Fastest cards ever

So this weekend was a busy one and the crafting just couldn't take priority. I've been working for months on a fundraiser for a really great organization that I'm on the Board of the Friends for and our big event was Saturday night. I was stuffing grab bags, making luminaries and doing other last minute tasks. But I still like to give handmade birthday cards and my daughter had a party for not just one three-year-old, but two. Consequently, I made two of the fastest birthday cards ever. Literally I slapped them together minutes before we left for the joint party, while my husband took a shower. Totally not my typical style of agonizing over the position of each element but it was rather freeing. Sorry about the abysmal photography -- I took the pictures with my phone in the (moving) car on the way to the party. That dark background is the jeans I was wearing.

The secret to this super fast card design was having 1 inch strips of patterned paper already in my scrap box. I've got tons because as an 8.5 by 11 scrapbooker, I often cut 1 inch off of 12 by 12 papers. I selected three strips that used purple for my daughter's friend Violet and three with oranges for the little girl named Clementine. I stamped some birthday and letter stamps using chalk ink, punched two circles, added scrap ribbon and voila! The stamping is rather messy and not up to my usual standards but I'm thinking three-year-olds won't really notice.

Do you have any tricks for getting cards made fast?

Minnie Mouse 3rd Birthday Party

Well, the party's been over for a week but my house is still decorated like Minnie Mouse Birthday Land so it can't be too late to post some pics. The party was super fun although I think the guests had more fun than the birthday girl. She was a bit overwhelmed! There ended up being 20 kids. I'm thrilled that she has such a large social circle but it was pretty crazy, especially since it was rainy that morning so we had the party inside. Fortunately we have a large living room where the grownups could socialize and were also able to use the living space in the attached in-law apartment as an "activity room" for the kids.

I was too busy running the party to take pics so thankfully my daughter's sitter stepped in and snapped away with my camera. Unfortunately she didn't really know how to use it so the shots aren't that great, but I think you'll get the idea. I am a little bummed that the fantastic work of my super talented sister-in-law wasn't documented well, but you can check out her blog at www.eventsthatsparkle.net.

The Decor

So the decor was pretty typical Minnie Mouse Bowtique party. Lots of pink and black and polka-dots. I got some ideas online (check out my Pinterest Board). I made a cute sign for the door but apparently no photos were taken of it. My sister-in-law put these adorable paper lanterns from Oriental Trading Company up on our living room ceiling, which took more time that anticipated but was so worth it. I may keep them up permanently, they are so cute (although this is a bad photo)!

My SIL made this SUPER CUTE Minnie Mouse using Styrofoam balls. This photo doesn't do it justice. She also ordered this banner off of Etsy that we hung over our mantle and we were both annoyed because we knew we could have made it ourselves if only our craft supplies were anywhere to be found.

I also bought this huge Minnie sign at Party City that we planned to put on our fence and use as a photo booth but we ended up just attaching it to the wall. My daughter was one of the few kids that was (surprisingly) cooperative about having her photo taken. As my SIL said, it was pretty cheezy but it did add to the atmosphere.

The Activities
I hired one of my friend's boyfriends who used to do kids parties to provide the entertainment, along with a coloring station (I printed out Minnie Mouse coloring sheets and paired them with Minnie crayons and markers from the $1 section in Michaels) and a temporary tattoo station (this was a surprising hit and gave the au pair that accompanied one of the families something to do). I guess they did the limbo and played with a parachute. I kind of missed that while I was setting up the food.

I bought a Minnie pinata at Party City and the nice thing was that it had the pull strings. My daughter really wanted to smack it with a bat like at the party she went to the day before, but since the rain forced us inside I was happy that no one was bashing down my walls. I did make cute favor bags for the kids to collect the loot in (I'll try to find a photo.)

The kids also played "Pin the Bow on the Minnie," which I made myself. I designed the artwork in Adobe Illustrator the printed it on ledger size paper and mounted it onto black poster board.The bows were a pain to cut out (thanks, Jess!) but I ran them through my Xyron using the re-positionable adhesive and they worked perfectly. I wasn't sure what to use as a blindfold and then happened upon a sleep mask in the dollar section of Michaels that none of the kids complained about putting it on. (Except my kid, who pulled the mask off and totally cheated.)

The Food
We had the regular kind of party snacks out when people got there --  veggie tray with dip, hummus and pita chips, pretzels, and other kinds of chips. Served juice boxes, small (uncustomized -- I just couldn't pull it off!) bottles of water, beer, hard cider and wine. For lunch we had pizza cut into 16 slices each. My husband ordered 10 pizzas which I was convinced was way too much but most of it got eaten!

