Sock Wreaths

When I saw this adorable Dollar Store craft over at Blue Cricket Designs, I knew I had to give it a whirl...
I gathered my materials: A sharp knife, a wreath form, and multi-pack socks in Christmas colors (all from the Dollar Store!). I followed the directions posted over at Blue Cricket, and came up with this...

And then, as it often happens...I couldn't stop. On this one, I cut both ends of the sock and tied a leftover sock into a "bow."

Can you just imagine the possibilities for all those hole-y socks now? Total cost for this craft: $2.50 per wreath (and an extra pair of socks leftover.) Not bad!

Enjoy your Monday!

Holiday Tags

I am very close to being done with all my holiday shopping. Wrapping them is next on the list. I'm not much of a card maker. I do love to look at and receive handmade cards but the time involved just isn't my thing. Every year around this time I get the urge to create cute little Christmas tags to decorate my packages. This year, I am sharing my tags with you.

Download Punch and Print Holiday 2010 Tags Here

How to use them:

1. Print as many copies of the PDF as needed. Make sure when printing that you do not have "fit to page size" or scaled printing checked in your print window. You will want to make sure they print at the correct size to ensure they line up with your punches.

2. I designed the tags to be used with a 1.75" and 2" circle punch (you can get away with a 1.5" and 1.75 if you need to). The EK Success Gold Circle punch is 1.75 and hands down the best punch in my enormous stash. StampinUp also sells a 1.75" punch. buy it, it is so versatile.

3. Grab some cardstock scraps in colors that match your print.

4. Begin by punching out all of your printed circles. Remember to hold the punch upside down so that you can see where you are punching.

 If you are using the 1.5" punch you will have to punch off the colored ring and simply punch out just the icon.

 5. Punch a stack of 2" circles out of the cardstock scraps. (If you are making the smaller size tags, you will punch a 1.75" circle). These circles will become the base for each tag. You could also cut these backer circles from a diecutting machine if you don't have the correct punch.

 6. Adhere an icon circle and a to/from circle to the front and back of each base circle to form the tag. Add a 1/8" hole punch to the top of each tag. Add ribbon or Jillibean Soup Bakers twine to finish!

 Tip: How to get to the center of the page? Cut the page in half so you can punch right down the line.

 Your finished tags will look like this depending on the size you punched.

 Quick and simple handmade tags! Enjoy.

Quick Holiday Favor

I love this one because my kids really helped out, and we finished making 15 of them in less than an hour...

Felt Buckets were found at the Target dollar spot. Winter suckers were purchased at the Dollar Store (6 in a pack). We simply filled the buckets with floral foam, covered the foam with shredded paper, and arranged the suckers. Finished in no time at all--and for about $2.30 a bucket. Not bad!

Enjoy your weekend...

It's cookie season...

Hi Everyone Tina here buried in butter, flour and walnuts as I begin making my 2o dozen cookies for this weekends cookie exchange.

Every year a group of us gets together at my sisters house for lots of cookies and Christmas cheer! Its such a great way to celebrate the season with friends.

Russian Tea Balls are my recipe to make each year, so I thought I'd share my recipe here.

1 C butter 1/3 C confectioners sugar

2 tsp vanilla 2 C flour

1 C chopped walnuts

Blend butter and vanilla until creamy, add confectioners sugar and flour slowly until blended, add nuts. Preheat over to 325 - roll dough into 1 inch balls and bake for 20 minutes. Roll in confectioners sugar directly out of oven.

Versatility

When I first got the December WIP kit in the mail, I was immediately drawn to the bold patterns and color palette. I love the aqua dots and number paper since they naturally fall in line with my more linear style. So putting together this Disney page came pretty easily. While you may not immediately think "Disney" when looking at the old-fashioned theme of this kit, I'll show you the elements I took from it to fit my theme. 

The first thing that struck me was the color theme - red/yellow/black. This went perfectly with the pictures that I had of my son meeting Mickey for the first time. I used the bolder paper patterns, some flags, a journaling spot and sticker frame to support my theme.

To add to the whimsical feel, I added loops of twine and a sweet banner at the top. This divided the page and brought attention to the focal point photo.

I printed two of the smaller photos on white photo paper and left a wide bottom margin to make them look like Polaroids. I like how it makes the photos stand out and gives the eye a place to rest on this busy page.

