GIU Day 5, wonderful mess

It's the 5th and final day of my Growing in Unity week!

 I posted 5 projects this week using Unity Stamps. And you can be 1 of 2 winners to win a bag of 25 stamps from Unity! Just comment on my posts for your entry every day.
Since I am posting a couple days late I will give you through Monday to leave comments and draw the winners Tuesday.

Today I have a paperboard letter I picked up at the craft store and decorated for my craft room. It started out a kraft color. I painted it a poppy red color. I stamped parts of the Up Against a Wall brick stamp. And then distressed with a few gelatos.

The sentiment is from the You Are Important stamp set.

The leaves are from the Wildflowers & Wings set.

I finished it off with a Prima flower and yellow twine.

Thanks for visiting my blog this week! Come back on Tuesday when I announce the winner. And thanks to Unity for sponsoring Growing in Unity!

Farmers Market pop-up card

The current challenge over at The Paper Girls is "Food".

I created a pop-up card for my in-laws. They are big gardeners so I wanted this to look like a big bountiful basket of produce. And, yes, I realize some of the veggies are out of scale with the others. Oh well!

I started with a pop-up card from svgcuts.com (sorry, don't remember which one) for the crate and made it fit what I needed. The veggies are from this cut file and are so fun to make.

After assembling the veggies, I added a little shading with my chalks.

And this card folds flat for easy mailing too!

I'm also linking up to Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday Challenge - Anything Goes

Thaks for stopping by and have a great day.

Fall Coffee Lovers Blog Hop, part 2

Here is my second entry for the Fall Coffee Lovers' Blog Hop!

I fell in love with this coffee cup svg file from SvgCuts a few weeks ago. I purchased it knowing I would have to make one for this blog hop.

So here it is:

 This cup is made from scrapbooking paper. I got a little messy on the lid, but I'll change the blade out on my Cricut next time and use less glue! :)

From her left side:

And her right:

 And the lid comes off. I'm not sure if I'll use this as a gift holder of some sort or not. Honestly, I love it so much I think I will just keep it in my craft room as decor.

The paper is an old SU pack I've been hanging on to for a few  years called Autumn Meadows. My leaves and acorn are die cut from watercolor paper and painted with a water brush and distress inks. Then I finished it off with a Simple Stories chipboard banner and a fabric flower.

I love making 3-d objects from paper!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!

I'm also linking up to:
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - Anything Goes

cup of love

 Hi folks! It's National Coffee Day and I am participating in the Coffee Lovers Bloghop and this is my second entry. Click here if you'd like to see my card.

I've been working on getting my craft room organized and decorated and decided to make some art for it. So I painted this little 6x6 canvas. I love it and can't wait to get it hung on the wall.

 It's a little hazy here in the Pacific Northwest today so I'm not sure how much of the true colors are coming through on this photo. 

The word COFFEE is stamped using Simon Says Stamp's Sketched Alphabet stamp set. Due to the texture of the canvas the sketchiness didn't show well, so I filled it in with a paintbrush.

And since it is National Coffee Day I am sharing my morning mug of Pumpkin Spice. I was feeling a little Halloween spirit today! I wait all year to use this The Nightmare Before Christmas mug that I've had for years. It's nice and tall and holds a LOT of coffee :)  And yes, my desk is always that messy. Sometimes even worse. Hey - I just noticed that you are getting a 2-for-1 today on mugs. I use that old cracked tree mug in the background to hold water when I paint.

(I'm taking it as a sign that today will be a great day since my manicure soooo matches my mug!)

Thanks for stopping by today. Feel free to come enter the blog hop for your chance to win one of the many many prizes up for grabs!

kind of a hot mess up in here

This is my 2nd post of the day. For my Day 5 GIU post click here.

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So I saw a background page in my art journal that I really liked and tried to replicate it on this 6x6 canvas. It sorta worked. I sprayed some dark navy, lime, and teal inks and sprays on it. I stamped some background stamps (Classified Newsprint and Quatrefoil).

Then I wanted to use this sentiment stamp (that I still can't find the name of) so I smeared on some gesso to make a spot for it. And then proceeded to smudged the sucker when I stmaped it. So I had to go over it with my fine tipped Pitt Pen to fill it back in. Then it was getting lost in the messy background and I decided to spray some yellow paint and spread some yellow gelato around it. Hmm. See what I meant when I titled this post a hot mess?

I liked the stars and wanted to add some more yellow. So I tinted some modeling paste with my yellow and gold gelatos and and applied it over a star stencil from Heidi Swapp up in the left corner. After they dried I added a little glaze to shiny them  up.

It was still a bit bright and busy so I smudged some grey gelato around the edges to soften it up a bit.

