Back to the blogging world . . .

Hello everyone!  I hope you all had a wonderful Hanukkah, Christmas, or whatever you celebrate at this time of year.

I know I've been neglecting my blog lately and I've been bad about blog hopping and visiting you gals.  I hope to get back to all that soon!  We went out of town last week and now I'm still working hard every day to get my house and scraproom back in order.  Before I put all my scrap supplies back in my scraproom, I'm sorting  through everything and trying to purge all my excess "scrap crap" (as my husband calls it).   How do we scrappers end up accumulating so much *stuff*??? 

I'm way behind on posting projects here.  These are some gift card holders I made for Hanukkah using packaging and other recycled items. I made this first gift card holder using a long piece of printed cardboard packaging from Prima Vines. I cut the stars from Prima cardboard packaging and covered them with glitter.

The piece of cardboard packaging was about 12 x 3 inches long. You could just as easily use a long scrap of heavy cardstock or patterned paper. I simply folded over a little piece for the flap and then folded the remainder in half. I put Velcro dots on the flap so that it stays closed. I added a pocket on the inside to hold the gift card.

I made this next gift card holder using the clear packaging from Prima flowers. I hand stitched two of them together, leaving the top side open so that the gift card can be inserted.

If you’re like me and you save all your scraps of paper, why not use them to make gift card holders? There are so many printable templates to be found online. I found this great little pillow box template on JersGirl's website.  It's the perfect size for holding gift cards. Just print, trace onto paper, cut, fold and embellish. I tied mine up with ribbon and added a little Hanukkah embellishment.

Altoid anyone? Altoid tins are just big enough to hold a gift card. I took an empty Altoid tin and covered it with Mod Podge, then I poured glitter over it. Mod Podge works very well with glitter on metal!

Sorry I'm posting these after the fact. Better late than never, I guess.

I'm hoping to get back to blogging and blog hopping on a regular basis very soon!

Winners of the Creating Keepsakes giveaway and a Prima layout.

It's done, it's done!!  Our kitchen is finally finished and I absolutely love it!    I've been busy over the past week putting things away and trying to clean up, but it's been a very slow process.  As soon as I get everything back in place I will take pictures and post them.  Today was going to be "the" day that I finally put away the last of the kitchen stuff, but then I broke/sprained/severely bruised (not sure which it is) my pinky toe last night.  Ouch!!!  I banged it HARD into the corner of the shower tile edge while walking by, and it hurt like the dickens!  It still does. So I'm out of commission for a while . . . no heavy duty cleaning for me today.  You know what they say about the best laid plans.  I guess it's a sign that I need to take it easy today.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!!  I had my daughters help me pick random numbers for the winners of the Creating Keepsakes Special Issues.  Without further ado . . .
The winner of Scrapbooking Everyday Memories is Anabelle.
The winner of Scrapbooking Tips & Tricks: Stamps & Ink is Liana Suwandi

Congrats ladies!  Please email me your mailing addresses. 

I'm behind again on posting projects.  Here's a Prima layout I made based on the December Build-a-Page:

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Paper Shoe Template

I finally finished the shoe template and tutorial, and I'm thrilled to share them with all of you! In case you missed the previous post, I made these little shoes:

I knew I wanted to make a high heeled slip-on mule style of shoe, so I played around with scraps of paper until I got each piece just right.  It took quite a bit of trial and error, but then it finally came together.  If you'd like to try and make a pair yourself, here's the template and instructions:

Download here:

 Shoe Template

Here is a step-by-step tutorial with pictures:

1. Cut out the template pieces: Trace the template pieces onto your paper and cut them out. You can also print the template directly onto the backside of the paper you want to use, since you’ll be able to make sure that the side with words and cut/fold lines doesn’t show on the finished shoe.

 

2. Upper: Make little cuts where indicated on the shoe upper. The cuts allow you to bend and mold the edges to fit around the edge of the sole.

3. Adhere the shoe upper to the sole: Fold over the little cut edges of the shoe upper and adhere them along the edges of sole - top layer (the larger one). A strong, quick-dry glue like Beacon’s Fabri-tac or Zip Dry glue works well. This step is a little bit tricky because the edges of the upper don’t fit perfectly onto the sole, so you have to play with the paper a bit until you get all the edges glued down evenly along the edge of the sole.

Tip: Rather than place the pieces on a flat surface while you glue these pieces together, it’s better to hold them in your hand while you glue so that you don’t crush the shoe. The underside of the shoe will look like this:

4. Bottom sole: Glue the sole - bottom layer (the smaller one) underneath the shoe to cover up the cut edges and to give the shoe more stability.

When you turn it over it will look like this (a flat mule):

5. The heel: Make the folds where indicated on the heel and fold them inward. First glue the side flaps together, then glue the top flap over onto the heel. Glue the heel onto the bottom of the shoe.

 

 

6. Finishing the shoe: Make the folds in the shoe where indicated by the dashed lines on the template. Your shoe is done and ready to embellish!  I used Prima papers, flowers, felt and crystals on these:

If you make a pair of these shoes, I'd love to see them!  Please come back and post a link or email me.  Have fun!!

