{Create} at our virtual craft day

Well now, we haven't had one of these for awhile.



So without any further ado, what did I get up to this month?

I put these 3 pics in a turquoise frame

I'm hosting the photo challenge with Mandy so I've been playing with my camera a lot this month (*ahem* our theme for this LAST Saturday is dirty/ messy - I'm daring you to let your kids make a mess and post the pics :))

I also did a little something something with washi tape on Monday. I had about 30 minutes and instead of thinking "I only have 30 minutes" I just got my stuff and got going. It was a push but I made it work for me. Hmmm.

Here is a sneak peek because I want to show you everything I made in one proper post.

So what did you create this month?

Leave your link in the comments (I can only display one linky at a time and I don't want to have to do the new linky in 2 days for the photo challenge)

PS if you like, make your link clickable so people can click. You'll type the following in the comment box and fill in your details

Washi tape craft

{Create} The June linky party

I have some work to do tonight frst so I'll write my own link-up post later.

BUT in the meantime, you can show off your creativity and link up crafts, sewing, knitting, scrapping, COOKING and baking, creative photography, etc.

BTW, Pinned it, Did it-type posts are also 100% acceptable :)

What did you get up to this month? 

{Create} Monogram button canvas & our monthly link-up party

May's been a good month of creating for me.

I finished my book which is my biggest creation to date, I did those lovely DIY paper tapes (BTW since then I've seen people do exactly the same thing and call it washi tape - um, no, it may look a bit like washi tape but it isn't), I also made some adhesive fabric tape and I'm 90% done with another photo canvas.

And then this one.

After my hectic weekend, I needed some time to recuperate and so I made this.

What you need

• Canvas (mine was R12,99 at Mega Mica)
• Monogram printed to the size of your canvas
• Pencil
• Craft glue
• Buttons (my bag was called crazycrafts and was R9,99 at Westpack)

I don't have any intermediate pics because all my things are done at night and the light is AWFUL in here.

Also, glue + camera = not a very good idea (I don't know how the crafty gals who do tutorials do it but they clearly have more patience than I do)


It was waaaaaayyyyy easier than I thought.

How to do it

• Print the letter of your choice in a plain font as big as can fit on your canvas. I like plain and simple so I chose a standard sans serif font (can't remember which one now).
• Cut out this letter.
• Trace it onto your canvas with a pencil.
• Glue within the shape. I did one "leg" at a time on my M.
• Stick any assortment of buttons onto the glue.
• The beauty is that this is meant to be imperfect so your lines don't have to be straight, you can position buttons over the pencil lines, you can use any colours, etc. and it still looks gorgeous.

showing you glue splodges up close. Almost invisible when you look at it as a normal person would

my pack of buttons had all shades, shapes and sizes

the widest section of buttons

and DONE!

I really, really, REALLY love this craft and I may even break loose and let the kids do their own ones... outside!

They have a K and a C on their bedroom door (plain white wooden letters) so if I'm brave, I'll glue them and let them go wild. I bought blue and pink buttons when I bought my green ones because I thought of doing something similar for their bedroom.
 
I also think this is a great idea for a gift that you really can suit both to the individual (choose a more flowery, whimsical font for a more girly person) and to your pocket (a bigger canvas will obviously cost more and use up more buttons - I still have about 15 buttons in my pack).

So, what do you think? Will you do one and show me?

What have you been creating this month?

I had TWO emails this morning reminding me I forgot to put up the linky.

Yes! I love it when things like this are noticed. And yes, I'm far too distracted with everything going on.

So here it is, for now without my pics, but I will say this - Jan was the month of the mini-book, Feb was the month of mini-cards, and March has been the month of the humble clothespeg (I went beserk! so watch out if you're seeing me anytime soon :)).

So.... show me what you've been up to - cooking, baking, crafting, sewing, whatever!


PS I've signed up for Superhero Photo starting on 10 April. Is anyone else joining me? I'm trying to decide if that will keep me busy enough in April, creatively, or if I want April to be the month of canvas :) What do you think?

Virtual Craft Day linky - Christmas edition

This month my goal was to make two different projects involving cards.

Let's do the easy one first.

Happy Birthday card

You know how much I love sending cards to people? I've started to rope in the kids so they get trained at a young age.

I got each child to sit on my lap and scribble ("write") in each of the Christmas cards. I did miss a few here and there because those were hectic days in the evenings.

Then we were invited to Nicola's birthday party.

I don't normally do birthday cards for the littles but this time I thought we would, seeing as they were used to doing cards.

