Fall Leaves Monogram

Happy Fall, Y'all! I wrote this post as a guest post two years ago but never shared it on our blog. So to get in the spirit of the season, here is my  Fall Leaves Monogram. I started by grabbing some fall patterned paper scraps from my scrapbook stash.

Using my Silhouette, I cut out a bunch of leaves from these scraps. Then I cut out my monogram also using my Silhouette. If you don't have a Silhouette, you could get some leaves like these and then hand cut your monogram. For this craft, you want a simple monogram because it ends up being really busy--straight lines are best!

I covered the "W" in adhesive and then stuck my first layer of leaves on.

Then I added more glue and filled in the holes.

I let the leaves staggered the leaves to create more visual interest and then trimmed down the sides.

Then I used some 3-D pop adhesives to give it a little dimension and backed it on a coordinating piece of cardstock.

Last, I popped it in a frame and called it good. Here's the finished product!

Here it is with my fall table scape:

(kinda weird to see this--I've moved two times since I wrote this post!)

Birthday Candles Card

My friend's birthday was this past week and I made her a quick and easy card to go with some cookies. I got the idea from this card and remembered I had purchased these candles for this same friend's birthday last year. I rummaged them out of the back of our silverware drawer to find the candles and then broke out my glue gun.  This card came together in 15 minutes!

I liked the asymmetry with the candles. The ribbon hides the glue!

Next time I would use more glue, since some of the candles came loose on the way there! 

(I snapped these pictures on the way to my friend's birthday lunch--while stopped at a red light!! Say hello to my car, leg, and foot)

Music Advent Calendar Garland

This year I wanted to make an advent calendar, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for each day. I wanted something simple enough I could really do it everyday. So I decided on music. I love Christmas music and my favorite part of Christmas Eve at my parents' house is singing all the Christmas carols. This was a great way to celebrate and appreciate the music all month long.

Ignore the football game on TV in the background

I thought it'd be fun to put the countdown on my mini Christmas tree as a garland. First, I found some vintage Christmas sheet music and printed it onto cardstock. Using my Silhouette, I cut out circles from the cardstock with the numbers counting down to Christmas and small holes at the top of each circle, to attach them to the garland. I also cut red circles.

 

I wrote two song titles on the red circles, one a Christmas hymn and the other a fun Christmas song. Finally, I glued the red circles on the back of the printed cardstock circles and tied them onto twine to make the garland.



Here's the list of songs I used:

Christmas Hymns

Joy to the World

Oh, Come All Ye Faithful

Angels We Have Heard on High

Silent Night

Once in Royal David’s City

Away in a Manager

It Came upon the Midnight Clear

O Little Town of Bethlehem

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

With Wondering Awe

While Shepherds Watched their Flocks

Far, Far Away on Judea’s Plains

The First Noel

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

Spiritual Children's Christmas Songs

From the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' (aka Mormon) Children's Songbook:

Stars Were Gleaming

When Joseph Went to Bethlehem

Away in a Manager

Mary’s Lullaby

Who is the Child?

Picture a Christmas

Christmas Bells

The Nativity Song

Oh, Hush, Thee My baby

Have a Very Merry Christmas!

Fun Christmas Songs:

Deck the Halls

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

O Christmas Tree

O Come, O Come Emmanuel

The Twelve Days of Christmas

We Three Kings of Orient Are

We Wish You a Merry Christmas

What Child is This?

The Holly and the Ivy

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

White Christmas

Let it Snow

Jingle Bells

Jingle Bell Rock

Rudolph The Red-nosed Reindeer

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree

Feliz Navidad

Frosty the Snowman

A Holly Jolly Christmas

Here comes Santa Claus

Carol of the Bells

Home or the Holidays

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Winter Wonderland

The Christmas Song

Now each day we can sing those songs and, if I'm feeling ambitous, I can research about these songs or read coordinating scripture references (found in the LDS hymnal at the bottom of the page, helpful!).

Merry Christmas

Watercolor Easter Cards

Sometime last year I became a tiny bit obsessed with watercolors. I wanted so badly to try them, but the local class was $84, with $100 worth of supplies. It seemed like an investment I wasn't ready to make. A few weeks ago I decided to get some cheap supplies and just try to see if I liked it. $15 later and I was set. I decided my first project would be greeting cards for Easter. After brainstorming I came up with these:

The eggs were cut with my Silhouette Cameo. One of the best features about the Silhouette Studio (software program for the Silhouette) is the "Trace" feature. I can take any picture and trace it and have a shape for free. I found an egg shape online and saved it. Then I opened it in Silhouette Studio, used the trace feature and had a free shape!

I used watercolor paper and dug in! While the eggs were drying, they curled up, but with glue they stayed down on the cards. I love how the watercolor looks like dyed eggs! This was a fun, simple project and perfect for my first time with watercolors!

Did you send anything fun for Easter? 

Mix and Match Animal Book

This is a fun activity to make with or for your children. I was thumbing through some craft books (specifically Step-by-Step Crafts for Children published by Kingfisher) and saw this idea. I simplified it a little, but the sky is the limit.

First I found some free clipart pictures of animals. I selected ones of similar sizes.

 Next I cut each one to the same size. (I chose 5" squares.)

I glued each picture to colorful cardstock that was a little larger than the pictures. Then I cut the pictures in half as shown here.

.I stapled the pictures inside the cover and then used a type of duct tape to cover the staples.

This would be very fun to do with family photographs or with pictures the children color.
Have fun!

