ArtfullyJune: 2011

Feature Yourself Friday at Fingerprints on the Fridge

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Zebra’s, Apple’s and Flowers, oh my

Since one of my sisters mentioned that I’ve been showing too many cards and I haven’t seemed to finish any other crafts lately I thought I’d share some cookies I made and decorated yesterday.

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I zebra patterned flower? Isn’t there a saying about flowers coming in all shapes and sizes, so why not zebra print?

The hardest part of this flower was cutting the edible paper to the size of the cookie. I thought the cookie cutter would work but this stuff is just too tough to cut cleanly through it. There are lots of patterns of edible papers that can be used as decorations on cookies or cakes, just look in the cake decoration isle of your local craft store and you too can make your own zebra print flowers. 100_9171

I don’t have any leaf shapes so I thought apples would be the closest fall themed shape that I had to decorate.

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I decided to make a couple flowers that were in a more traditional color.

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Since I only made white, red and green icing I thought I’d made a plaid of sort decorated cookie.

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I like to decorate a few cookies without a full frosting base since sometimes I find the sugar cookie and glaze frosting can be a bit too sweet.

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For this last cookie I just started drawing a few leaves and kept going until I had this abstract, poinsettia type flower.

Do you decorate cookies just for Christmas or for other holiday as well?

June

I usually link to these fabulous parties:

Transformation Thursdays at The Shabby Chic Cottage

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Baby it’s cold outside….

So cold that I decided that it was finally time to bring in a couple of my succulent planters for the year.

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Both of these planters really filled out this year.

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I love how full they are and the great colors that the cooler weather brought.

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I had only hen and chicks when I started these planters but thanks to one of my sisters who answered my request earlier in the year she brought me some of her plants to add in to the planters.

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What a great mix of colors and textures.

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I few of the trailing ones have been trimmed back and added back into the planter to fill it out a bit more.

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My favorite is this hen and chick that was almost a hot pink for while. I found it tucked underneath the edge of the container and pulled it out. It was a very bright green but once it was out in the sun it quickly turned a great pinkish-red color.

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This yellow one has a slightly peach hue to it – very eye catching.

100_9144 My smaller planter has a few plants that are a deep reddish-purple color.

As a reminder here was the planters earlier this summer when they were mostly green.

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And now the after – full of color.

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Hopefully I can over-winter these planters inside my apartment without too much difficulty. Last year a few of my hen and chicks didn’t survive inside. Hopefully this year will be a better year for them as I’d love to see these planters keep growing and transforming.

June

I usually link to these fabulous parties:

Feature Yourself Friday at Fingerprints on the Fridge

Transformation Thursdays at The Shabby Chic Cottage

Friday, November 4, 2011

Rhinestone Dove Card

My non-paper crafts have been very limited lately so here is the second bright but neutral card I made for Christmas.

The rhinestone dove had a holly branch and came with other holiday images but really I think this card could be for just about any occasion.

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I distressed some of the papers and inked all of the edges to tone down the bright cardstock.

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I love the neutral flower with some shimmer in the center.

June

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Deck the halls

At first glance I don’t think this cards looks all that Christmassy. Hmm Christmassy made it through spell check!

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When I was making this card I was a bit unsure where it was going. You see I was working on Christmas cards and ran out of the cardstock I was using with the patterned paper I had. I had a little bit left so went searching for another matching cardstock and came up with this turquoise-aqua paper. It matched but was not a color that said Christmas to me.

The cardstock in person is a bit more aqua than I could get the picture to show. I find aqua is a hard color for me to get a true to lift color when I’m taking pictures. I tried may different locations and just can’t seem to find the perfect spot.

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Who would have thought that a card could be both bright and muted?

I think the brown distressing toned down the bright cardstock and helped make this card of of my favorites. I’m like that sometimes, the stranger the color combination, the more I like it.

Last year I made a few pink Christmas cards. What is your most unusual color you’ve used for your holiday cards?

June

I usually link to these fabulous parties:

Feature Yourself Friday at Fingerprints on the Fridge

Transformation Thursdays at The Shabby Chic Cottage

Sunday, October 30, 2011

A few more Holiday cards

Here are a few more of the cards I made with the embellishment package that I picked up at Tuesday morning last and some crystals I won. 100_9057 100_9059 100_9060 100_9064 100_9065 100_9066

Have you started on your holiday cards yet?

