Monday, July 30, 2012

Teacher Appreciation Idea


Welcome Creative Crafters!

I scoured the web (Are they even calling it that any more?) for teacher appreciation ideas.  There a lot of good ones out there, but nothing I wanted to do personally.  So, as usual, I made up my own thing.  I have boys that are not exactly the easiest of children and I'm sure their teachers have to put forth an extra effort on them.  So, I wanted to do something a little special.  I'm fortunate enough to have my oldest child attend a small, neighborhood school.  I made a plate full of cookies for all of the teachers in his school.  I put them in the teachers lounge for all to enjoy.  Chocolate chip cookies are kind of a delicacy, here in Belgium.  Especially, home made ones, and I made his teacher one of those french fry boxes with her own, extra large cookies in it.  Below, is the tag I used on my delivery basket.  (Up-cycled clothing tag)











 My recipe is that of Better Homes and Gardens.
Too bad the day I chose to bake was one of summer's hottest.  Man, my kitchen was hot!
The chocolate actually started to melt in the car on the way to both schools.  I  never saw that coming.

Awe!  I dropped one of the cookies.  I guess I'll have to just throw it away.  As if?! Hehehe...
These lucky teachers actually received cookies that were still a little warm.


Here are the french fry boxes.  The template can be found on www.tipjunkie.com.  My staple for creative inspiration.  As you can see, I used some very old scrapbooking paper that has been sitting around for over a decade.  The embellishments definitely made a difference.  Bright and fun and calm and cool.  Excellent for Elementary Ed.

My youngest son has Autism.  He goes to a special school where he has at least 6 different, specialty teachers.  That's a lot of gifts to make! That's also why I chose something like this.

A basket full of goodies for some well deserving teachers.  I made two plates full with about 50 cookies on each plate and then the super large cookies for 8 teachers.  It took me all morning to bake the cookies and make the boxes and I probably spent around $10.  Not bad for the buck, eh?!


Tuesday, July 24, 2012

A Zoo-per Mini Album

Welcome Savvy Scrappers!

I purchased this Bo Bunny shaped book a little while ago because I just had to have it.  It's perfect for my numerous zoo trip pictures.  I actually had to add a few inserts so that I could put a few more pictures in it.  I thought the colors were really nice, natural, soft.  So I kept with that feel when I chose my embellishments.


I made, what I thought was a mistake throughout the book.  Gluing everything right side up when I thought it was suppose to be upside down.  However, when you stand the book up and flip the pages, it all comes out great.  Wheew!


Burlap is great for a natural appeal and also a fantastic way to recycle an old potato bag.  Many of the embellishments are from Karen Foster.  They matched perfectly.


I have to toot my own horn a little when it comes to the flowers above. Hehehe...  I was trying to use paper flowers and fabric flowers, but none of it looked right.  It seemed out of balance.  Then I started toying with this natural string and there they were!  I used a 3D Dot to keep it all together.  It was very easy to construct.


This page was done in a snap.  The only thing I did was add the photos, dark brown ribbon, Safari sign, giraffe patterned circles and zebra.  Done!


I have to admit, that I found the shaped pages really tricky to work with.  There is not a lot of space, but it forces you to think more creatively.  I chose gold as an accent color to add pop and warmth.  This page is still growing on me.


My favorite part about this page are the colors.  Green, black and white.  I never thought of that combination, but it really works here.


Another challenging shape to work with.  If I had just the right giraffe picture, there may have been no challenge what so ever. Hehehe...


Circles are perfect when space is of the essence.  I still can't believe I got 4 pictures on this very small page. 


Ah, back to square!  Now, I can go crazy again.  Well, this is not so crazy a page, but more simple.  I think this elephant must have modeled for Karen Foster.  Don't you? Hehehe...


This hippo page was so cute, I didn't want to cover it.  It was also a more difficult page to layout.  If I had some smaller pictures it may have been better.  How do you like those 3D eyes?  Just a little more fun added to an already great book.


1,2,3 and finished!  A little backing on part of the picture help make it stand out without taking up all of that precious space.  Not a lot of room for embellishments.  So, I went tall and skinny and small and round for balance.


