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Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Here is a St. Patrick's Day project I came up with for work. Photo cup wraps jazz things up for parties and helps your guests keep track of their drinks.
You can go here to see the step by step instructions and download the cup wrap template.
Someone on Craftster wondered if it would be a problem if the cups sweated and got the wraps wet and someone else had the great idea of laminating them and reusing them!
I was looking at the George Eastman House and noticed there were 24 windows... the perfect number for an advent calendar. I told my friend Rachel about my idea and she was able to get me a great photo of the house to create an advent calendar for this year.
Download the template and read how to make one for yourself on 1000Words blog.
Tonight I am having a sit down Halloween dinner party, so that required some crafting on my part.
I handmade the party invites. I used pre-cut black cards and added a moon with a stamped branch and a punched out owl.
Was it an excuse to buy the Martha Stewart owl punch at Michaels? Perhaps. Look how cute! It even embosses the eyes!
Aaron cut the moons out of yellow paper for me and then I used a branch rubber stamp to make a tree branch for the owl to sit on. Aaron then wrote the party details on the back with a white pen.
We also made paper mache pumpkins for favors.
The pumpkins were filled with ye olde fashioned candy like Bit-O-Honeys.
The pumpkins weren't hard... we covered balloons with orange crepe paper soaked in Mod Podge mixed with water. After they dried we popped the balloons and pulled them out. Aaron added wire handles and I added black crepe paper jack o'lantern faces.
I was going to make one for each person, but they were more work than I anticipated so we made them larger... one for each couple.
I made a Halloween photo project for work where you can download these lollipop cover templates and customize them yourself. Seeing as how I get over 200 trick or treaters, I need to think hard whether this is something I want to hand out.
To make the photo lollipops I used these Yummy Earth Organic Lollipops. I was lured in by the packaging and the "All Natural and Delicous". Strangely there were NO "pomegranate pucker" lollipops in the entire bag. Also very few mango and blueberry. Otherwise very tasty. Do I want to force the neighborhood kids to eat USDA Organic candy?
How to reuse a broken flower pot as a planter. Step one: foolishly leave your huge terra cotta flower pot out over winter to freeze and lamely find it cracked in half come spring.
When my sister graduated last weekend it was quite the event. That's me snapping one of hundreds of pictures of her from the day. To celebrate, I made her some congratulation balloon tags.
For Lauren's baby shower, made these seed packets to go with the favors. Since she was born early she had her shower after her birth and got to be featured on her favors.
Looking back at that project gave me an idea.
I designed photo seed packets that can be used for wedding favors or baby birth announcements. The project seems timely because spring always seems to bring lots of weddings and babies.
You can download the templates here and there are also step by step instructions. It helps if you have photo editing software, so you can add the pictures before you print them out.
in an effort to combine St. Patrick's Day and the looming Easter holiday, I made shamrock Easter eggs. You can read about how I made these photo eggs with decoupage glue and blown eggs on 1000 Words today.
. You can leave me a comment there if you want... it's sadly commentless
I am so lucky that I get to do stuff I enjoy at work. I just designed these Valentine's Day Candy Bar Wrappers for the project center.
Aaron had no idea he was going to be the cover boy for all the candy wrappers.
There are three different wrappers that you can download. They all have funny little sayings on them.
You can either open the pdf's up in a photo editing tool and add your pictures or print them out as is and cut out the hearts and place your picture behind the cutout.
I don't want to push Christmas before it's time, but here is something you will want to start early so you have it ready for the first of December... a Photo Advent Calendar.
I love advent calendars and wanted one that was personalized. So I created this house design in illustrator and the template for placing the photos behind it.
You can download the pdf's to make your own Photo Advent Calendar on 1000 Words and more detailed instructions for making it.
You can open a window for each day in December and see one of your favorite photos!
I also made an Oscar and Stewie back panel so you could have a Pug and Cat Advent Calendar if you don't have time to fill one in with your own pictures. Or maybe you just want a cute Pug and Cat Advent Calendar. You can download this panel at 1000 Words too.
I have two Halloween inkjet projects over at 1000
Words today. The first are Oscar and Stewie masks. Everyone
in the office agrees they are eerie looking.
If you aren't sure what to be for Halloween you could go as a pug or a
kitty.
There are also downloadable templates for Halloween Oscar and Stewie
lollipop covers. Kinda like my lollipop
cozies but faster and easier to put together.
Oscar and Stewie are demanding compensation for the use of their
likeness. Greedy little critters.
To download the pdf templates and see instructions on how to
make the masks and lollipop covers check out 1000
Words.
It is high time I wrote about our completed kitchen tile project. We actually finished it a couple months ago, but my kitchen hasn't been tidy enough to take "finished" pictures. Hah!
I was so sick of our old lineoleum floor... it had little nicks and cuts and I just couldn't get the spot where Oscar comes in from the backyard clean. We picked these brown tiles and chose a dove grey grout to match. It really wasn't too much work to lay down the tile. We did it in a weekend. We bought a tile cutter for less than $100 and it was so worth it. Aaron did the cutting and laying while I pretty much handed him tiles and kept the four legged critters out of the kitchen. You can see more pictures of the process on my Project Gallery.
Oscar and Stewie approve of the new tile floor.
While we had everything pulled out of the kitchen we painted it a nice butter yellow. I like how it looks next to our Tiffany blue foyer. Mmmm butter.