Tag Archives: gift

Baby Gift

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Lord, it’s been hard to get motivated to do anything in these days of quarantine. Especially cleaning house and writing on my blog. But I have made time for crapsmanship, and fortunately, I have a lot of random craft supplies and access to Amazon shopping. We have some friends with a baby girl due in May, and this baby gift is my latest attempt at something pretty.

The picture above is my inspiration, so I ordered a BIG bag of buttons from Amazon.

Ella’s nursery is being decorated in shades of eggplant, purple, and yellow, so I began with this background while I waited for the buttons to arrive. The background is made with acrylic paints and stencils on a 9″ x 12″ sheet of mixed media paper.

Once I had the buttons, I did a mock-up with random colors of purple buttons. Not quite crapsmanship, but I wasn’t happy with the colors. The background was too bright, and some of the buttons didn’t really show up. So back to the drawing board — literally. I darkened up the background with some black and purple Distress Inks, and then I selected the lightest lavender buttons for the E. I used painters tape to make temporary lines to follow as I glued the buttons to the background.

Here’s my finished letter, but a problem lingers. I can’t get to the store to select a mat and frame, so the gift remains unfinished. Let’s hope this damned coronavirus is eradicated by May. Ella needs this present!!!

 

 

Paper-Making Fail!

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I had such a good idea! I thought it would be fun to make seeded paper — a chunk of papier-mache-ish wad with seeds inside that can be planted — to go inside my Valentines Day cards. After reading about making seeded paper from the blog Kitchen Counter Chronicle (see https://www.kitchencounterchronicle.com/how-to-make-seed-bombs-for-earth-day/), I thought it would be an easy adaptation to go from layering paper in muffin tins, as described in the blog, to making flatter paper that I could cut into hearts and insert into cards. CRAP ALERT: Boy, was I wrong. Read the rest of this entry

Cork Monogram

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I have a cork-monogrammed R on top of my refrigerator, and I always get compliments on it. When my friend Jackie K. admired it, I knew I had to make one for her. Cork projects aren’t difficult to do — after all, who minds collecting corks?! — but certain materials make the job easier. Read the rest of this entry

HaHa Cookies & Gift Label

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I am extremely fortunate to have a group of eight of us who have known each other at least since high school. (Carol and I just celebrated our 60th year of friendship; we’ve known each other since kindergarten!) We call ourselves the HaHa’s because we laugh so much when we’re together. This weekend, we had our annual holiday cookie exchange. The event has evolved over the years — we now bring frozen dough so we can each bake what we want when we want. In addition to our dough exchange and lots of laughter, we might have stuffed ourselves with good food and wine. I’m not confessing to anything! Read the rest of this entry