Cupcake Birthdays and School Valentines

Coming up we have a certain girl turning 8 years old, and Valentines Day.  Nearly-8-year-old-girl is having a small birthday party with her friends at home in a few weeks.  She chose a decorate-your-own-cupcakes party.  Yay, easy!!  (Or so I thought.)  We were talking about activities and favors – I suggested aprons w the attendee’s names on them instead of treat bags, but I got shot down.  Treat bags are in, treat bags are cool.  And not to toot my own horn, but I stuff pretty nice treat bags.

*toot* *toot*

So ok, yay!  Cupcake theme, goodie bags, we can pull this idea out again:

Uh, no.  Nearly-8-year-old-girl put the kaibosh on that.  It’s been  done, that’s so my-sister’s-6th-birthday-treat-bags.  This child is NOT a repeater.  So the search continues….  or begins.  All suggestions welcome.

All suggestions are welcome for this, too:  School Valentines.  Last year we (“we” = “I”) made paperclip bookmarks for 1st grade

and the ever-famous “kid holding a lollipop picture” for kindergarten.

No one wants bookmarks this year (that’s kinda a relief, that was a lot of work!), and little girl wants the lollipop picture again.  That’s a fine idea to me, she only has one kid in her class from last year, so there will only be one repeater.  The lollipops were 10 for a dollar at Walmart, so it’s not terribly expensive, either.

So now we’re looking for some cupcake-8-year-old-birthday ideas and one set of super cool and crafty Valentines.  I’m a little off pinterest right now, I feel like there’s too much junk to weed through these days.  I guess it’s back to google and any ideas you’ve got for me!

tulle poofy things!!

they might need a better name than that….  anyway!  i figured out how to make tulle poofy things!

i made this little red one and wandered around looking for places to put it…

then i remembered some paper straws i ordered a couple weeks ago, and i made a wand!

and i went around “poofing” things and making my family wonder about my sanity.  i’ve got another idea, you’ll have to hold tight and see where this goes…

*poof*

here in the land of unfinished projects…

we’ve got lots going on.

i may have too many supplies, i’m overwhelmed with the color possibilities.  and i’ve got 6 more colors coming later this week! (rainbow!)

this one’s done, but needs a sign or saying for in the middle:

while i was in florida, i got an idea for plaster thingies… so i bought some plaster and made the

bases…. but now i have to actually paint them.  hmm.

and then there’s this girl.  she’s finishing up her 2nd year at preschool.  she is off to kindergarten in the fall.

this is the little girl that didn’t make a peep for the entire year last year.  this year she came around.  this week she stood up and performed a poem all by herself, and sang songs and danced with her friends.  she’s come a very long way.  i especially love this picture of the statue children, you can kinda make out her little bestie-friend peeking at her from behind her statue.  oh, the cuteness.

we’ve got a few weeks until her big sister finishes kindergarten, so we’ve got plenty of time to start some more unfinished projects.

buttoned up house plants

i like to have a little treat or prize for my mom and grandma and sister for Easter, since many times when we see any of them, they have a little something for the girls.  this Easter: little plants with crazy button flowers:

 

i saw this in a magazine (parents? family fun?) as a st. patrick’s day craft – some clover in a pot with a rainbow (YAY! RAINBOWS!!) of buttons poking out.  heavens knows i have enough buttons, and i know the 3 ladies that these are for have PLENTY of doodads and things… this is just a little Happy Easter for them to enjoy while they last.

mmm, buttons and wire, what’s not to love?  (p.s., hello carpal tunnel, that’s a lot of twisted wire)

so whimsical and a little silly…

funny, when i bought the plants, i just knew i’d be jealous if i didn’t get one for myself.  good thing an extra just jumped into the cart!

 

wooden spool bracelets

FUN!  NEW!  PROJECT!  WOO!  so i ordered 500 of these little bitty spools… what to do, what to do…

bracelets, baybee!

i pondered a way to “stain” the spools, and found this:

i thought it would work better than regular water-based ink that might wear off on my skin, and i wasn’t sure what craft paint would do.  the stazon refill ink gave the spools a gorgeous look, but HOLY COW! MESSY! PERMANENT!  my fingers and nails will never be the same.  (you can probably tell i went with timber brown =))  the up-side is that it dries very quickly.  i hate to wait.

as you can tell from the background, i’m at work, so i rifled through the scrap bin and found some very pretty patterned papers and cut them to fit – my spools are small, i used 3/8″ x 1 3/8″ pieces.  i tried a bunch of adhesives to get the paper to stick – mod podge worked just fine, so did tacky tape and the xyron sticker maker…  use whatever you’d like!  i think mod podge might work best, with the tacky tape a close 2nd.

