CHRISTMAS IN JULY

Yes, it's only 6 months away!  I love making Christmas cards and decorations and goodies (especially the yummy goodies), so Christmas in July is always a fun crafty theme time for me.  That's our theme this week over at The Outlawz for the Saturday Paper a la Mode challenge.  I love to make cards, but a lot of times I want to do something more 3-dimensional.  I decided to make some decorations.  I've made something similar to these before and used them for pumpkins and hearts - very versatile if you have the right shape of punch or die, or if you have a Cricut or other electronic cutter that can cut lots of the same shape.

I decided to make 2 different ones just so you can see the difference if you use more or fewer cutout pieces.  The one with the beads only uses 8 pieces, and the other one uses 16 for a much "fuller" shape.  After I put them together, the one with the 8 pieces looked so sparse that I started looking for a way to fill in some of the empty space.  I have a lot of beads in my stash so started "engineering" (I put that in quotes, because I'm not an engineer and my solutions are typically not so "elegant" as a real engineer might make) a solution for getting the beads onto the ornament.  What I ended up using is 8 strips of very thin wire (one for each "slot") to thread the beads onto - the wire is bent in half, with the "bend" at the bottom, one leg running up through the center of the ornament and one leg running up through the beads, then twisted together at the top, where the twisted end is wound into a little spiral shape (looks a bit like something from a Dr. Seuss show).  Hopefully that explanation makes sense.  I used a variety of beads and configurations for some variety, but obviously you could use whatever colors and shapes and arrangements that make you happy.

This second picture shows the beads a little more close up so you can see the details.

Hopefully you find time over the next 6 months to get all the cards, decorations, and goodies created that you want to - I tend to always run out of time, but maybe now that this challenge has given me a bit of inspiration, I will continue with my "preparations".

Thanks for stopping by!  Big hugs and showers of blessings!

GIFT WRAPPING

When 3 of my daughter's friends were graduating from their resident program, she and the other residents pitched in and bought each of them a Kindle.  Michelle was responsible for the gift buying and wrapping, so when it was time to wrap the Kindles up, she came to me for assistance.  I started showing her some options, because she didn't really want to use wrapping paper, and things just snowballed from there, with me in the middle of the snowball rolling down the hill!  Ha!  Ha!

I used a variety of different ribbons and goodies I had in my craft room, including a die cut shape as the "background" for each decoration.  The die I used, which is my all time favorite, is the Top Notes die from Stampin' Up - love that thing!

The one with the big star is for a guy, and the other two are for the ladies.

I enjoyed doing this, and Michelle said they loved how pretty they were decorated.  I fixed the wrapping so that the ribbon would come loose without having to remove any of it, then reattach back in case they wanted to keep it for something else.

Thanks for stopping by!  Remember to stop by The Outlawz and play along with our Saturday Paper a la Mode challenge.  Our theme this week is: USE YOUR FAVORITE TOOL, AND TELL US ABOUT IT.  My favorite tool is my die cutting machine (I have a Sizzix) and my Top Notes die.

Big hugs and showers of blessings!

SUMMER!

Looks like summer has finally made it to my part of the world.  Seems like we had a couple of weeks of just clouds and rain, clouds and rain, but the 4th showed up beautifully, and now we've had a few days of hot sunny weather, and it looks like we'll have a few more.  This morning is gorgeous outside!

This week's theme over at The Outlawz Saturday Paper a la Mode Challenge is SUMMER!  I had some leftover summer-themed papers from Webster's Pages that I used to make a banner a couple of years ago, which I gifted to my dear friend Jenn - she hangs it on the wall of her craft room, which makes me feel very loved!  This is a picture of the banner - I loved making all the different layers and adding in the little elements.

Hard to tell from that photo, so here is a closeup of one of the parts:

I also had a leftover little mason jar filled with flowers from when I was trying to make some ATCs (I find it very difficult to work in such small size), so I used that as the center of my card, and built the rest of my summery, patriotic card around that.

Thank you for stopping by, and I hope you are enjoying your weekend!  Big hugs and many blessings to you!