Valentine's Candy Jars

I may have mentioned before that I am not a huge Valentine's Day celebrator. I know, I am kind of bah humbug about it, but it seems like such a retail holiday. I love the people I love EVERY day, not just on Valentine's day. But for some reason this year, I was feeling the love and I wanted to celebrate it.

I happened to be in Northern California spending time with some of my biggest loves and so I thought, "I don't get this opportunity very often, I want to do a little something." So, the BFF and I headed out to the stores after the kids went to the school and got creative.

My niece, aka "Princess" is like her mom and I in that she loves all things peanut butter. So her jar is filled with peanut butter M&Ms and her card says, "You're the peanut to my butter."
My nephew JP likes just about any candy so I got him Starburst and told him he was my "shining star." Awww!
And my other nephew, who I don't really have a nickname for without giving away his name, likes chocolate mint stuff so I got him York Peppermint Patties and told him we were "mint" to be together. Schmoop!
(The Reese's hearts were from their mom.)

I also made similar ones for my sister, brother-in-law, and nephew - theirs just had different kinds of M&Ms. Oh, and my sister and bro-in-law got a bottle of wine with theirs too. And then they fed me a delicious steak dinner.

OH! And I almost forgot the best Valentine's/Birthday gift ever! My sweet nephew, JP, gave me this:

It says, "I love you so much, I will build you a house of money." Ugh! Just melt my heart, why doncha! He has a heart of gold, that kid. It was agreed that I couldn't spend it until he came down to So Cal to visit me. That middle part? That's a $20 bill folded into a shirt. That's 25 dollars that kid gave me. I mean, I have to wait and spend it with him, but what 11 year old do you know that would give away $25 of his own money? He's the only one I know!

Santa's Belly

I know, I know! It's toooooo early for Christmas! Can we please get through Halloween and Thanksgiving before we start on Christmas?! Trust me, those that know me know that I despise how the retail industry shoves Christmas down our throats so it's the last thing I want to do to you... But look how cute this guy is!!

When I bought the glass ornament balls for my niece's Invitation Keepsake Ornament, I of course couldn't buy just one, I had to buy four. So when I saw this little guy on A Crafty B's blog, I couldn't resist making one.

• Paint black strip around the ornament (I used regular acrylic paint - I think Crafty B used puffy paint)
• While that dries, cut red card stock into strips. I did various widths and lengths. I also lucked out because I had a ton of strips already left over from a different project I had done so I didn't have to cut that many! :o)
• Touch up the black paint strip/Santa's belt. Allow it to dry. 
• I used some silver glitter glue stuff that I had in my scrapbooking supplies. (Crafty B used white puffy paint.)
• I was impatient and didn't want to wait for all that to dry before I started putting the paper in so I used a roll of masking tape as a holder so the ball would stand straight and there would be no damage to the drying paint. 
• Roll the paper strips tightly around a pen or a paint brush or your finger or whatever you see fit. Slide the paper off the contraption you use and then drop it into the top of the ornament. Don't worry - it will unravel a little. You can also roll them a little less tight to give it varying degrees of tightness. I also rolled some of mine in a spiral around said apparatus just to give it a different texture in the ball.

I think this little guy is just precious, so simple, and inexpensive! I would be surprised if everyone in our family doesn't get one for their tree this year! 

Happy 4th of July!

It's been a while since I've done any crafting. What better time than to get into the spirit of it with a quick, inexpensive, 4th of July project?!

I got the idea from a pin that lined to this blog, which provided no instructions on how to do it, but it looked easy enough.

Supplies:

• Medium Mason Jar
• Mini flag ($1 at Michaels)
• Hemp or string of some sort. 

Directions:

Hold the flag in  place on the jar, wrap string artistically around the jar and flag. Tie off the string.(I'm sure if you wanted to do it more permanently, you could mod podge the flag down and maybe dip the string in mod podge before you wrapped it.)

I got some flameless candles and I had one real candle. I tried both to see which I like better. I liked the real candle, for sure, but if I decide to put these outside, I will stick with the flameless candles.

Flameless on the left, real on the right,

Pre-candles. They're even cute without candles!

I hope everyone has a wonderful 4th of July. Keep your pets inside where they're safe and leave lights and TVs on to try and muffle the sound of the fireworks!

In other news - HAPPY 20th BIRTHDAY to my first born nephew. If I had time, I would dig up some baby pics of him, but he's lucky. He gets this one of us from about two years ago before his high school graduation.

