Saturday, December 22, 2012

Holiday Mani!




I really like these nail polish strips from Sally Hansen. They are so shiny and Christmasy and typically last over a week! I love painted fingernails, but hate how they only last a day. I'd love to try a gel manicure, but I'm nit ready to take the plunge. They look wicked hard to take off and I'm afraid of damage to my nails. This is a happy medium. They remove easily as well with acetone polish remover.





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Christmas stitching!




Some sweet designs called "Colorful Christmas" from Embroidables.





Hope you will soon have all your projects complete and will be able to relax as we celebrate the last fee days of the Christmas season (Or do you just keep thinking up more and more projects like me? hee hee).

Merry Christmas!

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Friday, December 7, 2012

Gift Tags for Christmas

I got a but carried away with Christmas gift tag-making. Joy and I found it rather addictive. I got started with a crafty day with my girlfriend, then just kept going!


Here are my cricut cuts which I am entering into the challenge at Bitten By The Bug 2:

Winter Woodland, Plantin Schoolbook, and Tags, Bags, Bodes, and More were the various cartridges used. I was so pleased with the look of the vellum on the tags from WW. I embossed some with the cuttlebug as well.


Here's the embossed vellum:


I used a Scrappy Moms stamp on this one (and it's actually a card, too):


Another WW:


TBBM and I stamped and embossed on the vellum:


If you are feeling crafty, tags are sure to be satisfying--if not a bit addictive! :)

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A cute way to mend!

Saw this adorable idea on Pinterest from pinlavie.com & how funny is it that I was a little excited to find a pair of Joy's jeans that were ripped on the knees?











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Saturday, November 10, 2012

Thanksgiving Lamp




Isn't this fun? I just love these sweet pilgrims from A Child's Year & the sentiment is from Lyrical Letters.

I used chocolate brown vinyl and used the "Flip" feature on the Expression because I adhered it to the inside if the lamp shade. I also used transfer tape to make it easier to stick on.

It's kind of like a little surprise. See how it's barely visible with the light off?


It could be peeled off and discarded after the holiday, but I'm a bit tempted to buy another inexpensive shade (this was $15 from Walmart) and make one for Christmas. But then I'll have to store extra shades. Hmmm...,what do you think?


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Sunday, November 4, 2012

Marvelous Mini Books

So excited to share my latest Cricut find! Their new "Mini Books" cartridge takes all the guesswork out of creating these sweet little albums.


Here are the ones I've made so far:



This one has 2 inside!











Ok, they are tiny, but adorable, right?

The explosion box:








Lots of places for little pictures! And the layers are perfect with no measuring.





I love this little one. It has an adjustable band around it.





This one turns out to be fine for single-sided paper as it is glued in to the cover and you only see one side of the pages anyway. :)


I showed my hand do you could see the scale.

I'm sure I'll fancy thus one up with ribbons on the binder clips.


It has some great self-closing envelopes to choose from:


There ate different shapes of pages, but I thought this shape was really pretty.





I haven't added pics or embellishments yet, but I am happy with them even in this stage. I made all of these in a very short time. I love how fast they are. They would make terrific little brag books for grandparents or parents.

I even feel like I have a little head start on Christmas gifts for relatives. :)

Have a lovely, crafty weekend.


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Thursday, August 16, 2012

Mermaid Pool Party

Wow! Was this ever a fun party (well the preparation might have been more fun than the actual party...at least it was for me!). But the party wasn't for me, it was for my sweet daughter and her little mermaid friends.

I am thrilled to be able to link up to Decorate to Celebrate this week as the theme is "Anything Goes!"


The invitations were from Paper Doll Dress Up.  They have cute Peachy Keen faces and dance on their little springs! (Action Wobbles)  Their tails are cuttlebug embossed.



 Joy stamped Ariel on the envelopes and colored them in:
 Here is our door sign.
I drew on the face because I don't have PKS that large...I think it turned out ok.

The idea originated from our Yum! magazine with an article by One Charming Party and quickly spiraled out of control thanks to Pinterest!

Ideas we used from the magazine were:

This fun mermaid sign Joy painted and decorated (we used the cricut and contact paper to put the letters on while she painted the blue layer and peeled them off while the paint was still wet).  It was very cute that she asked her dad for a 2 x 4....



Cupcakes also from the magazine:


We got the seashell mold for the white chocolate from Michael's.

And the fishnet on the table:

The only reason my table is inside is because it was storming when the girls first got here, so we improvised with a game of Twister (it cleared up beautifully within the hour):


I remembered this adorable mermaid towel from the project section at Embroidery Library (great resource for creative sewing projects whether your embroider or not). I looked at cute ones on pinterest, too, and came up with my own adaptation:

                                               


I embroidered the names in a big, curly, girly font.  We stuck to our turquoise and lime green theme:


I crocheted this mermaid outfit for Joy to use with her Barbies a while ago, I meant to blog it, but it disappeared into her Kingdom and we pulled it out to use as decor for her party.  The pattern is here at Crafty Mama Sanchez blog.  It took some youtube viewing to master the crocodile stitch, but I love the texture.  It was made with lots of love at many baseball games and other mom-has-to-sit-and-wait events. :)

These fun, free water bottle labels are from Bumpsmitten.com:
And last, because I made them the morning of the party---too much coffee, perhaps....these stitched dish clip labels made using chalk cloth!!!  I love them because I can use them for every pool party.  I cut the chalk cloth with Nestabilities on the Cuttlebug and stitched them to rectangles of felt, then hot glued them to clothespins:
 Ocean Water
 Mermaid Treats
 Shark Bait
Fish Food
A good time was had by all the little mermaids....