I made this card for Christmas to send to my paper doll collector friends in 1981.

You may copy this and use it if you would like.  I have learned a few things since I made this and now I know I should have added a doll or teddy bear on the page with the clothes, maybe with matching outfits.

This was before they had circle cutters that you could buy, so each circle was hand cut out.

On the inside of the front cover I had pasted a sheet of gold paper leaving an edge showing for trim on the front.  Do this first so you know where to make the folds so it is folded into 3 parts. The gold paper was saved from a box of chocolates I had received the year before for Christmas.  You never know where materials will show up.

This is all on one sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 paper.  I copied the doll on one side at the end of the paper, cut the circles at the other end of the same side.  Fold the paper in 3rds, then copy the clothes in the middle on the other side from where the doll is.  Then I took a red pen and carefully hand wrote the saying on the front of the card.

It is adorable when colored with any thing you want, colored pencils, paints, markers etc.  But since this is my master I left it in black and white.

One more thing, when you fold your card, whether in thirds or in half, always have the front a little over lapping, this is so it is easy to open.

Option: If you do not want a paper doll card, dress the doll in one of the outfits and then copy it.  Where the clothes are write a nice verse , or a note about the past year and your family.

If you do copy this, please enter on the back of the card “The original art work done by Margery Schaffer”  Thank you.

Outside winter activities to do at home with kids can be enhanced in enjoyment greatly with the occasion of a good snowfall. Snow affords the opportunity to create snowmen, snow angels, snow forts and of course, the always popular snowball fight between siblings and parents. The aftermath of a winter storm also presents opportunities for sledding and tobogganing, given that there is an appropriate incline in the immediate vicinity. If snow is not in the equation, tossing around a football is a fun winter activity to do with kids, and it also gives everyone involved a chance to get some much needed exercise.

preschool bible crafts

Winter crafts for kids are also a great way to kill a few hours on a gloomy winter day. There are tons of websites on the internet that cater to children's crafts in many forms such as paper crafts, yarn crafts and others using common household items. Many of the websites offer children's crafts and craft patterns for free, with easy-to-follow instructions that require little adult supervision.

Supplies:

• heavy patterned paper
• glue gun
• wide lace (mine is a vintage estate sale find)
• ribbons and trim (check out SavvynSassy for great pompom and other trims)
• scissors
• pen
• dinner plate (to trace)
• rosette (make your own or check out luckygirlgoods on etsy for the ones i used here)

Directions:

1. Trace half of dinner plate onto patterned paper.

2. cut out semi-circle of paper.

3. Start at one side and roll the paper into a cone shape.

4. Once you have a cone shape, you can cut off the excess paper or just keep rolling.  (I roll it up the rest of the way)

5.  Apply hot glue along the edge and glue to cone.

6. You may want to add just a dab of glue on the inside edge as well, to keep in from moving around.

7. You should now have a finished cone shape.  Now for the fun part – embellishing!

8. Using hot glue at just the top of the lace, carefully apply just below the top edge of the cone, wrapping the lace all the way around. Start at the back, so that the raw edges won’t be visible.

9. Trim excess lace.

10. Carefully glue pompom or other trim just overlapping the top of the lace. (This should cover up any visible hot glue, too.)

11. Add a dab of hot glue inside on each side and attach ribbon or seam binding for hanging.  You could use staples instead if you want.

12. Create a rosette or purchase one and affix it to a scalloped circle of paper.

13. Attach rosette to front of cone and fill with goodies!

Here is another one I made with a rosette handmade from tulle and cardstock:

Distracted again with new projects…

…wanted to make my own envelopes, originally thinking I would make them with regular brown craft paper (or brown paper bags which is also a great idea)…but then I saw this little tutorial (from the knitted blog)using magazine pictures!  I completely forgot about these…I had wanted to make some a few months ago and haven’t until I ran across her blog.

Anyways…here are my results   Fun, fun!  (The top two on the pile are my personal favortie…the action figures and starbucks coffee

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These are a fun project with kids, or just to do by yourself.  You can use sheet music, patterned paper, copier paper, or even magazine pages.

Supplies:

• paper
• scissors

How  To:

Step One: Start with a rectagle of paper (pretty much any size works as long as it’s not too small to fold.

Step Two: Fold top right corner down so that it meets up with the left side of the paper as shown above. It should then look like a triange on top of a rectangle.

Step Three: Fold the top left corner of the folded triangle down to meet with the bottom right corner of the triangle as shown above. When finished it should look like the picture below:

Step Four: Flip the paper over and it should look like the above picture.

