Burlap Monogram

Well hello! Yes, I am still alive, despite the two-month long gap in the scrapbooking blog. I have to admit, I have not gotten a whole lot done in these past months--but I promise have a good excuse!

I may not have made a lot of crafty things recently, but I have been working on making something else--a baby! That's right, we are pregnant and due March 2013. And so, to be honest, for the past weeks I have not felt up to doing anything. The energy bank has totally run dry, so that when I get home from work all I can do is crash on the couch or bed and sleep until 6am, when it's time to do it all over again. Thankfully, I happen to have one of the best husbands in the world, who has been taking care of all the cooking, cleaning, dog-walking, grocery shopping, and all the other stuff I'm forgetting. He is the best!

But, last week, my soon to be newest sister-in-law was in town for a short trip which included her bridal shower, so there was a gift to be made! I had an idea of what I wanted to do a long time ago, but of course I waited until only a few days beforehand to actually get off the couch and do it. Bed Bath and Beyond was my backup in case my project went awry, but thankfully all went according to plan. Here's how it turned out (thank you Pinterest and Etsy for the inspiration!)

Okay, here's how I did it. I bought some burlap and Heat n Bond-type fabric stabilizer from Joann's, cut out a sheet of Heat n Bond that measured 8.5x11, and adhered that to the burlap. (For the record, if you ever misread the Heat n Bond instructions and have a massive accident where glue gets ALL OVER your iron--here's the solution: simply iron a fabric softener sheet and voila--the glue comes right off. Plus the smell of the dryer sheet is MUCH much better than the smell of burning glue. Just so you know.)

Next I cut out the burlap-adhered-to-the-stabilizer, made up the monogram that I wanted using Microsoft Publisher, and simply ran it through the printer. (Actually it was not so simple. My printer did not want to take the burlap at first, but my once again awesome husband somehow managed to push that burlap through until the printer accepted it.) After that I popped the burlap into a frame from Michaels, and tada it was done.

For a more helpful tutorial than this on how to print on burlap, here is a website I found super useful.

So Tim and Anna now have a little piece of artwork to hang on their new walls come October. And I feel a huge sense of accomplishment for actually getting a crafty project done. Since then I have even gotten a few scrapbook layouts done!

Since you have been so good as to read to the end of this post, your reward is a first look at our little baby (who at 8 weeks looked a bit like a hamster). Dave is convinced it's a boy, which, based on his family's history of making boys, is probably pretty accurate.

Easter Trip to Lookout Mountain 2012

This weekend I discovered that I am almost at the end of my pile of photos to scrapbook! That almost never happens! I guess that means it's time to get out and do some stuff worth taking pictures of!

Here is the second part of our trip to Chattanooga last April. The first part was here. I'm not sure where the super cute cars and buildings paper came from (it was a gift), but I love the colors and it just seemed to go with these pictures. The polka dot paper on the sides is actually the reverse side of the patterned paper, which makes for easy color coordination!

We had the greatest visit with Aaron, Megan and their family. I love scrapbooking events with them, mostly because their kids are outrageously cute. You pretty much can't go wrong with scrapbook layouts of kids, in my opinion.

Here is my layout in my new We R Memory Keepers 3-ring scrapbook album. I wasn't sure how I would like the 3 ring look, as opposed to all my other post-bound scrapbooks. I have just gotten so fed up with how difficult it is to add pages to post-bound albums, so I'm giving this a try. So far I really like it, AND these huge albums will last me years!

Chattanooga Lookouts

I've got a new layout nearly complete--just have to finish up the journaling (my least favorite part). So for today, I'm showing an oldie back from 2008--Dave's and my first summer together (married, that is). 

I miss a few things from when we lived in Chattanooga/Lookout Mountain: seasonal changes, tulips and hydrangeas, the mountains, and minor league baseball, to name a few. (But a friend just posted a picture on Facebook of a copperhead snake that he killed, right where we used to live! That is something I do not miss. At all. I pretend that we don't have dangerous snakes in Florida.)

Anyway, we went to two Chattanooga Lookouts baseball games in 2008. We love the cheesy, laid-back atmosphere at minor league games, and you can't beat the price! If only Red Sox tickets sold for $4.... 

So here's the layout of two of our ventures into minor league world. At the first game we got free t-shirts (always a plus to get free stuff!), and the second game we went to with Aaron and Megan (where Dave caught me a foul ball--more free stuff!). At both of these game (about 1 month apart), the stadium lights randomly went out during the middle of play. There was a short delay each time. The second time this happened, Dave got a little bored and decided to take a quick nap on the comfy bench seats. 