As an aside, it is super adorable to see them writing :)

I took an A4 sheet of white project board, folded it in half, pasted a pink strip of paper on the inside and used my Happy Birthday punch for the cover.

I then pasted two, two-inch circles (free printables from somewhere on the internet - I print things regularly and punch them so they're ready to use) on the cover.

I asked V to let them decorate the inside as a craft one day last week (another bonus - keeps them busy for 10 minutes too) and they did a great job of putting their handprints on the inside.

Sorry, no pics - I took these before they did their craft.

 

And that was that - an easy card that we could all contribute towards.

Next up, mini notecards

I've been making 6 X 6 mini notebooks with binder rings (pics to come soonish).

When I cut out the squares from the A4 project board, there were all these edges left.

I just hate to waste anything (especially paper) so I kept them with a binder clip til inspiration struck.

One day I was looking for something in my craft drawer (hey, I need to show you pics), saw my stash of stickers and inspiration struck.

I folded the card in half, stuck on a sticker and that was that.

I was really tempted to get out the washi tape and go wild but that's when I realised my style is much simpler. If you don't like them so plain (some of you will be getting some of these), have at it and go wild. I will not be offended.

I had 42 cards so I made 7 sets of six notecards each with birds, crowns or dragonflies on them.


I then tied some of my Christmas doodle twine on it and voila, a cute little gift :)

I also made some M ones for me and some more with my Moo stickers (separate post because the Moo stuff deserves lots of words).

Christmas doodle twine

a few sets ready to go - I did these 4 in a meeting :) (the folding and sticking, not the making pretty)

some more Christmas twine

crowns

Bon-bon Doodle twine

I may be biased but I think they're gorgeous. They make me very, very happy when I look at them.

If I got some of these in the mail I would SQUEAL :)))))

What do you think? 

And now, link up your Christmas or other stuff - cooking/ baking, cards, crafts, decorations, etc.

I have a funny feeling

that my holiday is not going to be as wonderful as I imagined.

That's if today was any indication.

Who would think that two two-year-olds could run two mature, intelligent adults as ragged as they do?!

Connor didn't sleep today at all and Kendra only slept about 40 minutes.

So it was "fun" and to think we have another two days of this weekend left.

On the bright side, we're going to a party tomorrow and even though I've been warned we won't know anyone, we're looking forward to getting out and seeing our friends :) The kids even contributed towards the present (all to be blogged next week as the mother reads this blog :)).

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In other news, we're still going to have our virtual craft day this month - I thought we should do it this Thursday so we can catch some last-minute bright ideas.

Sound good?

I'll be sharing my savoury and sweet snack mix recipes and how I presented them - they're looking good - should be because I have made TONS, so much so I'm all out of formula cans (I had 16).

I also did some really, really cute mini gifts for people all over the world. Some of you will be getting them in your mailboxes soon :)

The best part? They're totally repurposed things too.

I don't mean to be mysterious but I will show you everything on Thursday.

And hopefully this week I'll also take some pics of my Christmas decorations and post them.

I've already done my two card crafts for the month and I've also done some mini-book journals which I'm super stoked about. Can you believe someone is PAYING me to make them one? (no? neither can I! but they are turning out beautifully these days)

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This is the present I got at our team year-end lunch.

I love it :)

D got a cr*ppy mug at their team lunch - seriously, an oversized mug - I want it out of the house asap LOL And we put together a really, lovely present for his person.

*sigh*

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Speaking of crafts, I'm finding my style.

I think I felt a bit weird at first that I like a very simple, minimalistic look but I'm over that now. I am HUGELY inspired by Allison's crafts because of the clean, uncluttered look and feel about them.

You'll see what I mean when I post the pics of my mini gifts. I was so tempted to want to do more but actually I like them very simple.

I'm going to do a to make list of all the stuff I want to attempt next year - I have 3 punches I haven't used, lots of mini-book ideas (let me know if you want to buy one - hahaha), and now, twine.

Yes people, I've bought bakers twine. Two lovely fat rolls of divine twine and two small rolls of doodlebug twine. I'm loving it already.

So how has your Friday been?

What are you up to this weekend?

P.S. Notice I'm in total denial about V's four weeks of leave story. D said to me what if she doesn't want to accept our proposal and I said, "I'm not thinking about it". I'm really not  because I can't take off four weeks off work. I may have one family day left for this calendar year but that's it.

