July Guest Design Team Member for Berry71Bleu

Hello Everyone...

I know you are probably wondering, where in the heck did she disappear to? I know it's been awhile since I posted something. It's been quite hectic in my household and work this past month so I am sorry that I hadn't checked in with anything. Well, in any event, I hope you are all enjoying the summer so far. It's been so rainy and icky here that we are just now experiencing the hot muggy summer weather so the family has been trying to enjoy the outdoors! I haven't been part of a design team in awhile (since 2009) so I haven't been really motivated to post much - only when I've created a gift set for those special people in my life. But that changed when...

I was asked by Marivic, owner of Berry71Bleu, to be one of her July guest design team members. It was such a privilege to work with her beautiful vintage tags! Click on the link to visit and become a member of Berry71Bleu. It is a fairly new site, but you lots of great companionship as well as lots of inspiration from the DT as well as board members. After you are done browsing, you can check out Marivic's other links below. She also sells her tags and premade pages on etsy. Both her pages and tags are so intricate and beautiful. I can just sit there and drool over the layouts she's made.

  Berry71Bleu Tags, Pages, and More

Berry71Bleu Pages - Marivic's Personal Blog

Berry71Bleu Etsy Store

Berry71Bleu Facebook

 To show how versatile Marivic's tags are, I've created these projects...

#1: Oh La La Vintage Tag

 From tag to...

 this. 

I created a notepad holder and matching card. 

 

Doesn't this tag just fit in well with the size of the notepad holder? Here is the recipe on how to make the notepad:

1) Measure the height and width of notepad. I bought some colored notepad sets from Walmart awhile back. Mine measure 4x6.

2) I used Kraft cardstock as my base. Cut down to 9.5 x 9. The extra cardstock will be your flaps you can use to slip the back of the cardstock instead of permanently adhering it on the backside - this will be easier to replace the notepad when it is done.

3) Starting from 9.5 inch side, score cardstock at 4.5 inches and then again at 5 inches. This will give you ample room for your notepad to sit in its holder.

4) Rotate cardstock to the 9 inch side...now you are ready to create the flaps. Score at 2.75 inches on both sides.

Now you are ready to decorate...here is how I decorated mine:

INSIDE OF NOTEPAD:

5) Measure each side and adhere patterned paper.

6) Before adhering flaps, you have the option to use a corner rounder on the flaps as you see in the pic I attached. Instead of using red line tape to adhere the flaps permanently, I used my sewing machine to close up the sides of each flap. The sewing is at least 1/8 inches away from edge. I was cutting it really close with my sewing! LOL

OUTSIDE OF NOTEPAD:

7) Open up the notepad and trace onto patterned paper. Adhere patterned paper on front side using your favorite adhesive making sure the edges are well adhered to the cardstock. I prefer to use double stick tape, but you can also use red line tape if you wish at this point.

8) Once the patterned paper is adhered to the entire front side, you have the option to use the corner rounder on the top edges. If you decide to sew your flaps, the patterned paper on the front easily hides the sewing. Use sanding block to shave off extra paper from the edges.

Now you are ready to embellish the front with whatever you wish. As you can see, I used one of the tags on there and I think it goes very nicely with the patterned paper and ribbon I picked. For a truly vintage touch, I added a tab on the side that says "Notes" with my dymo label maker - do you remember those from the good ol' days?

The last thing I did was create a matching beaded pen. These are really fun to make...if you haven't tried to, go to this tutorial on SCS that explains it all: Beaded Pen Tutorial.

Let's move on to the card...I was so excited that I bought this Quickutz sewing/dress form die from a pea-member awhile back. So I created a matching card and tried to mimic the dress form image on the tag as much as I could. I wanted to make this a little more simple. While I did not have  postcard sentiment stamp, I was able to use my clear postmarks stamp set by Stampology. The sentiment at the bottom of the card is from Stampin' Up's Haute Couture stamp set. It was simply perfect for the card. I also topped off the dress form with a little hot pink felt flower from Maya Road and some bling bling.

#2: Patisserie Tag - "Sweet" Name Plaque

From tag to...

this.

I created a name frame using an embroidery hoop.

Now, I usually don't make too many things for myself, but I have been itching to make something for my cubicle at work. The company I work for doesn't supply professionally made name plates so when the opportunity arose, I created one for myself to hang on the outside of my cube. Now I have something pretty to look forward to when I get to work! 