Then I walked away from it not thinking I would even share this baby on the blog. I even thought about painting over it and starting over. But then my son said it was cool. I love that kid.

So I am trying to agree and see it from his eyes.

It's growing on me!

the golden thread

Today I've got a little 6"x6" canvas I made for a friend. It's 1 of 3 - hopefully I'll have the other 3 ready to share soon.

I collaged some paper, painted some yellow, and stamped some Unity ( Classified Newsprint).

 

I used the Moroccan stencil from Simon says Stamp and some embossing paste for cool texture. I inked over it with gold ink for some color.

 

I added some washi tape, die cuts, flair, and a fussy-cut stamped image (Grow Yourself Extraordinary).

 I created the quote on my label maker (love that thing!).

 

This was so fun to make. I think I need to make some artwork to hang in my own house now!

 

ETA: I'm linking up to the Moxie Fab World challenge to use stencils.

 

Thanks for stopping by today.

:)



home

I am hosting the current challenge over at The Paper Girls Challenge blog and the theme I chose was 'Home'. That word is my word of the year and since I've moved I have been thinking alot about the meaning of that word 'home'. It's just been on my mind a lot lately.

My husband and I casually mentioned in conversation the other day that we are living in our sixth house. In the last 15 years of marriage we have lived in 6 houses and 2 apartments. Crazy. To say we move a lot would be an understatement.

 

So I thought I'd create this mini album and document all the homes we've had (and am pretty sure are still to come!).

 

Hopefully, I can find photos of all our houses somewhere (once I unpack all the photos) and get the inside of this album scrapped.

 

Please come join in on the challenge! The theme is 'home' and it can be any project with a home/house on it, anything referring to home such as 'Welcome Home', 'Congrats on your new home', 'There's no place like home', a home décor piece, etc.

 

I'll have a prize for a randomly drawn winner too!

 

Thanks for stopping by today!

 

Oh...and I'm just curious. 

How many homes have you lived in?

Leave me a comment if you'd like to share.

:)



Fall Decor blog hop

 

Welcome to The Paper Girls Challenge blog Fall décor blog hop!



The Paper Girls have some wonderful fall-themed décor projects for you.

 And what's a blog hop without a prize??

We are offering up a $26 gift card to ScrapbookPal.com!

 What do you have to do to participate? 

Complete all 3 of these required steps:

1. Comment on each of our blog posts along the hop

2. "Like" the Paper Girls Challenge on Facebook

3. Follow our blog

Easy peasy, right?

 

 You have until Sunday, October 6, 2013 at 11:59 pm MST to comment. We will announce the winner on Wednesday October 9, 2013 at 9:00 am MST.  As usual, we are only shipping prize packs to the US and Canada due to shipping costs. We really hope to change this in the future.

 

You should have come here by way of Kristy. Wasn't her project great?! I love that she can change it up for the seasons!

 

So, here's my project now:

I used the 3D Letters cut file from svgcuts.com to make these out of cardstock for my mantel.
Seriously. This file makes it so easy to create word, initials, etc. without going out and buying expensive wooden or chipboard letters! I use them a lot :)

 

 

Some close-ups:

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a reminder of your hopping order:

 

The Paper Girls: http://thepapergirlschallenge.blogspot.com/

Kristy: www.mamasanity.blogspot.com

Amber: www.allamberallthetime.blogspot.com  ....psst You are HERE!

Erica: http://stampingstarlette.blogspot.com/
 Charity: http://menemenetekeluniversity.blogspot.com/
Heather: http://heatherskraftykorner.blogspot.com/
Charissa: http://akihasmommascraps.com/
Jessica: http://errantscraps.blogspot.com/
Michele: http://about-the-paper.blogspot.com/
Cathryn : http://www.catscrapcreations.blogspot.ca/
Becci: http://b-handmade.blogspot.com/
Misty: http://mistylynnwhat.blogspot.com/
Deborah: http://scrappinthelittlethings.blogspot.com/

 

So now you are headed over to the ever-so-talented Erica! If you love the tiny bits of book page I used then you will LOVE what she did with her book pages! Thanks for stopping by and hopping with us today. Good luck winning the gift card!



Glitter decor

The current challenge over at The Paper Girls is to use Glitter! As a mom of 3 boys I don't get to do that often enough!

 

My little niece is decorating her room in pink, white, and black so I thought I would make her some 3-D letters in her initials to decorate her room.



I used this 3-D letter svg file from svgcuts.com to cut the letters out of cardstock.

 

I added some black and white paper, and then a layer of pink glitter paper!



I added some black rolled flowers and a bow to the T and a fabric flower to the R.