As for the layout, it's very simple. Some red, blue and white paper, and stickers (Creative Memories, I think) pretty much make up all of it. As usual, pictures are my main focus, so I included as many as possible, as well as a ticket from one of the games.  

Wedding Cards

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July! We had a very laid-back day. Ate way too much food, watched fireworks from the back porch of my parents' house, and tried to comfort the dogs through all the loud noises.

And of course I did a little scrapbooking! My favorite thing to do on days off :-)

For today, I've got wedding/congratulations cards. This first one was super simple. Beautiful paper will pretty much do all the work for you, and with this card I used a DCWV paper pack. The colors and patterns are so fun and happy, and everything coordinates so that makes it even easier.

For both cards I used the same "Congratulations" rubber stamp, but here I embossed it with white embossing powder and a heat gun.

This second card was a little more time intensive. I used a border punch to create the detail for the wedding cake, and then layered that paper onto a piece of the same size and color paper. You could also do two different colors and I think that would look cool too. Three tiers of that makes a wedding cake, and I added some flower embellishments to the top, a ribbon along the bottom, and stamped it on the side. The background paper is also from a DCWV paper pack.

Here's a close-up of how the border punch looks on the cake.

Thrift Store Tray Make-Over

About a million years ago I showed you a picture of an ugly tray I bought from Goodwill for a few bucks. I have finally finished the make-over. Spray painting in soggy weather really slows down the process, let me tell you!

Here is the lovely "before" picture:

As much as I loved the fact that it says "I believe in snow angels," I envisioned something a little different...

So here's what I did. Starting with my supplies:

Yellow spray paint from Joann's

Primer from Lowe's

Off-brand Mod Podge from Michaels

Foam brushes

Small piece of fabric from Joann's (you could also use paper. In fact that might be easier.)

I forgot to sneak this into the photo, but I also used Krylon gloss sealer:

I started by spraying the tray with primer, then a number of coats of the yellow spray paint. Not sure if it was just the muggy weather or what, but the tray still felt a little tacky after that, so I covered it with some quick coats of the gloss sealer. That gave it a much more finished look and feel.

The trickiest part was getting the fabric to the right size. I read online that fabric tends to shrink just a tad when you use Mod Podge on it, so I was counting on that, but it turns out that mine didn't shrink at all! So my fabric was a little large, and if I ever do this again that's the first thing I would fix. Oh well!

But I measured up my fabric and stitched it along the edges since I didn't want any nasty rough edges showing. I really like the detail the stitching added too.

Anyway, once I was finished sizing the fabric, I just stuck it to the bottom with Mod Podge and a foam brush. Then I covered the top of the fabric with a little more Mod Podge and flattened out any bubbles.

Here are the "after" pictures!

See, the fabric is just a little too big.... 

My husband thought this would be a really good way to bring him breakfast in bed (ha ha), but instead I'm using it to corral all my random scrapbooking supplies, so that they all stay in one place and hopefully keep me more organized!

Overall I love how it turned out, and I want to go back to Goodwill and snatch up all the other ugly wooden trays they had!

Lobster Picnic from 2009

Our plans to go to Maine this summer fell through. Half of my family is up there right now though, and this weekend they had a lobster picnic (or they at least had lobster. I'm not so sure about the picnic part). Anyway, I don't have anything new to show (yet), so I thought I would post a page I did years ago on one of our past lobster picnics. I can't believe this was already 3 years ago!

This also shows how super easy and inexpensive it can be to make a scrapbook page. Seriously, all I did was get some blue paper, some red-checked paper that I thought looked picnic-y (which I ripped along the edges--using a ruler to keep a mostly straight line), and then a big lobster sticker. I cut out the pictures so that they would fit, stuck them down in a haphazard-y fashion, and used my Cricut to make large letters for the word "Picnic." The lobster sticker is the most expensive thing on this page (it cost a few dollars at Michaels).

I'm trying really hard not to be bummed that I'm not in Maine with the family, but instead stuck in Florida (which is quickly turning into one big swamp thanks to Tropical Storm Debby). Reliving these pages is not helping! Here is a sneak peek at what I've started working on to distract myself. I grabbed this ugly tray from Goodwill a few weeks ago. It's going to get a huge make-over (if it will ever stop raining long enough for me to get outside to spray paint!).

Michigan Christmas 2011

I hope no one reads this blog hoping to keep up with what's going on with me and Dave, because if so, you will be getting all our news about 6-12 months late!  That is my average for about how long it takes me to get around to scrapping big events, and since it is June that of course means it's time to talk about last Christmas!