Instead of using a typical picture frame, I used an embroidery hoop. I get a lot of inspiration when I browse the web for ideas and my inspiration came from Etsy this time. I used a brown textured fabric scrap (almost looks like burlap), crochet embellishment that I bought from a garage sale, kraft cardstock, vintage music sheet, a felt birdie embellie from American Crafts, flocked green sticker from Anna Griffin (I added the "sweet" sentiment on there so because there were so many sweet delicacies on the tag), vintage buttons from Making Memories and used twine. My name was spelled out using yellow glittered thickers - can you believe that this is the first time I am using thickers??? There you have it - a simple personalized name plaque. I scored on a bunch of embroidery hoops at a garage sale 2 years ago and I will for sure will be making more home or office decor with these doodads. 

Here is just a little close-up of the name frame...

The name plaque above also qualifies for the July challenge going on over at Berry71Bleu Tags, Pages and More website. Check it out as there are already many forum members and lots of inspiration to look through as well as tutorials.

I know this was a rather long post, but I hope you enjoyed reading through all of the details. 

Thank you again to Marivic for thinking of me and asking me to be part of the Berry71Bleu guest design team. She is having another design team call and you can find more deets here. Good luck to all who apply! Just a quick peek at the kit that Marivic sent me as a thank you - lots of goodies to play with!

 Maraming Maraming Salamat kay Marivic!

ETA: If you are wondering what this means, I was just saying a BIG thank you to Marivic in my native language, Tagalog.

Thanks for stopping by! Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

"No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks"

"No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks" - remember that childhood rhyme? My kids were so ready for summer vacation 2 months ago! HaHaHa

Of course, end of the year meant I needed to make thank you gifts for the teachers.Both teachers worked so hard all year and I know they were probably ready for summer vacation two weeks after school started - LOL!

So for both of the teachers, I created a gift set that consisted of: the following items: altered full-size clipboard, matching altered half notebook with pen, a bouquet of flowers, and can't forget for a little R&R...body wash that comes with a body sponge which was bought at the Dollar Store too. If you have been following my blog or have seen my gallery, you will notice that I love altering clipboards and composition notebooks. They are always a great "go to" gift.

Gift Set #1 went to my daughter's kindergarten teacher...My daughter's kindergarten teacher always admired anything crafty simply because she is a scrapbooker herself. So this was my chance to make something special for her. She had been teaching for many years and my daughter loved being in her class. She had several misfits in her class, including my daughter, but she kept chugging.

Instead of putting everything in a decorative paper bag, I bought these cute plastic containers at the Dollar Store to put all of the gifts into. It costs the same as a paper bag but I wanted to find a more practical container so that the teachers could re-purpose it for something else.

One of Jen del Muro's blog posts had given me a great idea to make these beautiful bouquet of flowers made out of tissue paper with tulle in the middle. She found this idea on Pinterest - a new website every crafter is raving about. I know I need to jump on the bandwagon already. Here is the tutorial I used for the flowers: Bouquet of Flowers


I started to make all of these flowers with different color combos. Here is a sampling of what the flowers look like...

It depends on the size rectangle you use so after testing the size on one, I created a much smaller version so it would fit better in the vase. In the pic below, you can see my first one made with yellow and white tissue paper and then my revised much smaller version on the left.

Here is the bouquet all completed. I used a glue gun and BBQ sticks to hold the flowers in place. I cut the sticks to the appropriate size. then placed them in the vase.

Here is a close-up of the flowers. I added a package of unsharpened pencils in the middle of the flowers to liven it up a bit. Plus teachers always need pencils in their classrooms.

I converted these ceramic containers to use as a vase. It used to contain dry mustard. I scored big during a community wide garage sale and bought 2 boxes of these babies. Hubby wasn't very pleased when he saw the boxes in the trunk - oooppppsss!!! I finally found the nerve to use the rub-ons I had been hoarding from SU that I bought a long time ago. Rub-ons can be temperamental. You have to make sure you rub hard and take off the wax paper it was originally stuck very slowly or you completely mess up the rub-on (ask me how I know that *sigh*). You live and learn, right?

Here are the rest of the pieces of the gift set. The first one is the clipboard and notebook gift set.

It is hard to tell, but I added Maya Road alpha rub-ons on the bottom part of the clipboard. I had this one already made from Christmas - it just needed some finishing touches.

For the notebook, I decided to leave it as is so that I wasn't distracting from the design on the paper. I created a matching pen for it too. When I gave the gift to my daughter's teacher, she said this was her favorite kind of pen. So score on that one too! I wish I would've had time to make a beaded pen instead.

This is just a picture of the body wash and body sponge I added to the gift set. I bought the body wash, body sponge from the Dollar store as well.

Gift set #2 went to my son's 1st grade teacher...She is fairly new teacher - this is her 4th year teaching. She is one of the most awesome teachers I have ever met. She is so energetic, enthusiastic, and so genuine with the kids. My son loved being in her class. My husband and I love the fact that she was so great at communication. I wish I had a teacher like her when I was younger.

