Christmas Cards from Shutterfly

Got my Christmas cards ordered from Shutterfly before the 50% off coupon code expired! Yea! Thanks, Angie!

Stationery card

View the entire collection of cards.

Magnet Fun

Kate, Anna and I have made some magnets for gifts this past year.  Our first project was one we found in Family Fun magazine (they always have such great ideas!).  Bottle Cap Magnets! Of course we always have plenty of bottle caps laying around........  Since we were making these for Daddy for Father's Day, we went to the craft store & picked out a couple fun sheets of scrapbook paper that was sort of dad-like.  Funny thing is, we actually picked a piece that they used in the magazine!  How funny!  Using a quarter as a template (fits perfectly, just as the magazine says), we cut the circles out, used the packing tape to seal them up, and were on our way to decorating pretty quickly.  So we used tons of glitter glue (the girls' favorite for any and EVERY project), and any fun little tiny things we had collected from broken bracelets, etc. to embellish.  I think they came out pretty great:

Here's a closer look at using google eyes.  Have to say, my favorite is the HUGE single eye that Anna used.....

And here are some that are just sparkly.....

In the Family Fun project, they say to seal the project with a clear sealant, like DecoArt Triple Thick, but I couldn't find that at my craft store.  I asked for help at the store, and this is what we came up with:

It worked really well!  I just put a drop on, & it was clear, shiny, and seemed to seal everything on.

We did another magnet project that I came up with from blog-browsing and then putting my own spin on it to make a teacher gift for the girls' preschool teachers for Christmas. Gemstones! Check these out:

Just look at these little "gems"! I love them. Just like the project above, we used a quarter as a template and cut circles out of scrapbooking card stock. Glued it on the back, using my favorite craft glue, Aleen's Tacky Glue. Same glue to glue either type of gemstone on the top, and the magnent on the back.  I like to use a fairly strong magnent because I absolutely loathe when magnents won't hold up whatever I feel like hanging up.  These were cheap, fast and easy; we made them the night before, and put them in a box the next morning. Voila!

Hope this inspires you to decorate your own refridgerator, or others'! :)

Goodbye snowflake, hello Valentine!

So today we finally took down our paper snowflakes from the window.  Found a tutorial on pinterest for how to fold them properly to make a five-point snowflake.  If you are interested, you can go to How to fold 5-pointed paper snowflakes. Worked great! We tried just plain paper and also construction paper. Plain worked the best, because the thicker the paper, the harder it is to cut through all the folds!

And I really got fancy later, and started making these out of 12x12 scrapbooking paper. They ended up way bigger, because essentially, you need a square piece of paper to make these.

But alas, even though winter endures, it was time to change up the decor, so the kids and I made a paper chain of hearts today. Found the project on Pinterest, of course.  Props go to Rebecca.  Thanks!  It was fun!  Here is how ours turned out:

We used scrapbooking paper and some old decoupage paper I had from a million years ago, and it worked pretty well. I didn't have enough cardstock to use that, but I think it would probably hold its shape much better.

I have a couple more heart/Valentine's projects saved up, so stay tuned.  I kind of like this blogging stuff. :)

CK

tie-dye cupcakes

So I had lots of icing left over from the kids' birthday cakes....  My husband's birthday is the last one of the season, so I decided to try something I had only tried once before, but step it up because of all the colors I had...  So I added once color at a time to my decorating bag to ice some cupcakes. It did not turn out as well as I had hoped, but they are probably the ugliest cupcakes I will ever make, which makes it somewhat humorous! Here are a couple pictures:

After these crazy-looking ones, I ended up only with Oswald Blue and white left.  These came out a lot better, kind of "blueberries & cream":

Of course my husband is not fond of cake, so the kids and I ate most of them!

Until next time,
CK

Oswald Cake for David & Adam

For my boys' 3rd birthday, they wanted an Oswald cake. Oswald is such a cute show on Nick Jr with Fred Savage as the voice of Oswald the Octopus. He was super-simple, so I was happy about that after the 5-hour Jessie & Tinkerbell! Here's a picture:

The blue for Oswald ended up darker than I meant, but it was ok.  I should have stopped while I was ahead with the Royal Blue coloring, but I put a little of the black in and it was too much.  I decided to do the cake in reverse of what you normally do, icing the cake in the color of the design, & then filling in the negative space around instead of the reverse.  I like how it came out, and so did my boys!