Step Five: Now you are going to fold into thirds from the top point.  You will probably need to practice this a few times to get the fold in the right spot, but after you do it a couple times it gets a lot easier. Start with folding the left side over as shown here.

Should look like this:

Step Six: Now fold the right side over.  It should look like about like this:

Step Seven: Flip it over and it should look like this:

Step Eight: Cut off at an angle as shown here:

It should look like this after it is cut:

Step Nine: Now comes the fun part!  Cut shapes however you want!  Play around with different patterns and shapes.

Step Ten: When you have finished cutting, carefully unfold your snowflake.  You should end up with a beautiful six-point snowflake.

Stick to your windows, hang on the tree, attach to cards…

that’s right ONE THOUSAND SMACK-A-ROONIES!

REMINISCE is having their BIGGEST contest ever to celebrate their brand new HUGE, GIGANTIC, GLOBE-TROTTING new travel line PASSPORTS!

i told you about the PASSPORTS line in a previous post, where i included my projects using the line {click HERE to review that post}. now let me tell you all about the CONTEST!  you can get all the details on the REMINISCE BLOG, but here is an overview of the REMINISCE 1000.00 DREAM TRAVEL CONTEST: use the Passports line to create an album of YOUR dream vacation. it can be places you’ve been OR places you DREAM of visiting.  you must use at least 10 PASSPORT destinations in your book – it MUST be in album format, but can be any size you choose! The deadline is JANUARY 8th, so get over to the blog and get the FULL DETAILS so you can get started on your project!

RAK time!!!

!!!

to give the contest an added little “kickoff”, i’m going to give away a sampler pack of the PASSPORTS line! you’ll get 15 papers and 15 stickers from the line! destinations include: NYC, Italy, Barcelona, France, England, Ireland, Spain, America, Brazil, Hawaii, Switzerland, Venice, Jamaica, Paris and Australia. so you have a chance to win the supplies needed to make your entry! to enter MY RAK, all you have to do is POST A COMMENT below {you must comment on THIS post} listing a project or page that you think this line would be perfect for. it could be a layout using vacation photos and one of the destinations, or a project or layout that uses several destinations like my international recipe binder. BE SURE to add your name in the post! i’ll post the name of the winner on DECEMBER 18th! — u.s. only please!

REMINISCE is also looking for another design team member – and it could be YOU! check out the details HERE! and be sure to check out AND bookmark the REMINISCE BLOG  as they will be featuring several Christmas and Holiday themed projects by the design team this week.

and one small favor… the Scrapbooks Etc Cover Contest is coming to a close, it’s down to the last 12 days… it ends on december 15th. i would APPRECIATE it greatly if you would vote for my son, Chris! you can review all the details HERE!

good luck everyone!

It’s December and there’s a tiny bit of snow on the ground. This week is flying by after the busy fun weekend away for Thanksgiving with the Tungseths.

Here we all were on Thanksgiving Day at the lake cabin:

It was the usual celebration of food, football, games, etc. and the usual weekend of making lefse, watching a movie, eating lots of food…but Trevor broke his hand playing football! He can’t use his right hand for five weeks. It is really frustrating for him, but at least he doesn’t have to have surgery.

Here are a couple photos from a bunch of us going to cut down Christmas trees on Saturday:

This week I’ve had appointments and errands and cleaning and job searching to do. I also made this wreath for the front door:

I saw this idea here and made my own version using supplies from the dollar store and what I had at home, besides some brads I found on clearance at Michaels. I also didn’t cut the flowers out from hand like the tutorial, but instead used my Cricut to cut them out for me.

We still need to get out the Christmas tree and decorations! Trevor won’t be too much help with his broken hand and all, but I am hoping he can help me a little bit, so I am waiting for him to be around. We’ve had a busy week! Hopefully we will decorate the house this weekend!

Whoo, I received one of my packages from the November Ongoing Wish Swap! Hika-Chan claimed me for notecards and a surprise. I received a metric fuck ton of notecards which are basically too pretty to give to unappreciative people. Perhaps I’ll just keep them and look at them. : )

Notecards!

(please ignore my creepy display head lurking there)

And a pretty box:

And tucked inside were more notecards!

STILL MORE NOTECARDS:

Awesome stamps:

Seriously, the sock monkey one is hella cute (and straight off my wist!). The block is a little difficult to maneuver so I think I’m gonna chisel them apart or something (DELICATELY–because it’s hella awesome). I’m gonna stamp so many things with sock monkeys…

Oh, right, why is this six now? Uh… cause I kind of signed up for the December OWS and claimed someone already, and that usually leads to two posts, one with things I sent and one with things I received… Yeah.