PPS Mandy, South Africans love holidays. We live for our public holidays and the deputy president is giving us another free holiday on 27th - yay! April and December is crazy with all the holidays - we hardly work :)

Happy Thanksgiving and our Virtual Craft Day - cupcake framed print

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers in the US - hope you have a wonderful day of family and food :)

I have a love affair with mashed potato so I'm just a little bit jealous :)

I am so proud of myself - I downloaded, installed and actually used a non-standard computer font in the pic above!

It's here - the virtual craft day.

I was able to make my two crafts largely because you guys had such good ideas on the ideas post.

The cupcakes look incredibly cute when they're all pasted onto the page but I realised I actually don't have patience for these fiddly sorts of things :) I might even sell my nearly unused cupcake punch. Any takers?

So here's my cupcake framed print which will go in the kitchen.

I chose that blue because it's a fun accent colour.

How to do

1. Take a standard 10 X 15 frame and cut white project board (I wanted a sturdier base) according to the paper inside the frame
2. Choose two (or more) colours of cupcakes. I chose just two because I prefer things simple.
3. Arrange them on the page before you start pasting them down.
4. Paste, let dry and put in frame.

Voila - you're done!


I tried to take a pic of the other stuff last night but the pics were terrible and blurry due to the light.

So let the games begin.

Please link up anything you made over the last month and when you write your blog post, please link back to this specific post. Thanks :)

It's also helpful if you put the name of the craft in the name box (e.g. cupcake framed print) so people know what they're coming to see.

Cupcakes! - an artsy-craftsy five on Friday

1. I love it when people remind me of things. I really do :)

So someone mailed me to check if we're still doing the virtual craft day this month and the answer is ...

OF COURSE WE ARE!


Save the date for the link-up  - Thurs 24th.



Remember you don't have to actually create the thing on the day - anytime in November will do.

Are you ready???


2. So I have this cute cupcake punch and I need to use it a lot to make the cost per use go down. As it stands, I've only made 4 cards with it, not very fancy ones either, so one card cost R25 - R30, which is not acceptable :)

I want to make one of these... and make some more cupcake cards. If you see any ideas while you're blog surfing, or pinning, please send them to me! Thank you :)

Source: patchesofpink.com via Marcia on Pinterest

3. We have our infertility support group Christmas function on Thursday night. I really, really, really want to make a gift for someone. It would help if I knew who mine would go to but I won't. We assign each gift a number and you draw a gift. Any ideas??? The gift should be in the region of R80 ($10).

4. I'm drooling a little bit at all the "I'm making all handmade gifts for Christmas" sentiments I'm seeing all over the blogs. Sadly, in my part of the woods, handmade does not go down all that well :(

I'm not too sad because I can only do (very limited) computer and paper crafts. But wait! Do photo crafts count? I am doing some things with our Newtown photo shoot.


5. I've realised that I need to buck up and get organised for Christmas. I haven't even made a Christmas card list, let alone started writing them all out. Usually by this time of year my cards are nearly all written out as I start posting the overseas cards. Of course that means aside from the 5 groupons I've bought for the mini photo books (really mini - soft cover), I've done nothing.

I'm not planning to get the kids anything (are you horrified?!) because there are birthday things we bought for them that we STILL have not given to them to play with. My MIL asked last weekend, "where are those backpacks SIL bought for the kids?" I said, "oh I haven't even taken them out yet - they already have two each". Silence...

By the end of this month I need to be done with my last book changes... hopefully that will happen but I'm finally SUPER excited. I have a title I'm happy with and that I think represents me well and I can't wait to see my book on the Kindle. Remember you need to all buy a copy if you're remotely interested in organising :)

So how's your week been?


Where's your crafty quotient at the moment? For November, mine is a 2!!!

Washi tape notebooks

 

One of my goals for October was to make two washi tape crafts.

I did 3 - 1 was a flop (tried to washi tape an old jam jar that I use to store tea bags - it was just okay and didn't inspire me in the least.

Then I did these washi tape binder clips which turned out really cute and I'm kind of addicted now. So if you come near me with a plain black binder clip, beware. I'll be washi taping it :)

So then I wanted a 3rd craft to have 2 successes.

Yes, I'm crazy.

Over two evenings I quickly did these washi tape notebooks.

They are super easy.

• Decide which colours of washi tape you'd like to co-ordinate and in which order. 
• The planning part for me is the most boring but I found when I started messing up the first one that it pays to plan. Who knew it works even with crafts?! 
• Thankfully, washi tape is so forgiving as you can pull off the same piece and re-apply it elsewhere. 
• These were jazzed up just a little more but I don't have pics of the final versions with the punched circle tags 

I am VERY happy with how these turned out.

