Holiday Cards

Here are a few holiday cards that I made.

One stamp was used to create three different designs...

Items used:

Green card stock, yellow card stock, red staples, rhinestones, HAPPY HOLIDAYS stamp, and 3D dots.

THIS ONE IS MY FAVORITE! I HEART SEATTLE!

Items used:

Black embossing powder, green glitter glue, red dot embellishments, and HAPPY HOLIDAYS stamp.

Items used:

Blue card stock, circle punch, snowflake punch, snowflake stamp,blue rhinestones, 3D dots, and HAPPY HOLIDAYS stamp

Happy Holidays & Merry Christmas! :)

Oh Christmas Tree(s)!

Wow! Christmas tree cones are EVERYWHERE! I have seen so many different styles this year of these trees... using twine, gumdrops, ribbon, feathers, pearls, flowers, buttons, etc. 

Mine are simple and a bit less complicated... I just used speciality paper (and by special I mean expensive!) You can't really see it in the pictures but the print of the paper is textured. I used three different sized styrofoam cones and cut strips of paper 1 inch wide by 1 1/2 inch in length, used "pinking"scissors at the end of each strip and used hot glue to adhere the strips starting from the base up. 

*(to get the paper to flip I slightly curled them using a pen.)

Embellishments were simple... flowers, buttons, and rhinestones. I used flower wire to attach the embellishment at the top of each tree. This picture shows a better detailed view of why I used the pinking scissors. 

The large tree used two pieces of 12x12 paper, and the two smaller trees used one 12x12 each. 

DIY Ribbon Bag

Remember the post I Heart Ribbon... 

and the crazy amount of ribbon I have? 

Over the weekend of black friday I kept seeing ribbon bags on sale.

They were priced anywhere from $15 - $30. I thought to myself that is a lot of money for a plastic bag with holes in it...

I remembered that I had this bag in my closet from awhile ago when I bought some bedding and figured it would be the perfect size for my new ribbon bag!

I used my cropadile (aka... the best tool EVER) and punch holes all throughout the bag. I wound each ribbon around  my fingers before inserting a small strip through the holes, that way it's not going to get tangled with all the other ribbons and when you need to use your ribbon you just select and pull! 

Some holiday cards are in the works and will be posted in the next week.... hope you are excited to see them! 

Giving Thanks

As Thanksgiving is quickly approaching I have been procrastinating with my holiday project for this month. This past weekend gave me a little inspiration to get this post done. 

I put together a quick "give thanks" sign. I had the two chip boards for a book I never gotten around to. I set up my layout first to get an idea of how it would look.

I used mod podge to get a glossy look for the printed paper I used as the background. The cardboard letters were spray painted with a soft cream color. Once those steps were done I hot glue gunned the letters and embellished as shown using ribbon, buttons, flowers, metal letters, jewels, etc. 

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My mom and I went this past Saturday to volunteer for Operation Support Our Troops Northwest. This Christmas pack out had over 150 volunteers and we stuffed over 3,200 stockings to be sent out to troops to arrive in time for Christmas. The pack out was featured on our local news channel here  is the short video clip.

Home of the Free Because of the Brave...

God Bless Our Troops.

Weekend In Whistler

This past weekend 13 of my closest girlfriends traveled up north to Whistler, Canada to celebrate Nicole's 25th Birthday (welcome to the club little!). These pictures can't even capture the amount of fun that was had! Just a few highlights to share with you.... 

Remember when I told you I was possibly going to be obsessed with etching? Well it's official. I made these beer steins for all the girls with their name etched and a tag. My tutorial on etching can be found here.

Lindsey and Michelle. Cheers! 

Kelly, Me, Teagen and Nicole during a game of catch phrase!

Erika and Lo breaking it off on the dance floor. 

Note to self... alcohol in Canada is EXPENSIVE! 

Something new and crafty I learned.... it's called "Pot Shots". Yup, you take a shot out of a pot. Sam made Nicole a personalized "pot shot pot" for her birthday! 

We enjoyed some Olympic sightings.

