4th of July Door Hanger

This is a really simple craft that I cooked up for the residents of a local retirement home nearby. Doing workshops at a retirement home is a challenge because I want to offer a really nice-looking project, but I have to be mindful of the ailments of older hands and eyes.

For this, I just cut a 12 x 6 of white cardstock and then cut about 3 1/2 inches off using the coluzzle to round the top edge. Inside, roughly 1/2 inch from the tope edge, I cut another circle measuring 2 3/4 in diameter. (On the large circle coluzzle template, it is the smallest outline.) I also added 6 small hole punches about 3 inches from the bottom of the card, 1/2 inch from either side and 1 inch between each hole punch.

Using the Celebration stamp called Your a Star, the ladies who joined me stamped the largest 2 stars in Heavenly blue, and the medium 3 stars in Crystal blue. They then stamped the smallest stars in Moonstruck and added Glitz to many of the small ones to sparkle the page.

After all the stamping was done, they added the ribbon to the bottom section of the cards. They inserted 4-inch cranberry ribbons to each of the holes and taped them against the back of the card. They also added the little bow to the top of the card using about 7 inches of ribbon.

With that done, the residents added pre-glued letters that I had made with my Cricut. (My daughter spread on the Mono-Adhesive because some of the pieces were really small.) The residents found it easy to place all the pieces and then used our Glitz again to added sparkly polka dots (and some of them added lines and dashes) to the letters.

It was a fun project and took very little time to prepare and make. In fact, two of the crafters made a second project in no time!

This project was a perfect one to enter into this week's Heart 2 Heart Challenges. If you want to take the challenge, check out the blog at heart2heartchallenges.blogspot.com.

Father's Day Tag Book

I used pieces of old retired paper packs and stickease to make this. I even cut the tag out of the top of a Level 1 layout because I was out of matching paper, but I really like the way it turned out. I sanded all of my cardstock to make it match the design of the paper pack and used 2 pieces of 8 x 12 sheets of it, adhered together, to make the accordian. I also added an envelope shaped flap from the leftovers and attached a loop of hemp using a square pewter brad. For the inside, the pockets are mostly made of stickease from the pack and snippets of leftover paper. I love the rich colors of this autumn paper pack! For the most part, they are: New England Ivy, Barn Red, Cocoa, and Autumn Terra Cotta, but I think Goldenrod is in there, too, and I know I used some Colonial White for a couple of tags.

SHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! - Don't Tell My MOM!!!

This is my Heart2Heart Challenge entry for this week, but it's also my mom's gift - so don't tell her!

I started with a chipboard base that was 11 x 9 and I covered it with a B&T from the Unforgettable paper pack. The 3x12 inch strip that I cut off, I used as a second layer on the right hand side, after silhouette-cutting it. I also used a different B&T as torn corner accents. I also inked the edges of the tear in Sorbet to highlight it. For the most part, I layered flowers from the base print with punched flowers and our Just Blooms.

Some of the Just blooms I inked to match the paper, and I sponged the edges of most of the punches. I used many different things for the centers including buttons and brads. I used the Hollyhock corduroy covered brads as well as some of the pearl embellishments.

The teal and pink flower is made with 8 circles from our new circle punch. I sponged the edges of the Juniper side of the circle in Juniper and the pink side, I sponged in Hollyhock. I really like the way that turned out, but I wasn't pleased that one of my petals got moved before it dried, so it's a little askew. Still, sometimes the petals have to be overlapped to fit as a flower. I added a chocolate flower from the chocolate mini medley and a square brad from the same set to finish it off.

This last flower was made with 4 circles. For each petal, I folded a circle punch in half and then in half again. I unfolded the punch one time, back to half way and then folded the corners in to the center. Those folds are inportant with this flower so that the ultimate fold can be made. Unfolding it all the way, I collapsed the circle in on itself, folding in the sides until they met in the middle. Once that fold was made, I turned down the edge of the petal, revealing most of the Juniper color and covering most of the Hollyhock that showed on the outside of this petal. I know that's pretty involved, but does it make any sence at all?

This week's Heart 2 Heart Challenge is a Mother's Day project - any project. It can be a card or a gift. You can see all the projects at the Heart 2 Heart blog site.