SO, coming up on chez Adulterous Whores Club: That hat I keep talking about (PLUS probably its free pattern), more swap stuff. Like I said, good think I got all this cause the knitting on Featherweight is SLOW and BORING and so not good blog fodder. Instead you get to look at pretty notecards while I squee about sock monkeys! Whoo hoo!

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Felt & Wool

Well it’s that time of year, for decorating, crafts, baking and shopping!

I’ve decided to go through some of my Christmas decorations this year and get rid of some stuff so I can decorate more “simply”.  I’ve had a bunch of “mish-mash” decorations for years and years now.  A lot of hand-me-downs that are tattered, broken etc.  I decided this year to simplify my decorations by going with a plain wreath with green LED lights and two wire/ivy trees with white LED lights on top of the piano.  I decided to go with LED this year.  While they cost more upfront they use a fraction of the electricity as regular lights do.  I’m kind-of a Christmas light freak so I figured I would save where I could.

I put this decoration together the other night after buying these two little trees at Fred Meyer for $9.99 a piece.  The planter is a Pottery Barn planter that I’ve had sitting outside since this past summer with nothing in it.  It was a gift from a family friend.  The silver ornaments are leftover from a few years ago as is the ribbon.  I’ve decided on a green and silver theme with a hint of red.  I have a couple of other “projects” up my sleeve that I will be blogging about later (once I buy the supplies to create them).

I am almost done with my Christmas shopping this year and it’s only December 1st!  I decided to get a jump start and I did a LOT of my shopping online this year.  I’ve been really happy with the results.  I’ve gone out to Christmas shop only once and it was NOT on Black Friday (NO WAY!).  I only have one more person to buy for (whom I am waiting for to give me some IDEAS).  Other than that I have a couple of silly stocking stuffer things to get.  I am really happy that I will be able to enjoy December baking and doing crafts instead of running back and forth from the mall and shopping center

Speaking of CRAFTS!!!  This is a little project I started last week.  I’ve had this pad of Holiday scrapbooking paper for a couple of years now.  I’ve used a few pieces here and there for cards and whatnot, but I’m not really into scrapbooking so I’ve been trying to figure out ways to use this beautiful paper (either that or give it away!).  I decided to cut up the 12×12 sheets into little strips to fold and make gift tags.  But I couldn’t stop there!  I cut little white squares of paper and used my Holiday rubber stamp collection to stamp images onto the paper.  After that I used an old paint brush, some craft glue and my Martha Stewart glitter to jazz them up a bit.  I may have gotten a little carried away…..but I was having so much FUN with this!  Aren’t they cute?!?!

I think the snowflakes are my favorites!  Some of them I drew myself, like this one.  I just drew the shape lightly with a pencil and painted the glue on before sprinkling the glitter.  The photo doesn’t show how sparkly and glittery they are.  They’re really cute!

This snowman turned out pretty cute too!  This one is from one of my rubber stamps.  Unfortunately I had to stop using the stamps because my stamp pads were all nasty from being in storage.  The foam was starting to disintegrate and make the stamping process pretty sloppy.

This was a great project for my ADD personality.  It gave me something fun to do for several hours a couple nights in a row and now I have a nice little collection of hand-made gift tags!

Happy crafting everyone!  Have a wonderful Holiday Season!

XOXOX

Kim

My goal every year is to make all my own Christmas cards, and of course write a personal note on each one that I send. In the real world, many times I just sign:

Love,

Joe & Carla

Also, I’m realistic enough to buy boxes of cards when they go on sale after Christmas. If nothing else, it gives me a cheap source of envelopes for the cards that I make. Sometimes the boxes go on sale for .25 for 25 cards. Now that’s a mathematical story problem I can solve. A penny apiece.

Affordable cards made in the U.S.A.

Stickles

For embellishments, I got out plain old Elmer’s glue – not made in the U.S. anymore – and my box of glitter tubes and bottles. My sister uses Stickles and it’s so easy to use and goes where where you want it to – next time I’ll use it for this kind of project. Stickles is glitter glue made by Ranger (in the U.S. as all there products are). It’s really superior to the kind of glitter glue I used to buy in the 1980’s. Nana’s Scrapbooks in Weatherford has some and I hope to add new colors to my stash. Nana’s is a very nice little scrapbook store. The owner is a kind Christian lady and very helpful. I’d link her website, but I couldn’t find it using the search engine.

Can a girl have too much glitter?

Red glitter for the berries on the bell cards.