Oh yeah.... a few brave souls went bungee jumping....

Nicole by far was NOT the bravest <-- look at her face!  BUT she did it!

Erika enjoying the ride. 

Lindsey & Teagen getting ready to jump!

The whole group. 


It was an amazing weekend with great friends in a beautiful place.... 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NICOLE!

Mummy Pops

These Halloween treats were fun and really simple to make...

Items that you need... a package of oreos, sucker sticks, white candy melts (I used Wilton), a piping bag and a flat decorating tip, and googly eyes (I was not able to find the edible googly eyes, so I used Wilton black sparkle gel). 

The original post and step by step instructions can be found over at How Does She? 

 (Note: I decided to not cover the whole entire cookie because I just thought it'd be too sweet, so I only dipped the front of the cookie.)

                                               

My nephew, Ethan, enjoyed playing with and eating his mummy pop!

Stamp Thank You Card

 I went to a Stampin' Up! bunco party last month and purchased a few stamp sets. I was excited when I found a reason to use them! I am not usually into stamping but these sets were too cute to pass up;

I needed to make a couple of quick thank you cards that I could just whip out in a matter of minutes. I already had everything on hand, and used a 1 1/4 inch circle punch and also a hand held single punch. The ribbon that I used (I actually won it!) is also Stampin' Up! 

If you need a Stampin' Up! demonstrator contact 

Blair over at Bright Pink Sprinkles!

Candy Corn Wreath

Time To Decorate!

My sister in law picked up this magazine for me the other day... To be honest I have never opened or read through a Woman's Day magazine. They have so many brilliant ideas for October/Fall/Holiday decorating, etc. (There are super cute how-to cupcakes that I might have to attempt to make.) 

The wreath on the cover is made from candy corn, and it didn't look that difficult to make at all.

You'll need a styrofoam wreath (I used a 12 in. one, the magazine recommened a 16 in.), black duct tape, wide ribbon, and candy corn (my size wreath took 3 11oz bags, Brach's brand). Start by covering the wreath with the tape. 

Start in the middle of the wreath laying candy corn the same direction and continue all the way around... there is going to be a gap once going around, just be sure to start the next  row in the same spot each time, you can cover any candy corn free space with the ribbon. Repeat with each row opposite of the once before. Loop ribbon of choice through wreath and hang on a sturdy nail.

Here is my new Halloween wreath! 

I love it!

Fabric Flower Necklace

J. Crew, Anthropology, Urban Outfitter, Ann Taylor, 

Cookie Lee, Nordstrom, Target, etc. etc. 

Inspired Fabric Flower Necklace How To

I have been wanting to make one of these necklaces for awhile and have seen them all over at the mall, in magazines, on other blogs, pretty much everywhere. I went to a Bunco party this weekend, and one of the ladies was wearing a Cookie Lee Necklace, as soon as I saw it I had to make it. It was a great piece to see for inspiration but I definitely took some of my own alterations to it. 

I planned to have a "veg" day and do nothing, but crafting consists of doing nothing, right?! One of my best friends is in town from Hawaii and this was a fun project to work on together and I always enjoy bringing someone over to the crafting dark side...

It is a little time consuming but worth the end product! 

Items needed:

Choose a fabric. I used two because I like the texture it adds. I choose a tulle/sheer and a silk eggplant color (In the pics it looks black put it's just a VERY DEEP purple.)

Flower template (small and large). I just printed one from clip art, and then used a thicker paper to use as a stencil. 

Sharp Scissors & Hot Glue Gun.

Some kind of embellishment.I like the crystal/gems that I used but buttons always look cute too!

A heat gun ...or in my case a small tea light candle. 

Ribbon. Preferably matching the color of fabric, or a fun print would be exciting! 

Bare with me because I have a VERY HARD time taking step by step pictures. I just get too excited about my project being done! 

I like to layer my fabric and cut multiple at a time. 

Repeat this step with both types of fabrics and both sizes of flowers.