OK what you really want to know about were the treats, I know. Round 2 of Minnie Mouse cupcakes came out pretty good. This time I made candy bows using pink Wilton candy melts and this bow mold I bought from Amazon. The first tray was a little rough but once I got the hang of it (and realized the mini Oreo ears would cover the ugly backs) it was MUCH faster than the fruit roll-up bow making method. I made two kinds -- pink cupcakes with white frosting and chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting. I added white candy sprinkles to the chocolate ones for a little extra detail. Unfortunately either no pictures were taken of the cupcakes before the party or no one has yet shared them with me, so all I have is this photo of the one lone chocolate cupcake left at the end of the party.

I also made Rice Krispy treats. They were all going to be Minnie Mouse heads (well, Mickey, I suppose, as I realized too late that the candy bows I put on the small cupcakes were actually intended for the Rice Krispy treats) but the cookie cutter got too sticky and the mixture too hard so I just rolled it into balls and stuck them on a lollipop stick. They I dunked partially into melted chocolate and threw on some sprinkles. My husband claims I invented Rice Krispy lollipops but I'm guessing someone out there has already made them. Anyway, there were absolutely none left after the party so I guess they were yummy. Even if the display was a rather ghetto piece of plain Styrofoam.

I didn't get to DIY as many things as I planned to and the rain was disappointing but the house looked cute and the birthday girl seemed reasonably happy. I even got to socialize a bit instead of spending the whole time running around like a crazy person. All in all it was a super fun party.

But next year I'm staying off Pinterest and we're so having it out of the house!

Birthday stuff

So we moved. Exactly a month ago. The new house is awesome. So much bigger, so much nicer and we're really loving the neighborhood. One thing that I really don't love is that the room that's supposed to be my new craft studio is not finished! It's a big semi-finished attic and it needs a panel to be put in to cover a big hole in the wall. Something about access to the heating panel if I recall correctly. I know the workers will likely make a big mess so I have been waiting setting up the room, but now it's been a month and I am getting itchy to craft!

The other problem is that all of the boxes somehow ended up in the wrong place. I felt like like I clearly labeled everything "craft room" that I wanted up on the third floor and wrote "office" on those that I wanted in my little alcove office that I made behind the fireplace. But yet the complete opposite was done. I have slowly been getting everything into the right room, but some of the boxes are heavy! You don't realize how much 12 X 12 paper weighs until you put hundreds of sheets together in a box...

Anyway, this is my main excuse for not having posted in a month. The move. The unpacking. The general disorder. But there's also another reason -- my daughter's third birthday! She officially turned three a few days ago but her birthday party is this weekend. I feel a little badly that it's definitely going to be smaller in scale that last year's party (although with double the guests -- how did that happen?) For last year's rainbow themed soiree I designed a super cute printed invitation in Photoshop:

I did all kinds of extra projects like customized water bottles:

And sippy cups with each kid's name on them:

UPDATED 9/30/13: I just discovered that you can see all of the details from last year on my sister-in-law's blog at www.eventsthatsparkle.net!

This year we've got a Minnie's Bowtique themed birthday party and I did design the invitation, although I sent it out electronically because I was running out of time:

I'm fancying up the treat bags and making Minnie cupcakes but that's about it. I did a trial run of the cupcakes for my daughter's preschool class, but it was before the bow mold I ordered from Amazon arrived and I couldn't find mini Oreos in the store so I improvised with chocolate candy melts and bow made out of strawberry fruit roll ups. They came out super cute but the bows were pretty labor intensive (that stuff is STICKY!) so I'm hoping bow made out of candy melts is a little easier. The party is in two days and I'll keep you posted!

Simple (?) layout

Simplicity has never been my forte when it comes to scrapbooking. I generally follow the theory that more is more. Here's a page that uses only five supplies! I'm not sure if I should be proud of myself or concerned that something is missing. It really does feel a little... plain to me. What do you think?

The background is pattered paper from Cosmo Cricket. The flower is a large die cut from K & Co. It inspired the entire page design because it is so big and bold. The title sentiment is also from K & Co, popped up with foam tape. I keep running into sales on K & Co. products at Michaels and AC Moore and I can't help but stock up! The final supply I used was just a pigment pen to add the date in the lower right corner. One of the easiest, peasiest pages I've done in a long time! Really, is it missing something? Maybe in the upper left corner?

Patterned paper possibilities

I've been scrapbooking a lot lately! I know I should be packing up my craft supplies in preparation for our move instead but I just can't make myself do it until a little closer to our actual move date. Crafting makes me happy and sane, both of which I need right now!