These also needed something extra so I touched up the snow with white glitter and also a few bits of red and green.

Not exactly handmade, but at least hand embellished. And it was surprising how much nicer they looked. They certainly didn’t look like penny cards.

We recently received some adorable samples from one of our newest Stampendous’ Favorite Stampers, Wendy Price. Wendy was one of the lucky Paper Craft Planet Design Team who hosted a week of our recent Back To Basics Tutorial on papercraftplanet.com. Wendy got to play with our Painting With Powder Technique and made the cutest card using our SSC1055 Birch Buddies Perfectly Clear Stamps and our SSC1058 Snowy Short Stacks Perfectly Clear Stamps, along with our Crystal, Baby Blue Pastel and White Embossing Powders.

Wendy has fallen in love with Stampendous products and sent us the sweetest note commenting on our wonderful quality and “cuteness”! Thanks, Wendy! We love them, too, but it’s nice to hear from other folks who appreciate the attention to quality we give every item from Stampendous. Here are some other samples Wendy has made using the supplies above. You can see more of her terrific creations at www.paperinkandsmiles.blogspot.com

Stampendous Stamps Used:

• SSC1058 Snowy Short Stacks Perfectly Clear™ Stamp Set

Stampendous Stamps Used:

• SSC1058 Snowy Short Stacks Perfectly Clear™ Stamp Set
• SSC1055 Birch Buddies Perfectly Clear™ Stamp Set

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Flanel Grey Grosgrain
Blue Stripe Grosgrain

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Bazzill
Core’dinations

This is a fun “trash to treasure” project perfect for Christmas!  Following is the list of supplies I used, but you can adapt this to whatever you have on hand, as long as you have cardboard, glitter, and glue.

Supplies:

• Corrugated cardboard box or sheet
• Martha Stewart glitter in various colors
• Liquid glue
• Various patterned papers
• Pop dots or other foam adhesive
• Vintage sheet music
• Ribbon and trim (I used ribbons and trim from the SNS Nov kit) and/or crinkled seam binding (mine is from etsy)
• Tag shapes to trace and cut out or die cut tags of varying sizes
• Distressing tool (or use scissors edge)
• Eyelet and setting tool
• Scissors
• Pen
• Scallop Punch
• Distress Ink

1. Start with corrugated cardboard.  If yours has paper on both sides, just peel off the paper on one side.  As long as it’s not printed, you don’t have to get it perfect.

2. Draw rough tree shapes on the back of the cardboard.  Again doesn’t need to be perfect.

3. Cut them out.

4.  They should look about like this when you flip them back over.  Ink the “trunk” part of the tree. (I forgot to take a picture of this.)

5. Spread with liquid glue and sprinkle with glitter.  Keep in mind that the more glue you have on it, the more glittery your tree will be.

6. Play around with lots of colors!

7. Trace and cut out  (or die cut) several tags, so that they are slightly different sizes.

8. Distress the edges and stack them up with 3d foam adhesive between the layers.

9.  Punch and distress scalloped circle and add to tag.

10. Add some ribbon/trim/seam binding and attach eyelet.

11. When glue and glitter are completely dry, add tree to tag.

12. Add ribbon through eyelet.

13.  Use as is for a gift tag or attach to the front of a card or altered notebook for a gift!

I recently had the pleasure, okay the privilege, alright the luck, of being a vendor at this year’s Detroit Urban Craft Fair (DUCF). This was the fourth year for the craft show, if you can call it that.

Gone are the kitchen witches and googley-eyed pine cones of craft shows past. This show is for the “indie-crafter” the “cool-crafter” if you will. Let’s just say that in my (many) years of craft show participation, this was the first show where I was definitely the most “un-cool” person there! (Hey, when you’re used to the lady next to you selling “Bingo” sun-catchers, it makes you pretty cool).

Pics from the DUCF

Sponsored by Handmade Detroit, the DUCF is held at the Majestic Theatre in downtown Detroit. If you’re not familiar with the Majestic, it’s a bar, a bowling alley, a restaurant, a cafe. I’ve bowled there (quite well I might add). I’ve even seen Echo & the Bunnymen there (take that!) But this has to be one of their biggest events.

Known for their life-sucking abilities, craft shows aren’t always fun. It’s like attending a wedding or a baby shower; it seems like a good idea, until you get there and remember what a long and torturous day lies ahead of you.

However, the DUCF sets a new craft show standard. It was busy from minute it opened, until we packed up (what little we had left, that is!) And it was actually fun! The vendors were amazing. From jewelry to prints, from clothing to stained glass, I have never seen such talent under one roof. It was all I could do not to spend all my profits!