What do you think?

P.S don't forget to link up to the Virtual Craft Day - we only have two other contributors besides all my stuff :)

Computer crafting and our virtual craft day link-up

Oh dear, I forgot my camera cord at home so I can't post all my washi tape crafts but I do have these two computer crafts available.

So remember that Friday afternoon when I made our family rules and this virtual craft day button?

Well, I was somewhat inspired so I've been playing a little bit.

Here is a draft header for dear Julia... (I know the sizing isn't right, hence the word DRAFT :))

and here is a family rules printable I did for "my friend with the twins". I asked her what she says to the girls all the time and she sent back an email so quickly I was transported back to many, many conversations we'd had on the phone where she interrupts and keeps saying, "stop biting your sister".

I had a jpeg downloaded (I can't remember where but it was for free - just found it, I'm a googling genius) - the idea is you put this in a frame and write on the frame with an erasable marker.

Here is the free downloads from Eighteen25.

I used Picasa and added this. It could have been more complicated in Picnik but looks just fine, I think.

If you want one, write out your family rules and I'll do them for the first THREE people who send their rules to me. I have no computer skills so I can't change colours or anything - font I can change :)

So there's my first link-up.

I will do the washi crafts later (or tomorrow) and I want to also show you all the other gifts I wrapped, just for some pretty things :)

Link up ANYthing you made - anything. Did you make something cute in the kitchen, on your computer, etc?

Link up.

P.S. I'm also desperate to write a "real" post :)

Creating and ... a challenge to 5 of you

So I'm happily putzing around in my study (thanks for the word, Heather) and I happen to glance at my computer.

10:30!

Seriously, where has the time gone today?

Then again, this is what I've been up to:

1. Took Kendra shopping with me to get the last of the Santa's Shoebox items. We both had TONS of fun and I got not one but two parenting compliments from a fellow shopper and a person working there. Why? Because I was all 1, 2, 3ing in the store. I didn't even get to 2 and she was back in line. D says he would have died a silent death if he had to discipline in public. I said, "that's why you've got me, Baby. I have no shame" :)

2. While the kids napped, I had SO MUCH fun assembling the shoeboxes. My colleague gave me a fantastic idea. She said she didn't feel like wrapping a shoebox so she bought pretty boxes which are more durable and will be nice keepsakes for the girls (she chose teenage girls). So I looked through my stash of organising things and found 3 bright boxes which I've now used. I even got a chance to do some more washi tape therapy on one of them. If these two year olds are anything like my kids, they would just rip the tape off so I wasn't about to waste my time on the other boxes.

3. Connor spiked a bit of a fever this afternoon so stayed home with me while D and Kendra went grocery shopping. This boy is very sweet when he's a bit under the weather - still wants to be around me (quality time child) even if only to lie on the couch while I tidy up. We had a wonderful time eating, reading, playing on my bed, so much so that the minute I heard D come through the front door with Kendra, I fell asleep for one glorious hour.

4. We bathed (he'd fed the kids) them, put them to bed and I had a sudden burst of energy so I cooked TWO meals from my newly-revised recipes to try file. We had one for supper which is a keeper, except I used maize pasta instead of wheat pasta and it wasn't as good, but I taste the potential :)

Tomorrow I'm baking - I have apple bars (new recipe) pinned and I think I'm going to do some pumpkin muffins (old recipe) too.

5. And then I came to the study to get it tidied up but I got sidetracked googling fish paste because of a comment on my FB status. Do you eat fish paste (Peck's Anchovette)?

6. I've also made 4 washi tape notebooks (I'll share pics on Thursday 27th when we have our virtual craft day) and a 5th is calling my name. The thing with these things is once I start, I can't stop.

So I was thinking...

I'm going to challenge five of you to something.

I'm going to send you something in the mail - it will be the same stuff to everyone - and I want you to make something with the something I'll send (nice and vague!).

And then if you want, you can do the same to 5 of your readers, or back to me (make it easy!!!!)

Trust me - this will be small (I'll have to think because I want it to fit in a normal envelope so it whizzes across the kilometres quickly). It will also be EASY-PEASY :) but I just thought it will be nice to see different interpretations from all of us different people. Or maybe I'm just curious?


So MandyE, Mandy, Jess, Andrea and Shayne.... are you game?

(totally random - but if you don't want in, comment and I'll pick someone else from the comments :))


Otherwise, how was your Saturday?


Did you make something yummy to eat? Share in the comments.