Craft Girl Problem # 12 : Hanging onto a craft idea without making it for no reason at all

Hi all! It's Val here. Wow I cannot believe how long it has been since I have put up a post. Bestie has been the only one keeping up the post.

Well I'm back! For how long?? ummm... one thing at a time ok?

Do you even have a vision, an idea in your head and you are just WAITING for the right occasion?
Well this lovely DIAPER CAKE (yessssum you read right, there are diapers under all that loveliness) has been brewing in this busy brain of mine for....3 or 4 years now. I have just been waiting for the right "themed" occasion. Waiting and waiting. Unlike the bestie who was just beside herself and admitted that if the idea was in the other brain, she probably made it for no damn reason. lol. And that is why I love her crazy ass so much.
When my cousins told me they were throwing a baby shower for their sister and that spring was the theme, I think I repsonded even before I confirmed if I was invited, that I was going to make a diaper cake.

I DID NOT WANT TO GIVE THIS AWAY! Best of part of this diaper cake, to be honest, it was (well in my books, and my books are all labelled CRAZY LEVEL 1, CRAZY LEVEL 2, CRAZY LEVEL 3, and so on. I think you get the picture.) quite easy despite how elegant it looks.

I basically started with a typical three tiered diaper cake. I added another tier using a MCD's coffee cup that I turned upside down, and the very top tier, my "cake topper" is actually an empty roll of toilet paper that I just covered with ribbon and the slotted the tulips in.


All the flowers were purchased from my local dollar store. I just pulled off the buds and stuck them in! Easy Peasy! I had to trim a few flowers here and there with my wire cutters.
NOTE: if you are cutting any of these flowers to fit nicely inside the cake, don't forget to close the end with either floral tape or electrical tape. You don't want any small pieces falling into the diapers




YOU CAN NOW PIN IT! Thanks to our tech department (aka Chanthou) you can now pin any of our projects to your board! If you don't know what pin and board mean, you need to get with the program. I am also not speaking about an actual cork board and push pin by the way ;)

 

* please excuse the spoon in the picture, we were busy tasting baby food and sounding like fools trying to figure them all out 

Sending you fists pumps, 

Velarie

Problem #11: Hand cramps!

I absolutely love the end results here, but, hand drawing personalized names and pirate related images on loot bags for Baby #1's birthday party was painful! My hand gave in after the third bag, probably because I haven't drawn anything since high school, or was that middle school?? Good lawd, its been a while! Surprised even myself the images remotely resembled skulls, parrots, and treasure paths (well hopefully anyways). Still this didn't stop me from doing 10 more bags, nope, because you all know how much I love DIY vs getting these printed on. These bags were very easy and honestly anyone can do them. 

I started off by searching for fonts I liked and saved them to my computer. Than created a mock-up of what I wanted the front of the bag to look like. I could have gone a step further by adding pirate images but I already had images I wanted to copy from his birthday invitation.

After many attempts of trying to eye ball the font from my computer screen onto the loot bag using a chalk marker, I realized, heck, I can print my mock up out. Than trace over the fonts using a pencil on to my loot bag to get an impression. After that I went over the impression using the chalk marker. Made my life much easier! Everything was centred and speeded up the process.   

Next, I grabbed the invitation to draw pirate images so that everything would coordinate. There was no easy way of getting the images to look exact. Total eye balling here. Im sure the easier way to do this, is to find the exact images online and put them on my mock up and trace again. Honestly tho, wheres the fun in that?! Random drawings look much better and made every bag unique!

After completing the fonts and images on all bags, I created a chalkboard affect by inking up white ink with a sponge and randomly rubbing it around the font and near the edge of the bag (Sorry I totally forgot to take a picture of that step). And there you have it. Cheap, easy, hand drawn, chalk board, loot bags. There is no end to what you can create by doing this. Make personalized Christmas and birthday bags (that way you save on making a card!! Ha! Lets not fool ourselves, I would still make the card, craft girl problems!) 

Supplies Used:

Blank paper gift bags

Computer

Printing paper

Pencil

Chalk marker

White craft ink pad

Sponge

Hope you found this project inspiring!   

xoxo,

Chanthou 

Problem #10: Crafting in the dark!