And the people! I know Detroiters rock, but this was too much. People of every age attended. And not just the hip Detroit crowd, but moms and dads. Yes, I said dads. Actual men at a craft show. My own brother (the King of Cool) even showed up. Families, kids; the place was literally packed.

My favorite moment was when a little girl (probably 8 or so) reached into her purse to buy one of my journals and turned to her (younger) friend and said, “You should buy one, this stuff is cheap!” From the mouths of babes!

I can only hope we have the good fortune (luck… talent) to be chosen for the DUCF next year. Events like this make you proud to be from Detroit, where we’re definitely putting the “D” in DIY.

For more photos, visit the DUCF flickr site.

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ALL Ink, Smooch & Border Punches

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Beige – Olive – Red Jacquard

Olive – Gold Metallic Braid

Red Velvet

Well it’s that time of year again. And I’m knee deep in Christmas projects and this ribbon kit was perfect for that.

Here is a ribbon tree I did:

And a bunch of Cards:

Have a great holiday season!

…but doing my Christmas cards doesn’t really count as something creative, right? Okay, so I’m semi-making them. Whatever. (I guess you caught me red-handed, Heather! Tee hee!)

But oh, I do love paper crafts. I am such a print girl – one of my favourite things to do at my job is ordering commercial printing. I love looking at paper samples, choosing the poundage, deciding if it should be matte, gloss, semi-gloss, then checking the proofs… (I also used to be a major paper eater as a kid. Foolscap paper tasted the best. Who am I kidding – I’m still a paper eater. Except that now I’m all about the copy paper. Yum.)

Zippo progress on the PhD application, in case you were wondering.

There is a little drawer in my desk in which I keep stamps. Along with the new ones, I also toss in ones torn off of envelopes that were never sent. For those really organized and efficient people, it will remain a mystery why anyone would go to the trouble to write out a card or letter and then not send it. But as an imperfect, very imperfect, human, I can tell you that after a couple of years, I have a little collection of these torn off corners of envelopes.

Now the slightly less efficient may simply toss the whole unsent letter into the trash; the slightly less efficient but conscientious would recycle the whole thing.

As a member of the above mentioned imperfect group, I set out a saucer of water and soak the stamps off of the paper, then place them on a piece of waxed paper to dry (if they were placed onto the countertop while wet, then I’d have to soak them off of that.)

5 minutes of work netted me just a little less than $4.00. With stamps at .44 now, I’m glad to save those expensive little bits of colorful paper. I would no more put an unused postage stamp in the trash than I would throw away .44 in coin. Or, in this case, four $1 bills.

Not just at Christmas, but all through the year I ask the Postal clerk what kind of commemorative stamps they have. These are the ones other than the Flags or Liberty Bells, featuring historical and/or popular illustrations; some of my favorites have been Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Stewart, the state of Oklahoma, Desi and Lucy, Elvis and Henry Fonda. Commemorative don’t cost any more than the others and give a certain oomph to the envelope. Of course, one has to actually mail the letter or card for it to have the final polish of that cancellation mark.

Speaking of which, canceled stamps are a great embellishment for handmade cards, scrapbooking, altered books or any papercrafting project. There is an almost infinite variety of ones available and one begins to look at mail, even the junk mail with a whole new perspective.

This post linked to Frugal Fridays @ Life as Mom.

Just click on the image above to purchase this gorgeous kit!

any Presents 4 me?-SNS December Kit
SNS December Ribbon Kit
Karen Foster-December ppr
MM Mistletoe ppr
Cardboard
Craft Paper
Prima gate
Gold and Green Paints
Assorted Scrap pprs
Assorted alphas
K & Company Brad

love-SNS December Kit
SNS DECEMBER RIBBON KIT
Prima paintable transparency
Alcohol inks
Prima say it in crystals
misc. scraps from MM and Bo bunny
K and Co trinket

Santa is…Great!-SNS December Kit
SNS December Ribbon Kit
Prima Paintable
Prismacolor Pencils and low odor thinner
Basic Grey pprs
Assorted Scraps
MM brads
Prima Quillon Flowers
Felt Thickers
MM tiny alphas
Misc. holly leaves and berries

Sweet Gifts-SNS December Kit
SNS December Ribbon Kit
Red Misc. Cardstock
Creative Imaginations-line paper?
MM ppr scraps
Misc. scrap papers
Assorted embellies (MM) from SH add-on Kit
Prima Say it in Crystals
Lace scrap
Fancy Pants
? Alphas
Fir branch-Silk Tree Factory