Doily Snowflakes

This week at Practical Scrappers the design team has been asked to share winter projects. The first thing that I thought of were the doily snowflakes that I've been making since I was a little kid. I'm not sure where the idea came from originally, but my mom taught me how to do this when I was a little girl and I've been doing it ever since! I need to ask her, because it would be fun to find out where she learned this.....not that it's anything hard or crazy! But, it would be fun to know if this was passed on from her mom to me, and now me to my children.

These are SO EASY and SO BEAUTIFUL!!!! All that you need are paper doilies. All that I had on hand were the large ones, so that's what I used. We were in the tail-end of the Christmas Blizzard that started on Tuesday. It snowed from Tuesday to Sunday! We got over 14-inches of snow and drifts that are several feet tall. We had more than plenty of snowflakes outside and it was time to have a few inside, too!
All that you do is to start cutting them into snowflake designs/shapes. I'm not really sure how to explain it the best! lol I usually start in the middle and cut out a circle shape, following along the pattern in the doily. Then set that to the side and start cutting out a circle in the next piece. You can cut out the centers of the smaller circles and use them to build snowflakes or to stick around as small snowflakes on their own.

I'm sorry for the bad photos. There is so much snow outside and it's so bright it throws off the lighting when taking a photo. These are really pretty and can be seen from the outside, too!

I hope that you all had a very wonderful and blessed Christmas!!!!! Before we know it, it will be New Year's!!!!

Christmas cookie layouts

I was so excited today about using my cookie press, that I took pictures and just now did a digi layout about it. I know that's totally silly, but hey, it's those silly, little things that make special memories! Things have been so busy around here and I really haven't had much time to scrap. I think that this is the busiest that I have been in a long time during December! I had two Christmas parties to go to, lunch with friends who I used to work with and I have been on a serious baking kick. Plus, I have been crocheting bunches of wash cloths from 100% cotton. So, I have lots and lots to share and I hope to do that soon!

But for now, here are a couple of digi layouts that I have done these past couple of weeks....
This one is about our yearly, Christmas tradition of making sugar cookies. I use the same recipe that my mother used when I was a child and nothing reminds me of Christmas when I was a child more than these cookies! They are so good! We will be making some of them tomorrow (the second time this holiday season!), so I will get some good pictures and share the recipe. Yum! Everything that I used for this page is by Shabby Miss Jenn Designs.....I just LOVE her digi kits!!!!
Here is a layout that I finished this evening. My good friend made spritz cookies the other day and I reminded me that I had a cookie press lost somewhere in my cabinets. I found the press at a garage sale ages ago and I hadn't ever used it! So, today, while it was raining and sleeting outside and everything was being covered by a thick layer of ice, I decided to make spritz cookies! I knew that we wouldn't be going anywhere (and won't for several days!) and that some fresh cookies is just what we needed! We are expecting 6-10+ inches by Christmas Day! So, since this was such a huge event today......finally using this age-old cookie press that I've been carrying around with us for the past 15+ years and almost as many moves, thanks to the Air Force.....I took pictures and did a layout! Once again, everything that I used for this layout is from Shabby Miss Jenn Designs, except the template which is from Weeds & Wildflower Design Life 365 Kit and the green, circle tag and journal block which is also from Weeds & Wildflower Design.

I hope that you are all ready for Christmas and that you have a wonderful and magical day with your family and friends celebrating the birth of our Lord, Jesus Christ!

Some ornaments to share......

Here are a couple of ornaments that I was able to make last week. We were totally snowed in for three days, so it was nice to have some fun projects to work on!
This little house ornament is inspired by this ornament that I found at the Orange Flower blog. My printer wasn't talking to our computer server when I decided to do this ornament, so I had to totally wing it with the pattern. I forgot that the original had windows and guessed on what size to make everything else. I still think that it turned out pretty, darn cute! The house is made from a scrap piece of white flannel and red scrap fabric that was left over from the tree skirt that I sewed last year. I embroidered on the year and I'll tell you about those flowers in a minute!
For this ornament, I used the pattern that I found at the author Jan Brett's website. I absolutely love her books! This heart ornament is made from white paper and red patterned paper. I added some rhinestones to each crossing of the paper, because I was trying to think of a way to jazz it up a bit!
Now, for the flowers, I used the tutorial that I found at Cheeky Magpie to make them. I really had a fun time making these and I can't wait to make some more! I used my Prima flowers and I just had to add some Diamond Dust to them....lol I think it kinda looks like snow on them and since we got over 12 inches of snow while I was working on these ornaments, it seemed fitting to add snow to my flowers. lol