When I look at the December kit I see Disney, Christmas, and fancy parties (as you can tell from my gallery). It what I loved most about it - VERSATILITY!

Scrapbook Those Events

Only 18 more days til Christmas, YAY! Are you getting excited? I know I am & I will be even more excited when all the shopping is done, gifts are wrapped, family is in town to visit & enjoy the holiday season watching my little ones open their gifts with surprising eyes.

This month, I am honored to be a guest designer/teacher for Masterful Scrapbook Design (a production of Get It Scrapped) & each month focuses on a specific topic & this month, the topic is Scrapbooking Events. You can view multi-photo layouts & multi-page albums & learn a variety of ways creating such these projects. So, I thought this months Work In Progress kit would be PERFECT to use for event layouts. Who says you need to have theme papers or embellishments to document your holiday memories.

My first layout is of my daughter opening up Christmas gifts last year & using Cosmo Crickets Circa 1934 collection was just up my alley. Great colors, design patterns, perfect for spotlighting your holiday pictures!


I also created a two page birthday layout with the kit. Again, there weren't any birthday embellishments or even phrases/words on the patterns, but the chipboard banner flags sure does make for a great excuse to create a birthday page, right? ;)


If you haven't already pulled out your December kit, do so & start documenting those holiday memories. The kit is filled with lots of products to get your creativity going!

Our Home This Season...

I wanted to share this video of our home and the decorations...

I hope you're enjoying this beautiful season...

Fun Printables for Children

Family Fun Magazine has done all the hard work. All you have to do is click and print! Our personal favorites? Find the Difference and Connect the Dots! Enjoy!

Home for Christmas

I would like to share a few pictures of my mini-album on the cover of Scrapbook Trends Create: Holidays. I'm beyond thrilled about this idea book and look forward to getting my copy.

The album is a Kaiser Scrapbooking wood album and has only four pages total. Two of the pages are "window panes" and that made picking out photos to scrap extremely easy: just a few of my favorites from Christmas 2009.  I used just one line from October Afternoon which made the coordination simple.  Speaking of coordination, I hope you got the WIP December project kit: everything you need in one package to create a holiday keepsake album :) 

Just out of curiosity, are you doing a December Daily album? 

Woe Is Me Explained

I'm an 8 x 8 scrapper. And I like to tell stories on my pages. And I like to add lots of pretty stuff on my pages. And Work in Progress gives me LOTS of pretty stuff to put on my pages. So that often presents me with a dilemma--how to fit it all on that small canvas.

Enter Cosmo Cricket tear-off strips. I try to include my stories on the front of my page, but when I just can't cram it on, I resort to hidden journaling. I'm sure you've noticed those nifty little sayings that Cosmo Cricket prints on their bar-code strips that tell you there's another pattern on the reverse side. I often use those on my pages to indicate there's more to read on the back.

I did this on my Woe is Me page, with the little strip that says "for the rest of the story...." I added some other clues that hint at the hidden journaling: I added the word "over" using the cool Jenni Bowlin letters on the Elle's Studio journaling spot, both of which are in the kit this month. I also cut out one of the designs from the patterned paper leaving one of the curvy elements on it, that to me looked sort of like an arrow. And I added the "Laugh Out Loud" (you'll understand why in a moment) cut out from the Circa 1934 Borders along with a chipboard pen nib, which also served as a sort of arrow.

In case you're wondering, here's my journaling: A sprained ankle with purple toes. Seriously bad hair day. Mammoth zit on my face the day before parent-teacher conferences (great timing--I never get zits anymore!).  I was in no mood for theater going, but Farzad had bought tickets for us to see Hair, so off we went. I couldn't walk because I had just taken a fall  two days before, and the thought of hobbling around on crutches was the last thing I wanted to do. All I wanted to do was sit on the sofa with ice on my foot, but I couldn't disappoint Farzad. He was such a good sport and wheeled me around the Kennedy Center. He's gifted at reading my mind and knew just the thing to bring me out of my foul mood by racing me up and down the halls of the Kennedy Center in that wheelchair, pretending he was going to run over people.  I'm giggling right now as I write this! {photo taken on October 31, 2010; journaling written on November 27, 2010}

Thanks, Cosmo Cricket, for putting those clever little sayings on your tear-strips!