do a "paste in place" with the parts you deleted and weld together and POOF! You have your image and letter as one image. 








I am really not sure how Make The Cut works since I am fairly new to the program, all I know is that all the welding and joining options wouldn't work for me. The lady who was needing the help was able to quickly join her shape and letters with the instructions I gave her. Another lady gave some instructions about a "import to a raster image" which I have no idea what that even is but it might work more easily if you know what it is and how to do it. For me this method worked fine and really did go quickly!

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Getting Use To The Pazzles!

I was so excited when I got my Pazzles and that excitement went away quickly when I tried cutting some things and a few times I almost cut through the dang mat! One of the reasons I wanted the Pazzles instead of the Cameo was because of the power, not realizing the very reason I wanted the machine was going to be a like a toothache when ya don't have to a bit of Novocain around!

With that said I would like to say I am LOVING the Pazzles now! It took me some getting use to because there is a very large range in the pressure, a 0-50 range to be exact, in the Make The Cut software cutting options. I finally started figuring out some of the settings and then I would forget them so I decided I needed to keep them recorded.

After just writing on scraps I decided to use my Stampin Up Tag punch, the large one to be more specific, and writing the settings on those. I do try to write the company name if I know it, such as Stampin Up, DCWV etc. The one that says "designer" would be papers like Basic Grey, Bo Bunny, etc. When I get more ambitious I am going to punch holes in the tags and add the tags to a ring or something so I can just flip through them. For now, they just stay stacked up on my crafting table where I can grab them easily.

Oh and thank you Tuki for asking me to post this! She wanted to "pin it" for future reference.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Battle of the Toilet Paper

Evidently this battle is one that is fought in many houses across the nation, and possibly the world *okie wonders if all countries have toilet paper holders*, you know the one....NOT PUTTING THE NEW ROLL OF TOILET PAPER ON THE HOLDER!

Last week I had posted on Facebook evidence that my daughter does not put the new roll on the holder. This is something that drives me up the wall...how hard is it to take the old roll off and pop the new roll on? Many friends on Facebook chimed in confirming that this travesty does occur in other households.  When I lived here alone *okie closes her eyes for a moment remember the sweet serene times she use to have in her house* there was always toilet paper where it was suppose to be...on the holder!

Of course  the only thing worse than the new roll sitting on the holder is when the roll is empty and there isn't a new roll readily available. To be honest, that does happen in my house as well...in both bathrooms! I swear I think the kids eat the stuff. I told them a few months ago that they were restricted to 5 squares per bathroom visit and then told them "WIPE AND FOLD, WIPE AND FOLD". They just laughed at me *okie gives an exasperating sigh* and I wasn't kidding.
 
Yesterday morning when I went to the bathroom I used the last of the toilet paper on the roll and instead of putting on a new roll I decided to leave a little note instead. I quickly went into my craftroom, grabbed a Post-It note and wrote the following: "Due to the planets lack of natural resources toilet paper will no longer be provided in this establishment. You may use your natural wiper (i.e. your hand). Please wash after each use!".

I knew this would either get a huge eye roll from my daughter or a huge laugh. I wasn't sure which and since I was leaving to go to the office I thought it best that I wasn't present for her reaction.

While at lunch with a friend I was going to read her something from my Facebook and I noticed my daughter had tagged me on a post and this was the result! Her note reads: Due to the daughters new job, toilet paper will always be provided in this establishment. We may all use the toilet paper instead of our natural wiper! You must always wash your hands! HA HA HA!!!

Of course I about fell out the booth at Applebee's from laughing at my daughter's response!

Some of you might remember what a rough summer I had with her last year when I had begun to think she had lost her ever loving mind but come to find out it was the effects of the Depo Provera shot she was on, and I think this goes to show how things have changed in a year. Last year my note would have caused her to go into hissy fits and this year she shot back at me with humor. While having her and her boyfriend live here might not always be the ideal situation at least I can say I enjoy my daughter, even if she doesn't always put the toilet paper on the holder!

Friday, June 14, 2013

Another Tumbler!

My cousin Lisa, who lives in Missouri, stopped through on her way home from Texas and I loaded her up on some vinyl and other crafty goodies. I also sent a few things home with her for her daughter Jessica who is also a papercrafter. Lisa bought my E2 from me last year so I am  hoping she will get into doing some great projects now that she is getting settled in to her new home.