I'm not sure if I will have time to make any more ornaments, but I hope that I can. I have started working on some 100% cotton, crocheted wash cloths for my kitchen and a couple of gifts. It's fun to be doing something different and still creative with my hands! And, we are getting more snow today and ice today. My kids missed three days of school last week! This is their last week of school before Christmas Break and I'm sure that they are hoping and praying that we have another snow storm roll through. Starting Christmas Break a few days early would really make them happy!

I do have lots more that I want to share with you all. Some favorite recipes and some great crafty links that I have found that you don't want to miss! I hope you are all doing well and keeping warm!

Recycled Can to Christmas Gift Container

I am one of those people who can't throw any thing away, because I know that I'll be able to use it for something, sometime, somewhere......lol Here is a perfect example! We always pick these little cans of cashews up when we go to our local home store and I knew that I could use them for something. So, when when the design team at Practical Scrappers was challenged to create a gift wrap idea, I knew that this was the project I had to do! Everything that I used for this project was from my stash or recycled from some other source.
For this project, I used a light-weight patterned paper. I lined the bottom edge of the paper along the edge of the metal ring at the bottom of the container and made a pencil mark on the paper where the inside of the top metal ring was.
I used that line to cut along the whole length of the paper.
Next, I wrapped the paper around the can and made a pencil mark, letting the mark overlap the bottom paper about an inch or so. Then I used my paper trimmer and cut where the pencil mark was. Then, I used my glue runner and put along one of the short ends of the paper and placed the paper on the can making sure that it was centered. I then added adhesive to the top and bottom edges of the paper as I wrapped the paper around the can.
Now you can decorate the can more or leave it as it is! I found some thin strips of vellum in my paper stash and decided to cut along one edge with my scallop, deco scissors and adhered a piece to the top and bottom edge of the can. That clear, circle glob is a big, glue dot and I used to add the tag. :-)
For the tag, I stamped a candy cane in red ink and then colored it in with a red marker. Then I added some Crystal Effects over the candy cane and then sprinkled it with some Diamond Dust. After it was dry, I cut the candy cane out and added it to the tag.
For tFor the tag, I just stamped the sentiment onto a piece of watercolor paper and then went over each letter with a blender pen that I had picked up some red ink with. It is double mounted on a scrap piece of the patterned paper and then a piece of yellow paper. I rubbed the edges of the yellow paper with some course sand paper and also along the top of the star that I punched from a piece of yellow, corrugated paper. I adhered the candy cane on, added a small, red bow and topped the bow with the yellow star and then put the tag on the container using the glue dot. The finishing touch was stuffing the container with some yellow, crinkle paper that I saved from some Christmas gift boxes that we had received last year. I always save the stuffing from those boxes, because I use it all of the time for gifts that I make all of the time!

And here you go! The finished container! And, a great way to recycle!

Beary Merry Christmas card

This is a card that I made for this weeks challenge to make a Christmas card at Practical Scrappers. This card didn't turn out at all like I had first planned! It's amazing how you start with one idea, but as you start creating your muse takes you off in other directions and you end up with a complete surprise! The idea for my card totally turned when I stumbled upon a small doily in my white embellishment drawer. After I decided to use that, the rest of this card came together really fast. I stamped the image from Stampin' Up! in brown ink and then colored it in with Stampin' Up! markers and a blender pen. I am trying really hard to avoid Copic markers! I WANT them really, really bad but I don't NEED them. My Stampin' Up! markers are all working totally fine and I just can't justify buying new markers at $6.50/$7.00 a piece when I have something that works just fine right now. So, maybe as my SU! markers start drying up, I'll start replacing them with Copics. Anyway, I have found that marking on an acrylic block with the brush end of my marker and then picking up the ink with a blender pen can give me almost the same results as if I had used Copics. The colors aren't as vibrant, of course, but I as I practice I have been able to do some really good shading with my SU! markers. The ribbon is from a package that we got for Christmas last year from Harry & David, or some place like that. Save those ribbons ladies, because you never know when you can use them! I LOVE to recycle things like that! Take care! :-)

Covered Jelly Jar

Here is a fun and easy project for jazzing up your homemade jars of jam and jelly for Christmas gift-giving! At Practical Scrappers, they will be sharing a new Christmas project EVERY DAY, so be sure to visit often so that you don't miss all of the amazing things that will be shared there until Christmas!