Here is the page I just finished of our trip to Michigan last December to spend Christmas with Dave's family. This was a matter of having lots of pictures I wanted to include, yet I really wanted to keep it to a 2-page layout. So I squished them all in. I also had one random 12x12 sheet of really cute paper covered in penguins. I decided to cut out the penguins and assign each one to a member of the family in a border along the bottom. There weren't 12 different penguins, so some people have duplicates, but I did my best to match according to personality :-) 

Besides that, this is a really simple page and it cost me almost nothing besides a little bit of paper and some stickers along the bottom. Easy! 

Cloudland Canyon

Here is a look at some of the scrapbooking I accomplished this weekend. I got quite a number of small projects done, and it felt good! 

I have been very excited to scrapbook these pictures ever since I got them printed. They are from our mini-vacation up to Chattanooga during Easter. We spent an afternoon at Cloudland Canyon State Park, and it was so much fun. 

Usually when I scrapbook outdoors-y pictures, I tend to go with blue/green/brownish paper, but as I was sorting through my paper stash I found this background paper that I bought for super cheap at Tuesday Morning. Definitely not the sort of thing I normally use, but somehow I thought it worked perfectly. Then of course, since it's Cloudland Canyon after all, I had to add some cloud embellishments. Overall a super simple layout, but it's the pictures and colors that make it fun.

June Birthdays

Yesterday we celebrated my brother Tim's birthday, my dad's birthday, AND Father's Day. (We are very efficient in my family!)

For Tim, our gift to him is going to see his favorite soccer team Chelsea play AC Milan in Miami next month. I made him a "ticket" to the event, and put it in this card.

And as for my dad, I was in Joann's buying fabric for another project, when my mom and I found the PERFECT Michigan fleece fabric. Two of my dad's favorite thing are the University of Michigan and anything with an argyle pattern on it. So how could I pass this stuff up?

So last week while dad was gone at general assembly, I spent an evening making a no-sew fleece tie blanket (I have no idea what the real name is). There are plenty of tutorials online for this, and it's SUPER easy to do. Just a little time consuming. I feel like I tied about 4,000 knots. But it's a good project to do while watching a movie. The trickiest part was finding a surface large enough to work on (I used 2.5 yards of both the front and back fabrics). Here is my dad with the finished project!

As much as he loved his blanket, I know that his FAVORITE gift was the Muether Family Journal that my sister and I write every June and December.

Doctor Who Cross Stitch

This has nothing whatsoever to do with scrapbooking, but I was really excited to finish this project last week and I wanted to show it!

My brother recently got engaged to his girlfriend Anna. I think it was even before they were "officially" dating that I started this project (I want to say it was around November/December), thinking I would someday give it to them as a little engagement present. I got very close to the end, and then I just got caught up doing other things, and did not finish it. Well, when Tim bought the ring a few weeks back, I figured I really needed to hurry up and finish this thing!! (So up until the morning before I gave it to them, I was rushing to finish it and prepare the frame.)

 TADA!!

You should check out the etsy store Wee Little Stitches. This is where I got the pattern. I love all their cute little "Pixel People"--especially the superhero alphabet. I would love to do that one someday! But the one I chose to do this time was the Doctor Who Companions--except I wanted to do only Rory and Amy (and change the hair color so it looked more like Tim and Anna :-) ).

I didn't use all the exact colors the pattern called for, but I have a box FULL of embroidery floss of all sorts of colors, so I just used whatever I had that matched best. That way this project was nearly free! I also tweaked the pattern a little (I made some changes to the Tardis, like adding the words "Police Box" to the top). Then I bought a wooden frame from Joann's and painted it Tardis blue, and finished it off with some Mod Podge.

Here are some more closeups:

It makes me so happy when I totally complete a project!

Wedding Toasts

Here is the latest installment of the Allison/Stephen wedding album. I don't want to share too many of the layouts because I want to keep most of it a surprise for them, but here's just one final sneak peek:

Beth and Teresa did a hilarious toast together, and I wanted to make sure that was included in the album. 

It's hard to tell in the picture, but those are champagne flute stickers.

I cut out all the letters using my Cricut machine. I don't think I could live without that thing! The little blue flower embellishments I found on sale at Michaels.

Washi Tape Cards

Target has four-packs of Washi tape in the office supply section for only $4. Usually I'm too cheap to go for supplies like that, but for only $1 a roll, I thought I would give it a try. I bought the blue and green packs, but now I'm thinking I need to go back to buy the red! As far as I know this washi tape isn't acid-free, so I'm a little reluctant to use it in a scrapbook along with photos, so instead I did a little experimenting with some cards.

