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Posts Tagged ‘Handmade gifts’
Welcome Baby Luca!
Aloha, all!
This weekend, our Duplicate Bridge club is being introduced to the new baby of one of our members. We're going to welcome Baby Luca with a gift from the club, including this fun pocket-sized Accordion Fold Album to use to show off baby pictures.
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You've seen me show off this album style on a couple of occasions. In fact, I was just looking over my introduction to the tutorial for the album and found that my husband had said last Valentine's Day that this was a great gift for just about any occasion. And it's just perfect as a little baby gift!
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The nice thing about this album is that you can make what I'm showing off here with just one sheet of 8-1/2" x 11" card stock! Of course, I added some Designer Series Paper and used a bit more card stock for the "photo corners," but it's still a very economical album to make – AND QUICK!
For today's album, I used Marina Mist Card Stock, and paper from the Designer Series Paper set, Nursery Nest. This paper set features some primarily blue (Marina Mist), pink (Blushing Bride) and green (Pear Pizzazz) prints, with a sprinkling of Perfect Plum for its colors. About those photo corners: As you know (if you use Stampin' Up! products exclusively, as I do) Stampin' Up! retired its Photo Corners punch this past year. But they just added a 1" Square Punch, which is what I used as the basis for my photo corners. I punched some Pear Pizzazz, Whisper White, and Marina Mist 1" squares, cut them on the diagonal, snipped out a triangle on the diagonal, and voila! I had photo corners!
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To decorate the front of the album, I tied on some Marina Mist Scallop Dots Ribbon, added some Marina Mist lettering which I cut using my Sizzix Big Shot and the Decorative Strip Die, Naturally Serif. I added a strip of the ribbon on the back, too, to tie the whole look together. I punched the little flower in the upper right corner of the front with the Boho Blossoms Punch and added a Pear Pizzazz Glimmer Brad as a fun accent.
I have a one-page tutorial for this Simple Accordion Fold album right here on my blog! I hope you'll enjoy using it the next time you need a quick and easy "occasion" gift! Next week I'll show off the Money Card Holder that we're going to use to present the gift to Luca's mom and dad at next Sunday's bridge game. I'll have a tutorial for that, too! Be sure to keep an eye out for it!
Subscribe to the comments for this postA Little Bit of Fun
Aloha, all!
What a week this past one was, and the coming week will be just about the same – packed with non-crafting activities! I was able to squeeze in enough time to make all the packets for my Stamp-A-Stack class on Saturday, and we all had a lot of crafting fun then. But that was about it until tonight. After a day out with my dh, I came home and said, "I just have to get my hand in some ink!" The good news was that I had a practical excuse for doing just that.
At Christmas time, one of the handmade gifts I made for some friends were bookmarks made with 4" paperclips. What fun I had using the Jolly Bingo Bits stamp set to make those bookmarks (and that set will be back with us come the 2011-2012 Stampin' Up! Idea Book and Catalog!). Then last week one of those friends asked if it would be possible for me to make a few more for her to give to her friends. In fact it was possible, because during the holidays I had mislaid one of the packs of paperclips – or else they would have been among the Christmas gifts! But what stamp set would be a good one for a fun little bookmark without a holiday theme?
It didn't take long before I touched my stamp set, For Everything. It has just the cutest little motifs and I could do them up in a variety of colors. So I made two each of the little bird (in Real Red and Pretty in Pink, with a Marina Mist Flower); the sunflower (or at least that's what I made it out to be with More Mustard and Chocolate Chip (including the brad), with a Pumpkin Pie accent color; and the 6-petal flower made with Marina Mist and a Pretty in Pink brad and accent color.
This was fun, and just the kind of thing I needed to make after a busy weekend! I hope to have a couple of hours to myself tomorrow for some crafting time, but that may be it until next Sunday night! I'll be out of town (which where I live means I'll be hopping a plane to go to another island) for half of the week, and busy with some volunteer work most of the rest of the time. But then I have to get ready for my Folded Album Class on the 29th. I can hardly wait to share those projects with you!