Looking at this photo brings back memories! Silly memories! lol! 

 We recently celebrated Velarie's dirty thirty! And by recent I mean almost a month ago. 

If you know Vel, she don't need no bottle popping, club hopping, or big spectacle to celebrate! We spent the day with Vel's sister (Mel), our baby girls, had lunch at a local diner, munched on some homemade chocolate cupcakes, and had much needed quality time with each other.

Y'all know me...I must craft something for Vel's birthday!! No excuses, no doubt about it...its just that itch we have to craft for every occasion. Of course I also left it to the last minute (the night before) to make the cupcake toppers because I thought easy peasy. 

Somehow the universe likes to tell our kids to misbehave the times we need to ourselves, or to run out of supplies, or not to have the proper supplies when we need them! 

I started at 9pm thinking once baby #2 is down for the night, I can get this done in an hour! Ah nope! I should also mention baby #2's room is my craft room. Instead of grabbing all my supplies and heading downstairs to craft I decided why not just stay and turn on the little lamp. Have "some me time". So, there I'am, sitting in the dark, starting the process of these paper flowers and trying not to make a sound since Baby #2 is literally in arms reach.

These paper flowers start off as a circles. Than cut in inward spirals to the center of the circle. I honestly thought, ok grab my circle die, quick and easy perfect sized circles. If only I had an inventory list or something to tell me I had a circle die. I didn't have it.  Fantastic! Hand cutting it is. I trimmed my double sided designer paper to 6x6 inches and free handed a circle. 

At 10ish, I finally got into the groove of how I wanted these paper flowers. Test run you can call it. Lawd, not even one completed paper flower yet. Than baby #2 decides to wake up crying for more milk which is unusual. When she is down for the night, she stays down till the wee hours in the night. 

At this point I was on a roll with the paper flowers, since I was bascially practicing making them up to this point. I decided to grab her and feed her in my crafting chair in the dark. Let me tell you, my crafting chair is a standard chair, no glider! How ridiculously uncomfortable...30 mins later, back down she goes. Than I hear stomping outside my door... "MOMMMMMY!!" Baby #1 of course wanting me for no damn reason! At this point, I aint having this. I yell at hubby to grab him and get him to bed! lol! C'mon I gotta get these flowers done for my bee, because you know... She'll magically know how much silliness I went through to make these! P.s Bee is our nicknames for each other. 

Come 11pm, still sitting in the dark... 3 flowers completed! I know. So damn long just for these flowers which look super easy to make?! The thing about these flowers is getting the sizing right. Loosening up the rolls just right so it blooms like a flower, than glueing it down while keeping its proper size. Plus stupidness...I do a lot of staring at the things I make. Argh Perfectionist. I can't just be happy with it. 

After the fourth flower I ran out of glue. Just my damn luck. I restock everything else but no damn hot glue sticks!! Digging through all my supplies, the closest thing I have is TOMBO Multi purpose glue. So instead of easy hot glue, I have this messy white glue.  

Finally, midnight, 3 damn hours later, in the dark, cutting, rolling, and glueing paper flowers as toppers for Mel's homemake cupcakes, all for my bee!  

xoxo,

Chanthou  

Problem #9: Measure once. Cut twice.

Let's be honest no matter how hard we DIY crafters try, we waste a lot of supplies. We are indecisive. Colour shades and layouts just wont do until we make two, three, even four of the same thing so we can decide later which one we like better. Cutting instructions, well any instructions and I don't get along. Ask Velarie, actually, don't ask her. She makes fun of me all the time when we craft together. I tell Velarie the instructions are just wrong. She gives me cut eye, and tells me to read the instructions again, and there goes two or three sheets of card stocks! 

This past weekend was my friend Alicia's bridal shower. Of course with my last two posts, I have to add my personal touch to her gifts. I was literally finishing her gifts the hour before I had to leave for her shower. Why I do that to myself, I do not know. Well, I do know. And so do you! Make an impression! Even the small ones go a long way :)   

The vision: A jar full of marriage advise for times when Alicia may feel the need to tear her future hubby a new one (ha I joke Vijay!) 

