Scrapbook Paper Christmas Tree

Well, I know Christmas is technically over, but if you are like me, you leave your Christmas up til February. ;)  So in my eyes, I still have some time for Christmas related posts!  So here's another Christmas goodie :)

Hello, my name is Stephanie and I am a pinterest addict.  I found the idea for this little beauty on pinterest.

A scrapbook paper Christmas tree

Here are the supplies you need.  One canvas, Christmas scrapbook paper, scissors or paper cutter, something tubelike to roll your paper on, hot glue, embellishments, baby monitor (because of course you are doing this during naptime!), and some coffee (because you are a mom and need all the caffeine you can get!)

Step 1- Find a tube with your desired circumference.  I found this extra piece of fuel line from my husbands mistress 1973 roadrunner.  It was perfect.  Roll your paper and use hot glue along the edges as you roll.  The hot glue ensures your paper holds together quickly.  

Step 2- Repeat step 1 as many times as you need to reach nearly the top of your canvas.  Using various Christmas paper, create a tier of scrapbook "paper rolls" by making the next roll slightly shorter.

 

Step 3- Embellish with buttons and a topper! (as seen in the first picture!)

2011 Christmas Card!

Merry Bright Greeting Holiday

Create holiday photo cards that create smiles.

View the entire collection of cards.

I just had to share my precious little boy on our 2011 Christmas card! Love those baby blues!!

Crafty Christmas Continues!

Holiday Greetings!

I bring you more Crafty Christmas gifts!  

I found this next project on an adorable blog called Cupcakes with Sprinkles (click on that link for the tutorial!).  I adore her blog! It is so cute!  This could be personalized in just about any way you can imagine as a gift (sports themes, baby themes etc)  I introduce you to:

The Baby Food Jar Christmas Tree 

Here is how mine turned out! Pretty darn cute! I simply saved Little E's Earths Best baby food jars, hot glued them in a tier, stuffed them with garland and put some little snowmen ornaments in strategic locations (because we all know I am obsessed with snowmen) 

.

 And wrapped a ribbon around the jars.  You can also punch holes in the lids and use a strand of lights to light up the jars. See Cupcakes with Sprinkles fantastic tutorial for the How To.  SO CUTE!  Thank you for the inspiration Cupcakes with Sprinkles!

A snowman upon closer examination! 

And now onto another fun project: Handmade gift card holders brought to you by

A Little Space Called Home 

Here's how mine turned out!

I found these wonderful velcro dots that I used to keep them closed.   These are great because they can be made to stick to a present, or hang on a tree or just to be handed to someone! And it is SUPER inexpensive to make! 

And I will leave you now with some really cute FREE printables!  Just click on the following links to check them out!

Free Printable Christmas Tags  by Living Locurto

Hot Chocolate printable for a small bag of hot chocolate by LollyChops.

A very Crafty Christmas!

It only took me two weeks but I am finally about to post the creations I made for MOPS (mothers of preschoolers). Sorry ladies, I left my camera at home on accident while I went on vaca for 2 weeks to visit family. :( So get ready for information overload!


On November 19th, I had the opportunity to share two things that are near and dear to my heart. 1) Battling Negative Body image and 2) crafts!  If you are interested in my health journey and battling negative body image or if you need some inspiration or just to relate to someone that has been thru some crazy difficult body image issues, you can check out my fitness blog at www.rn4fitness.blogspot.com or you can follow my facebook page at www.facebook.com/Rn4fitness and look for the fb page titled Faith & Fitness: Living Healthy for Him.  


But for this blog, we will be focusing on the crafts!  I LOVE to browse the web (and now totally obsessed with pinterest) for ideas. I do love to make my own creations (if and when they pop in my head), but I also love to be inspired by others creations and make them to fit my own personality!  Over the next few blogposts, you will see a variation of both.  So let's get started!!


The theme was "A Very Crafty Christmas!" and I showed the girls a ton of different homemade Christmas gift ideas that are inexpensive.  

Let's have a look at what you can do with jars!  