And however busy you are this week with work or other activities, I hope you have time to have a little bit of fun – and do something creative!
Countdown to Christmas! Day 11 – Give a Gift That Only You Can Give!
Aloha, all!
Every Christmas season I read stories about children who make their own special Christmas gifts, among which are their own personal gift certificates that promise something special – like a night of babysitting, or taking a brother or sister's turn for doing the dishes. Great gifts and the cost in terms of money is so small.
Well, why not make gift certificates for something that YOU could do for someone special in your life! With Stampin' Up! paper crafting products, you can make lovely gift certificates.
This gift coupon book is one of the projects that I demonstrated as part of last month's Royal Blog Tour. As with all the projects in that blog post, it featured the stamp set, Punch Pals. All of the stamps shown are from that set. The paper that I used for this project is from the Designer Paper Set, Jolly Holiday. Now, before I get into more information about the coupon book, I have to give you my insight to this Designer Paper Set. It has 12 designs, all of which use various combinations of the colors Cherry Cobbler, Old Olive and Very Vanilla. There are stripes and circles of various kinds, as well as some polka dot designs. There is not a tree or ornament or Christmas design of any kind in this paper set. So, if you're thinking that you might need some more paper for your Christmas projects, but aren't sure you could use a whole pack, THIS is the set to get – because you can use it for lots of projects AFTER Christmas. Christmas does not have a lock on red and green color combinations!
OK, so back to the project. The frame and lines on the coupons themselves are not stamped. I designed these using Stampin' Up!'s graphic software program, My Digital Studio, AND I printed them on my own home printer. I have two HP printers on my desk, and Very Vanilla Card Stock runs through those printers just fine.
After I printed the coupons, I stamped some designs on them and punched the outside corners with the Ticket Corner Punch. Then, before I adhered the coupons inside the coupon book cover, I used the Perforating Tool in the Stampin' Up! Cutter Kit to perforate them just to the left of the printed frame.
Of course I have more detailed information for you about how to make this project! It's right here in a one-page tutorial, that includes instructions on how to created the coupon design in My Digital Studio.
I hope you're having a great weekend as we get closer and closer to Christmas! I had a fun day in the Craft Room on Saturday with a Christmas Card Stamp A Stack class and a few wonderful friends. I hope whatever you're doing this weekend – and this week – that you'll have fun with it!
Countdown to Christmas! Day 8 – A New Take on an Old Fold
Aloha, all!
OK, for at least a day or two, I'm back on track to my once a day blog posting! And for today, I have a brand new tutorial to share with you. This one is a set of instructions for one of the projects that I showed off on last month's Royal Blog Tour – it's a Slimmed Down Diagonal Double Pocket Card.
You'll recall that all of the projects from the Royal Blog Tour featured the stamp set, Punch Pals. (As an aside, I've never been able to figure out why "Punch," when fewer than half the stamps in this set really work well with Stampin' Up!'s punches – but I digress!). This project uses two of the stamps on two fun bookmarks to insert in the folds of the card, as well as part of one of the stamps for the greeting on the front of the card.
What's really fun about this card is that it uses a 6" x 12" piece of Stampin' Up!'s Designer Paper so you can get two cards out of one piece of Designer Paper. Not only that, the card can be folded AND layered on some coordinating card stock AND still fit in an envelope (Stampin' Up!'s Small Open End Envelope) that can be sent through the U. S. mail with no extra postage. Nice bonus!
For this card, I used a sheet from the Jolly Holiday set of Designer Papers – see how nicely the two sides of the same sheet complement each other so well?! This card is mounted on two layers of card stock, one Old Olive and the other Cherry Cobbler, both of which coordinate with the colors in the Jolly Holiday set, as do the Old Olive 1/4" Grosgrain and 5/8" Satin Ribbons and the Cherry Cobbler 1/2" Seam Binding. I used the Scallop Trim Border Punch on the Old Olive Layer to add just a bit of elegance to this cheerful little card.
