The Anatomy of Paper Garland

Is EVERYONE having a baby? It seems like this spring has been a big baby season, 2 baby showers down, 2 more to go. In the middle of every other hectic thing going on I have not had a second to go and shop. Also, I don't have a huge 'gift budget' with both my kiddos birthdays coming up.

What's a girl to do? Get my craft on!

I love making paper garland (as you can see from here and here). There may be other tutorials out there, but I like to machine sew my garland and I looked for a tutorial months ago when I started making them and couldn't find one, so here you go:

1. Punch or cut out your shapes. I use an EK Success 2" scallop punch, but you can do this with any shape you like. usually work with my ribbon on the roll when doing garland, but for this project the only blue I had was already in a tangled mess.

2. Make a loop and put under your presser foot centered in the middle of the 1st shape.

3.I use a straight stitch, and add my shapes one after another and let the machine do all the work of pulling the garland through as I go.

4. Finish with a second loop, also in the middle of the shape.

I always make a very large loop at the beginning and the end when making these as gifts. This way if the recipient has hooks they can loop it around but if they don't they can snip the loop and half and tie the ends up to whatever they have handy.

For the baby gifts I printed a bunch of pictures of the mom and baby (this particular shower is after the baby is born) and added pup dots to the back. Add the photos on every other scallop, DONE!

sorry the photos are a little dark, as you can see it's raining. AGAIN.

Quick and easy gift for anyone. You can make these for birthday, anniversary or baby gifts as well as Christmas tree decorations or really any occasion when I think about it.

If you end up making any I would LOVE to see what you come up with! Add your photos to my facebook page to share with us all or link to your blog post in a comment below.

I go this whole box of favor boxes ages ago at Staples in the clearence bin for a ridiculous low price, I can't even remember how cheap they were but I knew they would come in handy. I folded up the garland and put one in each box, tied up some glitter ribbon and stamped out a baby sentiment to finish it off.

I'll be linking this project up here:

Come say hi!

Try Something New...

How pretty is this? My good friend invited me over a while back to try my hand at making stained glass. I forgot to take pictures, but it was a very involved process. I suggest checking out YouTube for some step by steps and a few things to note:

- Make sure you are in a well ventilated area, I had a pretty bad headache by the time I was done from the soldering.
- This is a time intensive hobby, there are many parts and pieces and you need specialized tools. Try before you buy. I loved this, it was very fun, BUT I don't think I'll be running out to buy everything to make them at home.

Arrrrgggg!

Sarah Hurley's new Pirate Collection dropped today! Here's my DT card:

Go here to get your piratey goodness: SARAH HURLEY

Now I love all Sarah's images, but I really wanted to have my pirates on a big ship and the collection included a really cool island but not a ship. So I drew one to add on my card. As always, I start with tracing paper. I find that it's easier to get the image on my paper if I create it on tracing paper, it saves the step later on. Here's my ship in the beginning sketch stage.

I transfered the image to plain white cardstock and colored it with colored pencils and Sharpie markers. I wanted the wood to have a really grainy feel that you just can't get with markers. Then I cut it out with my baby Cutter Bee scissors and an exacto knife. Finally I added pop dots to adhere it to a sheet of Sarah's sky background paper.

This card came out so soft and springy, I am in love with stitching on everything!

The Basic Grey Kioshi collection is so beautiful, it's very wahsed out and flowery. Check it all out and the Basic Grey design team's projects here: BASIC GREY

Spring Has Sprung!

Remember those flowers I posted yesterday? Each bunch was $1.00 USD at a discount store so I could not pass them up. We still have FEET of snow on the lawn and driveway and when I woke up this morning it was -5 degrees, so I am in desperate need of some spring.


I started with this paper form the Lost & Found collection. These birds are so cute and I love me some glitter, I trimmed out the journal section. Now here is where I goofed up. I wasn't sure what kind of card I wanted so I didn't stamp it right away. HUGE mistake (rookie mistake really, I know better). My advice? ALWAYS stamp your image on your paper before making anything!


I ripped apart the flowers and trimmed some of the parts down and randomly hot glued them to the back of the cutout. This is where you have to let go of your fear of not being perfect. It doesn't matter if the stuck out all wonky on the back and look weird because when you turn it over it will look great...


See? GREAT! At this point I knew I wanted it to say Spring has sprung, which is a little stamp from a set I have had for ages, I think I got it at Michaels Arts & Crafts Store but I can't be sure.


I pop dotted the back and trimmed all the excess flower petals that were poking out all around the back before adhering it to the card front. The card is a standard 5.5 x 4.25 (after the fold, half of an 8.5 x 11 sheet). Normally this would fit into a standard A2 envelope (invitation size), but the flowers make it impossible. I recommend using the larger photo mailer size so you don't crush the flower edges.

Virtual Reality

So there were SOOOOO many pictures of this project I am trying something new, making collage sections to explain my process. I will also be offering custom albums on my Etsy shop.

From top left: I drew my template on scrap paper and then used tracing paper to get the image onto the chipboard. For this project I used Creative Imaginations medium weight chipboard for this project because I had to cut it by hand and I didn't want to hurt myself :) Next I used my awesome scissors to cut out the shapes from the cardstock and enough paper birds to cover both sides of the chipboard and create 4 inner pages that are double sided too. Using spray adhesive I added the paper to the cardstock, then I sanded all the edges.

For this prototype I used Basic Grey Lemonade line, BG paper is so thick it's perfect when you want to create mini album pages. Once I put the bird pages together (fronts and backs) I sewed up the edges to give it extra stability and make it super cute!

I find that when making mini albums they are more likely to stand the test of time when the holes are protected by eyelets, so I dug out the Crop-a-Dile. I LOVE THIS TOOL.

Once the basic bird was finished it was time to grab my journaling and photos. For this album I knew ahead of time that I would be using tweets and twitpics (I did have to fill in some photos from Facebook). The whole point was to add some of my virtual life into my real life. I copy and pasted some January Tweets and photos into a blank document and printed them out, being VERY careful to get the date and timestamp copied too! I wanted to track when the tweets were sent too.

Here are the inside pages, I added the tweets, and the pics (after inking them with the same pretty green as the album). I started to add embellishments and some hand journaling too. These photos are about 3/4 done, I was losing light so I wanted to get the photos done, I will update tomorrow with photos of the final embellishments (feathers!!!!!).

2 YO Valentines

Lili was helping me make cards tonight, this is her Robot Valentine :) Sorry guys, not for sale.

Dresses Continued...

Here is the link to the swap: Dress up your craft space!

The template was created by: MEL click her name to go to her cool blog and get your own free templates for all sorts of great stuff!

This is the front of the box, I still need to add the flowers and the handle...

All the little dresses line up so cute inside!

These are the finished dresses with their flower and blingy broaches.

Are you sick of Valentines yet?

These ones will be headed to A Daisy Daze today :) There is a NASTY snowstorm going on out there, it looks like a good day for sleeping and hot chocolate.

Classroom Valentines

How cute are these? They can hold lollies or pencils or both! I will have them for sale in my shop tonight!

You can buy them in packs of 8, 12, 24 or singles. There will be other color combinations available also:).

Discounts available for teachers at Lyndon Town School use LTSTEACH as the discount code when you place your order and 10% will be taken off your total. All sales to LTS teachers will have no shipping as I will hand deliver them to school. There will be a 3 day turnaround time on all orders so order early!