Once all your flowers are cut you need to singe the edges, hence where my tea light candle came into play. Be careful because the tulle/sheer fabric burns quickly : )

Stack your flowers however you want in regards to what kind of texture you like, I enjoy more of the tulle/sheer so I only used a few of the silk fabric. Just layer each with a dab of hot glue. 

Embellish each flower, and hot glue onto your choice of ribbon, and shaaazaaaam:

For the clasp in the back, just tie your ribbon! 

This project was fairly easy but as mentioned it is very time consuming. 

With all the materials bought (1/2 yard of fabric and a spool of ribbon, gems I already had on hand)... each necklace total cost: $3.00! 

This is Sarah's necklace, she did such a good job! (So proud!)

She decided to do more of a scoop rather than layering. It's adorable! 

Making A Fondant Cake

WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS?

My parents were hosting an engagement party for my brother and his fiance. (They were traveling up to Seattle from California)

My brother Paul & his fiance Victoria

 So my friend Blair  had a brilliant idea that we make a fondant cake (neither of us have EVER made one). She thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to practice our fondant making-- I shouldn't say practice, let's use the word TEST instead. After reading and researching many blogs the reviews were mixed... do we make our own fondant from SCRATCH or do we just buy it? 

 

Buying it sounds so convenient  but what fun is that? Fondant is pure fat and sugar, and taste disgusting... what's the point then? It is supposed to look so pretty though...

Ingredients used for fondant:

16oz bag of marshmallows, 2 lbs bag of powered sugar, crisco, couple teaspoons of water, and corn starch and food coloring gel (green because that is Victoria's favorite color).

Cake ingredients: 

You better believe I used boxed cake mix, duh. We used 3 cake boxes (second time around) of yellow cake, raspberry jam for the filling and butter cream frosting for the fondant to stick, and cream cheese frosting for our piping and for the dots to stick.

Heat up the marshmallows (and add those couple of teaspoons of water) stirring occasionally, warm until they are smooth and stir able. Set up your "crater" below the mound of powdered sugar is a crisco base. 

Be sure to grease up your hand with A LOT of crisco, and when I mean A LOT... I mean rub some on, and then when you think there is enough.... put more on! On our first trial run, I definitely DID NOT put enough on... yeah it hardens and it is almost impossible to get off!

Pour the melted marshmallows into the powdered sugar craters. Then you are just supposed to continue to work it in until it turns solid....

This picture is actually from the trial run... I could barely move my fingers.

So Blair had to hop in and help me... it was hard! Eventually (probably like 30 minutes later) it solidified and we had fondant! To make it colored we just added a few drops of food coloring gel.

While working on the fondant, our cakes were baking... mmmmm raspberry jam filling.

...Blair rolling out the fondant.

So this was our TRIAL run cake. Yeah it looks horrible. Blair and I didn't even finish putting the circles on because a) we were way to tired at this point and b) it just looked horrible nothing was going to help. We told ourselves it wasn't that bad, but I think we were both a couple of glasses of wine into this. (In all honesty I think we didn't want to admit it, but it was HIDEOUS.) We slightly may have lost a little bit of hope for making a fondant cake....

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There was hope. 

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We decided to fully concentrate the second time...no pictures, no wine, no messing around...

Putting the last minute touches and pipping the cream cheese frosting. It was so hard to complete the cake in the 95 degree weather! We had to alternate putting the frosting and then the cake into the fridge so the dots and pipping wouldn't melt!

  

It is a miracle we came back from our trial run cake, did I mention it was horrendous?

Blair and I with the finale cake.

After hmmm: 5 cake mixes, 15 eggs, 4 lbs of powered sugar, LOTS of crisco, hours of baking, and manual labor mending and kneading that fondant... we were very happy and proud of our final product. 

Oh, and just incase you are thinking... wow she is really domestic. No no no, don't get confused. I had to buy all these things to bake this cake ingredients AND supplies... yup I had NO bakeware, NO flour, NO wax paper, NO corn starch, NO cookie cutters, NO rolling pin, NO crisco.... NOTHING.

I will still pretend to be domestic, but by having all these supplies it can at least look like I am trying?