Olive you. Again.
I made a card a while back with an olive on it that said “Olive you” because I saw a little project online at Craft magazine with a little jar of knitted olives. Ever since then I’ve been wanting to do my own jar. Guess what—I can’t knit! So I asked an etsy shop owner, Belle from Paper Girl Productions, who I had bought from before if she could make some olives for me. She did something called felting I think. I put them in a Prima Got Flowers jar, tied a ribbon around it with a tag on it that says OLIVE YOU. It’s one of the gifts I’ve given my dad for Christmas.
I hate it cause you can’t see the olives very well in the photo, but trust me it’s the cutest thing ever! haha
Filed under Projects | Comments (2)A Horse Is A Horse….Scrapbook of course!
I got hired to make a horse scrapbook for a Christmas gift for someone. I had never done anything involving horses, and it was with very limited funds, so it was a bit of a challenge. I had no horse supplies at all, so everything had to be purchased to make the album. I did use my Bind-It-All machine for the first time and punched and bound the scrapbook myself instead of purchasing one. The covers I bought from Bind-It-All were too thick for the small 3/8 inch spiral binding I had, so I had to make my own (thinner) covers in the long run.
I then covered THOSE covers with a bandana I bought from Hobby Lobby. I used Staz-On ink to stamp the horse’s name on the front of the book. Got all the quotes from different sites on the internet. Here is the end result.
Inside front cover
Page 1
Page 2/3 go together
Page 4/5 go together
Page 6/7 go together
Page 8/9 go together
Page 10/11 go together
Page 12/13 go together
Last page
Back inside cover.
Scrapbook a Wall ?
Remember that holiday bazaar I told you about from November? The bazaar was a total bust itself, but I did gain a client from it after the fact so it turned out to be worth it in the long run. A very nice lady hired me to make her a scrapbook wall. Yeah, you read that right. It was for a Christmas gift for her grandparents. Apparently there is some sort of wall on the side of their fridge. It sounded like the kitchen and living room were open to each other and you can see this wall on the side of the fridge from the living room. So she brought me a gigantic piece of thin wood to decorate as a humongous scrapbook page so they could then screw THAT piece of wood onto the wall on the side of the fridge. This sucker was 83 inches tall and 23 inches wide. And boy was it a challenge. She brought me 36 photos I think and 8 quotes to add to this thing. She was very clever in thinking ahead that there would be new babies coming into the family (she’s expecting one herself) and added the quotes to the wall so that they could be removed later and a photo added. The photos were all grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
This project was such a mental thing for me, trying to figure out where to put these photos so they would all FIT on there and would look lovely also. I would lay them all out on the board with tiny glue dots and try to figure out a way to fit them all in there. I would start at the top and make my way to the bottom, only to find out there wasn’t enough room at the bottom, or there was too much room, so then I would have to peel them all off and start again. I can’t tell you how many times in those few weeks I wondered to myself what the hell did I get myself into? But it was such a unique and cool idea that I was glad to have the challenge. I’ll share the photos with you here.
This was the before photo.
And here is the finished project.
Here it is broken down into top half and bottom half so you can have a closer look.
TOP HALF:
BOTTOM HALF:
Just here and there on random photos I would tie ribbons around them, sometimes add a little tag with a straight pin.
Every Sunday they go have lunch with their grandparents, and her grandpa always says the same prayer. I put this on black cardstock and attached it in the middle of all the photos.
See these pretty little flowers? I cut those with my Pazzles machine.
And this is my favorite part of the whole wall. I cut this with my Pazzles machine in a beautiful script font. The letters are 2 inches high.
And that’s it! What do you think?
Wedding album, my latest project
I was hired to make this for a client for a December wedding as a gift for the bride and groom. Their wedding colors were red and white so I incorporated those colors with a bit of black for contrast. It’s so hard for me to do scrapbooks without photos. I worked really hard on this and I love the way this album turned out.
Another cute teacher gift
This one I made for Summer’s regular teacher (the first one was for the student teacher) and since she has been teaching many years and probably does not need any more office supplies, I decided to fill it with some things that I happened upon in the dollar section at Michaels. I couldn’t believe it when I saw all these things made by Tinkering Ink. So I picked up 10 items that all had the same design (there were several to choose from) and some of the matching Tinkering Ink ribbons. 
I tied every item with matching ribbons just to make them prettier.
I also added the word NOTES to the little hardback notebook with rubons.
The planner was not Tinkering Ink, though. It was just some floral design or something, so I decided to take some Tinkering Ink paper I had in my supply and make a new one. It was the first one I’ve ever done, and I don’t think I want to do another one! I wanted to put a big cursive L on the front of the planner for decoration, but there was just not time to do it.