While she was here we were discussing the vinyled tumblers and she said "oh you could make me one of those so I could have one to use at my new job". And...of course I did! I asked what kinda of things she wanted on it and she sells Scentsy so she asked for something that related and we came up with a great tumbler for her! It would have been better if  had some sage green vinyl but hey, I can't have it all can I? HA HA

It's always hard to photograph this dang things so I took a couple of pictures. Here you can see most of her name. The font Sister which is the font like Scentsy uses was used for her name. I can't remember the font I got the swirls from and the stars were from the ones included in the MTC program and I just skewed them to make them odd sizes.





When I was going through vinyl to box up and send home with Lisa I told her "you can't have any of my glitter vinyl because I don't have that much". But I did honor her with using a little of my fancy vinyl on her tumbler. I think she felt a little special...if she didn't she should have! HA HA!














The swirls were a little thin so I did a shadow layer to thicken them up a little. I also broke the original design up and just used pieces from the swirl image so I could just use what I wanted. Have I told you lately how much I LOVE Make The Cut? Well I am telling you now! I swear the more I use that program the more I fall in love!

Lisa was very pleased with her tumbler and I think she will use it with pride!

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

I Am Able To Prove

There is no such thing as too many crafting supplies!

Yesterday one of my clients at the ICF/MR came and asked if she could make a sympathy card instead of a birthday card for group today. I was so touched by the way she was expressing herself about her sadness for one of the staff members who lost a child to a drowning accident over the weekend and I told her I thought that was a fabulous idea. We were scheduled to make the cupcake birthday cards for today but after a lot of quick work last night we will be making sympathy cards that they can send to their very loved staff member.

I quickly realized that I am not use to working under pressure, nor do I like doing so, but I knew I needed to do this for my clients so they can express their caring to their staff.

Coming up with 12 different cards that needed to be alike was going to be a challenge for me. I didn't want all 12 to be exactly the same but they needed to assemble the same so the instructions can be clear and simple while we are doing the activity. I finally came up with a design I thought would work and my stamps that have been neglected were coming off the shelf. I can honestly say this is when having my stamps cataloged comes in handy! I was easily able to flip through and find the stamps I thought might work.

From the picture above you can see I used quite a few different inks, and boy was I glad I had so many colors to choose from! The use of the Stampin Up Color Wheel was a life saver since it saved a lot of time from trying to figure out what colors went together. I know Linda often thinks I am some kind of color genius but truth be told...I CHEAT! HA HA HA, but seriously...I do.

I went with a shape similar to the Stampin Up Top Note die and stamped each one differently. I did have to repeat some of the sentiments since I don't have a lot of sympathy ones. There will be 3 base colors, Chocolate Chip, Certainly Celery and Really Rust for the cards. The mats for the stamped images are So Saffron, Almost Amethyst and Mellow Moss...or at least something very similar.

I was able to use the Hallmark Card Studio software to print sentiments for the inside of the cards and luckily there were 83 to choose from in the sympathy category so each card will have a different sentiment on the inside.

I will make sure to take some pictures of their finished work and post for you guys to see and let you know how the did with this activity. I think it will be very therapeutic for them in several ways. 

When I was cleaning the tables off and putting stuff away that is when I realized how lucky I am to have so many supplies to choose from. If I didn't have all the stamps, ink pads, paper, etc at my disposal it would have taken a lot longer to figure out how to do these all differently but yet the same. So if anyone ever tells you "Hey you have too much stuff" then you just tell them "Nope, okie says there is no such thing as too much stuff and I believe her!".

Monday, June 10, 2013

Bra With A Bow - FILE DOWNLOAD!

I keep thinking I am going to be able to use some of the files I have been working on but I just haven't been able to find the time or the  motivation yet so thought I better post something so ya'll don't think I am a liar! This is the week we will be doing the birthday cards in group and I will be posting those files later for download.

I was playing around in Make The Cut one night and made this file. I wanted to make a thank you card that said "Thanks" and the inside "For Your Support. Or maybe a birthday card and say "I hope your birthday is uplifting". Since I haven't used the file and it is sitting there waiting to be used I thought I'd go ahead and post it and hope someone uses it! If you do use it please send me a picture so I can share it on here for others to see.

This was a simple one so I have the Make the Cut file and the SVG file available.