"Like a Sir" Mustache Birthday Card

It's been my goal to make handmade birthday cards for everyone in my family this year. I sometimes go the extra mile and make a card for a friend. I came up with this:

I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out the top hat, 'stache and letters (Courier font). I printed out the newsprint from here

I was pretty proud of myself =)

Paper Balloons

 The ancient art of origami

Ok... I am really only assuming that origami is an ancient art. I learned how to do what I am going to do 1000 years ago it seems, so that is pretty ancient. I learned how to make the paper balloon on a school bus ride home from elementary school. An older girl taught me how to fold a torn sheet of notebook paper into an inflated box. She called it a paper balloon, so that is what I have always called it.

Start with a square piece of paper. In the pictures I am using colored computer paper, but it is a little thick. Origami paper (or notebook paper!) work better. Fold the paper in half, and then in half again.

Unfold the paper once so that it is in half with a crease down the center. This is a little tricky to explain, but I think picture 2 above will help. Bring the lower right corner inside the paper and have it touch the center line. Crease it well and repeat on the other side. It will look like picture 3 from the front and picture 4 from the top.

Lay the triangle with the point nearest your body and the open end away from your body. Bring one flap down to the point of the triangle. Repeat with the left side. Flip it over and repeat on the back. It will look like the middle picture, top row. Next fold in each side of the diamond. Two on the front, two on the back as shown in the third picture top row. Just for orientation sake, not the the top has a hole in it and the bottom does not have a hole. It has 4 flaps.

Fold the top of each flap into a triangle. (First picture top row.) Tuck each folded down triangle into the opeinng on the sides. (That gaping opening in the first picture. The second picture is another few.
Almost done! I like to crease the top and bottom as shown by that faint line in the bottom row.
Crease everything very well one more time and gently blow into the hole at the top. It should look like this:
It should look like this:

 

You can do it! I learned it as a 5th grader!

There are lots of origami direction online. The piggie at the top and this little fox below are easy to make. I used to have my students try them (and a paper crane) when we read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes.  (Piggy)  (Fox)

Paper Snowflakes

Taking a break from wedding posts...that you all don't comment on. Mmhmm I noticed. When you were little did you ever cut out a snowflake and it not turn out so well? Yeah well that still happened to me when I was not so little. I decided I was going to make snowflakes and make dang pretty ones yesterday so I used the Google machine to help me out and Pinterest. I found this pin and decided to go for it. Well still didn't look as pretty as the pattern! So then I asked Mr. Google how to fold a darn snowflake correctly. Turns out I had been doing it wrong all this time.

So here's how to do it:

Start with a square piece of paper.

Fold it in half diagonally.

Now fold it in half diagonally again.

Here's the tricky part that I have to do a couple times. Fold both sides into each other so the outside of the side matches the new fold. It's going to look like a triangle with tails. Make sure that the sides match and aren't overlapping. This is kind of hard to explain. Hopefully I didn't lose you!

Now cut off the tails.

Here's where the fun begins. Draw whatever pattern you want or follow a pattern you found.

Then cut out the pattern. I recommend not using the tips of the scissors since this is several layers of paper and it might be too thick for the tip. I cut as high as felt comfortable on the scissors blades. This gives you more control and power to cut through the layers.

And unfold!

Here's an example of when you fold it only in half twice on the diagonal and not doing the final two folds vs the fold explained above:

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Bubble Marble Card Stock

This is a fun, easy craft that even the kids will enjoy. Take a small amount of soap (preferably uncolored; scented doesn't matter) and add a small amount of water into a bowl. Size changes the pattern so it's up to you as to how large of a bowl you would like to use. I used a regular sized disposable bowl.
Add a few drops of food coloring and mix the color in.

With a straw, blow bubbles in the soapy mixture to fill the bowl a little over the rim. I stirred the bubbles to make them smaller so the color and pattern would look differently.

Taking card stock, lightly press the paper face down onto the bubbles not getting the paper in the water and lift up. You can repeat this as many times as you want adding different layers of bubbles.

Don't overdo it though, then it'll just look like a mess. Some bubbles may stay on the paper. You can let them pop on their own or blow them off.

Set aside to dry. Dry time is short and varies as to how many times you dipped it in the bubbles.

Fluffy Fringe Birthday Card

I'm not the best at sending out birthday cards. I'm at about 50% for the year thus far. But a few weeks ago I got a 3 day notice on my sister-in-law's birthday. So I whipped up a card using some inspiration from Pinterest.

Here's my card:

Here's my inspiration:

Source: papercraftsconnection.com via Jaime on Pinterest

To make the fluffy fringe: I cut three equal lengths of crepe paper and stacked them on top of each other. Then I cut fringe on each side. Next, I fired up the sewing machine and sewed the crepe paper up the middle.

 

For the rest of the card: I used some cake patterned scrapbook paper as the background and adhered it to white cardstock. I added some decorative stitches and then sewed the frill on. Finally, I used corresponding scrapbook paper for the sentiment, cut with my Silhouette Cameo. Sadly the scrapbook paper I used was really thin and tore a bit when coming off the cutting mat. Boo.

Fringe in action

When I wrote the message and gave it to my husband to sign (who else does this? Everyone?) He asked if I made the fluffy fringe. Then he said, "Niiiiice," Woohoo! Man compliment on my craft!

Paper Bag Scrapbook

Do you remember how I helped plan a monster themed baby shower? Well with all the pictures on my camera I decided to do a scrapbook for my amazing friend. I wanted to do something small and cute so I did a Paper Bag Scrapbook.

All you need is three paper bags. I folded one in half to see the halfway mark and I used my sewing machine  and sewed up the line. I made sure I doubled sewed the edges. For a three bag book you will end up having 12 pages and three open pockets from the top of the bags. I used some monster paper, solid cardstock, and  some fun baby boy paper I had on hand.

CD of all the pictures with a custom CD case out of the monster paper

It was so fun to scrapbook again since I haven't done it in a while. The whole book only took me an afternoon. I hope she likes it!