One of my favorites was the Petite Pie in a Jar.  Look how cute they turned out!!  My engineer husband would like me to note that he did the lattice top.  These little cuties are made in canning jars so they can actually be frozen, then popped into the oven and baked inside the jars.    Here is the tutorial !

Here is another idea I just came up with while I was out gathering materials (and I'm sure this has been done before.)  I came across a gingerbread mix bag and thought it would be great to put in a jar and decorate it with a gingerbread theme.  The cooking directions are on the back of the tag.  It turned out so cute! Funny story though.  See the cute rope around the fabric?  I went to the garage and thought I would steal a small piece of a large thing of rope that was hanging near all the other rope my  husband has collected.  Snip. Snip.  Later, I show the hubby my little creation.  Turns out that rope I cut off was from...his hammock.  Oops....

And yet another jar of goodness! Cookies!  Mine turned out pretty cute but check out this tutorial to make your own Cookies in a Jar! And if you haven't ever used sticker paper before (that's how I made the Cookies for Santa tag and cooking instructions), you are missing out! 

oh so much you can do with jars! I have several more crafty christmas gifts to posts, but the little one just woke up.  I'll be posting more this week! 

Happy Tuesday!

A "pretty" grocery list!

So I honestly don't know how I would (or ever did) live without my smartphone. I have an iphone4 and like they say, there is an app for everything! Recently, I discovered this awesome app called "GroceryIQ" which is basically a grocery list app. What's so awesome about it is your other half can add to the list on his phone and the list will sync on both your phones. So when you add something to the list, he can see it on his phone and vice versa. I thought this was so great...until my husband would never use it. Prior to this app, I had a little boring notepad that had a magnet on the back of it that lived on the fridge. The hubby was very good about adding to the list when he noticed we were low on something. So back to the notepad, except this time...not boring.

I had these loose grocery list papers sitting in my office, that I had forgotten about. So I simply stapled them together and at the same time stapled them to a piece of scrapbook paper.

To get it to stick to the fridge, I tacky glued an old mat (garage sale for like 5 cents, cheapo!) to the back and then stuck some magnet strips (.97 cents for a huge pack at walmart!) to the mat.

And Waalaa! A cute little grocery list (no boring notepad) that cost me pretty much nothing that my husband will actually use. I would call that a success. And please note the cute picture of the baby on the fridge. Ya, that's my baby boy...he's pretty much the cutest baby in the world ;)

Ghostly Footprint cards!

I realize Halloween is over and this was a last minute project, but I have to share it! How cute are these little homemade Halloween cards? I wish I would have taken pictures of Little E while I was printing his feet. Bummer!

Here's the how to --> Remember that Halloween scrapbook paper I had? I simply folded a sheet of that to make a card, cut out black cardstock and footprinted Little E's feet, glued it to the paper, drew a little ghost face after the ink had dried and decorated with scrapbook stickers and embellishments :)

I have to admit I think they are adorable.

Ahhh :) How fun is that.

Candy Corn Wreath

Candy Corn Wreath

There is this fantastic blog that I follow called "Crap I've made: Sometime's its amazing and sometimes its just crap." I LOVE that title and wish I had thought of it. Dang it! It's so appropriate for this little tutorial. Sometimes we creative types get something in our heads but then it doesn't come out as planned. That's what happened here. I had these big plans for this wreath and it just didn't work out like I had envisioned. You may think its adorable but its not what I was after. Oh well, there is always next Halloween. I would like to rate my projects on a 5 frog scale with 5 frogs being the awesomest and 1 frog being the crappiest. The BOO project totally recieved a 5 frog rating. This one, however, I am only giving it a 3 frog rating. So here you go...let's make a 3 frog rated Halloween wreath.

Step 1- Gather supplies. You need a styrofoam wreath, ribbon (candy corn colors!), modge podge, a little wooden plank guy, some more halloween stems, embellishments (scratch that, I didn't end up using those!), some scrapbook paper and some hotglue. Oh and you will also need a large dog to supervise.