This layout focuses my my daughter and her babysitter's daughter. I love getting photos during the day that show me how happy she is and the fun that she is having. Here I paired some patterned papers that I usually would never put together but I wanted the layout to be colorful and reflect what was going on in the photo. I thought the number paper from the My Minds Eye Lime Twist collection (I'm still really loving this stack!) was related to the fact that they are in the library (OK, letters would have made more sense...) and the cloud paper from American Crafts showed that it was a rainy day, hence my daughter's polka dot raincoat. The plaid paper (I think from the Target Dollar Spot) picked up the color of her friend's coat and the flowered strip (DCWV Kidlet stack) was fun and tied the colors together. The blue strip at the top was kind of a random addition that I'm not sure if really adding anything. I just happened to be going through my sticker stash and found the chipboard "Pals" title (DCWV) as a last minute addition. The date sticker is from the Target Dollar Spot (so many cool bargains abound there!) and the little sticker next to it that says "Sweet" was a freebie for renewing some magazine.

Maybe one of these days I can actually catch up a big and scrapbook some 2013 events! The photos in this next layout are even older, as you can see that my daughter was just a baby. How time flies!

Again I paired patterns that usually I wouldn't pick. I really am trying to use up some of my stash and stretch my creativity (sometimes with mixed results, I know!). These are some really old papers from Colorbok. I also used one of those foam craft stickers for kids as the embellishment. The journaling and date label are digital elements that I printed. I punched holes down the side and ripped some to the edge to simulate authentic notebook paper.

The photo in this last layout is from around the same time. To make it I used a lot of the scraps generated from the previous two layouts. Since I scrap 8.5 by 11, I usually cut an inch off of each sheet of 12 by 12 paper before I start using it. I've organized these 1 by 12 inch strips in a box that I can pull out when I need a quick border. I found out that they also make a cool background!

The title is from a very old DCWV kit but it just happened to fit my subject. I really am trying to use up my stash! I love that simple layered flower sticker in the lower right. Kind of hides the fact that I cut the plaid pink strip too short! A mistake is just an opportunity for creativity, right?

Kids' birthday cards

My daughter has also been invited to a lot of birthday parties lately and I've been trying to make a quick card for each kid. I've really been loving making strips of patterned paper into banners. It's fast, colorful and uses up those scraps that I always feel guilty about throwing away.

TIP: I used a square punch to make the triangular portion of the banner. You can use any size square punch as long as it's bigger than your paper strip. Just feed end of the strip through the punch, held diagonally, so you cut off a symmetrical triangle shape. So much easier than using scissors or a craft knife!


Please pardon my photography -- my scanner has been on the fritz so I photographed the cards and I don't have any kind of professional setup for card photography.

A cute first birthday card using primary colors:

I stamped the elephant directly onto the card using Charcoal Colorbox chalk ink, then drew the string of the balloon. The hat I cut freehand from patterned paper and for the balloon I used a circle punch, then inked the edges. I cut out the 1 using my Cricut and used that ever-popular Fiskars scallop sentiment punch to make the ground the elephant stands on. After cutting and assembling the banner strips, I stamped the birthday boy's name.

A horizontal variation, this one totally girlie. I'm sure you can see the influence of the first card on this one! Instead of the elephant I stamped with Charcoal chalk ink (as you can see, it's one of my favorite inks!) a large sentiment that I decorated with dots of clear Stickles. Instead of stamping directly on the card, I used a white panel and attached that to an aqua card base. I was able to wrap a piece of pink ribbon around the white panel this way (I hate for the ribbon ends to be seen in the inside of the card -- pet peeve). I stamped the birthday girl's name on white card stock and punched out the letters with a small circle punch, then attached them with pop dots. I added a Prima flower and of course a gem because this was for a very girlie two-year-old. I also embellished the designs on the patterned papers with additional Stickles, because you can never have too much glitter, right?!

Three months... three years

OK, it's like a I'm a once-a-month blogger. Can that be a new thing? Well my same excuses continue regarding work on the new house, which we still haven't moved into yet. The IKEA cabinets are finally installed though! To add to my list of distractions, my daughter's daycare provider quit on me and I'm scrambling to find care for the summer until she starts preschool in September. How she's almost three years old, I have no idea! It makes me nostalgic so I'm going to share a layout I recently completed (yes, I am VERY behind) from when she was just about three months old. The journaling details how I when we first talked about naming our daughter, I didn't want people to call her "Dolly" as a nickname but it has since stuck and totally fits her.

No special techniques used here. It's a hybrid layout. I printed the journaling out directly onto white cardstock. Created the title block digitally, printed it out and glued it on over two rectangles and a strip of patterned paper. Added a sticker and a flower gem. I am proud to report that I used a WAY old piece of patterned paper from my stash. The brown piece is from one of those Paper Pizzazz 8.5 by 11 booklets. Probably some of the first scrapbooking paper I ever bought, way back in the early 90s -- before 12 by 12 paper was even available, I think! I pared it up with some "modern day" Basic Grey (hearts) and DCWV (plaid).