Bring on the Purses

To kick off the year for my Create-A-Bunch at Lunch club, we made purses to hold all the cards that we would be making during the year. Initially we were going to do this in January, but since the January date snuck up on me, we pushed it back until February's class.

I learned how to make these purses from Rita Kegg last spring. They're nice and sturdy, and are perfect for holding a bunch of cards.

This time, instead of showing you my sample, we decided to take pictures of the completed projects the club made. Everyone chose their paper ahead of time and I cut it for them and brought it in on the day of the class. All of the purses have unique personalities, and the girls were pretty excited to have their work featured on the blog. Unfortunately, the initial class was a small one, and when I did the repeat for the others, I forgot to take pictures. So you're only getting to see the creativity of about a third of my group.

Another Towel Cake

Here is the second cake I made for my co-worker's bridal shower last weekend.

This one is basically the same as the one posted Saturday, but it uses two bath sheets and two bath towels. Note to self....while bath sheets seem much larger when you look at them or when you use them after taking a shower, they're really not all that much bigger than the bath towels when you roll them up. In fact, both layers were the same size. To help the bottom layer look bigger, I ended up rolling a measuring cup set in the center and wound the bath sheets around it, and even then, the bottom layer is still not much bigger than the top layer. Something to keep in mind if you decide to do this yourself.

Other than that, the cake came together in exactly the same manner as the one I posted on Saturday, including using spatulas and wooden spoons to poke through both layers and help hold the cake together.

Since the towels the bride chose were cream, I was able to incorporate her black, white and silver wedding colors into my decorating, and went for a big bow on top accented with flowers.

There is also a matching card that I will post on Thursday.

Wedding Shower Gift That Takes the Cake

I have two bridal showers today. One for family and one for a co-worker. For both showers, I thought I'd try my hand at making a towel cake. I'd seen one once before at another shower last spring, and figured it couldn't be that hard. Truth is, it's a piece of cake :). Pun totally intended.

The idea is to make three layers using two bath towels as the base, two hand towels as the middle layer and and two fingertip towels for the top. You basically fold all of the towels in quarters lengthwise and roll them up and pin the back. I actually did each of mine slightly different, but the idea is still the same. I also chose to fill mine with kitchen gadgets, because in each case, I am going in halves with someone else on the gifts.

This one is the one I made for my cousin's fiance. She chose chocolate brown towels. My sister and I decided that a two layer cake would be easier to handle and we used three bath towels to make this cake. Two are rolled together for the base and one is rolled up for the top layer. My nieces will also be going to the shower, so we decided to make a smaller separate cake for them using hand towels.



The insides are stuffed with various kitchen gadgets we found at Bed, Bath and Beyond where we got the towels. They were items that were not on the bride's registry, but were just different and interesting, or something everyone can use a bunch of. Spatulas and bag sealers are pushed lengthwise from the top layer through to the bottom layer to keep the layers together and give them some stability. Other items include a strawberry huller, an avocado peeler, a cookie scoop, bag clips, a mini chopper, a silicone fingertip hot pad and some other miscellaneous items.

The sides are rolled in cream colored ribbon that I added some cream cabochon crystal stickers to, and the topper is flowers from a dollar store. Strangely enough, it was the girls' mini cake that was the most difficult to get together. It was so small, that the gadgets I was filling it with weren't laying right. But other than that, the cake was amazingly easy to put together.



Check back in a few days, and I'll share the other cake.

Black Friday! Shop 'Til You Drop!

If you've been following my blog for a while, or been part of my newsletter in previous years, you know that my sister and I consider Black Friday to be it's own holiday. It started out a few years ago when we said "if we happen to be awake early, we'll go and check out the sales". Turns out the two of us woke up every hour on the hour all night long, until I finally tip-toed to her room at 4:00 am, cracked open the door and whispered "are you up?" to be greeted by a flurry of activity in the dark. We went out together and had a lot of fun and have been doing it ever since.

Last year, I decorated coffee sleeves for the occasion. This year, I was more organized - and I made organizers. You can find them all over the Internet, but I got my instructions from Vicki Hook's Christmas Planner Tutorial.

The pink one, is for my sister and takes a quote from an e-mail we exchanged earlier in the week "Who needs sleep? Just give me coffee and let the shopping begin!"



The aqua one is mine and matches my purse.