Reindeer Noses

Every year for the past few years, my mom has asked me to craft something for her Church's Holiday fundraising sale. The last three years she has asked me to do Scrubbies, which were not my favorite. You can learn how to make them and read about my disdain for them here. 

Well, my mom let me off the hook this year and asked me to make these cute tags instead of Scrubbies. (If I am honest with myself, she probably got tired of me bitching about doing them.) She found this idea on Pinterest, of course!

It started out rough:

I did not like how they were turning out. The lettering looked sloppy, they holly wasn't stamping right and the colored pencils weren't popping like I wanted them to. I think it was at this point I texted my mom this picture and told her that she really should have had my sister Melissa do them because she was much better at stuff like this. I even texted Melissa and asked her to take over the project. - They both assured me that it was cute, even at that point.  

 

 And then I was determined. I will make the letter stamps I have fit. I will find pens that I can color Rudolph with. I will make it happen. And it did. It finally came together and I was satisfied with it's cuteness. 

Overall, it was a fairly inexpensive project. I had to purchase the Reindeer stamp (hard to believe I didn't have one in my thousands of dollars worth of scrapbooking stuff!) I think I paid $1.50 for the stamp. I bought 2 packs of the tags - they came in packages of 10 for $1.99. Oh, and I had to buy the sparkle glue for Rudolph's nose. It was the most expensive at $3.99, but it came in a three pack of three different colors. I also used a 40% off coupon on each thing (yes, I made four separate trips to Michaels) so it really wasn't even that expensive. I had all the rest of the supplies in my reserve - holly and letter stamps, ink, pens. 

It turned out pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself! 

 Here's to wishing you all a very ....

BOO!

I think I saw this project last fall when I first signed up for Pinterest. I bought the letters last year and just never getting around to doing this project.

While I was off work, I was going through all my scrapbook paper and found this halloweenish paper I never really cared for in a scrapbook setting and I thought it was perfect Halloween paper. Then I remembered the letters and I thought, PERFECT! I'll do it.

So I did.

Here's what you'll need:

• Wood letters - any size, really
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Scrapbook Paper
• Mod Podge
• Exacto Knife
• Sponge paint brush
• Embellishments (If you wish)
• Paint (maybe)

Here's what you'll do:

1. Trace the letters onto the scrapbook paper and cut them out. Don't worry if they don't fit perfectly, you'll have a chance to clean that up later.
2. If you want, this is where the paint could come in. Paint the letters whatever color you want. I chose not to because I didn't want to have to wait for it to dry before I started Mod Podging. 
3. Put a layer of Mod Podge on the letter and adhere the paper to the letter. Do your best to line up the borders of the paper with the letter, but not to worry if there's a lot of over hang. 
4. Put 2-4 more layers of Mod Podge over the paper to help seal it. 
5. Let that dry completely.
6. Take an exacto knife and clean up the edges. I suppose sand paper might work too, but I was worried about damaging the letter itself so I just cut around the letters. 
7. Once that's done, embellish as you wish. 
8. Oh! And don't forget the help from the family pet.

For some reason, Edward really liked this one. :o)

Fall is my most favorite time of year. Halloween is one of K's favorite Holidays. I did this project more for here than I did me. Hopefully, this project will inspire you to do something fall/Halloween related. 'Tis the season to start getting in the spirit!!!

Project inspired by Then She Made.

Budget Wreath

Earlier this month, K and I stopped at a Christmas "tree farm" - by tree farm, I mean the one set up in the parking lot of the local shopping center - to get a wreath. We do a fake tree every year, but we both love the smell of the fresh tree so we thought maybe a wreath might be enough to give us that fresh tree smell.

When I saw that the wreaths were $16 for a small one - that wasn't even decorated of fancy, mind you - I was reluctant to get it. $16 for a smell that will probably be gone in a week and then we're just going to throw it away? $16 may not seem like much, and it isn't, but for a couple on a budget, I just couldnt wrap my head around spending $16 on something that we were going to throw out. We might as well just put the money in a trash can and skip the wreath all together.

I convinced K that we should go to Michaels and see if there's one there that I can make. Sure enough, they had plain fake wreaths with nothing but a bow on it. So we kept browsing and they had an entire section for wreath making... Ornaments specially designed for wreaths. Who knew?! I certainly didn't. We loaded up our basket with goods that totaled close to $16, but it was a wreath that I made so it had sentiment, and we can use it year after year after year.

