Great Mother's Day Gift & Tutorial

Cathe Holden over at Just Something I Made has a great (and as usual, extremely clever) gift you can make for Mother's Day. It would also be cute themed for a baby or wedding shower with bits of advice written on the cards for the mother or bride-to-be. Take a look here.

photo from Just Something I Made

Maker Faire is Coming - A Creative Mojo Jump Start

Last May my family and I attended one day of the Maker Faire. It was a lot of fun. We're going this year.

In case you're near San Mateo, CA at the end of May, check it out. You can buy your tickets early on-line and save some $.

Click on the photo to go to their website.

Out of Boredom Comes Art

Little Cat A has been on TV and computer restriction. This has caused her to look for other sources of entertainment. Lots of painting and reading have been happening in her life. Last weekend she focused on 3-D art. She rummaged through my ribbon stash, got inspired and went to work. I thought what she came up with was so clever I told her I'd blog about it. She blushed.

You can click on photos to enlarge.

She searched the web for a dog outline. Enlarged it on our printer. Glued eyelash ribbon like crazy. Coiled bits of pipe cleaner for the eye and nose. Added blue ribbon and bit of tinsel pipe cleaner for the collar and tag. Such a clever girl!

The finished pooch! (It's a West Highland Terrier)

Easter Bunny Card, Envelope & "Bag" - FREE Download

I was completely inspired by Jessica's tutorial over on How About Orange last week. Check it out here. She cleverly showed how to make a bag out of an envelope. I literally grabbed an envelope while I read her post and tried it. It works beautifully! I started thinking about how I could use this idea and Easter goodies came to mind. Here's what I came up with. I thought I'd share. I'm going to put some candy in the bags and give to my kids for Easter. I had to use tissue for the photo because if I bought Easter candy now, I'd eat it all before Easter. No lie.After you've looked at Jessica's tutorial, download this PDF template formatted for an A2 envelope. You CAN CHANGE THE NAME in the template and print it out. Just open the PDF in Acrobat 8 or later (download for free at www.adobe.com), click in the text box and type your info. I printed on light blue envelopes. If you're using a different size envelope or a store-bought bag, print the pdf on paper, cut and glue to your bag. Label paper would work too.

You can also download this PDF template of a 2" square envelope and coordinating card. You'll need a color printer, 8.5x11 card stock and scissors. No glue needed. The envelope folds to interlock in the back. So simple. You don't have use the card with the bag. Tuck one in a bouquet of flowers or at place settings and write trivia questions on them. If you don't want your card to say "happy easter", cut 2" squares from any paper and write your note.

Have fun and leave a comment on how you'll use these freebies!
Thanks Jessica for the inspiration!

Valentine Treats for my Family

This morning I TRIED to make something special for my family for Valentine's Day. I saw a yummy recipe in Marty Stewart's Feb issue for heart-shaped Ginger Sugared Cookies. I'm not the baker in our family. The LOML is. He likes to bake. He's good at it. I like to eat what he bakes. A match made in heaven. But, I thought he (and the rest of my family) would enjoy being on the receiving end of some baking love. So I tried.Here's what the little pretties looked like going into the oven. Not bad. I was already starting to pat myself on the back.

Here's what they looked like coming out of the oven! What!?? They are official Valentine blobs! Seriously, I could have just thrown the dough at the cookie sheet and gotten equal or better results.

After having spent the time making the dough, refrigerating it, rolling it, cutting it, sprinkling it, re-refrigerating it and then baking it, I was invested in this little project and was not going to give up.

So, I scrounged through my stash and found some glassine envelopes. I packed 5 little "hearts" (the bigger hearts will need to be used in blind taste tests, ephasis on blind) into each envelope, sealed them with some labels I made and wrapped them with baker's twine. I'm hoping the packaging will work as camouflage and distraction for the cookie-blobs.

Nothing says love like an envelope of Valentine's blobs. :)

Cheap Wall Art (I mean frugal)

The walls at Print Possible (my other, other job) are bare. Have been for 2 years. We keep meaning to put something up, but time keeps moving on and the walls haven't dressed themselves. Well, no more naked walls! These will be hanging very soon. (click on photos to enlarge)

The 16 frames all laid out on my floor. I'm going to try and hang them with sticky-back velcro so they will (hopefully) be easier to align.

I bought some 5.5 x 5.5 Nyttja frames at IKEA ($24 for 16 frames!), scoured my clip art books, did a little printing and cutting and voila, instant art.

The frames still wrapped up and some trial images printed out.

I created a template in Illustrator so I could print the images 2 at a time. I printed the trim marks as solid lines for easier cutting and because the picture frame border would cover any cutting mistakes.

A closer look.

I printed the "border" on kraft paper and the butterflies on white. I ended up changing the corner images to include some of the border because the corners on their own (see photo 3) were to overwhelming when they were bigger.

Some Free Love

Ok, I've been wanting to do a free download for quite some time now, but had no idea how to do it. Once again, it's Cathe Holden to the rescue. She gave me some pointers (ok, she told me exactly what to do). Let's see how it works. Please click here for a download of this:

It's an 8.5 x 11 pdf of Valentine's gift tags/lollipop holders. I created them for my daughter to pass out to her pals in class. Just print, cut and attach a goodie to each tag and spread the love. Little Cat is is going to punch two holes in the center and "weave" a lollipop stick through them.

Please let me know if this download works for you and how they print for you. I'd really appreciate any feedback. I want to get it right so I can do more freebies in the future:)

Happy Valentine's Day!!
Whitney

Another Valentine After All

I THOUGHT I was only going to create one design for Valentine's Day, but I came across a couple of cupid graphics that inspired me. I decided to do a PDF Valentine Set for the etsy shop. I tried to make them flexible to use.

