Christmas Gifts #2 - Explosion Box

I started my mom's gift months ago. A friend had shown me pictures of GORGEOUS explosion boxes that she had made and I was ready to try my hand at it.

I used Bo Bunny's Welcome Home collection for the box. I generally don't stick to "collections" when I do things, but this was such a huge undertaking, I thought starting out with everything that coordinated was a great idea :-)

I was excited to make the box interactive for my mom. There are tags to pull out with words and pictures inside. Some of the extras were "hinged" with brads so that they could be pulled aside.

I made the flower out of one of the patterned papers and one of the coordinating colors I bought to go with it. I cut each one 1/4" smaller than the previous, and used the end of my Xacto knife to "cup" the flower petals to give it depth.

I used a lot of the beautiful family photos we had taken in October!

It was definitely the Christmas present I was most excited to watch opened this year!

Christmas Gifts #1 - Yarn Wreath

I made this wreath for my aunt. She lives in a log home and it felt like the perfect rustic addition to her house!

Funny story, she flew in from Cleveland on Friday am before Christmas. I was in the living room and heard her say "Wow, this is a beautiful wreath!" I had a moment of "Oh crap!" because that was HER Christmas gift that I'd forgotten to take off my door and wrap. :-)

Luckily, my small partner in crime said "It's for YOU, Auntie!" to help avoid confusion ;-)

I followed the directions I found on Pinterest except that I used styrofoam instaed of the covered straw. I will DEFINITELY find covered straw next time, as the yarn stuck to the styrofoam and made it difficult to wrap.

I made all of the felt flowers, also using the tutorial from Pinterest. (I am LOVING Pinterest! - if you want to check out my boards, I'm here)
 

Christmas is coming....

Time to bust out the homemade gift ideas again!  We didn't make this one for Christmas, but it would make a great gift for a grandparent, aunt or uncle!

For Father's Day this year (yes, I'm that behind on my blogging) E and I made Daddy a handprint calendar.

I found the directions HERE. I did change some of the poems for our calendar.

They made SUCH cute little pictures and Daddy LOVES it!

I would have liked to have had more time to coordinate the paper better, but we were on limited time, limited budget and had an infant around who 1) didn't like to sit still while we painted E's hands and 2) wasn't sleeping through the night!

Birthday!

E's BFF turned FOUR this month!  She is an avid bookworm and LOVES reading, so of course my first thought was her very own library book bag (which was filled to the brim with books E picked out for her friend - all Curious George!)

The book image was cut from the Learning Curve cartridge. The font is from Hannah Montana.   I used EasyWeed heat transfer vinyl.  I purchase my vinyl from Coastal Business Supply.

I made Maddie this awesome bookmark to keep her place in all of her new books.

This card was so fun to make! I used Once Upon a Princess for the cupcake.

Homemade Christmas Part 2

The grandma's got brag books for Christmas!

 I've done a post about accordion albums before, and these ones were just as much fun as the first!

I used Zutter 4.25x4.25" chipboard covers on these accordion albums.

Lots of pictures of my daughter, some cute quotes and, on one of them, even some art work that she did herself!

I used a Crop-a-dile to punch a hole in the front for the jewel brads, then hot-glued the ribbon in place for the fastener These make great purse albums to carry around, ready to show off the grandbabies at the drop of a hat!

Homemade Christmas Part 1

A friend sent me a link to the Moda Fabric Wreath tutorial about 2 weeks before Christmas. And I decided it was a MUST for those "hard to shop for" people on my list! So I set out on a journey to find the honey buns to make them. I wound up ordering three from Etsy and one I found at Hobby Lobby (it was wider, with less variety than the honey buns, but it worked out!) 

These took an average of about two hours.

I had to do math, though, which I'm not good at. I enlisted my husband to assist me in determining how many knots would go in each section.  I had about 320 strips, so it was a lot of math to do. :-)

I think these turned out really beautifully!  

I loved the way they look all set up on my ottoman (there were more on my couch arm!)  I will warn you, though, the honey buns shed like CRAZY! I'm still finding little strings in odd places in my house :-) But it was well worth it!

Canvas Bag #1

E's friend Lily turned one in October and part of our gift to her was this canvas library bag!

It's my first attempt at vinyl in my Cricut, adhereing to canvas. I think it turned out pretty well!

I cut the crown from OUAP and the letters are one of the fonts on the Hannah Montana cartridge. I used gems for the top and middle of the crown. The two little bows on the handles are fork bows. (If you've never heard of a fork bow, it's one of my favorite scrapbooking/crafting techniques. Check it out HERE)

There are two other bags that came in the package, so be watching. One already has a future destination (Lily's big sister Maddie also needs a book bag!) but the other is still up for grabs!

If you have a great idea for a personalized bag, send it my way! I'm contemplating making myself a hospital bag for when Broster arrives :-)

A Special Gift!

I've known Stef since I was 3 years old. She's is, in fact, my oldest friend (time, not age ;-)) She got married last summer and promptly moved out of the country, so they haven't had a chance to print wedding pictures. For their anniversary, I had some pictures printed and put it in a multi-photo frame.

When a friend mentioned a folded album , I thought "Well, I want to try the album and I have lots of extra wedding pictures!"

And so this album was born.

It took me two hours, start to finish, for the entire album.

It doesn't hurt that they are an incredibly gorgeous couple who picked gorgeous wedding colors!!

I was able to embellish both the front folds and the backs. They had some beautiful photos of their day!

And it just arrived (having been shipped about three weeks ago!!) at their doorstep yesterday! Stef and Nick, I hope you enjoy your pocket album!