Christmas Gingerbread House

Here is an inexpensive kids craft for you to do. It's fun because each kid gets their own house to decorate and there's no fighting over creative differences. The houses are made out of graham crackers instead of gingerbread. We used pint sized milk cartons as the house structure and "glued" the crackers on using royal icing. As soon as I was done making the house structure the kids went crazy decorating them with candy. Use royal icing to "glue" the candy onto the house. My 4 year old son has a good imagination and he was very creative. He used a jolly rancher for the chimney. I loved it so much I had to copy him. Finally, I dusted everything with shredded coconut to make it look like snow. You could try using powdered sugar on the roof top to look like snow as well. I posed my daughter's mini doll for the pictures. It was the perfect size. We lined all our finished houses up and made a mini village.

Happy Holidays!



Mini La La Loopsy sitting in front of her new candy home

Christmas Tags Part I

Yay! It's Christmastime. I hope you are as excited as I am. I just bought my lifetime supply of Christmas wrapping paper from Costco, so I am officially in the spirit! Wrapping paper means it's tag time. SU! has a huge line of tag stuff so it makes it super easy to crank out these projects. All of these tags above were made using SU! stamps, punches and die cuts. Michael's Craft Stores has so many cute ribbons that these tags practically make themselves ;)

Saw this on my cuz' blog. It's so cute I had to piggyback her idea. If you haven't checked out the link yet here it is again:  by tkg
We have a lot of the same stamps and so we end up doing the same projects. I don't have the snowflake punch she has so I had to improvise. I modified the Sizzix Flourish Set in carob brown card stock. Rudolph is made using SU! Stocking builder punch in tan card stock. I shaded the edges with brown chalk and rosed his cheek and ear with red chalk. His collar is punched out of red textured card stock and embellished using the negative snowflake from ek snowflake border punch on baby blue with white polka dots. Can't really see that detail in this photo. It is mounted on a Sizzix tag die cut on the same baby blue white polka dot card stock. Finally, added a googly eye and tiny red pom pom nose. Oh yeah, and don't forget about the ribbon at the top. It matches Rudolph's collar. I didn't plan that, but it worked out so perfectly.

Yuki Merry Christmas

Between work and mommy duties I have not been able to do as much crafting as I would like to. You know how it is with school, swim lessons, music lessons and chores....all on top of the 40 hour work week. Sometimes I just don't know how it all gets done! So I have been working on this card for about two weeks. Not because it was difficult, but because I have only 10 minutes here and there to work in my studio.

This Yuki Sister Stamps is just so adorable. I painted it using those shimmery watercolors again. Then cut it out using Spellbinders Labels Four. The red paper is embossed using Sizzix Flower Vine Embossing Folder. The sentiment is heat embossed using Rubbermania Stamps #55 Red Dragon Embossing Powder on green Bazzill textured paper. I also added teeny tiny ribbons to her ponytails for that extra 3-D pop.

Hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving. Thanks for stopping by!

Flower Punch Happy Bday Card

It was my friend's birthday on Tuesday. I made her this card using a pleated paper technique I learned at a recent Stamp Camp. Can you see the gray "skirt" on the bottom half. Take a 1" strip of paper and fold it to look like pleats. I used a scorer and made 1/2" pleats, then topped it with vanilla grosgrain ribbon. I used that multi-ink technique again on the main flower image. (Wish I knew what the technical name of that technique was) Inked it all over with green and just edged lower left corner with purple to give it a gradated look. Then I added a bunch of circles and mounted Happy Birthday sentiment. Check out the background cardstock. It's dotted swiss textured paper in Celtic green. I just LOVE this color. It is neutral enough that I can use it with just about all my card projects. So cute.

Thanks for stopping by!

Simple Birthday Card

I finally got my shipment of Sister Stamps. I made this very simple card. I find it so hard now to make a "simple" card because of all the embellishments, punches, charms and fun stuff that are available. I just want to keep adding more stuff and don't really know when to stop.

I saw these really cool coloring techniques using Copics on various craft blogs. I do not own any fancy Copics, so I had to improvise. I used shimmery watercolors. It's by Yasutomo and it is a 16-color pallet. I bought it for $3.99 @ Freddy's. Here's my attempt at painting like the pro crafters. Hope I did Sister Stamps justice. Tell me what you think about the hair painting technique.

Here's the link to that tutorial by Amy super-hero-blue-black-hair. She used Copics and she made it look SO EASY. I tried....really I tried.

I really would have preferred to have it say Konichiwa for the sentiment, but I live where it is difficult to find Asian sentiment stamps. (Not sure if there are such a thing). I had to settle for this Happy Birthday sentiment.
Happy crafting to you! Have a good week.

Happy Birthday Card

Today is my co-worker's birthday on 11/11/11. Kinda a big deal, right?
I think of this card as a tag punch explosion card. It looks almost as if I just threw a bunch of punches on this card. It is very busy. I tried to use a monochromatic scheme so that all of the different elements matched. I hope she likes it.

Here is the vertical version of the same card with a Thank You sentiment.

Then I made this very linear card with the same Many Thanks sentiment as above. Very opposite from the tag explosion chaos.
Thanks for stopping by. Have a great weekend!

Paper Bag Album

Paper Bag Album cover

I made this baby girl album from a sample I saw at Cut & Paste Paper Arts Store.  http://www.cutnpasteshoppe.com/
It's a small store, but they always have the latest arrivals. If I'm ever in the neighborhood I try to stop in just to see what's new. They have a lot of samples and they are so helpful with all my questions.
I distressed the designer paper with brown vintage ink before assembling. I made one of these for my dear friends that had a new baby girl and gift wrapped it in a brown lunch sack to stay with the brown bag theme. I hope she was able to fill it with cute baby pictures.

Inside pg 2

Inside pg 3

Inside pg 4

Inside Pg 5

Inside pg 6

Inside pg 7

Materials used:
Brown paper lunch sacks
SU! Designer paper
Various paper
Ribbon
Embellishments

The open ends of the bags I glued shut just for stability. However, I made one where I kept all the bags open and used them as pockets to add more things such as little baby mementos. Cards or notes for examples, or more photos, or I've heard of parents keeping a tiny lock of hair. It makes it much more fun than a traditional album because it is so interactive. It's almost like a pop-up book. Each page had a surprise with hidden pages or pockets. There are two different lunch sack sizes. I tried making albums with both sizes. Both came out cute. It all depends on your personal preference.