Saturday, May 31, 2014

Spider-Man Birthday Party

Hi Crafty Friends! I haven't posted in a while. I was recovering from my now 3 year old's birthday party.  As you can see he is a Spider-Man enthusiast. He loves all things Spider-Man. So, it was a no brainer that when I asked  him what kind of birthday party he wanted he jumped up and screamed "SPIDER-MAN"!!

An, like any other crafty mother on a budget, I opted to make as much of the party decorations as possible. My job was somewhat simple... Sean had only two requests. 1) Pizza & 2) A  candy buffet. 

I think I accomplished both. Yay, two points for Mom!! Pizza was easily taken care of . We easily phoned ahead and went to pick up our pizzas right before the party. 

The candy buffet on the other hand was a little more work. I want a little more than candy in containers. I wanted the theme to his birthday incorporated into the set up.






I think I did a pretty good job!

I even handmade these Spider-Man masks to pas out to the children!


And, believe it or not, I already had the materials to make them.


For the masks I used fun foam sheets that I bought tons of years ago and had like 8 packs hiding in my craft stash. I am a craft hoarder so when things go on sale for a really good deal I don't hesitate at scooping it up. I can always figure out what to do with it later!!


Here is my uber cute 1 year old helping mommy to size the masks... they are so stinkin' cute at this age!!

And here I made table tent labels for my glass jars.

 I opted for table tents instead of labels because the last time I hung the labels arount the jars and hung them around the lids they seemed to get in the way and I ended up removing them and placing them besides the jars anyway.
 To get this look I used Accucut's Table Tent #2 (3-D) for the base. And Design On Cloud 9's Journal Tags and Haunted Halloween Party.

Also from Designs cutting files I made this:
 which I also had in yet another previous post. Found here.

Then I backed the candy buffet with this awesome handmade cityscape skyline... also handmade and I also already had the materials for. Yay, for saving money! I did a previous post about it here

The thing is I try to only buy stuff only on sale. And these matboards I bought at Hobby Lobby at 50% off. I try to buy a variety of colors and just stick it in my stash because who knows when you'll need it! LOL 

This is another good reason to hoard... am I right or am I right??!! Buy when you can because sometimes things get tight and budgets get tight. And in doing so it always looks like you've spent tons of money and went all out on your child. When in reality it just took a little bit of time and elbow grease to throw your child a super fab birthday.

Hope you enjoyed my little birthday projects! And check back real soon!

Happy Crafting Everyone!! 

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Cityscape Backdrop

Hello Crafty Friends!! I have another "SPIDEY" project to share with you all. This is a cityscape skyline backdrop for my son's upcoming birthday party. If you read the previous post about his birthday banner you already know that he absolutely wanted a Spider-Man themed birthday party. And, I was more than thrilled to take up the challenge.


For those of you who have read my post about with the Giant Cupcakes
you know I love to use mat-board for my over-sized party decorations. I do this for 2 reasons. 1) I do not possess the necessary tools or skills to make it out of wood. And, 2) Mat board is so much easier and lighter to handle and craft with.  


For the action signs I used Design on Cloud 9's Superboy & Supergirl cutting files and I slightly enlarged the backgrounds behind the wording.

 The BOOM is from the Supergirl file.

 Pow is from the Superboy file

Wham also came from the Supergirl file.

Each file has two sets of action words in addition to various superhero themed designs.

This picture is to show how HUGE this backdrop is. This is my 5 year old and my 1 year old in the picture hamming it up.

As you can see it is taller than she is!

And my 1 year old is barely peeking through the buildings. 

This scene is great on the floor but thankfully it's not going to stay here for long... I'm afraid my children will do some Godzilla action on this city and it'll be mangled before it's used for the party. So, back up and away it goes till later.

That's all I got for today. But this is the last week before the party and I'm going for one last push before then to crank out more Spider-Man/ Super hero themed party decorations. 