Above is one of my own pages.  I traced around the cover of the book and added a little more color around the edges.  Keeping with the biological feel with natural twine and grass like, fun fibers.

The page below says it all, A Good Time.  Belleware was a beautiful park/zoo.  Liam cried for 30 minutes at the top of his lungs, on the way home.  "Ik wil niet naar huis!  Ik wil niet naar huis!  Ik wil niet naar huis!" Hehehe...In a flash, he was a sleep and then he woke up, he continued the shouting, "Ik wil niet naar huis!" Hehehe... (I don't want to go home.)

I made a glittered edge and glittered around the holes for some much needed bling.  What appears to be grass is actually part of a picture of a tree that I cut out with small scissors and turned upside down.  It now serves as a pocket for my very large mascot shaped tag with more fun fibers.

That's a wrap for today's blog.  I hope you all have a great week and may you create something beautiful if not with paper then perhaps with words.  Tah!


Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Digitize Those Backyard BBQ Moments




Summer is here my super scrappers!  The smell of BBQ is making me drool.  So, is this awesome collection by A-Manda Creation.  This is an enormous collection that I bought from the Digital Scrapbooking Studio.  I could not believe all of the goodies that came with this kit.  I've been using it like crazy, all across my scrappy endeavors.  I can't take all of the credit for some of the clusters you will find here, because they came in the kit.  They are really amazing and also an excellent source of ideas for my own clustering projects.  This first page is by far, my favorite page.  It might even be once of my favorite digital pages over all.  I feel almost guilty telling you that it took me 20 minutes to make this.



This whole white space thing is a real catcher.  I love it and hate it. Hehehe....  Sometimes it can look just perfect and other times...Well, it just feels like there is something missing.  I would use awesome photographs if I were going to leave a lot of white space of have kick'n embellishments, like the ones in this kit.


I'm not sure if it's from the time I spent as an editor of a newspaper, but white space just really jumps out at me.  I'm growing to like it more and more, but it was tough in the beginning.  I plan on using this technique more and perfecting it.








These bright colors are screaming summer fun.  The variety is almost unfathomable.  It just keeps going and going.  Including alphabets, titles, cluster frames, word art, quick pages, design papers, a brag book and probably hundreds of embellishments....all I did below was insert a background and the pictures.  Doesn't get much easier than that, does it?!

Above are 2 "Quick Layouts".  I actually created these myself with the collection.  My intension was to enter it in a contest, but when I found that one would not be able to insert pictures behind the frames, I had to give it up.  At least for now.  I tried and tried and researched until I found that with Powerpoint, you cannot cut out spaces.  What a bummer!  It has definitely encouraged me to look into other software programs.  I have looked into 2.  One being an Apple/McIntosh program that did not leave room for very much creativity and the other, Photoshop, which apparently one needs to attend a semester long class just to learn how to get a picture started! Hehehe...  Wow!  I toyed and toyed and got nothing, nada, zip!  So, I've heard of a few other programs that I'll look into and of course, I'll share my findings with you.

 Above and below are two different kinds of layouts.  They were made specifically for my Facebook Page, The-Cherry-On-Top.  This is one new trend that I am totally into.  It's kind of surprising because I usually find it a lot more challenging to make something fantastic when there is a limited amount of space.  Shaped books can totally make me crazy.  Maybe it's because I always try to get too many pictures on one page?



 It's a wrap!  Another blog to add to the archives.  I hope you enjoyed it.  Come back again or visit me on FB at:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Cherry-On-Top/322708647766995.  You can find this collection at:http://www.amandacreation.com and www.digitalscrapbookingstudio.com.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Just Be...



Welcome!

I get a giggle out of the little cartooned captions that are going around Facebook lately.  I can relate to a lot of them and often laugh out loud out a good few, too.  Those helped inspire this poster I made.  

As we grow older, we learn through our life experiences.  One very important lesson I learned a little late was just be yourself no matter who scoffs at you.  My mother tried to warn me that these people are, "just jealous"or perhaps envious.  I suppose, back then I didn't have enough confidence in myself to believe it.