I know you're going to want to make quite a few cards with this fun fold, so here's the tutorial! I hope you have fun with it!
Countdown to Christmas! Day 5: Sending Money? Quick Card!
Aloha, all!
As my children and niece and nephews have grown up, I've been sending fewer and fewer gifts and more and more checks and cash for special occasions – like Christmas, of course! And now I have grandchildren, all of whom live far away, and whose interests change quite a bit more often than I see them. So money works for them now, too!
But as I slip a check or some money inside one of my handmade cards, it seems as if I should be more creative than just folding a piece of paper up and putting it in a card. I looked around and found some money holder cards that people have made. But all of them either require folding the money anyway or are too large to fit in one of Stampin' Up!'s envelopes. So I finally decided last week to make my own special money card. It was a bit on the tricky side, but it's worked wonderfully.
The tricky part is one that I solved, so you won't have to struggle with it. To keep this card short enough lengthwise to fit in a Stampin' Up! envelope, I had to use just a sliver of adhesive on either side of the slit where the bill/check fits in. For the card shown, I cut a piece of Sticky Strip in half lengthwise.
The important thing is that this card, including its "belly band" closer, fits just perfectly inside one of Stampin' Up!'s Small Open End envelopes. And that envelope meets the length and width requirements for mailing in the United States. Important if you live in the U. S.!
Of course I've written a one-page tutorial for this gem of a gift card and it's on my blog as of today! I quickly whipped out a half dozen of these for a craft fair I did today, and they looked lovely on the display table. The ones I have left will look even more lovely when someone in my family opens them on Christmas Day!
I hope you enjoy making these as much as I do. Whatever you end up doing this weekend, I hope you have a lot of fun with it!
Countdown to Christmas! Day 4: A Stocking Stuffer
Aloha, all!
Back around Halloween, a lot of my fellow Stampin' Up! demonstrators and I had a fun time making boxes to hold the purse-sized bottles of Bath and Body Works' seasonal hand sanitizers. Well, I just could not wait until I could get my hands on some Christmas versions. And I did – I ordered up 50 of the bottles, not having a clue about what I was going to do with them.
Then came the opportunity to participate in a local craft fair (which is today, by the way!). But with 50 of them, I didn't want to make as large a box as I'd made for the very few Halloween bottles I'd bought. So I fussed a bit with the original pattern that I shared in my Halloween tutorial and came up with the smaller version I needed. The tutorial is right here for you to enjoy!
I used stamps from the oh-so-much-fun Jolly Bingo Bits stamp set in the Stampin' Up! 2010 Holiday Mini Catalog. Stampin' Up! has said that this stamp set is going to be around for awhile, and I can hardly wait to see what they do with stamps for other holidays! But for now, I'm really enjoying using this set THIS holiday season. And you'll be seeing some more of it over the next few days as I share more of what we did with the Craft Fair! I also used the last of my dwindling supply of the Candy Cane Lane Designer Papers. Boo – Stampin' Up! has run out of it!! But I have enough for my Stampin-A-Stack session next weekend in Robin's Craft Room. There's still room for 1 more person in the class (well, I might be able to squeeze one more in after that). So, if you're on the East Side of Hawaii's Big Island, and you'd like to come, just give me a call (808.854.6145) or send an e-mail and I'll sign you up!
Whatever you're doing this weekend, have a LOT of fun with it!
Countdown to Christmas! Day 3: A Promised Tutorial
Aloha, all!
Early last month, I was featured in a blog tour sponsored by my Stampin' Up! Demonstrators group, SUDSOL (Simply Unique Demonstrators Sharing On.Line). The project on my blog for the tour was a Greeting Card with an Attached Bookmark. Just to remind you, here's one picture of the card I displayed on that tour.
The flap at the right is a second fold in this card, and the fold has been perforated with the perforation tool in the Stampin' Up! Cutter Kit. Once Christmas is over and cards are (at the best) put away for reminiscing later or (at worst) just tossed, part of it can remain around as a useful, hopefully, treasured bookmark!