Sunday, June 9, 2013

In The Name Of Science

I am one of those people who can get lost for hours reading tips on the internet...everything from how to repaint laminate furniture to keeping your skin looking young with ingredients from your refrigerator. The most recent tip I read was this morning and it was about how to repel mosquitoes with lime halves and cloves.

According to the information you just put cloves into limes that have been sliced in half and TADA! the mosquitoes don't come around. I don't know if this really works but it seems like a great waste of limes to me since they are more enjoyable in Margarita's! I have to admit the picture seems rather pretty and would look great on a patio table.


When I was growing up we had well water. Our water smelled of rotten eggs and most people didn't like to drink it. My family was use to the smell so it didn't bother us and after we got a new fridge with a water spigot so cold water came out we didn't notice the smell at all and besides I always thought our water tasted so much better than any other water I tasted when I would go somewhere. And to be truthful many of our guests loved the taste of our water as well. But what does this have to do with mosquitoes?

I can remember quite well the summer of 1980. We had a lot of company that summer. We hadn't been in our new house very long and many of our relatives lived in other states in towns or cities and they would come to visit and stay for a week or so. I always loved having company and relished listening to stories they would tell of their lives. Since it was summer we would sit outside a lot and of course there were flies and mosquitoes in abundance. I remember my cousins swatting at the mosquitoes constantly while my family and I would sit there in relative comfort, I say relative because it was summer and it was Oklahoma so you know it couldn't be totally comfortable. After noticing this pattern for awhile and asking around my mom came to the conclusion that our water, which went through a sulfur vein, kept us from getting bitten by mosquitoes.

Here it is summer time and I always swear I am going to get some sulfur tablets and take them and see if it works for mosquito repellent and I still have not done so! I think I will pick up a bottle this week and start taking them, worse case scenario is that it helps my arthritis in my joints, and see if it works. I am not going to tell the kids I am taking them and then I am going to see if the mosquitoes bite them more when we are outside. I will update the results at a later date. Oh and don't ya'll tell them about this experiment either or they will think I am being mean if it works and I don't get bitten like they do. If it does work I will tell them their sacrifice is greatly appreciated and it's in the name of science!

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Remember The Elephant? It's Loose!

I am sure ya'll remember my post about the "Elephant In The Crafting World". Well it looks like someone decided to bring that elephant way out into the open and on the loose!!

Someone in my Facebook group posted they saw where a place called Tech Junkee was selling the CD that contains the files and low and behold I had to go there and see myself! BAM! There it was!

273 DIGITAL CRICUT CARTRIDGE SVG ADD-ON PACK

Can you say "OH MY WOW!"

According to the website it includes instructions and can work with other programs besides SCAL.  I am curious to see if Provocraft gets wind of this or if they are allowing this! I can't imagine actually allowing this but at this point who knows. Maybe they decided they would make more money this way.

I have been using Make The Cut exclusively since October and while I have not regretted one time getting rid of my cartridges I will say that I have a tendency to like Cricut images better than most of the SVG's out there simply because I think they are better quality and not always so "cutesy" like most sites have available. If Cricut did allow their new carts to be sold in SVG format I would likely buy one or two if it were something I liked.

So folks, leave a comment and tell me what you think of this situation!

Friday, June 7, 2013

Losing My

DOMAIN! Yeah that means this thing right here! A couple of years ago I decided to make the switch of changing my blog to just okieladybug.com without all the extra address. My friend Joy encouraged me to do so as she had changed hers and it was only like $10 a year which isn't bad. I have been on automatic renewal and haven't worried about it until I got an email that said my domain was suspended...EEEK! I forgot to update my credit card information back in mid-March, but considering I was on vacation it wasn't one of the most important things on my to-do list.

When I got the 3rd email about my domain being suspended I thought I better get in and rectify the situation before I lost everything I have done over the last 5 years...OMG did I just say 5 years? *okie is a bit shocked*. Anyway, I thought "I'll just log in and fix that real quick". It ended up being a 3 day adventure trying to figure out how the heck I was suppose to log in! I kept getting errors and "domain suspended" errors. You would think it would be a quick call and POOF it is fixed. IT IS NOT! Evidently if you have an account like mine it is considered "free" and you get no support other than a forum where not much information is given. I was finally able to find a user suggestion of going into an old email from Google and try one of the links in there when you first signed up for your domain. Luckily I don't throw away all my email and it was lost in there but found easily with doing a search.

