Challenge boxes

If you've been reading my blog for awhile you know that I give my Close to my Heart team members a creative challenge every month. I give them some kind of unfinished craft piece and have them show off their creativity in decorating it. This past month it was these cute little boxes. They were plain, unvarnished boxes until my girls got a hold of them. Here's the original look.

This is what I did with my box, a combination of painting and stamping. Directions for this can be found here.

Connie Hagood (Supervisor, Battle Creek), painted hers and added stamps and Evensong stickease. She filled it with the to do clipboard and matching pens.

Susan Colby, (Consultant, Battle Creek), varnished hers and made six 3" by 3" cards with envelopes. She used the Extreme Happiness stamp set to decorate along with Moon Doggie paper.

Aren't my girls talented? It's a joy to work with them.

Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

The challenge I told you about yesterday requires two cards so here's the second using the same School Zone paper. Paper sizes:

Outdoor denim cardstock 6" x 6"

Outdoor denim cardstock .25" x 6

Outdoor denim cardstock .5" x 5"

Card base (any color cardstock) 6" x 12"

Striped paper 5" x 6

Sunflower cardstock 3" x 3"

Colonial white cardstock circle 1.5" in diameter

Sunflower cardstock 1.75" in diameter

Outdoor denim cardstock 2" in diameter

Magic mesh or patterned paper of your choice 3" x 6"

(Ignore the long white paper strip, I changed my mind on that after taking the picture.)

Using your corner rounder, round off two opposite corners. Distress all paper with outdoor denim ink.

Stamp on your white circle with a stamp from the Christmas Melodies stamp set. Use Clover Meadow ink.

On your 6" x 6" outdoor denim cardstock, use the dry embossing down the groove of your trimmer to produce raised lines. Sand them to show off the white core.

Cut the edge of the striped paper with a border punch so that you have a nice look on the right hand side. Attach it to the card front .25" from left hand side.

Glue sunflower square .5" from left hand side of the card front. Glue thinnest outdoor denim strip down along your punched border on the striped paper.

Use your magic mesh vertically over the sunflower piece about 1" from the left of the card front.

Attach all three circles together.

Glue the circle embellishment down on the sunflower square. Add other outdoor denim strip horizontally, 1.25" from the bottom of the card front, flush with the left side. Add four cranberry brads about an inch apart on the strip.

Glue ribbon down right side of the card front. I cut a small piece of ribbon and tied it to the ribbon strip instead of trying to tie a regular knot with the two ends of the ribbon strip, much easier and everything lies flatter. That's it, with me luck on the card challenge!

Holly Jolly Christmas

Now if you're my age, you can't help but hear Burl Ives singing when you see the words, "Holly Jolly Christmas." I don't know why it is but August seems to be the month where I first start thinking about Christmas. I have high hopes every year that I'll get that early start on holiday shopping this month I guess. I definitely do not want winter to come any faster than it already does but sometimes it is nice to think ahead.

I'm going to two big team meetings this weekend and the contest we're having at one of them is to take a non-Christmas pack of paper and make Christmas cards or layouts with it. You can't get more non-Christmas than this School Zone pack! It's no longer available, I received it in one of those mystery boxes back in June and loved it immediately.

I went through the pack and chose 2 patterns and 3 cardstock pieces. Do the same for your card.

Cut as follows:

Pattern paper #1 6" x 3" (striped)
Pattern paper #2 3.5" x 2.75" (grid paper)
Cardstock #1 for card base 12" x 6" (colonial white)
Cardstock #1 circle 1.5" in diameter (colonial white)
Cardstock #2 for card front 6" x 6" (sunflower)
Cardstock #3 2.25" in diameter (outdoor denim)
Cardstock #3 .5" x 5" (outdoor denim)

You'll need some magic mesh in green OR you can cut a strip of pattern paper 2.5" x 6"

Distress everything with outdoor denim (or a brown depending on the paper you are using).

Put the long skinny strip through your crimper and then sand to make the white core show.

Since the 6" x 6" front doesn't fit in a crimper, dry emboss it with lines every .5" x 1" in a grid design then sand.

Do the same to your large circle but in a diagonal (pie) design.

Choose a stamp to use for the small white circle, I used Christmas Melodies.

Stamp a sentiment on the long white strip. I used a stamp from our brand new (not available yet) stamp set Holiday Trinkets.

Lay the 3" x 6" piece down about 1" from the left side. Glue.

Attach the 3.5" x 2.75" piece a quarter inch down from top, one inch from the right side.

Place the strip of outdoor denim .5" x 5" piece a quarter inch from left side of striped piece.

Lay your self adhesive magic mesh horizonatally down one inch from the top (you can use the substitute pattern paper instead).

Attach your Merry Christmas strip one and half inches down from the top of the page, about an eighth of an inch from the left side of the striped paper.

Put your circles together and glue them on the bottom right quadrant of your card.

Add three matching brads down the left hand side of the striped paper and a cute window circle over the circular stamp to make it really pop out.

That's it for today, don't forget to sign up as a follower if you haven't already.

Nothing to do with scrapbooking

Just wanted to share these beautiful flowers from the Berrien County Youth Fair. It's going on all week for those of you in southwest Michigan.

19 years ago today...