Nothing fancy, but cute enough!

Bad lighting, but you get the idea~

The wreath wasn't even the best part. When we were at Michaels, we found nifty things that TOTALLY smelled like a fresh tree. (I am positive we didn't pay $6.99 for them though.) We just put two on each tree and vwalla! It smelled like a fresh cut tree in our house. Granted, I don't think they smell anymore, but they worked for a few days anyway. It might have worked better to just use one and keep replacing it. Now we know for ext year. :o)

Dry Erase Board

Earlier this year, my sister Denise sent me this blog showing me how to make a personalized dry erase board.

At the time, I decided that was what everyone was going to get for Christmas this year. That didn't happen, but I had made two of them earlier this year as trials and kept them around the house waiting for the perfect person to give them to.

Then on Pinterest I kept seeing cute sentimental dry erase boards made to put daily messages for the ones you love. Like these:

I really liked the concept of these, so I thought I would do something like that for the ones I had already made. K and I have two sweet nieces that love home made gifts and are absolutely adored by their parents (and Aunties) so I thought, what better way to tell them every day how much they are loved than with these:

Our hope is that their parents will put a message up for them at least once a week. And every once in a while, we can send a text to their Mom or Dad and ask them to put a message up for them from their Aunties.

These really are great gifts. I am not sure why I didn't make them for everyone as Christmas gifts since they can really be personalized and fine tuned for the people you're giving them to... maybe next year. Or as Birthday gifts!

Disclaimer: I am well aware the picture quality of these photos suck and do them no justice. I am working on improving my product staging. :o)

1st Christmas Craft of the Year

I saw this pin on Pinterest and thought in the day and age of the Words with Friends craze, this could be cute, but it would definitely need some dressing up.

Here's my version of dressing up.

All I did to dress them up was to put color to the ribbon, and as you can see, I tied little bows on Barbara's.

Simply hot glue the letters together. The glue will ooze out on the front and back of the tiles when you put them together, but don't fret. When it dries, it's super easy to just pick off and it cleans right up.

They're kind of fragile. I dropped a few while assembling them and they just snapped right apart, so I thought a little reinforcement might help.

Here's what I did to add reinforcement.

I just added a little ribbon on the back. It gives more support to the tiles and dresses up the ornament even more.

I am planning on using these as the gift tags for their actual presents. Hopefully, actually people will keep them and hang them on their tree!

Obviously there's a lot more you can do with these to dress them up. I may do that as I do the rest of them. I only have about 40 more to make!

The biggest challenge is going to be finding enough Scrabble games to complete all of them. Watch out thrift stores and garage sales, I'll be coming for your Scrabble games!

Happy Halloween

A couple of weeks ago, my sister, Denise (her name not changed to protect the innocent), sent me an email with a link to a project she thought would be right up my alley and she was right!

With Halloween just around the corner, I needed to get this project done before it was too late. So, Friday after work, I made it my mission to get the supplies.

After avoiding Walmart for almost two years, my mission took me there thinking it would be a one-stop-shop. I could get groceries, jars, and tissue paper and then head home. I was wrong.

Groceries: The Walmart by my house is apparently not a Super Walmart, thus their grocery selection consisted of cereal, chips, candy, alcohol, and a very small freezer section. Definitely wasn't going to cover my grocery needs.

Jars: They had jars, but I had to buy them in cases of 12. I didn't need 12 not to mention, I want varying sizes. Hmmm... I am thinking about what I can do so I don't have to make a third stop at Michaels and I remember that I put some spaghetti jars in the recycling bags the other day. Perfect! I will just use those.

Tissue paper: They had that and it was cheap. All under $1 except for the bulk of white tissue paper I got. I figured with this project and all the coasters I will be making people for Christmas, I would need the white tissue paper. Only problem was, they didn't have purple. Seriously? I think the Michaels Gods are working against me and doing ALL they could to get me to go there.

I buy the tissue paper and I head out of the store to the grocery store. I grab the things I need, even looked for some Mason jars there and thought I would check out the wrapping paper section for some purple tissue paper. I knew it would be a little more pricey here, but it could prevent that Michaels trip I am so desperately trying to avoid. Annnnnd, they had it! SCORE!

I head home all excited to dig my jars out of the recycling and get to crafting. I dug in the recycling, all right, but I didn't dig out any jars. :o( I guess we already took that bundle of recycling to recycle center. I was heart broken. I did find one jar, but it was an odd shape and I wasn't sure I wanted to use it. I ripped the label off and threw it in the dishwasher anyway.

