Rainbow Loom Valentines!

 My kiddo is obsessed with her rainbow loom as well as most of her friends!    They are making bracelets at recess all the time, since it's too cold to go outside right now.   Every afternoon, she's working on a bracelet of some sort!    So much so that we now have two looms to make bigger and better bracelets and now necklaces.   It never ends!  

She really, really (did I mention REALLY) wanted to make her class bracelets for her Valentine cards.   First, she was going to make triple singles.   Then, it was single loops.    After MUCH debate, she finally agreed to the fishtail design.    We don't do anything the easy way around these parts!   By the end, I was wondering why on earth I thought this was a good idea.   We spent lots of time bonding over the rainbow loom, for sure!   

Enough rambling...on with the photos and some tips to make this easier.   Live and learn!

We started by first picking our colors.    She insisted on a rainbow pattern so ROYGBIV pattern it was!    It's much faster if you just dump the bands on your table instead of trying to get them out of the containers.  Efficiency was the goal!

We made several one at a time before I got the bright idea to mass produce these things.   Much faster even if boring.   :)    She made them one at a time and I made a couple batches of six.    She was limited on time since she spent a few days deciding which bracelet she was making.   Mom to the rescue! 

They do make an impressive looking pile when all 24 bracelets are piled up together!

 Thanks to Pinterest I found these awesome printables.   Go here to get the downloadable file from Nest of Posies!   It's awesome and easy peasy.   Just download and print.  Take your paper cutter and cut them up.   I printed mine full page.   Then, each card was 3.25x5.25.    She wanted big ones!    I printed on plain paper and then matted them with cardstock for sturdiness.     I also cut out the edges so the bracelets were easy to get on and off the valentine without destroying either one.

She put to and from on the back and we were done with time to spare!   Always a good thing!!

 

Happy Crafting!

Project Life 2014: Title Page

I'm sharing my 2014 title page today!   I'm still not 100% happy with it, but it will do.   I had great visions of having a photo of several of the 2014 glasses, but it didn't pan out.   I will still probably switch the current glass picture with a picture of the kiddos wearing the glasses!   It's been SOOO cold this week that we haven't gone outside in our usual spot to take the photo!

 

I used some of the suggested title cards from the Slate kit.    I love using photos in the title page!   We had photos taken last year by Zoe Photographic Group for my in-laws 50th anniversary.    I thought they went well with the Slate cards!

(click on photos for clearer images)

I, also, used a couple of the Project Life Overlays that were available on HSN last year.   The top left card has an overlay on it.    I cut one down to 3x4 and used it on the last of the 3x4 title cards.    Love these!    I will totally have to buy the digital files to these to use all year! 

Last, but not least, I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut the letters for our last name.    Not just a big fan of my handwriting, so this worked perfectly!   I just glued them down and was done!    Mostly quick and easy!    

Next week, I will be sharing hopefully the first two weeks of 2014 in my book and will be caught up!    I'm crossing my fingers for that anyways!!



Project Life 2014: Getting Started!

As the first week of 2014 comes to a close, I am finally finished deciding which kit I'm going to use for the year and what color album.    There are just too many choices I'm telling ya!   I'm working on my first two weeks pages to share next week!

I've been doing Project Life since 2010 when my husband was deployed.   I started this project as a way for him not to miss the everyday things he would be missing.   I loved that book so much that I have continued each year since.   I've gone from the picture of the day way to more of a week in review.   I don't worry about taking a picture every day, but more the funny, crazy and extremely boring things we do every day.

I chose to go with the Slate edition and the red We R Memory Keepers 3 ring album.   My BFF got the Slate kit for me for Christmas because she just knew we would use all the awesome sayings in it without our kids.   No doubt that she was right!    I've already decided that the SERIOUSLY!?!  card is going to be my theme for the first week.    2014 came in with a bang, but that's all good.   We'll just keep trucking right along!

 

 

I plan on sticking with Design A throughout the year.   On weeks i have more photos, i will add some insert pages.    I'm undecided about how to incorporate my Instagram photos this year.    Last year, I ended up with two albums.   Not sure I want to repeat that this year!

 

 

The one thing I found I didn't much like about the Slate kit was that the weekly title cards were a little plain and some were very bright and full of white space.    I'm not a big fan of white space!     I chose to use my Silhouette Cameo and cut letters out for each week.   I got through week 25 when I had the thought that what if I changed designs on the plastics.    Plus, it was taking SO LONG to glue all those letters down.   Whew.

