And while he’s super, duper supportive of my crafting hobby, he knows how expensive it can be.  Heck, in the almost-five years that I’ve known him, he/we have purchased a Cricut Expressions, a Cricut Expressions 2 (5yr anniversary edition), a Cuttlebug, a Gypsy, and various Cricut cartridges.  Then, I made the leap into Silhouette products, so he/we purchased a Silhouette Cameo.  Most recently, we purchased a Canon Selpy CP900, which we (I) am patiently waiting for.

So obviously, we spend money on this hobby.

However, those big purchases are few and far between.  I do try my best to make the most of the stuff that I have on hand, and I try my best to not  buy things like paper or other embellishments if I really don’t have to.

With that said, when I joined the Scrapbooking Pen Pals group on Facebook, I knew that buying stationery for it was an expense that Hubby wouldn’t really think was necessary.  Also, I’ve got TONS of paper and several cool stamps.  Why not just make my own?!

Brilliant!  Not only did I not buy anything extra than what I had on hand, this stationery has a bit of my bright and fun personality, while staying super simple!

I started with plain old computer paper. I trimmed it down to 5in x 7in.

I pulled out my Lawn Fawn Interlocking Backgrounds stamp set and used the hexagon stamp. I’m currently obsessed with StazOn ink. It stains the stamp, but I love the clear images that are left after stamping.

I stamped along the left-hand margin of the page. I let a little bit of the stamp hang off the edge, so I actually stamped the paper over a scratch sheet of paper to avoid stamping my cutting mat. I did this with all the pages of my stationery.

I lined up the papers together with all the stamped margins side-by-side with each other. I pulled all of my brightest colored markers. They are from Tombow. I purchased them at Michaels a few years ago because I had a coupon. They are good for what I use them for. I don’t do a lot of coloring, so these markers work for me. I lined them up so that when I begin to color certain hexagons, there is a bit of consistency in the randomness.. I hope that makes some sense.

I went through with each color and filled in three random hexagons along each sheet of stationery. There was no rhyme or reason. I couldn’t say why I picked one hexagon over another to color a particular color. All I can say was that the project just “spoke” to me. I’m sure that happens with many crafters. The placement of things just “speaks” to them.. there’s no other way to explain it.

And here’s the finished stationery. I LOVE it! It feels so “me.”

Feel free to share you DIY stationery products in the comments below!

It’s amazing!  These ladies are super-duper-ooper talented.  I’m so inspired with everything I see them create.

A small group of us decided to do a little friendship book to pass along to each other in order to get to know each other a little bit more.  Each of us would make a little book and we’d pass them along and allow everyone to create or write something on a page.

This is my first time ever doing something like this, so I immediately jumped at the chance to do it!

As you all know, my style is very clean and simple.  I’m not great with patterned papers, and I don’t have all the latest and greatest designs and embellishments.  In fact, the only time I have something “designer” is when they go on huge discounts from scrapbooksteals.com!

Having said that, I pulled my resources together to come up with this booklet:

I had the red paper that I purchased from Cards & Pockets.  The white squares are leftover scraps from making the framed silhouette flower from the Save The Date cards a few weeks ago (click here for that blog post).

The stamps are from Amy Tangerine’s Ready Set Go stamp set that I purchased off of Scrapbooksteals.com.

The polka dot strip is Smash Washi Tape from Target.

The brown ribbon is from my never-ending stash of pre-cut brown ribbon from my wedding favors in 2010 (click here for that blog post).

The red paper is originally 8 1/2 in x 11 in.  I cut it in half to measure 8 1/2 in x 5 1/2 in.  I folded it to become 4 1/4in x 5 1/2in. 

I used 2 sheets of white paper, originally 8 1/2 in x 11 in.  The white paper (which came from Paper Source) was cut down to 8 1/4 in x 5 1/4 in before folding it in half.  The result was that the white sheets were a quarter of an inch smaller than the red sheet.  That made sure that the white sheets didn’t poke out of the red, thus making it a cute little book!

I carefully put the book together and punched two holes using my Crop-A-Dile (purchasesd a year ago at Scrapbooksteals.com).  I used the smallest whole and just used whatever setting was originally set on the Crop-A-Dile to figure out how far to go into the margin to punch the whole.  This was my very first time using my Crop-A-Dile since I purchased it.  Yay!

I used the ribbon to bind the book together. 

And there you go.. easy peasy.  Not knowing what to do or what everyone else was expecting, I left my pages completely blank.  I can’t wait to see what sort of magic these other women will create for my book!  I’m excited to get it back!

Year In My Life (Project Life) 2013 Update:

I finished another week, which brings me to Week 3.  I just received my batch of February pictures from York Photo.  I dated and cut them up and added them to the end of my picture stack.  Here is my Week 3:

I tried to play with NOT centering things, and maybe a little bit of layering.. I’m trying to play with my style and trying to make use of the things I learn from watching all sorts of scrapbooking videos..