The PDF files all printed out.

Everything cut up and ready to give.

Each little Love Note is for writing something you love or appreciate about someone. Similar to the Bucket of Love concept, but instead of having all the notes in one place, I like the idea of hiding them all over the place so they can be found for days on end.

The Petite Valentines are for using as gift tags (maybe with a Hershey Kiss taped to it?) or punch a couple of holes in it and "weave" a lollipop through.

The labels are just for fun; sealing envelopes, decorating a package or making Valentines with.

Valentine for the Shop

The Book of Love

I don't do a lot of designs for holidays. Just a few for each one (at most). I just finished my one and only nod to Valentine's Day for my esty shop. The idea came from the Christmas gift (The Bucket of Love) I made for my husband. That project was loads of work. It was worth it, but I wanted to come up with something a little more user friendly for the shop. Enter "The Book of Love". All the giver has to do is decorate the heart (if they choose), fill in the pages with the things they love about the person, pop it in the envelope and voila, instant valentine keepsake. I have enough supplies to make 10 (my first limited edition!).

The heart and envelope are red pearlized paper.
The heart works as the to/from tag and to keep the book closed.

Once the heart is removed, the book opens.

The inside front cover (on right) and the first page to write on.

Samples of the pages to write on.
They alternate in the book. 10 pages total.

The Final Handmade Christmas Gift!! -- A Bucket of Love

Finally finished the last of my handmade gifts for this holiday. Whew! It's a Bucket of Love for my husband.

This idea started in November of 2007. I was going to make a daily calendar for Christmas with each day stating something I loved about him. Well... that idea turned out to be more than I could take on (365 is a lot to think of, not too mention making the calendar!). So, I shelved the idea for last Christmas, tweaked it a bit and came up the "Bucket of Love" for this Christmas.

The Bucket of Love ready to give.

The idea for the paper fortune cookies came from the For the Love of Paper blog, click here to see how they're made. I printed the "loved things" on the paper directly (not a fortune slip), cut out the 3" circles (bigger would have been better) and folded them. I had a heck of time keeping the cookies from popping open (even with permanent sticky). I ended up heavily creasing the fold. They don't look near as nice as Kimberly's, but I was running out of time!

I put them in a clear paint can/bucket from the Container Store, made a label for each side of the bucket and voila, I was done. A Bucket of Love for my Love Bucket!

I wonder if he will read them all at once or spread his reading out over time? Either way, I hope he will feel the love.

Handmade Gifts

I haven't been posting much lately. Trying to make this holiday a hand-made one is taking loads more time than I thought it would. Here's a few more things I can check off my list...

Little Cat A is a snuggler. She loves plush/soft stuff (blankets, stuffed animals etc). I thought I would knit her a scarf for Christmas. I haven't knitted in about 20 years and I was very much a beginner when I stopped knitting. I have to give a big THANK YOU to You Tube and all the kind, generous people who post knitting videos. Without them I would have ended up giving Little Cat A a ball of yarn! Thankfully the yarn I chose was VERY forgiving. I initially started out with 25 stitches and after 1.5 hours of knitting, realized that would be way too wide and I unraveled all my hard work. After all, I wanted the scarf to keep her warm, not strangle her! I started again, this time with 12 stitches and somehow ended with 14 in the end! I don't know that happened. Anyway, here's what Little Cat A is receiving.

Little Cat A's Christmas scarf.
I thought it worthy of two photos since it took me forever to make!

Next up may seem like a cop-out, BUT my peeps will need to write thank you notes after Christmas. So they will each get a set of flat notes with return address labels designed just for them.

Little Cat B appreciates the Steam Punk style,
so the gears work for him.

The LOML would appreciate something simple.
Manly yes, but I like it too.
(Does anyone remember those Irish Spring soap commercials??)

Little Cat A likes cute things; puppies, kitties and of course, butterflies.

I have only one more hand-made gift to make. I'll post it when it's done. I'm excited about the concept, I hope the execution of it meets my expectations. Fingers crossed.

Gifts for the Neighbors

Each year at Christmas time the LOML (Love Of My Life) bakes up several varieties of yummy cookies for our neighbors. He puts a LOT of work into these babies. He scours the internet for new and different recipes and no recipe is too time consuming or difficult for him. I always encourage him to keep it simple, but he's all about the taste, no matter the effort. Then, after all his efforts, he's perfectly fine with putting his creations on a cheap paper plate and covering them with ugly plastic wrap for delivery to the neighbors. He's been doing this for 15+ years and each year I suggest he kick up his presentation a notch or two. He's never interested. This year I figured, if it was important to me, then I should do something about it. So I did. Here's what we co-created together. He was responsible for the cookies and I was responsible for the marshmallows and the packaging.

A package of wrapped cookies and the supplies I used to make the cookie tags.

Here's the Hot Cocoa packaging before I cut them out.
Props to LollyChops for coming up with the great hot cocoa packaging idea.
Thanks Lolly!!

Contents:
Carmalitas
Iced Citrus Crackle Cookies
Lemon Meringues
Ginger Cookies
Cappuccino Flats
Homemade Marshmallows (little hearts - cut with a cookie cutter I bought at Bake It Pretty which I discovered from Miss B at Le Blahg. Thanks Miss B!)
Hot Cocoa Mix (store bought, but packaged with love)

The filled boxes before they get all wrapped up!

All wrapped and ready for delivery!

I like how they turned out and they were worth the hours and hours of work!