Me being married 2 years am no marriage expert so I thought maybe the ladies attending the shower could write down their own advise and throw it in the jar (kinda like the ones you find in a fortune cookie).

Now don't be fooled. This simple jar wasted a lot of supplies because I couldn't make up my mind.  

1) Alicia & Vijay are having a destination wedding. I had a tropical paper belly band wrapped around the jar. But since its a jar, pattern paper didn't wrap nicely around it. Trash it went.

2) The paper flower on the lid was originally made from gift tissue. However I had super glued too much to the lid and it was a total fail. I didn't like the texture once it was glued. It wasn't the look I was going for at all. Teared it off and scrap bin it went.  

3) I had printed "Marriage Tips" and "Marriage advise" to centre on the jar but once I went through my sticker stash I found some love quotes which obviously looked better than something which was quickly printed. Trash it went. 

4) The purple button holding the ribbon wrapped around the jar was orginally another ribbon tied into a bow. Once I cut and tied that ribbon I thought wait, its going to over power my centre doily. Scrap bin it went. 

So after an hour of playing and tossing supplies back and forth, I was finally happy with the jar. Ya just have to make do with whatever time you have. 

Here are four easy steps I used to make the pretty paper flower for the lid. 

This is a tutorial I used by Stampin' Up!

Step 1: Punch five flowers from card stock. 

Step 2: Poke a hole in the centre of each flower for the brad which will hold the flowers together. 

You can skip this if you are using glue.  

Step 3: Spritz the flowers with water. This is important for getting the right texture. 

Step 4: Layer the five flowers, attach a brad or glue, and scrunch up the flowers. 

Let flower dry, and viola! 

xoxo,

Chanthou

Craft Girl Problem #8 : Curse the need to make a gift

I can't believe its been months since my last project... and how funny my last project was a gift for hubby and oh look... another gift for him! Why oh why can't I just be happy with buying him something. It would be so much easier buying him a couple of beers or perhaps something for his bike but no I refuse! I always have that craft itch that needs to be scratched. 

Off to my local craft store I went and grabbed these simple and affordable items (using my coupon app of course). Total spent on father's day gift = approx $10. A life time of our babies foot and hand print = Priceless!...well until it gets washed out. 

My primary goal in creating this shirt was to keep it as neat as possible. I wanted the babies foot and hand print to be defined. Yes, yes, it would have added more character seeing the random messy spots of fabric paint on the shirt but that's a whole other set of problems I have... everything has to be perfect and in its place! 

Tip: Don't forget to have something like a piece of card board inside the t-shirt before you start painting because the paint will go through the shirt.

To help cover up the little spots of paint I did get on the shirt, I stamped hearts over the spots and ta daaa... like the spots were never even there :) 

Let the shirt dry flat for 4 hours before writing your message. 

To be honest I thought it was going to be easy peasy writing on a t-shirt with a marker. Heck no! The shirt kept moving or I thought about stretching out the shirt and pinning it down. Nope. Nothing worked besides letting the shirt be and being extra careful holding it and trying to write. It adds my personal touch to the shirt :) plus I did not want to go through the trouble of getting/buying iron on letters/saying.

Hope this inspires you to create a gift vs buying one. 

Hubby loves the shirt and yes I showed and gave it to him before Father's day. Another set of problems I have, I think its called gift giving excitability, ha! 

xoxo

Chanthou 

Craft Girl Problem #7 : Trying to be all artsy fartsy

I have been slowly hoarding, opps I mean, collecting some new mediums to craft with. In the states anyways, all the rage is in these colour sprays and adding paints and so on.

I love love love the look, so artistic, so free hand, and just soooo purdy!

So after a night (well actually a whole week's worth) of watching videos on these techniques, I finally decided to get down and dirty and give these sprays a try. Now whenever I use the term "Down and dirty" I never really mean it in a like, Honeslty get paint all over yourself, your kids, your table and the damn remote controller!

How is it, I ended up with spray all over those items and more??! And look at my craft mat and hands!

And that was actually after I washed my hands a few times. How come those ladies on their videos make it look so easy and neat??!!!

I must be doing something wrong!! 