Step 2- Wrap your ribbon around your wreath. I had originally planned to have the ribbon intertwined rather than doing chunks of color but I didn't have enough ribbon. :( And I didn't feel like driving an hour away to get the matching ribbon. I also used a little modge podge along the back to secure my ribbon as I went.

This is what it looks like after completing step 2.

Step 3: With the help of my husband and his trusty staple gun, we stapled spider web to the back of the wreath and stretched it til it looked like a web. You will want to put hotglue over your staples becuz they will pull easily out of the styrofoam. The staples just made it easy to work the webbing.

Step 4: I had originally planned for the web to be thicker so that I could have my other goodies look like they were caught in the web, but to much webbing made it look like a blob of white, instead of a spider web. So to make my web more visible and to have something to put my goodies on, I did the whole staple/hotglue thing with a piece of black scrapbook paper.

Step 5: Add your embellishments. I tossed some candy corns on there from the Halloween stems. I painted the wooden plank black and did the same thing I did with the BOO letters with scrapbook paper. Then I wrote BOO on there with a black paint sharpie.

It's cute, but not what I envisioned. And Halloween is nearly here, so it will work for this year.

Hopefully my attempts at a Thanksgiving wreath have better results ;)

Boo!

BOO!

Guess what! I love fall and I LOVE Halloween decor. I have more fall decor than Halloween decor but I am in the process of fixing that. For my first official tutorial post, I have come up with a really fun, inexpensive little piece. And I have to say, it is absolutely adorable.

Step 1- Buy some letters. I chose to spell out BOO but you could do any Halloween message you want and you can totally adapt this to any holiday. I bought these letters at Wal-mart for $2 a piece and I spray painted them black. Note: If the only black paint you have is rust inhibitor paint meant for your husband's roadrunner...it will work. ;)


Step 2: Find some really cute scrapbook paper. I had a 40% coupon to Hobby Lobby and I wanted a whole pack of Halloween paper since I scrapbook. You could just buy 3 specific sheets of paper making this part of the project a ton cheaper.

Step 3: Trace your letters on the back of the scrapbook paper and cut them out. Be sure to trace them "backwards" so when you flip them over the scrapbook paper side is face up on your letter. Also cut inside your trace line just a bit so that you will leave some space for the black to be seen on the edge. Your scrapbook paper should be just a little bit smaller than your actual letter. Then hire your husband to make the fine detailed cuts in the middle of the letters.

Step 4: Modge podge. I recently started using it and it's just about the best thing ever created. Slap some on your letters and place your paper on the letter.

Step 5: This was my favorite part. Take a brush and a little bit of modge podge and put it all around the edges of your letters. This is going to ensure that the paper lays flat on your wood letter. It will not mess your paper up (that's what I LOVE about modge podge). After you get some along the edge, take your finger and wipe it off along the edge, flattening the paper as you go.

Step 6: Find some fun Halloween "greenery." I am not exactly sure what you call the cute little Halloween stems. I cut them with wire cutters so I could work with each stem individually and I hot glued them to the back.


Step 7: Add some embellishments if you like (like my little bat on the purple O) and then sit back and admire how cute your BOO is.

Step 8: Spend every 15 minutes for the entire evening telling your husband how much you love your BOO and how cute it looks on your piano. ;)

I hope you enjoyed the first tutorial! This just popped in my head when I was walking down the craft aisle at Walmart. I saw it in my head and had to put it to work and ended up with a pretty awesome little Boo. =)

About Me!

Hi there! I'm Stephanie. New mom. Wife. Nurse. Lover of creativity. A woman with a bucket list a zillion miles long and an unhealthy obsession with snowmen. I created this page to keep a journal of my attempts at being creative. Sometimes those attempts yield an awesome result and sometimes those attempts yield an epic fail.

Things you should know about me:

I am literally obsessed with snowmen. (I said that already, right?)

I love modge podge.

I love scrapbooking.

I love DIY projects.

I love being inspired by others.

I love being a mom (best.job.ever)

I love flea markets, craft shows and garage sales.

I hope you leave here inspired =)