Here are my favorites that I created (sorry if this ruins the surprise to anyone I sent these to!)

I hope I can find more good deals on Washi tape because it is so fun to work with! Or I need to ask for some for my birthday - just look at all the gorgeous patterns that are listed on Etsy.

Graduation Cards

It's graduation season! I had a sister-in-law and brother-in-law graduating from high school and college, and here are the cards I made them:

For the top card I used my Storybook Cricut cartridge, and for the bottom I used the Simply Sweet cartridge, plus a free graduation cap SVG that I found online. 

Congrats Laurie and Dan!

Scrapbook Room

I plan to spend a lot of this wonderful 3 day weekend scrapbooking and getting caught up on projects (and of course cleaning my house. I really don't know how it gets so dirty during the week.). Since I have nothing yet to show you today, I will give you a little tour of my scrapbook room. Originally our second bedroom was going to be a guest room, but we never bought a second bed. Then it was going to be Dave's study, but he never used it for that much (he prefers the living room floor, or the dining room table, or my parents' back porch). Since the room was basically turning into a junk room, I decided my scrapbooking and I could take it over. 

Here is a look at the mess creativity happening on my table right now:

Here's a bigger look at the generally organized chaos. 

I even cleaned up this room for the pictures. Look at that uncluttered floor! 

(Anyone want that arm chair? We are giving it away for free!)

My sewing machine and some embossing supplies. (And our enormous printer! It's so big and ugly, but it prints things for super cheap, so I'm okay with it.)

My laptop finally has a home! My family was getting rid of this old TV cart, and it turns out to be perfect for my computer, cricut, external hard drive, and laminating machine. I love it. 

Wish I could say that filing cabinet is full of craft supplies! But sadly, no. 

Okay, now it's back to scrapping and cleaning. 

Using a Layout Sketch

Hello again! Sorry it's been so long.

Got a little bit of scrapbooking done this weekend, including this single page layout for Allison and Stephen's wedding album. I wanted to try going from a pre-designed sketch (never done that before; usually I just make it up myself as I go along). So I did some Google searching, and found the My Little Sketch Blook website, where Liz has created dozens of layout ideas to give some inspiration.

I had two horizontal 4x6's to work with, so that narrowed down my choices of sketches. In the end I chose this one for my inspirational starting point.

And here is what I came up with (sorry about the weird glare above Allison's head)

I left out some of the frills (including the butterflies. Wasn't a fan of those), but I did want to do some kind of flower in the bottom left corner. I used a Martha Stewart flower punch for that, and whatever yellow and beige paper scraps I had lying around. I added ribbon to the top, because it matched the paper perfectly so I couldn't resist. For the journaling circle, I punched out holes using a nail (I know, super scrapbook-y equipment, right?) and then used embroidery floss for the stitching (I have pretty much every color of the rainbow, from my old cross stitching days). For the title, once again I used my Cricut and Sure Cuts a Lot software. I'm just now figuring out all the cool things I can do with that program. 

I really enjoyed having a sketch to start from, so I'll be looking for some more sketch inspiration for other pages. Usually I try to fit so much more than 2 pictures to a page, and most sketches don't do that. But for Allison and Stephen's album I have plenty of room for pages so I'm not worried about squeezing all of them in. 

Later this week I'll show some of the cards I've made using Target brand washi tape! 

Mother's Day Cards

I can now reveal the cards I made for Mother's Day! I had some leftover hydrangeas from doing this project, so I used some of the remaining flowers for these cards. I'm still searching for the best adhesive for pressed flowers. Right now my laminating machine does a great job, especially for large groupings of flowers like this. Not sure if I like it so much for individual flowers, though.

Anyway, these were pretty simple to put together (except for the yellow one, which I did as a window card. That one was a little more complicated). A fun trick for printing on scraps of paper like I did in these cards, is to first print your title/sentiment/whatever on a regular piece of paper, then cut your separate piece of cardstock to whatever size you need, and then lightly tape that cardstock directly onto the words you just printed on the regular paper. (Make sure everything fits and is lined up the way you want it.) Then put that same paper through the printer again (printing the same document as before). This is a nice trick to avoid having to hand write anything! (Good to know for people with sloppy handwriting like me.)

It was also my in-laws wedding anniversary last week, so I made them this card as well:

This one was super easy and fun to put together: starting with a fun blank card, I added a border with flower punches and brads, and a small sentiment that I adhered using 3 dimensional sticky squares to give it some depth.