Since I really do like to share something new with each of my blog posts, I've made another card using the same template as the one above.
Here is what the card looks like, all folded up, from the front. Notice how the knot in the Always Artichoke Seam Binding Ribbon almost looks like it's a continuation of the ribbon on the front of the card. But it's not as you'll see in the next photo.
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It's the ribbon at the top of the bookmark! All it takes is some careful positioning to get the ribbon in the bookmark lined up with the ribbon on the card front. And instructions about how to do that are right here in a one-page tutorial for constructing the card. I just know you are going to love having this new kind of folded card to give to a special person – and not just at Christmas! Imagine a Birthday Bookmark that your friend can keep around all year!
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the papers and stamp set that I used for this card. The paper is from the Stampin' Up! 2010 Holiday Mini Catalog, and is called Deck the Halls. The word, "Noel," is on one sheet, along with the holly beside it. I just cut the paper to fit, but didn't cut through the holly, but cut around it. I used the Stampin' Up! Fiskars Cutter and stopped the blade just before the holly and then started it up again just past the holly. I think the result looks pretty cool!
The stamp set is one that I've used a lot this year – Punch Pals. It's so versatile. It can make a cute card or one that's very elegant. I'm really hoping it will be around for at least another year!
I hope you have fun with this tutorial – or with whatever you're working on this Christmas season!
An Addition to My Note Pad Covers
Aloha, all!
Fellow Stampin' Up! Demonstrator, Melissa Stout, has a great new take on making covers for Note Pads (or Jr. Legal Pads as they are sometimes called). I've been making covers for these note pads for years, and have shared some of them with you along the way. The basic tutorial is here on my blog.
What Melissa has added is a place to store a pen – what a great idea! But one problem I've had with her pattern is that I end up with a 1/2" deep cover for a note pad that's only 1/4" deep. Believe me I used up a LOT of retired card stock trying to modify her pattern so that it was only 1/4" deep. But the pens that I'm using (and they're my favorite for this kind of project – more later) just wouldn't fit. So I've taken a different approach to getting a pen attached – just add some ribbon loops to the open side of the note pad cover that I usually make!
"Aha," you might well add! "Where's the Christmas paper – we thought you were in Christmas mode these days!" Well, indeed I am. But I'm also greedily saving my Christmas papers and embellishments for projects that I KNOW will turn out all right. I still wasn't sure about this one, so I went for papers that I wouldn't need for awhile – like Spring stuff! And I absolutely copied the layout on one of Melissa's note pad covers – she's so talented!
Here's a picture that shows the ribbon loops more clearly. I cut about 4-1/2" of ribbon, folded it in half, then let the loop end extend from the back of the note pad cover just shy of 3/4". I adhered the ribbon with Sticky Strip inside the back cover BEFORE I attached the note pad itself. This pen is an 'RSVP" pen by Pentel, from which you can remove the end and insert paper that matches the rest of your project! Is that cool or what? One adjustment that I may make in future versions of this is to make the bottom loop just a bit smaller.
Oh, and the Spring colors that I used are Pear Pizzazz, Peach Parfait, Daffodil Delight, and Poppy Parade. All of these colors are featured in the Designer Series Paper Set, Cottage Garden. The flowers are stamped with two images from the Stamp Set, Sunny Garden. Doesn't that all just shout, "Spring!!!"? For sure.
I'll be making an adjustment to the note pad cover tutorial when I return from some well-deserved vacation time!
Meanwhile, have fun stamping!
Learning the “Vintage” Look
Aloha, all!
As you can probably tell, I tend towards the kinds of designs that have clean lines and some symmetry. I like to have neat edges and have papers and ribbons and such lying nice and flat on the card or scrapbook page. But I've noticed in many of my craft magazines as well as in Stampin' Up!'s publications and samples, the "old," "vintage" look has become very popular. I'm sure there's some psychology in that as we go through some economic and environmental hard times. But regardless of the underlying cause, I'm really going to work to try to learn how to take what I'm most comfortable with and turn it into a more vintage look.