Even after finding the link and getting logged in it still took me at least an hour to figure out where to go in the control panel and  update the information and then another 20 minutes trying to find out where to make sure I had the domain thing on automatic renewal!

During this whole process I kept thinking "dang it is this even worth the hassle" and then I remembered how much work I have done over the last 5 years and how it is easy for me to refer back to a project I have done and knew I had to keep at it until I had the dang thang fixed!

I am busy this weekend getting card kits ready for my groups out at McCalls. I have been promising them we would do some birthday cards and we would so this after school was out. I shouldn't have asked how many they wanted to do because they said 10, 6, 4 and various other numbers. I agreed on the 4! That means I have 48 kits to do but since I will go ahead and do some extra I will actually  have a total of 64 kits. It's gonna be a lot of work but will be well worth it since my groups really enjoy the activity. I'll be sure to post pictures!

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Double Wall Tumblers - Dollar Tree

Recently my cousin Teresa called and asked what I was doing...nothing of course! So she came down to spend the night. She wanted to go to Dollar General and get some double wall tumblers for a Christmas project. We had made some for her grandkids at Valentine's day and they really loved them. We were able to find the tumblers for $2.50 each and she got quite a few so we could fix them up. When Teresa checked out the cashier asked her if she wanted her receipt and Teresa said "No, don't think I will be bringing anything back". Quick lesson...always get your receipt! I had told her about the glass cutting boards a friend of mine had done, I can't say who since they are gifts she has made, and we decided to go to Dollar Tree and see if they had any of the glass cutting boards.

After browsing around and not finding the cutting boards we were on our way to leave and what do we see? A basket full of double wall tumblers! Jokingly I told Teresa "I should just push the whole cart up to the checkout stand". Teresa quickly said "I can take those other ones back to Dollar General" and then we remembered she didn't get her receipt. Luckily my daughter works at the store and I was able to call her and have her dig the receipt out of the trash! I knew I wanted the blue ones for a project I will be doing later on this year. There was only one clear and Teresa didn't care what color she had. She counted out the ones she wanted and I got what I wanted and that left a total of 4 tumblers in the basket. We shrugged and decided to take those as well. So we managed to take every tumbler in the basket and put them in our basket, which we got a good laugh on that one. My lovely daughter had Teresa's receipt ready when we arrived at General Dollar and we were able to quickly get her money back, it saved her something around $20 I do believe.

I posted about the find on Facebook and my friend Joy, aka Happy Happy Joy Joy, promptly went to her Dollar Tree and snagged up some of the tumblers. She also made a post about some other cool finds at Dollar Tree that crafters can alter. You can see the post HERE.

Later on I showed Teresa once again how easy it is to do the vinyl in Make The Cut and we discussed the Silhouette Cameo. She has talked about them before and her daughter would love to have one for projects. We started looking around at the machines on the internet and she was able to find a good deal on a Cameo on eBay that even came with some vinyl...so she bought it! That reminds me I need to call and ask her if she got it yet since that was last weekend.

My friend Chelle brought her daughter over to see me a few days later, as Makaylah kept telling her she wanted to she me, and I made her a cup. Makaylah also kept trying to snag various ladybugs in my craftroom and Chelle told me that Makaylah loves ladybugs. I did let her have a magnet from my craftroom and my fridge and told her the other stuff was mine and she would have to get her own. That's when I rememberd the tumblers and decided to make her one with some ladybugs on it. Half way through she said she wanted a butterfly on there as well and I told her "too bad, you are getting ladybugs". I don't think she knew the difference.

I wanted to get a picture of the tumbler done but Makaylah promptly wanted me to put juice in her cup and then wouldn't let go of it for me to get a picture. This was the best picture I could get of the cup and I am lucky I got it! She really loved her cup and knows it has her name on it.

It's hard to tell in the picture but I did a shadow of her name and welded the ladybugs to the shadow and then did the top layer in lime green. Next time I will have to remember to take a picture before handing it to the recipient. Especially when it is a 2 1/2 year old toddler who loves ladybugs!

Monday, June 3, 2013

Book Flowers - Picture Tutorial

I have made a few book flowers in the past and thought I would try a few more. This time I used more layering and like the effect a bit more since it made the flowers fuller. I also decided to make some graduated sizes of the flowers. The book pages I used were from an old book that I got at my local library. NO, NO, NO I did not destruct public property. My library has a little table set up where you can get take books for free...usually books that aren't popular or too old for them to keep on the shelf. I had to explain that to my daughter before she had a heart attack and thought I tore up someone's book they were reading.

