Easy Silhouette Cameo holiday gifts

I got a Silhouette last year for Chrismukkah. I FINALLY put it to use for the holidays this year. I think I've overcome my fear of vinyl and really I have no idea why I was afraid of HTV -- it is so much easier to weed than 651 and it went on really easily with an iron. Siser Easyweed IS easy to weed!

First a little adhesive vinyl project. I needed something ASAP for my daughter's dance teacher. Like literally I needed to come up with something during my daughter's 1 1/2 hour dance class. My daughter has recently become obsessed with Rainbow Loom bracelets (what, like three years after the rest of the world?!) and had made her teacher a little bracelet but really that wasn't enough, Fortunately I had picked up this little dip bowl at Walmart. I cut the teacher's name out of purple vinyl (I think it's Oracal 651 but not totally sure -- got it from a sign maker's shop) and stuck it in the middle of the bowl. It looked a little plain so I cut out some little circles and applied them on the sides. Voila, personalized jewelry dish to go with Rainbow Loom bracelet!

The success of that project made me confident enough to try some HTV. I had ordered a starter pack from Amazon and it had just been sitting in my craft room collecting dust because I don't have a heat press and quite frankly, I detest ironing. Part of my Walmart haul included two packs of flour sack towels, which were like five for $5. I decided to try personalizing them for holiday presents because I figured they were hardly an investment if I totally messed up. I designed all of the images myself in Silhouette Studio, which I am happy to report is so much more user friendly that I first assumed and I've been using more and more instead of Illustrator. I used my Silhouette to cut the images out of Siser HTV (don't forget to mirror and put the shiny side down), weeded the designs (so much easier than I expected), watched a Siser video on the time and temperature for using and iron, and applied them using the iron that my husband and I got as a wedding present (which only he had used in the prior almost nine years).

I wrapped most of them up in pint sized berry boxes that I had left from my daughter's Strawberry Shortcake birthday party. I cut patterned paper to fit each side, put in the towel and tied on a tag with bakers twine (sorry, no photos of the wrapping). I loved how they came out and so did the recipients. One told me it was the best Christmas present she got this year!

Shake your booty shaker card

It has been a long time since I made a shaker card. I always found them rather... fussy. But this one actually worked out well for me. I knew I wanted a black and purple color scheme for this card. I ended up being inspired by this purple strip of cardstock that I found on my desk, which I had used to punch a circle for another project.

I wrapped a piece of wide black polka dotted washi tape around the card. I like how it is kind of translucent. Then I stamped the sentiment above the tape and embossed with silver powder.

I attached a piece of clear plastic that I cut from some packaging (I'm always up for upcycling). Then I added pieces of foam tape around the circle on the back side and filled it with large silver and iridescent glitter. After deciding that I would use a black panel on the white card base, I attached a piece of black cardstock slightly larger than the circle opening with the foam tape. I think this is where I have always gone wrong in the past -- I had tried to attach the shaker panel directly to the card instead of closing it off with another piece of paper.

I dry embossed another piece of black cardstock and attached it to a folded card. I punched a border from white cardstock and attached it across the bottom of the card. Then I adhered the purple panel using foam tape all around the edges. I stamped the letters onto white cardstock and embossed with silver powder, ran them through my Xyron, cut them out freehand and layered them on the card (one of my favorite easy personalization techniques).

Finally I found the perfect paper flower to attach with a glue dot and topped it off with a large gem that I had purchased for a decorating supply at my daughter's birthday party.

Bright pink and orange Mother's Day

This card just makes me happy. I don't usually pair together hot pink and orange but I'm going to start doing it more often! I wanted to make a fun Mother's Day card for my mother-in-law this year.

The ribbon has been in my stash forever but it always seems to wide for me to use it. It worked perfectly here and I picked up the colors from it to use in the rest of the card. I've been trying to use my millions (OK, really dozens) of embossing folders more often so I used this one as the entire background panel. I think it's made my Darice as most of mine are. I used the Ranger Blending Tool to lightly blend Tangerine Colorbox Fluid Chalk ink to emphasize the flowers and circles. I rounded the corners with my Corner Chomper (I have the aqua one), ran it through my Xyron, wrapped a piece of ribbon around the edges and attached the panel to a hot pink card.