Hanukkah Layouts

Hanukkah is in full swing!  With so much going on and our house in complete shambles, Hanukkah has been a bit different for us this year.  Normally I do all my gift shopping ahead of time and place all the wrapped gifts in front of the fireplace and put up Hanukkah decorations so our house looks very festive.  This year I've had to wing it and buy and wrap gifts as I go each day.  Luckily the girls haven't minded.  And I normally make a couple nice Hanukkah dinners, but with all the kitchen stuff going on, I haven't been able to cook much.  But it's okay . . . we're together as a family, and that's all that matters.  And we've all been enjoying our Hanukkah . . . clutter, dust, and all!

Here are a few Hanukkah layouts that I made for Creating Keepsakes.  The journaling on this first reads: Every year we follow the established traditions of Hanukkah, like lighting the menorah, saying the prayers, playing dreidel, and opening presents on each of the eight nights. But in our family we have a very special Hanukkah tradition. Every night after we light the menorah, we turn up the volume on our favorite Hanukkah music, then Daddy, the girls and I all dance around the living room together. I’m not talking about mellow dancing. I’m talking about anything-goes-build-up-a-sweat-crazy-chicken dancing. This is definitely one of our favorite family traditions – one that we will hopefully continue for years to come. It’s usually just our little family of four, but if you happen to be invited to our house for Hanukkah dinner, you’d better bring your dancing shoes!!!

I used Shimmerz paints on the alphas and the flourish:

As seen in the November/December issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine. Copyright Creative Crafts Group. Posted with prior permission from the publisher.
There, now you know our goofy little family secret. ;-) 

Lighting the menorah:

As seen in the November/December issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine. Copyright Creative Crafts Group. Posted with prior permission from the publisher.
All the papers are Lily Bee, and I used shimmery, Shimmerz paints on the chipboard.
 

Playing dreidel (with more beautiful Lily Bee papers):

As seen in the November/December issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine. Copyright Creative Crafts Group. Posted with prior permission from the publisher.

As for the shoe template, I'm still working on it!  I thought it would be easy to just trace the cut-outs onto paper, but the perfectionist in me wants it to look pretty and perfect for you all.  So I spent hours yesterday trying to fix the template in Photoshop.  For the life of me I couldn't get the margins right.  It kept cutting off parts of my drawing.  But I *think* I finally got it!  Now I'm working on a tutorial and step-by-step photos.  Hopefully I'll have it all done soon!  

And one final little tidbit:  Shimmerz has extended their 30% off sale through December 20th!  

No coupon code is necessary.  Go take advantage of this great deal!!

Creating Keepsakes giveaway, plus an update on the shoe template . . .

Creating Keepsakes has two new special issues out, and I have one of each to give away!   The first one is Scrapbooking Tips & Tricks: Stamps & Ink, which is filled with lots of creative ideas for using stamps. This issue is perfect for experienced stampers and also for novice stampers like me who own a gazillion stamps but never know what to do with them.

Next up is Scrapbooking Everyday Memories.  It's brimming with beautiful and inspiring layouts.

 And I just happen to have a couple of my own layouts in this issue!  Here's a sneak peak at my pages:

"Red Light, Green Light," a game my girls and I like to play in our front yard:

 

Creating a mosaic tile counter in our bathroom (all by my very own self!!):

If you want to be entered to win a copy of one of these issues, just leave a comment in this post before midnight PST on Friday, December 10th, and I'll draw two lucky winners (one for each issue)!  I also have a coupon code to share for the CK Store: CKDT15 (this is good for 15% off all items in the store, and it expires 12/20/2010).

Did somebody say SHOE TEMPLATE? Thank you for all the nice comments!  And because so many people have expressed an interest in getting a template, I'm working on transferring my shoe "parts" (heel, sole, upper and insert) to a pdf template that you'll be able to download and print. I'm more than happy to share it with everyone!  I'll be posting it here on my blog when it's done.   The tricky part is that while creating the shoe, I kept tweaking the design and shape of the different shoe parts, so I have lots of different scraps and now I'm not quite sure which one I used on the final version.   But don't worry . . . I'll figure it out!  I'm also going to create a little tutorial with pictures so that you can see the steps.  I'm hoping to post the template and tutorial here on my blog in the coming week, so check back!!   And since a lot of you came here via CK's Facebook page, we'll also link it up there when it's posted on my blog.

Lastly, my life has still been consumed with this remodeling project, but we are 90% finished and I'm so HAPPY with how it looks!!   Here's a look at what my kitchen looked like about a week ago (the first picture shows the empty kitchen with the new floors, and the second pictures show the cabinets and the countertop):

Thankfully we've had a functional kitchen now for almost a week, and there are only a few little details to finish up (they're coming tomorrow to finish the molding and a small countertop). Then Monday they start painting.  I get my scraproom painted too. . . yay!  I will definitely post the "after" pictures when it's all done.

Don't forget to leave a comment here if you want to win a copy of one of the Creating Keepsakes issues!