The next day, when I got up, my sister-in-law had left her old pickle jar soaking on the counter for me. So sweet of her. She knew how disappointed I was the night before because I didn't have any jars.

After cleaning that jar, I suddenly remembered that someone had given us a small Mason jar of homemade apple butter last year and started frantically looking for it in the cupboards. YES! I found it! This was starting to come together. :o)

I wont bore you with the details on how to do the project. You can read that other chick's blog for step by step instructions. The only thing I did different was I used black tissue paper for the faces and just Mod Podged it right onto the jar. She used black paper and glue.

Oh, and one tip: the tissue paper is very fragile when doused in Mod Podge. There are a number of spots that the tissue paper ripped while I was working on another part of the jar, but don't fret!! I just patched it up with a small piece of tissue paper and more Mod Podge. Only the close inspector will be able to tell.

I made these little guys first:

This was the one that was a weird shape that I wasn't sure about wanting to use. Turned out perfect if you ask me!

And while I was making them, K (the wife... I decided to just start identifying her as K... less to type) reminded me that we had a really big Mason jar in the garage from a 50/50 raffle we did for the Relay for Life event last summer and it would be perfect for a ghost!

Off to the garage I go, to begin crafting the ghost. He was a little more special, this ghost. I drew his face on the black tissue paper and I just did two small ovals for the eyes and one large oval for the mouth. As I was cutting the mouth, I decided I wanted the mouth to have a different shape... like the mask from the Scream movies. Well, let's just say my free-hand cutting abilities aren't what I thought they'd be.

WARNING:  This blog may contain different images, some of which are considered objectionable or offensive by some readers.

That's not going to work. :o\ Hmmm... How can I fix this? So I went to the computer and Google imaged the Scream Mask and literally traced the face right from the computer screen, onto my black tissue paper and got this:

Here is what they look like all set up together:

Pretty stinking cute. Thanks to my sister for finding the blog with the project. Special thanks to K and my sister-in-law for not letting me get all suicidal over another failed project and helping me find the jars I could use around the house. I had a lot of fun doing it and was even a little bummed out when I was out of jars to do. This was the extent of my pumpkin carving this year. Quite frankly, I would be ok if this was the extent of my pumpkin carving every year.

Did you notice that I was all upset because Walmart didn't even have the purple tissue paper? Did you also notice that out of all the jars, not one of them had purple?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Such a Witch!

My wife left today and won't be back for until next Sunday. I think in an attempt to make my week without her a little less painful, she took me to Michael's yesterday and we loaded up on craft projects I could do while she was gone. (Gimme a break, we're newlyweds!! We still don't like to be apart from each other for extended periods.)

The first one I started last night is still not done so that blog will have to come later. (The process of having to spray clear coat on things is a lengthy, tedious process that is tough for someone like me that doesn't have a lot of patience when it comes to having to wait for it to dry. I'm a more instant gratification kind of girl.)

I should preface my first craft blog with this: I wish I could take credit for originating the projects I do, but I cannot. While I do think I am creative, I am not good with creating things from scratch. I need someone else to come up with the idea and then I will steal their idea and make it my own.

With that said, I will start with the Sock Witch. I actually started making her a couple weekends ago, but I didn't care for the way she turned out. Her head was too big, her hair was scraggly, her face wasn't right (eyes and nose), and she needed something more.

Here is what she looked like last weekend:

See? She was a mess. After I took the above picture, I added a couple buttons which helped, but not enough.

This weekend, I went and got her some cute eyes from Michaels and I used a pipe cleaner to make her nose. I also gave her more hair and cut her some bangs. A major make-over in my opinion.

I couldn't find a broom that was small enough for her, so I made my own. My wife found this broom at Michaels in the Halloween decorations for just a couple of bucks. At first I resisted it. I thought it would be too much work to make a broom out of it, but my wife insisted it wouldn't be that bad so I gave in and just got it. I cut a little chunk off the bottom and just wrapped black waxy string I had to make the handle and bind it together.



And vuala:

Oh yeah, I reshaped her head and body to maker her look a little more proportionate.

She's cute, she's easy to make, but she taught me something. I dont really like working with a hot glue gun. Perhaps it's because I just have a cheap one that wont stand up on it's own, but I am pretty sure no matter how expensive of a glue gun I get, I will continue to burn the crap out of my fingers!!