I stamped the sentiment (a little crookedly) on white cardstock with the tangerine ink then mounted it on hot pink cardstock. I sprayed a white Prima flower with Stephanie Barnard Colorbox dye spray ink in Guava, attached it to the card with a Zot glue dot after it dried, layered on a white flower and topped it with an orange gem. I added a gem to the other end of the sentiment strip after I glued it under the ribbon. Finally I tied a bow and adhered it over the ribbon with a glue dot. The bow would probably have been to lumpy to mail but thankfully we were delivering it by hand!

Tutu cute!

It's that time of year again -- teacher present time! I haven't figured out yet what I'm going to do for my daughter's preschool teachers (thankfully there's still a week of school left), but I did have to scramble for the dance teacher last week. I ran to Target for a gift card and plunked it inside of this card I made that reflects this year's dance recital costume:

It was actually pretty easy to make, once I saw the idea for a cupcake paper tutu on Pinterest. I could only find an aqua cupcake paper with white polka dots in my stash of baking goodies and I needed light blue. So I turned it inside out and sprayed it with my new Heidi Swap Color Mist in Ocean. If you haven't used these mists, try them out! I think they may be my favorite brand of spray ink as the color is predictable and consistent. I ordered them from www.joann.com when they had 50% off of all papercrafting supplies.

I freehand cut out a leotard and sprayed that with the same ink. Then I used Stickles around the the top to mimic tiny sequins. The bow and rose came from my stash  -- I've had them for years and finally found a use for them! I adhered with Zots glue dots. I really like the singles as opposed to the rolls -- much easier to apply in the right spot. 

The background is embossed with a butterfly embossing folder -- I think it's made by Darice. The card is 5 by 7 so and the embossing folder only 4.24 by 5.5 so I had to trim the panel in width and allow the bottom inch or so to remain unembossed. It left a perfect place to add my daughter's teacher's name, which I stamped with mini lettters using Colorbox Chalk Ink in Pink Pastel, ran through my Xyron, cut out invididually, inked the edges and then adhered. Then I used the Tim Holz ink blending tool with the sponge pad and the same ink to lightly apply pink to highlight the butterflies.

 
 I wrapped a piece of butterfly washi tape around the butterfly panel between the end of the embossing and the stamped name. Finally I mounted the butterfly panel onto a purple panel and then onto a white 5 by 7 card.

It came out so cute that I'm wishing I had made another tutu to use as an embellishment on the scrapbook page I'll make of my daughter's dance recital!

Not-quite-right engagement card

I made this engagement card for my husband's cousin. It features a partially embossed background, rows of scallops accented with black gems, silver embossed letters and a white and black layered flower with pearl center. It was a bit of a rush job and I don't quite think I nailed it.

I think it's missing something at the bottom. I probably should have added another row of scallops, but my EK Success Embossed Curve Slim Edger Border Punch was being impossible and kept jamming. Usually EK Success border punches are pretty good but this one has been a dud since I bought it, always jamming and ripping the paper. I wasn't that surprised when using thinner weight scrapbook paper but I expected it to be fine with cardstock. I did just Google this and saw a video on YouTube where they layered thinner paper with cardstock in order to make the paper thick enough to punch, so I'll definitely try this out to see if that will help make this punch work.

I was going to stamp "Congratulations" on the bottom of the card to fill up that white space but I was afraid of messing it up, since I was rushing. Also I tend to overdo it a lot and struggle with keeping things simple so had second thoughts. What do you think?

Yellow butterfly thank you card

Finally getting around to posting one of the other "end of the year" thank you notes I made. This one was for my daughter's babysitter. She likes yellow. Totally not a color I usually reach for unless it's super bright, but I liked this butter yellow cardstock and I think it came together nicely with the piece of flowered patterned paper that happened to be on my desk. The yellow in the patterned paper is actually closer to the color of the cardstock in person that in this photo. The butterflies are stamped, cut out, raised up with pop dots and finished with jewels. Overall a cute and easy card to put together.

Bat Mitzvah Photo Book

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shutterfly offers exclusive layouts and designs so you can make your book just the way you want.

 

OK so normally I wouldn't share something like this but when Shutterfly offered me the ability to post to my blog the photo book I made for my niece's Bat Mitzvah, something possessed me to click yes. I guess I'm kind of proud of it -- it took me a long time to put together, both due to my own fault and Shutterfly's. Yes I know it is a little weird that some of the layouts are sideways, but I didn't realize that they don't offer an 8.5 by 11 PORTAIT option (so annoying!). I had already created the layouts (with some modifications in journaling) for my regular scrapbooks and ran out of time to adjust them all so they work landscape. Still., I think it looks pretty good and I am excited to see the printed book, especially since this is my first all digital bound book.