When I look back at all the opportunities I turned down because I had little trust in the actual good that some people attempted and so little faith in myself, it saddens me to a degree, but also strengthens me now.  Fortifying a belief that one must do what one must do even it is a bit odd, different, special or above ordinary.  People out there are jealous of those who aspire to their dreams.  Envy should not make one put another down only to try to lift themselves.  Envy should encourage a person to make their own dreams come true.

I also learned that no matter how much we hold back.  How much we shake our heads in agreement although we do not. It rarely benefits us and often does not even improve relations anyway.  We feel like we are holding back so that people will not look at us funny or judge us, but won't these kinds of people find something anyway even when we are trying to satisfy them?

They might even be our family or people we consider to be our good friends.  If they really are that, then we should not change what we believe or do things that make us uncomfortable for their benefit.

Just be...yourself.



Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Up -Cycled Mirrored Frame


Howdy Happy Scrappers!

This project is an absolute synch.  From start to finish you should get this baby done in an hour or less.  It is another up-cycled project and it is more than possible that you have some kind of frame or mirrored frame like this one here.  I almost took a trip to the thrift store to see if I could find something there, when a friend of mine called and asked if I would help her take some things there.  She let me look through her stuff and I ended up keeping half of it! Ha!  Ya gotta love when that happens.  She had several of these framed mirrors.  It may be from Ikea.  It doesn't have to be just like this one.  As long as it is fairly flat, you're good to go.



I didn't even paint over the entire frame because I was just going to cover it up with paper anyway.  I did use a bit of craft paint to paint around the edges of the frame and the part of the frame by the mirror because those parts would show.  This kind of paint dried really fast and I was on my way to papering in no time.

How fantastic is this paper?!  I had it for a little while, waiting for just the right project to show it off.  I love retro advertising.  Especially, when it deals with worldly travel.  Mmmm...travel....

Let me tell you how I eye balled this one.  It saves a ton of time.  I just laid the piece of paper over the frame and marked the paper with a pencil where the frame ended after it was lined up to just the place I wanted it to stop on the frame.  So imagine it being 1/3 covered by your desired paper.  I didn't measure anything.  After I cut the paper to fit over the frame, I lined it up as perfectly as possible by simply setting it on the frame exactly where I wanted and ever so gently, pressed along the frame of the mirror on the three sides where it still needed cutting.  When you remove the paper and turn it over, you will see a faint line where you just pushed and then you cut on those lines.  It's so easy.  Of course, you cane measure it all up if you don't trust this method.

Then you use Mod Podge or something like it to glue down your design paper.


Measure up the next section of the frame like I explained above, glue and set. (This one is from Destinations collection from Simple Stories.)

The ribbon isn't necessary, but I think it gives the project some extra glam and it softens it up.  I couldn't choose what ribbon I wanted to use so I used all three!  All of it being from gifts I received.  (I know, I keep everything!)  Just simply tie it around the frame placing the knot just above the top cut out of the frame or mirror.


Choose some appropriate, coordinating embellishments like these below.  I had to play with them for a while before I figured out exactly where I wanted them.  (That is my favorite part of project making, but it often takes the longest.)  I keep thinking, "Location, location, location..."



Let's see what embellishments were finally chosen and applied.  A metallic edged tag affixed slightly under the knot of the ribbon and another tag like sticker that's been made sturdy with black, card stock underneath, also fixed slightly under the knot and to the right for balance.

In the bottom right hand corner of the mirror are several more sturdy stickers backed on black and 2 small, gold circles that were just punched out with a circle punch for more warm bling.  I typically use odd numbers of embellishments in my groupings.  You may choose to raise some of your embellishments so that they stick out, literally and figuratively.  Foam tape or 3D dots are great for this.

See how easy that was?  I really like this project.  It was made in under an hour. Looks fantastic and I didn't have to go out and buy anything for it.  Now I'll always think of my friend who gave me the frame, too.

Summer finally made it to this scrap house and my high maintenance children are home full time.  That means less time for crafts, typically, but I'll see if I can't change that.  I hope you all have a safe and happy summer.  Keep your kids busy and they will stay out of trouble.  Why not craft together?  When I do a cool project with my boys, I'll be sure to share it with you.