...I got married. The wedding was in a Mormon church in Los Angeles even though neither my husband and I were Mormons. My husband had no best man and my sister in law was my maid of honor. The caterers of my wedding were my teacher's aide's parents and they catered my wedding for free although they were an hour late because their daughter, my aide and good friend ran off and eloped on the same day as my wedding. My mother in law, afraid we'd end up with no food to serve to our guests, ran out and bought a bunch of bread, cold cuts and condiments! Fortunately the caterers arrived with some wonderful authentic Mexican food and the reception went smoothly.

Two weeks later we got married again, this time my sister was my maid of honor and my dad was my husband's best man. I wore the same dress. We wanted two weddings because it was too expensive to fly either the Michigan family and friends to L.A., or the L.A. people to Michigan. At the second wedding my dad's shoes for his tuxedo were marked size 9 but were actually a six. He swore he could squeeze into them but we sent my brother to the tux shop to get new shoes. Consequently he's not in the wedding pictures we took before the ceremony. We drove to the reception in a Model A car (seen below) at my parent's farm. The reception was under a big tent we'd put up the day before. After installing the tent my husband was playing frisbee and fell into a ditch and pulled a muscle which caused him to nearly limp back down the aisle of the church after the ceremony. I know that a lot of couples want the perfect wedding but, believe me, it's the imperfect things that you remember and love 19 years down the road.

Here's my husband, Mark and I, thanks for reading.

Twitterpated Card Box

If you haven't signed up to be a follower, please do, one of my followers will win a bunch of blog candy (handmade craft items, some of which you see displayed in these posts).

I forgot to tell you what I make these boxes out of, they are our acrylic stamp holders, you can see one here! I've also tweaked the original instructions to make the inserts larger so make sure you check those out.

Here's another one of the boxes we'll be making in Niles, Michigan tomorrow. If this interests you and you live in mid to western Michigan or Northern Illinois, give me a call or email and we can talk about doing the workshop with your friends. This paper is one of our new ones called Twitterpated. I feel like it's okay to tell about this one because Jeanette Lynton, the founder of Close to my Heart has it on her website, you can see her blog at http://jeanettelynton.com/. Here's the front with Twitterpated paper and Tickled Pink stamps.


This is the sideview, both sides are the same, directions for this can be found *here.*


This is the back of the box with special buttons made just for this paper set. Aren't they cute?


This is the inside of the box, the labels were cut first with a fancy punch and then distressed and stamped with Say It In Style stamps. That's it, if I get a chance to complete the other kit I made with Bella paper for the workshop, I'll post pics of that. Have a great day!

Animal Cookies card box!

I'm so excited because tomorrow I'm teaching a workshop for one of my Close to my Heart clubs. Our club meets monthly to make a variety of projects and this month's will be at my friend, Angel's, house around noon tomorrow. Angel chose Animal Cookies and Bella papers for the boxes and I made this example yesterday for us to follow as we make the card holding box. For full instructions see the Card Box Instructions I wrote back in June.

The front here uses the Animal Cookies paper, Tickled Pink stamps, Dutch Blue, Tulip, Sunflower, and Clover Meadow inks. I used Precious Alphabet for the writing and a window charm for the center of the flower.

The sides of the box are identical using the same stamps and paper as listed above. I also used a crimper and sanding tools to give it texture.

For the back I used the Summer Celebration buttons and waxy flax. The ribbon isn't CTMH.

Inside I made 12 dividers and used Say It In Style stamp set which has 36 different labels in it, it's my most used stamp set EVER.

I hope to make a few more of these boxes after the workshop if I have leftover kits (I always make sure I make TOO many for my workshops, never know who might stop by.)

Woohoo!

Hi, make sure you sign up to be a follower this month and get a change at some great blog candy (handmade gifts). It's easy, look at the sidebar for the "follow" link.

I'm getting a little sentimental about the Summer catalog because I've seen the new Fall one and know that the new sets of paper will soon become my new favorites and Back Country will fall by the wayside a bit so in honor of my favorite paper from the Summer catalog, here's a new card!

You need to choose your favorite paper set and cut them with these measurements.

Patterned paper #1 - 2 1/4" by 2 1/4" and 1 1/2" by 5 1/2".
Patterned paper #2 - 3" by 5 1/2".
White or off white cardstock - 1 1/2" by 2 3/4".
Darker cardstock - 1/2" by 5 1/2" and 1 3/4" by 3".
White or off white cardstock for card base 8 1/2" by 5 1/2", fold in half.
Distress everything with a dark ink like Outdoor Denim if desired.

Attach the 3" x 5 1/2" piece to top of the card, keeping it flush with the two sides and top of the card. Always work from the fold down.

Next put the 1 1/2" by 5 1/2" piece flush with bottom of the card.

Add 1/2" by 5 1/2" strip along the border created by the two other papers.

Attach the 2 1/4" by 2 1/4" one half inch from the right hand side of the card centered between top and bottom of the 3" x 5 1/2" piece.

Glue off white piece to the 1 3/4" by 3" piece. Using the You're a Hoot set, stamp the branch across the bottom of the paper with Olive ink.

Stamp the smallest owl and the "whoohoo" word, using Outdoor Denim and Barn Red inks respectively. Attach to the left hand side of the card, 1/2" from the top and left side.


Add five buttons at the bottom of the card after threading them with waxy flax in color of your choice. Attach with glue dots. You're done, woohoo!!