 

Check back soon for my title page and the first few weeks of 2014 Project Life Pages! 

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Happy Halloween: Cat treat bags!

Happy Halloween!!! 

My kiddo was in love with the idea of having cat treat bags...last minute treat bags!   Who am i kidding, she's in love with ALL things cats!     So, I went to work brainstorming on making the perfect treat bags that didn't take forever to make.   I didn't want anything to large as she wanted to give smarties to her friends.   

So, I found these little black bags at Micheals.  I had also found these cute colored googly eyes at Micheals for another project, but we deemed PURFECT for this project by the 8 year old.    I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut the ears and the mouth.     THe ears I made triangles in Silhouette Studio and the mouth was from a purchased file.     THe whiskers I was going to cut out but decided they would be easily knocked off and we drew them on with a paint marker.    I stapled the tops to keep the candy in the bags.    However, a tiny attacher would have been PURFECT and it's definitely on my list of things I need!

According to her teacher, they were the hit of the party!    Everyone loved them and that made it totally worth the last minute work! 

Enjoy!
 

Our kitten Samus thought he had found all his long lost friends!    He hopped up here himself to take a looksie and see what all the fuss was about!

 

 

Melted Crayon Heart Canvas

My 6 year old crafty mini me was searching for something awesome to make her favorite Kindergarten teacher for an end of the year present.   Her teacher is moving to a new school, so she wanted to make her something for her classroom.    We found a picture of the crayon heart canvas on www.pinterest.com, of course!    So, here is a quick tutorial on how we did this!

First, we cut a heart shape out on my Silhouette Cameo.   I am not a freehand artist...at all!   I traced the heart on to the canvas trying to center it.   I put a crayon in the compass positions to try and make sure it was evenly spaced.    After that, we spent some time getting all our crayons in the order we wanted.   After you know the order you want your crayons in, you just line them up with the bottom of the crayon lined up with the pencil mark.   This makes sure the heart shape is uniformed on the inside.  (The next one I make, I am going to try not having them fanned out so much.   I'll post an update if that works better!   I'm not real happy with the bottom of the heart, but it is still super cute!)

  After you get the crayons lined up and are happy with the design, it's time to glue them down!   I used zip dry to glue mine down and it worked very well.   I tried to keep the crayola emblem facing up so they were all uniformed.   After the glue dries, it's time to melt the crayons!   This canvas was MUCH MUCH MUCH more messy than the one we did with the crayons straight across the top.   I ruined my pants with little flecks of colored wax everywhere!!

To melt the crayons, you just need your hair dryer.   You could use an embossing gun and it would probably go much faster.   I held the canvas and just rotated it as I went around to make sure the wax fanned out.   If it's not making it to the edges, just remelt the crayon drippings and the "wind" from the hair dryer will keep it moving in the right direction.   Just keep rotating until you are where you started.   Let it set for a few minutes for the wax to harden and you are DONE!  


It took about 15 minutes or less to melt these crayons.  From start to finish, I'd say it took an hour and a half, but we had problems finding enough crayons.   I would splurge and buy the 130 box of crayons next time just for all the different shades that come in it.    We used a box of 48 and some extra crayons from another box of 24.   I didn't actually count how many crayons we used, though!

Her teacher LOVED it.
 

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Cub Scout Blue and Gold Banquet Centerpieces

Our Cub Scout Blue and Gold Banquet was a couple weeks ago and each of our dens were to make 3 centerpeices. So, we needed something simple and related to our Webelos den! I took some of these little Easter trees from the Dollar Tree and some trusty spray paint and went to town. I cut some 2 in, 1.5 in, and 1.25 in circles on my cameo. I had orginally planned on doing some print and cuts but the fonts were SOO small to fit that you could barely read them on the larger words. So, my handwriting was the font of choice. We put each of the 12 words that a scout should strive to be. I punched a hole with my Crop-a-dile and we hung them on the tree. Simple, yet cute! The wind was blowing like crazy when I was trying to photograph these little trees so the little circles were pushed back to the bases. They were much more spaced out and readable on the actual tables. The lighting just didn't work for taking photos of them on the tables!