Supplies Used:
Old book pages
3/4" prong paper fasteners
2 3/8" Scallop Circle Punch
2" Scallop Circle Punch
1 3/4" Scallop Circle Punch
1 1/4" Scallop Circle Punch
3/4" Circle Punch






I punched 3 of each size to make the large flowers. For the medium size flower I left off the 2 3/8" scallop circle and then for the smallest I just used the 1 3/4", 1 1/4" and the small circle. I used the same steps of assembly for all sizes of the flowers.






Here is a picture of the layers stacked so you can see how full it is. I tried to align them to the center as much as possible.










For the very center I didn't stack the circles up evenly, instead I layered them unevenly so I could get a little extra fluff. A 1" circle punch might have saved me from having to do this but what's done is done.








Since there were 15 layers of paper I thought I better pull out the big guns and used my Big Bite to punch the holes for the paper fasteners. On a few of the flowers I didn't hit quite in the center but that wasn't a problem as I found you can just turn the layers to even it out once it is put together.






Once you get the paper fastener in place then just start squishing the layers to the center as shown in the picture. I did each layer individually so I wouldn't have the same crumple pattern on my layers and the flower would look more full and natural. 






After all layers are squished to the middle then just start pulling the layers down away from the center. You can give the flowers different looks by leaving the layers closer together and pulling layers further apart.








And TADA this is the end result. I think it resembels a caranation flower. I am not sure I would use these on layouts as I try to keep my embellishements a little thinner as to fit the layout in books but I will use them on projects like mini-albums or shadow box layouts. Actually I might even try a few on some gift bags come to think of it. I think that would be quite nice!





The cool thing is that you can embellish these pretty much anyway you want. On this one I inked the edges with some chalk in and then added a Candi for the center. The ones I made before I used a very decorative brad and sprayed with Glimmer mist. So ya see, it's all in how creative you want to get!

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Glitter Organization

First let me say I have been working diligently on converting files and I think I am starting to get bored with that and finally start making some things again...at least I hope so!

I wanted to show you this little shelf thing. It is actually an electronic cigartette display case. Our May's Drug Warehouse closed a few months back when Walgreens bought out the company. The store was having a huge sale and selling everything in there, including some of the lighting fixtures...NO JOKE! I had to stop by on my way out to McCalls and I got a tall standing display case, that I haven't done anything with yet but I will. I saw this little gem and figured I could use it for something, especially since it was only $3. I have had it sitting on my table since then and had a few things in it but knew I wanted the labels off there and hadn't actually decided what to do with it until last night.



Chuck had some of his little friends, okay probably big friends since they are football players for the local university, to cookout and watch a basketball game and I told him they could have free reign in the house and I would stay in my craftroom. Big sacrifice on my part I know! HA and HA! And that is when I decided to go ahead and organize stuff on the little shelf.

I had to use some Undu to help me get the pricing labels off the shelving but it was pretty easy to do, just a yukky little task. I didn't get the side labels off and they aren't going to come off easily so I will either get some spray paint and paint it or cover it with some paper and modge podge, not sure which I will do yet.

What made me start this project was that I had gotten my Doodlebug Sugar Coating glitter in from Happy N Scrappin and I needed to put it away somewhere. Shari is still working on closing down her online store and has some items that are 75% off retail price if you purchase 10 items from the same page. It is NOT mix and match, the items have to be from the same page, so if you decide to go over there and check it out just remember that little tidbit. I have the small bottles of this glitter that I have been using very sparingly and now I can be a bit more generous. I would still like to get the larger bottles of the colors I am missing.




I went through some of my embellishing items drawers and pulled out a few things that I thought would fit on the shelving. I was able to put all my Stickles and Liquid Pearls on the bottom shelf.

The shelf up from that has Doodlebug Glitter and flock, small bottles are Doodlebug and the large ones are from Hobby Lobby that I got one year after Christmas.

My Glimmer Mist, Glimmer Glaze, Pearl Pens and Glossy Accents and Crackle fit on the next shelf nicely. I still have an empty shelf to put something in.

I am going to enjoy having this on my table so I don't have to go pulling out drawers to get to these items and to tell ya the truth...I think it just looks nice!!