We went to a local apple orchard in August and came home with a huge bag of Gala apples. I made apple butter and cinnamon-apple jelly and I thought that they would make super gifts for my neighbors this year. So, I decided to make some fabric jar covers to turn them in to festive gifts!
For this project I used a piece of fabric from my fabric stash basket and some ball-edge trim. I bought a yard of the trim, because it was only $.45 a yard.
I used a saucer to trace a circle onto the fabric. I just used an ink pen to trace with. Then, I cut the circle out and sewed on the trim. I did not turn the edges down on the fabric. I guess it would have made the back side look cleaner if I did that, but I am hoping that no one will turn this over and inspect it and say, "Wow. She should have finished this side by turning the edges under!" lol It honestly looks just fine with the edges raw and the trim covers it up anyway on the front side, and that's what's most important!
I did use one of my special feet for my sewing machine to sew the trim on. It is open on one side so that the balls on the trim had room to go by as I sewed. I didn't use any pins or anything.....I just sewed a long very slowly and adjusted the trim on top of the fabric as I sewed a long. I think that this kind of trim was the easiest, because it was easy to make the sharp curve of the circle with out bunching up or anything like that. So, I would pick out a trim that is very flexible for this project.
Here's the finished fabric piece! You can see a bit of the red fabric showing through the top in this photo. I took some sharp scissors to trim that off as close to the stitching as I could.
Now for the fun part! The circle that fits in the lid....... ;-) I traced around the outside of the metal lid onto red card stock and then used my circle cutter to cut a circle just a little bit smaller than what I had traced. This way I know it will fit inside of the lid. Then, I made another circle but out of white, watercolor paper. I made this circle so that it is about 1/8-1/4 inch smaller than the inside circle of the metal lid. I stamped the image in a chocolate-brown and colored it in with a blender pen and my Stampin' Up! markers and then I sponged red ink around the edges of the circle. I then centered the fabric circle on top of the jar, placed the red circle of card stock inside the lid and then screwed the lid ontop of the jar. Next I adhered the white circle in the center of the jar lid. I wrapped some green, gross-grain ribbon around the lid and adhered it together with some glue. I folded the ribbon over so that I was able to create a small loop of ribbon to hang the tag off of.
For the tag, I cut a rectangle from red card stock and wrote "Apple Butter - made with Honey" on one side of the card stock. Next I cut a piece of green, gross-grain ribbon, attached one end to the tag, slipped the other end through the loop on the lid and then adhered that end to the tag, so that the tag is now attached to the jar. I punched out a big snowflake and added it to the side. Then I punched a small circle, stamped the stocking on it and colored it in and then went around the edge with red ink on a sponge and placed it on top of the snowflake.

And there you have it! A cute and festive jar of preserves! I hope that all of my directions made sense. If you have any questions, please ask! And also please share if you make some of these, because I sure would love to see you're creations!

Wedding Pillow - Practical Scrappers Challenge

The challenge for this week at Practical Scrappers is sewing. I was going to make something new but with it being Thanksgiving weekend, my time got a little lost doing other things! Then I remembered that I had this pillow that I made years and years ago and I thought that it worked just perfectly for this weeks challenge! The idea is from an old Family Circle or Women's Day magazine. I cut out a big heart shape from a paper sack and used that as a pattern to cut two pieces of fabric. Then, I started sewing on all sorts of goodies to the top piece. Ribbon, lace, buttons, ribbon flowers, etc. I then made a frame from some flat lace to hold the photo. I sewed the front and back together and there ya go! A fun memory pillow! The picture is of me and my husband right after we got married and one of my all-time favorite photos of us. I've had this pillow on my bed for a LONG time! lol We will be celebrating our 18th wedding anniversary this June!