June

I usually link to these fabulous parties:

Feature Yourself Friday at Fingerprints on the Fridge

Transformation Thursdays at The Shabby Chic Cottage

Friday, October 28, 2011

Vintage feel holiday cards

One of my favorite places to get discounted craft supplies is my local Tuesday Morning store. For the size that the store is they have a fair amount of paper and other craft supplies. I’ve bought many paper packs for there for pennies on the dollar compared to my local craft store.

Some of the items are at a great price and some are not so great. I’ve been lusting over this pack of embellishments the last few times I’ve been in the store. I just couldn’t bring myself to pay $19.99 for this pack until yesterday. I figured if I kept looking at it and putting it down at the last minute that I should just get it. It was hard paying that much for it since there wasn’t matching paper but I was pretty sure that the papers I recently won would match pretty well.

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The pack came with two boxes of chipboard letters and numbers, a pack of buttons, a pack of embellished snowflakes, paper flowers,

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fun vintage vibe trims,

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tons of stickers, and a stamp set.

It really was a lot of items for the price.

100_9017 Luckily it did match with the papers I won a couple weeks ago so I have new stamps and embellishment for some Christmas cards.

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With one sheet of the patterned paper, two sheets of yellow cardstock and three sheets of burgundy paper I sat down and made 10 cards with this same basic layout.

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Some have flowers, some snowflakes, some have ribbon and some I stamped a sentiment instead of the chipboard letters.

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I love the cards and listed them in my Etsy store to see if they sell. If not they have a good home with me and might get mailed out to family and friends. I might have to hand deliver rather than mail as most of them will require extra postage since the embellishments are so thick.

I loved these snowflakes and flowers so much that they inspired me to make some flower rosettes with my Tim Holtz die. I loved the result and have to say it is getting rather addicting. I think I made fourteen of them last night from one sheet of 12 x 12 paper.

Stay tuned for more holiday cards with my handmade rosettes inspired by the ones I bought.

Are you getting ready for the holiday season?

I can’t believe Christmas is less than two months away!

June

I usually link to these fabulous parties:

Feature Yourself Friday at Fingerprints on the Fridge

Transformation Thursdays at The Shabby Chic Cottage

Thursday, October 27, 2011

$3 Thursday – Dress Shirt Apron

I know I haven’t shared much lately but I’m back with another $3 craft item for this Thursday. Thanks to my Wisconsin sisters I have my one and only apron to share. Well to be fair, I do have a couple vintage aprons I bought to go in my Etsy store. So far I haven’t taken pictures of them to list so I’m saying this is my one and only apron.

At first glance it may look like an embellished button up shirt…

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but it actually is two shirts made into an apron.

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I was asked to bring a plaid shirt to our weekend getaway last week and I didn’t have any but knew there would be extra shirts for me to pick from so I wasn’t too worried. I think if I knew what we were making I might have went searching for a shirt but I’m pretty happy with the shirts I was able to use.

Thanks go to one of my BIL’s for cleaning out his closet.

I was probably the tallest person making aprons and somehow I picked out what was probably the shortest shirt and it was just too short for an apron so I added a ruffle section to the bottom to make it a better length.

100_9088 I decided to add pockets and some flowers to the pockets to make it a bit more ‘girly’ since it is after all two men's shirts.

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After I added the yellow flowers to the pockets I added some yellow on the shirt pocket and tacked down the collar with some large yellow buttons.

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To think, all of this was relatively free to me. Two old shirts, some scrap fabric and some buttons. 100_9089

It took me a while and I worked on my apron most of the day but in the end, I love it and am so glad that I kept adding to my apron.

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Thanks to my sisters for letting me use their supplies to make my first ever shirt to apron transformation.

Supplies:

Button up shirts - I used two

Fabric scraps – optional*

Buttons – optional*

Sewing machine and thread

Total cost: Free!

If you had to purchase a shirt at the thrift store you should be able to find one for $3 or less.

* I used for flowers but would be great for pockets if you are using one shirt

What I learned:

I would look for long or men's tall shirts. Everyone else made their apron with one shirt and they looked great, a bit more tailored looking than mine with the ruffle bottom.

A crisp white shirt would look great.

I sewed my flowers directly on to the apron but if you made them into pins you could change them out with the seasons or to match your outfit.

It’s ok to take a bit longer than my sisters, almost everyone added a pocket after seeing me work to add them to my apron.

It might be best to ask before you take a shirt out of the closet or you might have someone saying ‘Hey, is that my shirt?’ or something to that effect after the shirt is already cut up. :)

Thanks to a few of my sisters for a great weekend and a great apron.

June

I usually link to these fabulous parties:

Feature Yourself Friday at Fingerprints on the Fridge