Anyhoos, I'll figure it out, here is the out come of my attempted artsy fartsy cards.

Craft Girl problem #6 : Gotta beat the timer!

I am try crafting up as many thank you cards as my little hands can make for my cousin to give out.

I want to make anywhere from 75/125 cards in total, so I have to keep the concept, simple, but of course still gorgues.

On this particular day I decided to set a timer for one hour to see how much I can get done in an hour (I promised the kids a trip to the park)

Here are the supplies I had on hand:

I wanted to keep it simple simple and here is my end result:

I am really really happy with the results, I am hoping to make another batch of these cards before I move in to another design. I hope you like!

Craft Girl Problem # 5 : Look what I made! No you cannot touch! I said LOOK silly! dont touch ...

Well, I do not know about you gals out there, but I am very very guitly of making tons of mini albums, layouts, photo books, which after I show them off to my friends and family, are stored away where just about no one, can see (ahem by that I also mean touch) any of these hand made goodies. You wouldn't know (kids and Mike included) that I have all these wonderful albums to look and read unless I actually pulled them out and said here, have a lookie!

Sooo, I reluctantly organized all of my minis, albums and all that stuff and put them in ONE place so that others (including my kids who don't understand what turning the page softly means!) can also enjoying looking back at our fun times and memories which make up our crazy family.

Anyhoos, just a reminders that of you are going to make albums and scrapbooks to cherish, you may as well share them with the people you are actually scrapping about... I guess.

All joking aside, here is how I rearranged it so that others, (including the kids) can sit down and look at our albums whenever they want. Although I did keep the large 12x12 ones at top, we'll just have to take them down whenver they want to look at them. Because, if they were to accidentally damage those album or the countless pages of designer papers and embellisments, I may have to trade them in for new supplies to re do those albums. opps..did I say that out loud? yea...that thought was to stay in my head. I would NEVER trade my kids for scrapbook supplies...  :)
 

Craft Girl Problem #4 - Mothers with a new born should rest

...Unless you have craft girl problems and a wedding anniversary! 

On March 1st we welcomed our second little one so I should be catching up on my sleep when the bebe sleeps... right? Nope! I can't let lack of sleep stop me from making hubby his gift. Plus the more and more I thought about this project, the more sleep I was losing over it! lol! and Googling ideas while nursing at 3 in the morning doesn't help. At this stage with the bebe I don't have the luxury to run out and buy anything for him either. Honestly I wouldn't even know what to buy as an anniversary.

Today I celebrate 2 blissful years of marriage. I wanted to make hubby something we could hang on our wall because we lack wall eye candy. Since I'm running on limited fuel I knew I had to make something sweet and simple. But don't be fooled by the simple part. I spent hours texting with Velarie about colours, placement, and embellishments. So a big tip: Don't glue anything down until you are happy with the project layout.

Here is what I used to make this memory photo display:

I added some throw back pictures of hubby and I on our camping trip to Bruce Peninsula National Park way back in 2011 and Sn@p designer paper. 

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my DIY anniversary gift. I hope you're feeling inspired to make your next gift because even the simple DIY gifts leave big impressions! 

Xoxo, 

Chanthou 

Craft Girl problem #3: Crafting in stealth mode

Hubby was going to be the big 3.0.this year. I really wanted to make him something sentimental and very special, and of course hand made. 

As much as I craft, I very rarely make things for him believe it or not. So in comes the idea of a simple mini book with 30 reasons why we (kids and I) love him so much.

Now here is where the problem comes in. Usually I can dig off to the studio and craft away...(very peacefully might I add), however, due to my tight work and social calender, the weeks leading up to his birthday didn't allow me any time to head over to the studio, soooo I had no choice but to work on this  mini album at home...with Mike constantly home with me.

When I first started dabbling in papercrafting, he really showed no interest. But as the years past, he has grown to understand my love for the crafts, and likes to give me feedbad and I put as I work on a project.

However, this was the ONE project that I didn't need him "checking" in on!! The man just kept peeking his head up in my personal craft space to see how I was doing. So I had to keep a back up project near by (which actually is a project half done from like last year that I have yet to finish...hey!! Don't be giving me no awkward eye! I know you have those kind of projects too!) 