I created a slightly different color combo for this bouquet to match the rub-on I put on the vase.

When I started altering clipboards, I used to tie different colored ribbons by the metal clamp, but browsing through the SCS gallery had inspired me to experiment with different kinds of medium. For this one I used one of my flower dies, red felt and a red button. For a more 3D effect, I cut out 2 each of 3 size flowers. To put the flower together, I gathered all of the pieces the way I wanted it to look, then stitched a red button with matching thread. Then to make more stable, I cut a square piece of cardstock and glued it to the back of the flower. Then I cut a few pieces of 3 dimensional double stick tape to the back so that it is not completely flat on the metal clamp. I think it turned out so cute! Don'tcha think???

 

Isn't that such a cute owl? It's hard to see, but it says "hoot" underneath the owl.

Before ya'll go, stay tuned for a couple of announcements in July!!!

Thanks for stopping by!

For Arnie...

This is an altered gift I made for my kids' bus driver, Arnie. He has been driving the bus for many years and told me that he was retiring after this school year. My kids have only had him for two years since they both just started school full-time and I was saddened by the news.

So, I decided to make him this custom tumbler gift set for Christmas. I bought several of these from Mike's several years ago and found an excuse to finally use them (can you say "What a hoarder?"...Yes, I admit I am!) I had this stamp set from Club Stamp Academy called Sheer Genius that had never been inked. I love all of the images from this set and used the silhouette bus stamp which reminds me of a Thomas Kinkade stamp.The first picture below is the whole gift set: one tumbler, matching card, 2 packets of ground coffee purchased at Target, and homemade wheat bread.

Here is  close-up of the  mug you can see the detail...I traced the template on patterned paper and sewed it together with the piece of paper that came in with the tumbler for more stability. I stamped the image on textured vanilla cardstock. And even with the textured cardstock, you can see the detail very clearly. I customized the tumbler with his name. It was very hard to stamp his name in a straight line using wooden alpha stamps. I used twine to tie the tag onto the template. I was lucky that everything fit inside the tumbler once I was done.

And here is the close-up of the matching card - very simply made. I can't seem to find the stamp set I used for this one so I will post the name of it later on when I do find it. I did a little stitching on the card as well.

As you can see, I decided to use non-traditional Christmas colors because I wanted Arnie to be able to use his tumbler throughout the year.

That is it for now..working on some other things and will come back soon!

Thanks for stopping by!

Congratulations on your new baby girl gift set

Whew! That was alot of projects I hadn't posted in awhile...flashback from the past and now on to the present!

My younger sister gave birth to a beautiful baby girl in early February and named her Mikayla. I thought using Angel Landing's digital stamp sets called Alphabet Train and Toys on Wheels would be the perfect way to welcome the new baby.

The frame was bought at Walmart. I love using these frames - they are the perfect size! The frame came with its own matting, but I chose to create my own by using a cereal box (cut to size) and decorated it with patterned paper and used my square nesties to make the frames. One of the hardest part was to measure how far apart the frames should be and cut out the squares in the middle - it was hard to keep it in place!

The tedious part of this project was figuring out the size of the letters as well as cutting each and every one of them out. It was also difficult to attach the hemp twine underneath the wheels and figuring out spacing - as you can see, the letters came out a little crooked - oh well!!! I guess it kind of looks like it is being dragged so I guess it looks ok. The letters were colored with prismacolor pencils blended with baby oil and popped up. I also used a small piece of cotton ball for the bunny's tale on both the frame and the card.

Inspiration for the card was based on Card Patterns Sketch 106. I just used a scrap piece of scalloped square from the frame, cut out a circle in the middle and placed patterned paper in its place. I did some stitching on the patterned paper (although I still need practice sewing - LOL). I think the card turned out so adorable, don't ya think?

This project was inspired by this one that I created for the Angel's Landing DT.

Thank you for visiting!

Stamps: Digital Stamps from Angels Landing - Toys on Wheels, Alphabet Train
Paper: K&C Small Wonders Girl Pack, Kraft/Vanilla Cardstock
Ink: Tim Holtz Distress Ink Antique Linen
Accessories: White Satin Ribbon, Prima Flower, Button, Hemp Twine, Cotton Ball. Square/Circle Nesties, Sewing Machine, Prismacolor Pencils blended with Baby Oil

And even more...

More thank you cards/projects...

Back in the Saddle Again...

Hello Everyone! Boy, it's been ages since I last paid attention to my blog. I thought I would post some projects I have made while behind the scenes way back from last year that I never posted here. So, let's go back to where I left off...shall we?

 

So that is it for end of year school projects from 2010...Don't go yet, there is more!