The paper comes from JoAnn's Peppermint Forest stack that my Mom picked up on sale and left for me to use. The stamp is from Hanna Stamps, Vogue Hanna set that I got just because it reminded me of my sister, who really does consider shopping to be one of her hobbies.

I colored the images with Copic markers, in so many colors it's probably too much to list them all, but predominantly the jeans for both girls was B34 with a little B32 to lighten them up a bit. The pink girl has a paper pieced shirt taken from the background paper and her hat is R83 and R85. The "magenta" on the aqua girl is a combination of RV34 and V01 with the accessories done in G00. The inside labels are printed on the computer and cut with the Labels 1 Nestabilities dies.

Girls Rock Party Favors

Two things as follow-up to my post about the GTA Rocks! The first is that I was blown away when most of the people in the band said they couldn't open the bags and eat the rocks because they wanted to save the whole package. I even had someone tell me it was one of the best gifts he ever got. That's quite a statement from a bunch of hardcore hard rockers.

In addition, the rocks inspired a friend of mine and her step-daughter. They were in the process of planning a rock and roll themed birthday party. At the Stamp With Me night I had a few weeks ago, we talked about various party ideas and came up with the idea of purchasing a bunch of blow-up guitars and microphones from the party store and having the girls dress up and take pictures in rock gear with the props. They would get some pre-cut picture mats and the girls would decorate them with stamps, markers and glitter pens and then the photos would be added. It would count both as an activity and a party favor. This past weekend, they came over and went through all my music themed stamps and picked out the ones they wanted to use. Then they saw my post on Sunday with the GTA rocks bags and decided that they would make those as well using each girls name on the package "-----" rocks! All this positive feedback makes me feel like I rock too!

GTA Rocks!

My husband's band, Grand Theft Audio, a.k.a. GTA, is in the studio today recording their first demo CD. The whole band is excited and it's rubbing off! I made these little treat bags for everyone filled with chocolate rocks we found at The Southbend Chocolate Company. The toppers have the recording date and information on the back so they can be kept as souvenirs. I doubt that the guys will keep the souvenirs, but the singers might, and it just seemed like a fun idea in the spirit of their excitement.

To decorate the front of the toppers, I used The Angel Company's Kamalaht paper collection, which was retired, but is available for a limited time. This paper was from the Classic Soar With It Collections, that are very similar to Basic Grey. I stamped the background with T.A.C.'s retired Music Notes stamp and used the retired Distressed-bet set for the "rocks". The GTA is cut using the Graffiti Sizzix die.





If I've sparked your interest in Tom's band and you'd like to see information, you can go to his MySpace page. He's even got some videos that I took of their first gig posted (I had heels on and was crouching on the floor in front of them, so you'll have to ignore my shaky camera skills.)

Candy Tin Project

Tomorrow (Sunday) at the Tinley Park Expo, our make and take will be decorating candy tins. This is a sample of one that I did up to keep my business cards from getting crumpled in my purse, but there will be other styles available at the booth.

These little tins are great for holding little brag books in your purse, or just pictures that you don't want to get crushed. They're also perfect for holding gift cards. Can't you see this little tin as a package topper? I also know someone that does nothing but purchase gift cards for all the nieces, nephews, and grandkids in her family. At Christmas, instead of having presents under your tree, can you just see having the tree (large or small) decorated with these little tins? Then the kids could just pick out the tins with their names on them right from the tree when they come to visit.

My tin is made using paper from the Amberly Grace collection, stamped with Aegean Blue, Jumbo Java and Sahara Sand VersaMagic Ink, and uses the Go Abroad stamp set.

Make and Take for Tinley Park Expo

This coming weekend, at the Tinley Park Rubber Stamp and Scrapbook Expo, we will be doing two make and takes. The first one is this great little web book meant to hold your username and password for all the websites you visit.





After just recovering from a computer virus, I felt the worry of my passwords possibly being compromised, but was reassured since I use different ones for every website I visit. (Yes, I was one of those that used to use the same password for everything, but in this age of identity theft and computer hackers, you can never be too careful, and I changed my ways.) I was really happy when someone showed me a little book similar to this so that I had a place to keep all the usernames and passwords to assist my memory.

This book is really easy to make using the Bind-It-All, acrylic covers, paper and tags. We're charging $3, and you'll get some hands-on experience with the Bind-It-All, which is a great tool for making all sorts of personalized books. We'll also have product on hand that you can purchase to make your own little web-books as gifts.