I also bought a Selphy CP900 this past week, so that last batch of pictures I received from York may be my last via online printing.  I’m excited! 

I’ll be sure to blog about it next time.. or whenever it comes in!

In the meantime, stay creative!

This year, I plan on posting BEFORE Christmas is over so it doesn’t look like I’m obviously playing “catch up.”

Anyway, I purchased Scotch Postal wrap from Target. It’s a pretty large roll. One roll lasted me all the Christmas presents. The only downside is that this paper is pretty thick and so folding it down and wrapping oddly shaped packages was harder than using thin traditional wrapping paper. Also, gift wrapping tape doesn’t stick very well to it either.

Decorating my wrapped packages, especially the rectangular ones, was so much fun. Again, any stamping you see uses Lawn Fawn holiday stamp sets.

I only have two pictures to show.. here we go!

I had so much fun doing this during the Christmas holiday season. I didn’t buy any new colored or patterned papers. I think I really made a nice dent in my paper stash.

I look forward to any occasion that requires any form of wrapping and gift giving.

Hope you enjoyed the Christmas recaps! Can’t wait for what this year is going to look like, craft-wise!

My soon-to-be birthday girl developed an ear infection after catching a cold over the weekend a few weeks ago and so I was in full mommy-mode for the past few days.

So I had to sacrifice a lot of the other papercrafting projects I was thinking of doing for her birthday party.

Thank goodness I decided to just buy pre-made party favor bags from partypalooza.com.

Anyway, the banner was quick and easy and I got to use my Cricut Expressions 2 AND my Silhouette Cameo.  Who says you have to have one or the other?  Why not have both?!

I love my Gypsy.  I really do.  I love that I can squeeze in as many letters as I could on a 12×12 sheet of paper so I would limit the amount of paper waste.  It’s too bad that they aren’t making these anymore.  I love not being tied to my laptop when working on a project with my E2.

My Gypsy and my E2.. ready to go!

A finished letter.. you like?

It was at this point that my daughter got sick and I just wanted to get the banner done.  So, I stopped taking pictures as I progressed..

Because of my limited time, I decided to simplify the banner.  I had every intention of making the banner match the invitations with the strips of colored paper against the cream background..

Instead, I decided to use each individual color as it’s own banner square.  Simple.  Easy.

I cut out scalloped squares with holes in two of the corners.  I made that shape a while back on my Gypsy when I was making the banner for my daughter’s baptism. 

I took some of the cream colored paper that I used for the invitations and cut notches on the corners to accomodate the holes and to give it a little style.

Here’s the finished banner, minus the ribbon that ties it all together.

As you can see, I used my Silhouette to cut out the music notes that I had used in the invitation.  I also broke out my bottle of Glossy Accents and glossified those notes.. Sorry about the dirty carpet.. I’m sure that’s a stain of spilled baby food from my daughter’s baby food eating days.. So embarrassing!

With that said.. lets move on to the creativity!

I’ve been suffering from major creativity block.  I’ve been watching tons of videos and reading tons of blogs to get some inspiration, but it just always leaves me feeling like I don’t have enough things.. I want to be able to create with what I have and not break the bank doing so.. especially since I’m putting this whole “for sale” thing on hold.. I was going to use that to fund my craft habit.. but that’s a whole other blog entry..

We just bought a camcorder, but we don’t have a tripod and I don’t really have the room (at the moment) to make this crazy camera set up, so I settled for taking pictures.. and here we go!

It pretty much started with this.  I cut both shapes out with my Silhouette Cameo and had them lined up on my mat.  But what am I going to do with them?!

I kept looking at the word “thanks” over and over again.  After awhile, it just didn’t seem like a word anymore.  So I decided to drop the “s” and handwrite a “u” using my white gel pen.

I bought this 6×6 pad from scrapbooksteals.com.  It’s Studio Calico’s Take Note Collection.  I pretty much just flipped through every page and placed the letters and heart on each one until I found the one I liked..

The wood-looking patterned paper wins!

So I found some lace tape from a huge scrapbooking kit given to me one Christmas.  It’s a kit from Costco.  I’m not sure of the brand, but it has so much stuff.  This was the first time I have even used something from it, but I think it made a lovely addition to my card.

I’m a recent convert to the Tombow Mono Multi Glue.  For awhile I had (and occasionally still do) been using ZipDry Paper Glue.  I like this for small pieces because it doesn’t smell bad and it also doesn’t create those little glue strings that are super annoying.

I popped up the heart to give it a little dimension.  I bought this dimensional adhesives at Hobby Lobby.  I actually like them.. a lot!

I stared and stared and stared at this for almost an hour hoping I could find some sort of additional inspiration to add to what I have.  It feels so bare to me, but I just can’t figure out what else to do with it.