I hope you're all having a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Delight in the Day - card - Practial Scrappers

This weeks challenge at Practical Scrappers a sewing. For my card, I cut out several circles of patterned fabric and then used my sewing machine to sew them together in what I can best describe as a wagon wheel spokes. I added a button to the center and use adhesive to attach it to the card base.

I hope you are all having a wonderful day! I am writing out my grocery list right now and then it's off to the store! My mother is driving up and should be here later this afternoon. It's going to be a wonderful and busy week!

Sweet - layout - Practical Scrappers weekly challenge

The challenge this week at Practical Scrappers is to sew and here is my layout where I used my sewing machine. I went around the edge of the circle paper twice in an uneven pattern. I really love using my sewing machine on scrapping layouts and I really need to do it more! My problem is that I don't have room to keep my sewing machine out in my scrapping area, so once I put it away, I tend to leave it there for awhile. If it was sitting out, I'm sure I'd use it more.

This is my little GG last Christmas. Once she tried a candy cane, she was hooked! I can't believe that it's already almost Christmas-time again! Where did this year go? I'm sure that I won't be able to put candy canes on our Christmas tree this year......I have a feeling that they will start to disappear one by one!

I hope that you all have a wonderful Monday! It's Thanksgiving week! I have so much to be grateful for and so many big dreams for our future that we are talking about..... :-)

Honey-bee card

Here is a card that I had made for last weeks challenge at Practical Scrappers to use acrylic paints. I meant to share it before now, but having the flu last week really threw me off my groove!

I received a special package from my mom a few weeks ago and my goodie was wrapped in some bubble wrap. (It was my favorite vanilla fudge in the whole wide world from Branson!) I had been trying to think of something to do for the acrylic paint challenge and as soon as I saw that bubble wrap, I knew that I had to try using it and paint to make a background for a card or layout. I had heard of people doing it before, but had never tried it myself. Well, it was super easy and so much fun! The first thing I thought of when I looked at the bubble wrap was honey comb, so that's what I decided to do for this card. I'm not sure if anyone else picked up that I was trying to make it look like honey comb, but that's what my muse told me to do so that's what I did. lol

The flower is a wide piece of wire-edged ribbon. I pulled one of the wires to gather the ribbon into a circle and then added a small Prima flower in the center.

I am hoping to take some photos tomorrow of how to do the bubble wrap techinque, so that I can share it here with you all!

What a week.....

Wow. This week has been something else. I woke had the stomach flu Saturday night through Sunday and then my little GG started throwing up at 10:30 on Monday night. I stayed up all night with her and didn't get to bed until 5 a.m. on Tuesday. I am so grateful that my husband is able to work from home, because he stayed home on Tuesday, so that I could nap awhile and to help take care of GG. She is just now starting to feel better. I felt so badly for her and even worse because I gave her the germs! I must admit that I am still not feeling great and I haven't been able to eat a meal since Saturday. Actually, the one thing that sounded good to me and the only thing that GG ate today, was some homemade potato soup. I made a batch of it last night and it really hit the spot! It's such a simple recipe, too. I'll have to share it soon. This stuff is really icky and I hope and pray that no one else gets it!

I need to get to work scrapping, too! I have next weeks focus to work on for Practical Scrappers! It's a great one, too and I'm really excited to do a layout for this one!

I hope that you all are all doing well and are staying healthy and warm. It's feeling like winter is coming here in the Heartland. I am totally shocked that next week is Thanksgiving! I have been working on my menu and pulling out some new dessert recipes to try. I will share with you all, if they turn out super yummy!

Love-Doh - layout for Practical Scrappers weekly challenge

Good morning everyone. Wow. I am surprised that I can sit here. Well, I barely am. I woke up at 1:30 a.m. Sunday with the stomach flu and this is the first time that I've been out of bed and sitting up since then. It was awful! lol But, I sure am glad it's over. I just hope and pray that no one else in the house gets it. Especially my little Gracie.

The challenge this week at Practical Scrappers is to use acrylic paint. For this layout I simply dry-brushed some white acrylic paint onto the red card stock. After the paint was dry, I added all of the other elements and there you go!

I would love to write more, but I'm honestly not feeling too well!

Take care!

An awesome list of tutorials.....