Today's project is my first try at this in a side-by-side manner. Let me back up a bit and say that I really like making covers for my 5" x 8" lined note pads and I've had instructions for making this posted here almost since I began my blog. It just looks so, well, plain, to have the pads just sitting around with bare paper on them! And my favorite theme to use for note pad covers is the musical "note." For awhile, Stampin' Up! had a wheel with whimsical musical notes on it, and there was a great stamp that said, "Just A Note." Perfect for that. Well, this year, there's a new wheel with musical notes, but they've done themselves one better and have a great set of printed Designer Series Paper that has musical notes on it. It's one of the sheets in the Newsprint Designer Series Paper set. Hooray, I have my theme again! And here are the two projects that I've made with this idea of trying out a Vintage Look when my first instinct is to make something with nice, neat, straight lines.
My first try with the new papers is on the left, and the second one, with a bit of stepped up Vintage look, is on the right. Both of these projects use basically the same products: Newsprint Designer Paper, Lovely Letters Alphabet, Rich Razzleberry Patterns Paper, Rich Razzleberry Card Stock, a Border Punch, and some Stampin' Up! Ribbon.
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Here's my first try at this with my traditional clean-cut look. Can you tell I took this photo during the sunset last night? Love the lighting! Anyway, I made some nice clean cuts here, and used plain Very Vanilla card stock on which to stamp the letters. The border punch is the Scallop Edge Border Punch, and the letters are nicely lined up with some Stampin' Dimensionals popping them up over some 1/4" Rich Razzleberry Grosgrain Ribbon. The letters are cut into 1-1/8" squares and I punched the mats with the 1-1/4" Square Punch.
Now let's check out the Vintage look:
To begin, I roughed up the edges of both pieces of Designer Series paper – the Newsprint as well as the Rich Razzleberry Patterns. Then I sponged Rich Razzleberry ink from a Classic Stampin' Pad all over both pieces of paper. Instead of using the Scallop Edge Border Punch, I used the Eyelet Border Punch. The letters are the same color and size as in the plain card, but I used some more of the Newsprint Designer Paper on which to stamp them. Then, instead of some plain grosgrain ribbon (think clean lines) I used Very Vanilla Taffeta Ribbon which I first ruffled by pulling a center thread through it and then mussed up a bit by applying some Rich Razzleberry Ink with a sponge. Finally I applied the letters NOT in a straight line (straight lines were not allowed in this project, well, except for the note pad itself). Angled up a bit they seem to fit more with the vintage look.
What do you think? Which do you like? If I get at least 10 comments about this post by July 24th, I'll pick one commenter who can choose one of these note pads for a gift! Check back here next week to see who wins the note pad!
Some Great Workshop Projects!
Aloha, all!
Dana's workshop was a great success, even though we may have had a few logistical glitches. The good news (for me) is that I didn't forget ANYTHING! I'm amazed because there's usually something critical that I leave at home (SNAIL, snips, the stamp set we're using for the make and takes).
In preparing the kits for the make and takes, using that wonderful Sweet Pea Paper Stack, I found that I had been so eager to make sure that the projects were designed just perfectly that I didn't have enough of the paper I'd chosen for the Note Pad Cover left for all of the kits. What to do, what to do. Well, it is a paper STACK! So there had to be something else in the stack that would still coordinate well with the Sweet Pea Stitched Felt and Flower Fusion embellishments that Dana and I had chosen to use. And, of course, there was. Here is the second of the two designs for this project. Um, well, actually there were 3 designs because (gasp!) I ran out of Old Olive card stock. How could that happen???? There weren't even some 12" x 12" pieces in the "greens" box in the craft room. So the last couple of kits had to be made with Certainly Celery card stock. Would you believe no one noticed??? Oh, and as I promised earlier in the month, here are the instructions for making this great gift project!
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