Rockin' Pajamas

Tomorrow my husband's band, U-GODDA-WANNA, will be playing The Taste of Chicago. For those of you in the area that want to see it, U-GODDA-WANNA will be playing from Noon - 1:15 p.m. on the Illinois Lottery Taste Stage, just South of Buckingham Fountain along Lake Shore Drive. They will be doing songs from 1999 through 2009. Both of us are super excited about this big accomplishment for him. We plan to spend the day at the Taste to see some other bands that we know and then we have a hotel room booked so that we don't need to worry about when the party will end.

To memorialize the big gig, I thought it would be fun to have some pajamas that were inspired by Tom (and he'll tell you that the only stamp in my vast collection that is "his" is the Rockabella stamp). So I used Rockabella to stamp up the shorts on some new pjs. I colored her in with Fabrico markers and used the Cyclamen glitter from my Taylored Expression's Cupcake Pack to rock them out.

Here are the completed pajamas



and a close up


Now we're ready to party like rock stars!

Another Necklace/Earrings Set

In follow-up to my post yesterday, I thought I'd post the second Necklace/Earrings set I made as my prop swap for my team meeting. This set I made using Ultra Thick Embossing Powder (UTEE) from the Brights collection instead of regular embossing powder. It's a much bolder look than yesterday's post. Instead of the Fancy Curls stamp set I used in my Club MED swap, I decided to use the butterfly and flowers silhouette from the Natural Hope stamp set in Serendipity. I also reheated the UTEE and impressed the stamp into the melted surface to give some texture on the necklace.

Club MED Prop Swap

Today, I am not at home. I am at The Angel Company's yearly seminar waiting for the catalogue release. Well, by the time this posts, I will probably already have seen the new catalogue, if only briefly at the Club MED luncheon. What kind of paper collections will we have now? What will be my new favorite stamp set? Have we gotten any cool new tools or embellishments? I can't wait.

One of the things I worked really hard for in this company was my promotion to Manager last year. Being a manager allows me to attend the special lunch, get a sneak peak of the new catalogue before it is officially released, and swap trades and participate in the prop swap, where I make an item that's above and beyond your typical card/scrapbook page. All prop swaps are placed in a pile and I randomly receive something someone else created. This time for my Club MED prop swap, I created a necklace and earrings. The necklace uses the 2 x 2 Memory Glass and frame. The earrings were made using microscope slides that I cut in half with a glass cutter used for stained glass making. I put these in the melting pot, and spooned various colors of embossing powder on them until the embossing powder melted and the colors flowed together. Once they were cool, I stamped on them using the Fancy Curls stamp set and embellished with Frosted Lace Stickles. Then to attach the earring hooks, I used heavy duty glue meant for glass and metal to attach antique triangle loops (I tried drilling the microscope slides first, but couldn't do it without breaking them), and I think the loops worked better anyway.







I had originally started my Club MED swap using re-inkers and Crystal Lacquer on the glass, and it worked just fine for the necklace, but because of all the rain we've had this week, by the time I got to the earrings, I couldn't get them to dry. I started them on Wednesday afternoon, and by Monday, they still weren't even dry enough for me to apply a second coat. I had already made a necklace and earring set using the same materials in a different color for my team prop swap, and had wanted my Club MED one to be a little different, but things just didn't work out right and I had to fall back on what I already knew would work without issue.

I guess I'll actually have my own necklace and earring set once the materials straighten up their act. Kind of nice, since I don't make much that I keep.

Crafty Card Holder

What a weekend. Saturday I spent my day at the Shepard Craft show. Unfortunately, that was a bust. Not that I didn't expect it. In this economy, people are not necessarily purchasing the crafted items already made, they're wanting to make them themselves. I totally understand that. So, here's a little something that you can make yourself. It's a Christmas card holder. I want to say that I saw the concept on the Carol Duvall Show a few years ago, but I may be wrong.



I made mine with foam board, 4 pages of 12 x 12 scrpabook paper in two different patterns, adhesive, a ruler, a heated Exacto knife (using my Walnut Hollows Hot Marks Tool), but any box cutter or sharp straight blade will do, and 24 star-shaped brads.

First you want to cut two triangles from your foam board. The bottom edge will be 12 inches and the sides will be 13.5 inches.

Then you'll want to position and glue your paper onto them.