I stumbled upon this incredible list of sewing tutorials this morning and I wanted to share it with you. I am in total LOVE with the red, mushroom houses that are in the center photo. I have pretty much decided today that I am going to have to come up with some sort of creative-time schedule. There are just way too many things that I want to do and I'm not able to do any of them because get stuck working on just scrapbooking and do make any time for the other things that I would love to do. Right now, I'm thinking of just alternating days.....scrapbooking on one day, sewing on the next, then scrapbooking, and then sewing.....you get the idea. There are lots of things that fall into that sewing category, too. Clothes sewing for me, clothes sewing for GG, accessories and bags, softies and toys, home decor.....there are so many things that I want to do! I need to schedule my creative time somehow, because my right-sided and easily side-tracked brain isn't letting me get to all of the things that I want to. I'll let you know what I decide to do and I need to decide fast, because my stack of projects that I want to create is just getting bigger and bigger!

Anyway, here's this amazing link!

The Long Thread Top 100 Tutorials of 2008

Talk about lots and lots of super-cute goodies to make! I hope that you find something fun here to make, I know that I sure have!

Take care and happy crafting!

Pass It On - Card 3

I made this card last week that I shared here and I am putting it up for grabs for this weeks Pass It On. I sure do hope that you comment below, because if you do, you could win this card that you can pass on to someone who needs some TLC!

Please read about the mission of Pass It On Ministry here and be sure to come back here to comment. I will pick a random winner on Friday and send the winner a card as soon as I get their information. So please be sure to check back on Friday or follow me. I sure don't want you to miss out on winning a card!

I hope you all have a wonderful and blessed day!

Scraproom Re-Do - organizing by color

Well, I did it. I reorganized all of my scrapping embellishments by color of the weekend. It was a pretty big decision to make, too! I am a creature of habit and I've have things the same way in my scrap area for a long time, so the idea of doing this really freaked me out for a bit! lol The first time I heard of organizing your embellishments by color was by Stacy Julian. She has talked about it in some of her books and on her web site also. I always loved looking at the photos of everything all pretty in their drawers by color. I have always organized my paper by color, but everything else was by type. All the ribbons together, all of the buttons together, flowers together....etc. This was working just fine for me, but I really wanted to try something different. And, after sitting and really think about how I scrap, I actually think what color I want to use, before what type of embellishment. This is funny, too, because I thought I was the other way around. I thought that I said to myself, "I need a button. A red one." But I really think, "I need something red, how about a button?" I think that this is probably the most important thing to think about seriously before deciding to organizing your embellishments this way. If you think, "I need a button" first and then decide on a color, then I wouldn't think about touching your embellies! lol This might really mess your scrap-thinking system. But, if you're feeling a little stale and like you're not using your embellishments as much as you'd like to, then this might be a way to mix things up a bit for you. Either way, I would really sit and think about how you scrap before you consider doing this. It is a huge change! lol

So here is what my scrap area looked like before......
This is my main work area. The counter top is pretty much full of stuff, especially the two, gray drawer units. These units had all of my small embellishments in them organized by type: buttons, ribbon scraps, brads, flowers, etc. These drawers were also my little ones favorite thing to play in! And, another reason why I decided to try this way or organizing honestly. She likes to work beside me while standing on a stool and she can easily reach these drawers and pull things out. This was really starting to drive me crazy! lol More so because she was putting things back in different drawers and mixing everything up. So, I knew that these drawers had to go, because she's only going to get bigger and able to reach more drawers! lol The two, small green drawer units hold my square-punched photos and the white drawers are my category drawers. Both of these are for my Library Of Memories system of organizing photos as taught by Stacy Julian and discussed in her book, Photo Freedom. I highly recommend this book if you're looking for a change in how you scrapbook photos! It totally helped me break out of the "I can only scrap chronologically" way of mind and threw me into the "I can scrap whatever I want to, whenever I want to!" scrapping freedom! No more, "I'll never get caught up.".....sorry, it's easy for me to get excited about that system. Oh how I wish and dream that I could afford to take her on-line class, but the book is awesome, too!
I have a 2-door, tall pantry that I keep my drawer units in. The unit on the left was pretty much a mess and waste of space. The top, three drawers were full of ribbon. Some were still on their rolls and others were wrapped around plastic, floss keepers. The other three drawers were completely unorganized and just full of stuff that needed to be sorted. This was really a waste of good organizing space! The unit on the left is actually two, 6 drawer units on top of each other. These held all of my paper scraps, organized by color: red, yellow/orange, green, blue, pink, purple, brown, white, black. Then, a drawer with specility papers like vellum and mulberry paper, one with scraps of only Chatterbox patterned papers (I had aquired over 300 pieces of Chatterbox paper at a garage sale for a steal and thought I should keep all of the scrap together, so that I could use them better....I was wrong, I never remembered they were there!). On top of these units is my one, true scrapbooking shame......I'm hanging my head in shame right now as I type.....those tall stacks of paper are layouts. Completed layouts that are waiting to be put into scrapbooks. Isn't that terrible????? I don't even want to know how many are sitting there. How can anyone enjoy them all piled up there, shoved in a cabinet? Oh, woe is me.......I think that should be my next project. Putting them into albums..........