In the end, I was able to do this project in stealth mode and he didn't suspect a thing.

I've now aquired the skill of ninja crafting :)

                                      

For this mini album I usually love to embellish and make some layouts and so on, but when you are crafting in ninja style, you gotta be quick and swift! So I just kept it very it simple.

Don't forget to get the kiddos involved!

Remember your book doesn't always have to close flat. I added some 3d elements like the straws, and also added a brad to this pretend door to act as a knob.

I also chose to make this book, sentimental, but funny so he could really smile and laugh whenever he reaches for this book.

For example, behind is door I basically wrote : I love that you are a gentleman and you always hold the door not only for me, but for other ladies in public. (Even if those bitches can't say thanks! I'm grateful for that!)

There are definely more swear words in this book, and totally done on purpose. I wanted to be real,intimate, and also funny. If you know my hubby, f bombs are just part of his vocabulary, and you can't just go to your local hallmark and find a card with f bombs all over the place.

I also dabbled in using acrylic paints. Here is my attempt using acrylic paint on a piece of acrylic board. Ran into a small craft girl problem, but I'll save that for another post.

Anyways, I hope that enjoyed having a peek into Mike's album. If you haven't made anything for a loved one, i suggest you try. Mike and I have known each other for 15 years plus, and he was really touched by this gift, I've never seen an ear to ear grin from any gifts given to him in the past. 

Give it a try, it doesn't have to be fancy, oh and I am here for you if you need any tops on how to master ninja crafting :)

Craft Girl Problem # 2: trying to keep your project a secret from your best friend

Bestie and I talk about, 7/15 times a day. I know, we have problems, all kinds. Craft girl problems, shopoholic problems, fat girl problems,can't make up our mind problems, so many too count! Well, since we speak so much, it was so hard to keep this project a secret.

We had a baby shower luncheon last week Sunday and I wanted to create something new and cute as a centre piece. Diaper cakes, she has seen and even assisted in all the ones I made in the past, so I had to do something new.
Thanks to Pinterest and Google, I found many different baby bouquets using washcloths, burp cloths and onesies. It was so so DIFFICULT not to share my process with her! We usually ask each other 5 thousand plus questions with every project we start.
Throughout the process all I wanted to do was show her pictures, ask her what she thought of this colour and that flower. I must admit, I did tease her non stop on how cute my secret project was...hehe.

Here are the supplies I used: 

You will need a pack of wash cloths, elastic bands, dowels, faux flowers with leaves, floral tape, and either sand paper or a nail file.

here is a mini tutorial on the baby wash cloth bouquet

1. Fold the burp cloth in half to create a triangle, and fold over once more.
2. Put the dowel on one end and roll up, tightly as first and then loosely as you go along.

3. Wrap an elastic band around the wash cloth.

4. Flip up that little tail and fold back down slightly or create a petal.

5. Take apart the faux flower to get the leaves out.

6. Using the floral tape, start wrapping a little of the dowel near the top of the rose, insert the leaves, and re wrap again using floral tape.

My dowel were pretty thin so I was able to cut and snap off the dowels using a knife and cutting board. I wanted the flowers to be all different lengths, that's what the nail file was for, I sanded down each dowel that I cut. The last thing I want to do is give her a small cut when she is taking apart the bouquet.

Add some more faux flowers, find a pretty jar or vase and...

Craft Girl Problem #1 - Ain't no one got time to craft!

Especially if you work full time, try to be super mom to your kids, have a husband to attend too and/or be pregnant. That’s why you’ll find me in my craft room in the wee hours of the night. My pregnant self can't sleep anyways, might as well create something from our long 'To do list' or shall I say 'Want to do' list.

When your crafting at midnight, your creative juices aren’t flowing. Here comes ‘Me and My Big Ideas’ aka ‘Mambi’ to the rescue aka my new obsession. I got carried away at Michael's using their 50% off coupon on these babies (broke girl problems).

Supplies used to make Mike's 30th birthday card

Tada! The finished card...

Simple, handmade, and fast. Only problem is...how will I store all these Mambi cards? Ahh next craft girl problem!

xoxo 

Chanthou