For the girl that has everything

I love gift giving and finding just the right gift for the receiver.  For the most part, a large part of Canadian's have wants over needs and the dilemma becomes giving a gift that a person will like and use.  It becomes even more of a challenge when people can readily purchase most things that they want.  So what do you do for the girl who essentially has everything?

Of late, I tend to do gift cards for a store that they love but I also like to give something small with it.  I will be celebrating a friend's birthday in the next week and I have come up with my small something.  It is something that my friend uses and need... cards.

I am going to make a bundle of 5 cards for various occasions.  I often make cards from the product scraps of layouts that I am working on (less to clean up and a good way to use up scraps). Since I have been scrapping with Pebbles this week and have lots of scraps sitting on my table, it naturally became the product of choice.  Here is my first installment card:

Supplies: patterned paper, chipboard, dimensional stickers (Pebbles), punch (Fiskars), ink (Colorbox), jewels and thread (miscallaneous)

I used the Floral Lane papers, chipboard and dimensional stickers for this one.  I really like the texture of the Floral Lane papers.  They are quite lovely.

Look for more cards to appear on my blog over the next week or so.

TTFN,

Fun embellishment discoveries with Pebbles

The Happy Go Lucky line by Pebbles Inc.is so playful, and apropos for these fun photos of my daughter and one of her copius Littlest PetShop Pets.  She has always had such a spunky spirit and, par usual, she is certainly not camera shy.
 


Supplies: patterned paper, felt embellishments, ribbon, twine (Pebbles Inc.), gltter chipboard letters (American Crafts), flocked letters (Prima), eyelets (Zision), felt (Michael's), pen (Sharpie), chalk, denim and thread (miscellaneous)

In making my pieces of art, I continually enjoy experimenting with techniques and it is no different with this layout.  I discovered several new things during its' creation. 

Firstly, felt can be re-coloured with chalk.  I changed one of the button felt backings to green from a turquoise blue to better match the layout.

Secondly, when you do not have the right size of flower but you do have ribbon, create the right sized flower with the ribbon.

Here is how I made the Pebbles Ribbon and Felt flower:

Materials: Ribbon, felt, button, floss, hot glue gun and glue, cardstock, circle punch/diecut/ scissors

1. Cut a 1” diameter cardstock circle for the base.  Cut 6 pieces of the polka dot ribbon 10 dots long.

2. Slide one end of the ribbon on top of the other ensuring that the back of an orange polkadot shows at the top of the ribbon petal fold and place a dab of hot glue between the ends to hold together.  Repeat 5 more times for a 6 petal flower.

3. Hot glue the ribbon petals onto the cardstock circle base at even intervals.

4. Cut a 1 1/8^t” (2.8cm) diameter circle from a piece of felt.

5. Pick a button and thread it with embroidery floss.

6. Glue both the felt circle and button in the centre of the flower.

Thirdly, I wanted to use denim to tie into my daughter’s denim hat bill penguin perch.  The use of fabric is a scrapbook trend that continues to grow.  Canvas is still hot but making a comeback is denim.  This can be seen in some denim look patterned papers and products coming out of this summer’s CHA releases.  So do not ditch your family member’s worn out denim, instead repurpose your old jeans by scrapping with them.  Here I show how to make the denim tags from my layout.  An added bonus is that they used up some eyelets from my stash!  

Denim tags:
 
Materials: old jeans, scissors, sewing machine or needle and thread, eyelets, Crop-a-dile or hole punch and setter

1. Using a piece of denim from a pair of discarded jeans, begin with a guide cut.

2. Pull the fabric apart at the guide cut section to produce a straight yet fringed line.  Repeat approximately 1” inch over to create an even strip of torn denim. Cut at 1 ½” intervals in length.

3. Stitch around the edge of the rectangle and tie off at the back of the piece.

4. Make a hole at the top of the tag.

5. Place an eyelet through and crimp to secure it in place.

6. Embellish and adhere as desired.  I placed part of my title on it and used the Pebbles twine to string the series of tags.

If you give any of these techniques a try, be sure to link back to the comment section of this post.  I would love to see what you create.

TTFN,

Pretty perch... of the human kind

A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting at the local municipal pool while my daughter was having her swimming lesson, when it dawned on me that the folding chair I was sitting on would be a fun thing to personalize and alter.  So I gave it a go.

Supplies: patterned paper, ribbon, felt embellishments (Pebbles), modge podge (Plaid), font Cooper Black, hot glue, thread (miscallaneous), folding chair (Loblaws President's Choice)

To make it more weather resistant, I modge-podged both sides of the paper for both the background and the leaves.  I adhered it with hot glue and hand stitching using a curved embroidery/apolstery needle.  I kept the rectangle size such that by centring it fits naturally in the chair's fold zone for bag storage.

I love, love , love the results! Apparently this experiment rates highly with my daughter's approval and has thus raised my coolness factor (for the present time at least,LOL!) as she wants me to make one for her now.

TTFN,

Playing with some Pebbles

Sometimes I just do not know where a layout is heading but love the end result of the process.

Supplies: patterned paper, chipboard, dimensional stickers, twine, trim, packaging (Pebbles Inc.), chipboard letter stickers (American Crafts), marker (Sharpie), border punch (Fiskars), pen (Staedtler), jewels and floss (miscallaneous), birch bark (a little piece of Muskoka, Canada)

For this layout, I started with some Pebbles Floral Lane products and Happy Go Lucky Trim and a adorable photo from my pre-digital era of my daughter at 15 months old.  I had a rough sketch drawn out with an idea to use a bunch of journaling chipboard and sticker tags along one side, a few paper strips, a floral cluster and a machine stitched border.  Once I got that part lying on the paper, I was like ...okay what next? Here inlayed the problem... I was at the cottage and thus only had a small bunch of supplies on hand.  And just as the saying goes... necessity breeds invention... a little improvising was called for. Not the right colour of letter stickers, re-colour them with a Sharpie marker.  Do not have the right size or font lettering, hand draw and stitch the letters. Machine sewn border not showing up against the paper because the thread is too thin, rip it out and hand sew a running stitch with embroidery floss.  I even incorporated a little bit of the cottage by trying out a border punch on some birch bark.  It works really well and thus it along with the adorable Chips packaging made its way onto the layout.

So here’s to the creative process and scrapping at the cottage... the results are well worth it!

TTFN,