After about two days of working, I was finished.......here's how it looks now:

The unit on the left now has embellishments in it, all organized by color. I had to use two drawers in the unit on the right for embellishments also - for white/black and then metallic. The pink/purple drawer is pretty full, but I'm going to try to keep those two colors together, because I don't have any more drawers that I can use! The unit on the right still has all scraps, organized by color and a drawer for specialty paper.

Here is a peek inside some of the drawers:
I used some of the little drawers from the gray unit to help keep some things organized together, like the ribbon, the rhinestones and glitter, and then a larger drawer for paper pieces, chip board, anything like that. I have the flowers in a zip-loc baggie as well as scraps of ribbon and fabric in a baggie. I have been saving these round, metal tins for years. One of the teachers at the school I used to work at was throwing them away and I took them, because I knew that I'd be able to use them for something! You can see them the easiest in the green and pink drawer (click on the photo to see it bigger). I have two in each color drawer. One has buttons and the other brads and eyelets. I punched out a flower in coordinating paper to put on top of each tin. I also did this for the front of each drawer in the units.

Here is the biggest change in my scrap area. My counter top. Getting rid of those two, gray units really freed up a lot of space on my counter top. I added a little shelf (a piece of scrap wood sitting on top of two, recycled spaghetti jars!) because I wanted to keep the two, green units right there and to put any small odds and ends. I have a jar full of black buttons and a jar of white buttons, because I had too many to keep in my color drawers. I also have my two Design with.... calendars from Autumn Leaves there, but I might move those because I never really look at them like I should. The white basket has silly odds and ends in it. Movie tickets, labels, card board coffee sleeves, things like that. It's another idea from Stacy Julian's Photo Freedom book. It's just fun stuff that you can sift through and add to a layout. Little things from every day life go in there. This can easily be moved to free up more space, if I need it. The red and white polka dot pot is my little trash bin and the square basket next to it has photos in it that I am planning on scrapping soon. Then I have my tool turn-around that I use to hold my pens, pencils, scissors, paint brushes, erasers, glue tubes, etc. The basket next to the lamp is full of small stamps that can be used on envelopes and the back of my cards and layouts: "hand stamped by" and "scrapbook layout by"....things like that. :-)

I hope you enjoyed seeing how I have reorganized my scrap area. I honesltly haven't been able to do one bit of scrapping since I did all of this work! The rest of my weekend was very full and I just haven't had the time to play in there at all and to try out my new system. I must say that when I open up one of my color drawers, my severely right-sided brain gets so happy! lol I can't wait to put it to the test and see if this helps me use more of my embellishments that get so easily forgotten about. I also had a ton of stickers and what-not just lying around. All of those have been put into plastic page protectors with pockets and into a binder with my alphabets and other stickers.

I guess I should say that I do not have any of my stickers in my color drawers. I decided to keep them organized together. Right now, I have a binder full of alphabets that are in page protectors and organized by color and a Crop-In-Style Paper/Sticker Binder full of stickers that are organized by theme - love, flower, sports, birthday, Christmas, Halloween, spring, etc...... I don't know if I will ever add all of those to my color drawers. I do like having them by theme and I think that I'll use them the most if I keep them organized that way.

Well, I have rambled on long enough about this! If you have photos of your color drawers on your blog or if you decide to do this, please share because I would love to see what you have done!

Take care and I hope you have a wonderful day........and hopefully are able to do something creative!