Cute mailing labels
I just had to show this cause they’re so darn CUTE! I mail out lots of stuff with my business and this will brighten up my packages! I just love creative people who come up with this stuff.
I got them because I’m on the mailing list for a great etsy shop and she has a blog that I follow. You can get them too if you sign up for her mailing list on her blog! Check out all the cool and cute things she’s been making and shows on her blog too.
Altered Jar Candle
I’m working on 3 client projects right now, so I am BUSY. Yesterday I finished a wedding scrapbook that I’ll show you later and I’m still working on 2 other things that have to be done by Christmas. But I took a few minutes (literally) to craft up a little something that I think I’m going to give to our mail lady for all her hard work this year. She loves candles, and I think she’ll like this one. All I did was tie a snowman ribbon around it and put on a Tinkering Ink rubon to the front. What do you think?
On a side note, when the holidays are over I’ll be doing something crafty and pretty with these babies. Yes, those are medication bottles. No, I did not take all that medication. Got them off freecycle. Check back later for the after photo!
Yes, I am dammit!
Filed under Projects | Comments (2)Altered Advent Calendar
I thought about titling this post “Michaels craft store sucks.” I was so disappointed with this advent calendar, I can’t even tell you. Here it is before I actually did anything to it. My daughter wanted it and I had a 50% coupon so we got it for $5.00. Then I got it home and realized there were flaws! See them?
Yes, there are 2 doors with a #5 on them. Huh? Were the elves drunk when they made this? And some of the little knobs are missing that serve as doorknobs. As if that’s not bad enough, most of the doors are crooked and don’t close nicely. So I’m filling this thing up and all the doors are flopping open and stuff is spilling out. Merry Christmas to me. Whatever.
So I figured I could fix the problem of the numbers being wrong and I changed the knobs, but nothing I can do about how the doors fit. We’ll live with it. No big deal. I covered all the doors with squares of American Crafts Christmas papers. LOVE THESE. Then I used pushpins for the doorknobs, just stuck them into the doors. I kind of like these better, easier to grasp to open the door. I used Making Memories rubons I’ve had forever for the numbers. I believe that font is called “Rummage.” I actually used my Le Plume markers to color in the snowman. Was going to do paint, but that was my brain being a bit more ambitious than I could handle, so I went with the markers.
Sooo…….here is the AFTER photo. What do you think? Better?
Now, I like Michaels as much as the next girl. This is my first time buying something “bad” from them, but oh, the disappointment. Just so sad that a store would actually sell a piece of crap like this. I live 45 minutes away, so I was not about to return this stupid thing. The gas money driving back would have cost me more than I paid for it in the first place! Shape up Michaels, or I’m going 2 blocks down to Hobby Lobby next time!
Looking for a cute teacher gift?
I made one! My daughter has a student teacher helping her teacher this year, and her last day is today. I made this little lunch box thingie to decorate her first classroom when she gets a teaching job. Totally stole those crayons out of Summer’s stash since she hadn’t used them yet. I filled it with things from the Dollar Tree for her classroom. I love that place for stocking up teachers with supplies. The funny thing was, after I had this done Summer’s teacher sent home a note saying she wanted to surprise the student teacher with a gift from all the students and asked us to send it office supplies for her first classroom. Um, yeah, they’re already in my lunch box! I might make one for Summer’s teacher for Christmas also, still trying to decide, but she’s already got a stocked classroom putting something else inside. Decisions, decisions.
(close up of the front, but WOW the colors of that paper got weird)
(goodies inside just to show you–they actually all fit in there quite nicely)
(the back side)
I’m going to list these for sale in my shop for teacher Christmas gifts or end-of-the year teacher gifts. What do you think? Cute, right?
Filed under Projects | Comments (3)The Pazzles Inspiration on sale with a rebate!
Right now the company is offering a rebate of $40.00 (you download the form from their website) if you purchase a Pazzles Inspiration cutting machine between December 1 and December 31, 2008.
They are also offering free shipping, which is a $35.00 value.
Right now I am offering this on sale from my store or website or on my sidebar right over there —————————————————> at $520.00, so that would bring the price down to $480.00 for you, plus free shipping. A GOOD DEAL! Tell the hubby it would make a nice Christmas present, lady scrappers!
If you want to refresh your memory on what this fabulous machine can do, you can see some cool stuff on my buddy Klo’s blog here, and some past blog posts of mine here and here and here and here and here and some cool stuff on my friend Jill’s blog here and here .
Filed under For Sale | Comment (1)