you can string them together the traditional end-to-end way, but i chose a side-to-side method – just string one end through each side.  i used elastic thread so i could stretch mine over my giant beat up crafty hands.

i’m experimenting with colors and papers tonight, and will show you anything super, should it pop up!

new shrinky dink tutorial

hey, lOOkie!  Little Yellow Bicycle has “shrink film” in their new Snugglebug line! Let’s make ’em!! 

use sharp scissors to cut the shapes out.  leave a little edge around the outside, and don’t worry about your cuts being perfect.  once the plastic is shrunk, you won’t be able to tell that the edges are slightly wonky.   it also adds a little to the “handmadeness” of them if they aren’t perfect. 

   

color or ink if you’d like, be sure to use PERMANENT ink – Stazon, Sharpies, Slick Writers – if it’s not permanent, it’ll smear and you’ll be sad.  i used Bic fine tip permanent markers.  I tried coloring on both the smooth and the rough side and the results are about the same colorwise – but it’s easier to color on the rough side because there’s a little more control due to the texture.

 

place on a piece of parchment paper or foil (it doesn’t matter what side is up) and pop in a preheated oven or toaster oven on a heated pan and watch them shrink!   it only takes a minute or two for the film to do its thing, so watch it closely, they’ll be ready soon.

the directions for these said to use an oven temp of 350F, but i found that to be a little too hot.  i use somewhere between 250-275 in the toaster oven.  this slows the shrinking a little so i could control the shapes a little more – if they curl too quickly, they might stick together and it’s easier to reach in and peel the ends apart if it’s not happening quite so fast.  (i have to say that the quality of this particular shrink film is excellent, it’s even easier to use than the actual shrinky dink brand, and mine never curled enough to stick together.) 

i also only do one or 2 at a time so i can keep an eye on them.  it doesn’t take long to shrink all the shapes, so i only do a couple at once.

once the shape is nearly flat and stops shrinking, take it out of the oven and whack it once with the back of a spatula to be sure it’s nice and flat.  the end result is super cute – sturdy embellishments with a little extra something by me.   They came with little tiny pop dots too, to add a little more dimention to your scrapbook page or altered project.   

2 days down…

and one to go…  the “Scrapbook Summit” weekend at the Simsbury Inn seems to be going veeeeery well.  the scrappy ladies are busy, the scrappers are scrappin’, and Scrap Can Do! has sold a trillion kits!  maybe not a trillion, but we’re probably closing in on a million or so.

i spent last night holding down the fort at the store where we had 20 ladies come to crop til midnight.  and i made a crafty thing or two, too!!  the stars above are by Kaiser – they’re 2 pieces that slide together.  i made the black and cream one for myself, i think it’s gonna be adorable on my mantle.  today we had 28 ladies cropping – 13 hours of scrap-scrap-scrappin.  it seems like a long time, but i know the hours just flew by!

now i’ve got 15 minutes until it’s tomorrow, and i’ve got lots and lots to do for tomorrow.  more on that another time….

more fun with shrinky dinks!

so i dabbled in halloween, but i’m kinda over it, for this second.  i moved right into christmas. made some shopping bags and some partridge shrinky dinks. they’re all set and listed in the etsy shop!  i almost cannot stand how cute they are!!

 

if you wanna see…

christy and i on TV, here we are!!

http://www.wfsb.com/video/16631165/index.html

but don’t tell me about it, i can’t watch.  but after all, i was there when it happened.  so i don’t have to.

odds-n-ends, cut-n-paste

my bags from last week are even cuter in person if that’s possible.  if you need a little  handbag (and EVERYONE *needs* a little handbag), i’d highly recommend madebymolly, i don’t want to give these up!  i keep telling myself i’ll pick out something pretty that’s more my style soon, but i may hold these hostage til that day comes.

i’ve kinda lost my mojo for a while in the crafty department.  i haven’t been in the mood to pick up my stuff, so i haven’t been bothering to take it out.  i did make this while babycakes napped one day and beanie was occupied with new library books:

 it’s ______ paper, if that means something…  i just love the colors and the watering cans…  i love projects that i can work on in steps, things i can set down and not come back to if i have other things to attend to.  this is one of those things.  i was surprised to see how quickly it came together though, with no interuptions! 

tonight i’m going to the “cut-n-paste” to play.  they have a crop every friday night from 6p-12a where ladies come to work on their scrapbooks.  i usually work every other friday, but on my off-night i like to go and work on whatever i needs to be finished up.

these are what is on tonight’s slate.  we’ll see how far i get…