 

These are so fun and {almost} easy to make. If you make any of these (and I highly recommend you do) please watch the assembly video. And have lots of quick-drying liquid glue handy. Some letters have way more pieces than others and can be a bit tricky. I used this last year to make all the letters in "Merry Christmas" for my mantel. Talk about time-consuming! But it was well worth it.

 

What would you make with these files? I want to make more seasonal words for my mantel. My sad little mantel needs help. I should do this soon.

 

Thanks for stopping by today!

 

 

I'm linking up to:

Think Pink Sunday

Making the World Cuter Monday

Time to Sparkle Link Party

Take it on Tuesday

Link up Tuesday

Your Whims Wednesday

 

TMNT birthday party

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

Heroes in a half-shell.

Turtle power!

I love that my kids watch a show that I watched as a kid!

My middle son has become a fan of TMNT. So we decided it would make a fun theme for his 7th birthday party.

I created this invite in my SCAL2 software and cut it on my Cricut.



 I made him a banner in the turtle colors and the balloon idea is from here. It's just crepe paper and paper eyes. I cut white ovals and drew the black pupils. Only I forgot to give mine mouths!

 (p.s. I know there is supposed to be an orange turtle and not a yellow one. But I could not find orange crepe paper in my town!)

We served pizza for lunch since that is the turtles' favorite food after all!

He wanted his cake to look like a pizza too. I baked the cake in a large round cake pan (14" maybe), frosted with tan frosting (white frosting tinted with brown, yellow, and peach color gels) , used red frosting for the sauce, grated white chocolate for the cheese, fruit rollups for pepperoni and bell peppers, and licorice for the olives.

 

I found these cute Lego candles and just had to use them! (nothing to do with TMNT but they are cute.)

I made these cute mini pizza boxes from kraft paper (I think the svg template came from here) and gave the kids a decorated sugar cookie to take home.

 I set up a cookie bar with sugar cookies, red, green, black, and white colored frostings, sprinkles, and lots of candies. There are these pouches of cookie icing from Betty Crocker that are easy for kids to squeeze out. And it dries fairly quickly making it somewhat easy to get these home without too much mess. I set out a pizza and a turtle cookie for inspiration. Here's what's left of poor Leonardo...

I'm told he was delicious! His mask is fruit rollup and the candy eyes are from the baking section. The kids may have eaten the fruit rollups and had to create the masks from icing which worked out even better!

These pizza cookies are made with red icing, shredded coconut, grated white chocolate, black licorice, and green fruit rollups.

The kids came up with all kinds of crazy cookies. I wish I took pics of them! I only got one plate that one of my kids made:

 Our little cookie taste tester!

The boys also got to make their own Mutagen Ooze! This was such a huge hit and everyone loved it. It was so easy to make too. Recipe found here. It's just made of water, borax, clear school glue, and food coloring. Instead of the cool container in the link I just used these food containers I found at Walmart. They were inexpensive (a pack of 4 for a buck-something), the lime green lid matched the party!, and the container is wide enough that kids can play with the ooze without removing it.

 Such a fun party!

My birthday boy:

 Oooooohhhhhh....I almost forgot! See that green punch the boys are getting above?

We called it Ooze punch. I wish I took a pic of that too. It was just powdered lemonade mix and soda. Take enough powder to make 4 quarts. Add just enough water to dissolve it. I probably used a couple cups. Stir and add lots of green food coloring. Then add in 2 2-Liter bottles of lemon-lime soda. I just happened to use Sierra Mist. This got more compliments than I ever expected it would.

 It's a really weird and fun green color:

I decorated the table with a black tablecloth and added strips of yellow washi tape to make it look like a street. (The turtles live under the streets in the sewer you know.) I spray painted a small bucket so that it looked like a sewer pipe (idea from here) and added some of his turtle figurines for décor around the pipe. Of course at this point someone had already spilled punch and everything was moved. See all the wet blue napkins?? :)  Believe it or not I just happened to have a bunch of 12" pizza pans from Dollar Tree just laying around left over from another project so I used them as a charger at each place setting. I thought they went with the pizza theme, of course, but also looked a bit like a round sewer cover too!

The kids left with an armful of goodies. I found these giant coloring books a few weeks ago for $1 at Wal-Mart and snatched them up. I also found TMNT cups at Wal-Mart that we used at the party. They each took their cup, pizza cookie (not pictured here), picked a balloon, plus took all their cookies and ooze.

Thanks for stopping by today!

I would love to know if you use any of these ideas. Please leave me a comment with a link to your blog so I can see your party too!

Linking up to:
Think Pink Sundays
Making the world Cuter Monday
Take it on Tuesday
Link it up Tuesday
 Time to Sparkle
Your Whims Wednesday