Once the adhesive is dry, you want to cut a 1/4"-wide slit from the top to approximately the 1/3rd point one one piece, and from the bottom to approximately 2/3rds up on the second. If you were to hold these up next to each other, the slits should meet.



Next, you want to make small cuts every 2 inches where the cards will go. These should alternate on each piece so that the cards don't bump into each other. For example, on one of the pieces, you want to start your slits 1 inch from the top, and make them every 2 inches, and on the other, you want to start 2 inches from the top and make them every 2 inches.



Now you're ready to assemble the tree. Simply line up each of the slits so that the tree becomes dimensional.




The final touch is to add the star brads between each of the card slits.



Now you're ready for the cards.

It's Time to Party Like a Rock Star!

Aerosmith was the first band I ever went and saw live in concert. I've been following them ever since I was 16 and until a few years ago, I never missed a single show when they came to my area. So when Aerosmith came out with its own special edition of Guitar Hero, I knew I had to get it.

Tom went out on my birthday and picked up the game, and we've been planning a Guitar Hero party to have some of our friends come over and play (or watch as the case may be). This plan has been in the back of our minds since June. Now it's October, and we're finally getting around to doing something. Crazy huh?

Anyway, last weekend we picked a date. Since then, we've come up with all kinds of ideas for the invitations, food and decorations. I thought it would be fun to make little "tour cases" with laminated back stage passes in them, since we'll be handing our invitees their invitations. Then we took it a step further and made tour books with the story and party details inside. It's been a lot of fun, and we just finished getting all of this stuff together.

Here's a picture of all the stuff together:



And here's a close-up of the "tour case":



Here are the passes and tour booklets a little closer up:



We're even planning musically inspired food, but since some of the attendees read my blog, I don't want to spoil the fun.

So far this has been a lot of fun to plan. If you've had any parties that you've done with a theme, I'd love to hear about them.

Diaper Wreath

O.K. I'll try to make my absence up to you. Here is one of the projects I worked on while I was gone. It's a diaper wreath for my friend Leah, who's having a baby in the next few weeks.

To make the wreath, you need a wreath base to wrap the diapers around, approximately 20 diapers (Size 2 - so that they won't be needed immediately and the wreath can be enjoyed for a little while), a package of small clear or white rubber bands for hair, curling ribbon and a few goodies such as bottles, teething rings, pacifiers, stuffed toys, etc. to embellish the wreath with.

For mine, I ended up using 16 Winnie The Pooh Huggies diapers, a wire wreath form from Michael's floral section, and Goody hair bands that came in a pack of 52.

Making the wreath itself, took approximately one hour and pretty much consisted of me taking the diapers right from the package and folding them around the wreath. When you take them out of the package, they're naturally rectangular in shape, so there's no need to spread them apart any further, they simply wrap around the wreath form with very little work. You hold the diaper ends together at the top (one should be on either side of the wreath) and slip a hair-band over them, to hold the diaper in place. Continue working your way around the wreath adding diapers and pushing them together snugly until the whole wreath form is well covered. Once the entire wreath is covered, take your curling ribbon and tie it around each diaper, covering the rubber bands. Then curl the ribbon with your scissors. Use some of the ribbon to tie the toys, bottles and teethers on in a few spots as well. And that's all there is to it.

DIA Project #3 - Rita's Card Folio

It's time for a look at another awesome project from the DIA girls. This week's edition is a note card folio created by Rita. We did these neat little note card holders, complete with dividers, from green and beige paper, and scraps from the Angelee collection. We also made some little note cards to fit inside. (My note cards are not my best work, but you get the idea)









To see other versions of the same project, check out the other DIA girls' blogs.

Rita
Pat
Dawnmarie

DIA Project #2 - Teri's Purse Scrapbook

Here is another project I did with the DIA girls. It's a purse scrapbook that Teri put together for us.



Mine uses The Angel Company's Willoughby paper collection, but some of the other ladies used a different collection.

Here's the inside of the purse with the slide out circle tags shown to the side:



And here's some of the stitching detail we freehanded on:







For those of you in the Chicago area, I'll be hosting a class on this sometime in the future, so be on the lookout.

If you want to check out some other versions of this project, take a look at the following blogs, and hopefully the rest of the team will have posted theirs today too. I know some of them have been having computer trouble.

Rita
Pat
Dawnmarie