So I trimmed it down and adhered it to my card base.  That’s Soft White from Paper Source.  The card measures 5.5in width by 4.25in tall.  So I trimmed the patterned paper to 5.25in wide by 4in tall.

And there’s the finished product!  I’m essentially a super clean and simple card maker.  My cards have never been really embellished with a lot of pieces, but the videos that I have been watching always have a good amount of embellishments.  Maybe I’m just feeling the need to keep up with them.  Either way, I’m open to suggestions.

I’d love to here some comments!

I’ve seen it done millions of times.. I’ve watched many, many YouTube tutorials.. but I had never made my own diaper cake.

Thank goodness for having a baby.  Thank goodness for the abundance of unused diapers that have stockpiled in the closet because my daughter outgrew them.  Thank goodness for other ladies having little girl babies.

I was finally able to make my own diaper cake!

Now I had dreams and visions of this diaper cake being this grand mixed media work of art.  I was going to incorporate a lot of my paper crafting, Silhouette and Cricut tools in making this thing.  My sketches were works of art in itself!  Little die-cuts of baby strollers, rattles, the baby’s name lined up along the front.. it was going to be magnificant!

But.. making a diaper cake was trickier than I thought.. I had to recruit the help of my loving husband.. (and my baby girl).. I ended up keeping it super simple.  Next time I’ll go for the grand cake of my dreams.. but for now.. I settled for Clean and Simple (CAS).

We started out rolling the diapers.  That was tricky because many tutorials said to make it tight, but it was making the rolls a little too narrow.. and it just wasn’t looking pretty.

I told you this was a family affair.  My daughter wanted in the all the action.

I used a 72-count box of the Pampers diapers that were designed specifically for boys or girls.  Obviously, the mother-to-be was expecting a girl.  Lucky for her, I had a girl that outgrew the 1-2 sized diapers.

The biggest mistake we made was using colored rubber bands.  I’m never, never, never going to do that again!  I was lucky that I found ribbon that covered the color of the rubber bands.  It was also a pain to make sure that the rubber bands were all lined up so that they hid behind the ribbon I wrapped around.  You always learn from your mistakes.. and well.. LESSON LEARNED!

We made three tiers of the cake.. making those tiers involved some math.. how many diapers make the center core.. how many diapers go around the core.. how many rows per tier.. numbers.. numbers.. numbers.. I left it up to the husband to figure that out..

We used wooden dowels to keep all the tiers together.    The cake looked great.. I just wished we didn’t buy the colored rubber bands!  The helpful hubby is holding up his masterpiece.  He said he’s the builder and I’m the decorator.. we make a great team!

So, I found some coordinating ribbon at Michaels.  I really like that green ribbon I bought.  I’m planning on incorporating that ribbon into some future card projects.  I ended up using almost all the pink ribbon.  Good to know for future projects.  One roll of the big pink ribbon per diaper cake.

I’m upset at the way the bow ended up looking.  It’s a sad bow.  I think I need to hit up the YouTube tutorials again and learn how to make good looking bows.

We bought the little Hello Kitty doll at the local mall.  I have it taped to a dowel on it’s back.  It’s the not most glamorous method.. but it’s what worked for me.. anyone with suggestions is free to leave me a comment.

There it is!  My first diaper cake.  I’m overall pretty happy with the way it turned out, but deep down, I know I can do sooooo much better.

Please feel free to leave my tips and suggestions on how to do a better job for next time!

Enjoy!

Related articles

• How to make a Diaper Cake (local10.com)
• Diaper Cakes with a Modern and Elegant Touch; Thinking Outside the Box – Diaper Cakes That Will Wow Your Guests (prweb.com)
• Utilising Diaper Cakes regarding Baby Showers (boldstate.com)

It’s a set of birthday party invitations for a good friend of mine.  She plans of having her birthday party at one of those bouncy places for kids and so she suggested a jellybean theme for her invitations.. so I came up with this!

This is the first time I didn’t make a rectangular or square type card.  This is a flat card with all the information printed on the back of the card.

I drew the little “jumpy” lines on the jelly beans to make them look like they were jumping around in the little candy dispenser.  I also embossed the bottom part to give some texture.  I popped up the sentiment on the front of the card to give it more dimension.

The great thing about these invitations is that no two invitation look alike!

The great thing about “handmade” is that every invitation can have it’s own little personality.  Every jellybean had a mind of it’s own… so she will notice that the jellybeans are jumping in a different direction on every invitation!  It’s so much fun to have that kind of creative freedom!

I had so much fun doing this set of invitations.

I’m so glad that I was able to do this and complete it successfully.  I think it’s adorable and I can’t wait for her party guests to see these invitations!  I hope she has a great party for her kids!

If you want to order this, or something similar, leave me a comment or a message.  Let’s talk!  I’ll be happy to accommodate!