I'm hoping to get a little more done before the big day. Check back soon for more updates and progress!

And, Happy Crafting Everyone!!

Monday, May 12, 2014

Mother's Day Cards

Sorry, for some reason this did not post yesterday... oh well, anyhoo....

Good Morning & Happy Mother's Day Crafty  Friends!!!
Today I'm sharing with you 2 Mother's Day cards. I made them for the 2 most important ladies in my life, my mother & mother-in-law. 

The first card is the card I made for my mother. And, the second is for my mother-in-law. You may notice that neither card has a sentiment on front. There are a couple reasons why I do this. 

One is because a lot of times I make cards on a whim and add them to my "stash" that I keep on hand that I can thumb through later.

Leaving them blank gives you more freedom on when & to whom you want to give them. If I labeled both these cards Happy Mother's Day then I would definitely have to give them to 
A. a mother and 
B. on Mother's Day. 
By leaving my cards blank I can expand card giving areas to (just by looking at them, based on theme) Easter, Spring, or just an everyday type card... maybe even birthday( depending when the recipient's birthday is). 

Reason two is sometimes I just like keeping the cheesy puns inside the card a surprise.

For this card I used Design on Cloud 9's Tulips file. 


I used the watering can from DC9's Garden Pixies file for this card.

Hope these inspire you to your own card stash...
Happy Crafting Everyone!

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Spider-Man Birthday Banner

My Sean Boy is going to be three years old. 

So, when I asked mama's little man what kind of birthday party would he like he said without hesitation "Spider-Man". And, in at least one point in a little boy's life, he should embrace his inner supper hero. So, why not now?! YOLO, right?!

His actual birthday isn't for a couple more weeks but I think it's never too early to prepare. 

This will be the beginning of Spider-Man themed project I will be doing leading up to the big birthday bash. I'll try to make them all short an sweet. LOL

 Here's is the look of the finished banner.


Section 1

Section 2

Section 3

For this project I used Design on Cloud 9's Daddy Long Legs file (for the web) which went perfectly into the semi-circle from my ecal shape library. 

And the font used is called The Amazing Spider-Man. Not only did I create the wording for my banner with this font I also created the little circle Spider-Man heads with it too! That's right, this font comes with Spider-Man icons!!

I hot glued my paper pieces onto about 10 feet of grosgrain ribbon and there yo have it... a quick and easy AND DIY Spider-Man personalized birthday banner!!

Stay tuned Spidey friends for more Spidey projects!

Thanks for stopping by and have a very CRAFTY Day!!

Cupcake Boxes Again

Hello Crafty Friends! I'm back again with another cupcake box. This one was also made for a friend who was having a birthday. She had specifically asked for me to make her strawberry cupcakes and I was more than happy to make them for her.

Again, I used Design on Cloud 9's K-cup Box file and super sized it. For the exact measurements visit the cupcake box tutorial here

There's a couple of differences between the two though. One being the shape of the window and the other being this awesome purple flower. I created it using DC9's Fancy Flowers file set. 

For the window: I used DC9's Laurie's Labels and the same technique described in the tutorial.

For the  flower: I combined 2 different flowers from this set to make the purple flower. I used the violet (flower 3) and the daisy (flower 4) and combined them together. The daisy was the base and I glued the violet petals to each daisy petal. There are 4 layers of petals to make this flower.
So, it went:
Bottom/ base 
8 violet petals
then 7 petals
then 6 petals
then 4 petals
Make sure when you start a new row you start placement in between petals of the previous row. Otherwise, if you just place the next row of petals directly above the previous row it makes it difficult to see the separate layers.

I added some Prima hydrangea flowers & leaves, & buttons and Hero Arts' flower shaped bling for the centers. And, I twisted light weight wire onto dragonfly bead sand made stems, and curled the wire. Lastly, I simply colored the bead with permanent ink markers and glued in place behind the flowers.

 This box will hold 4 standard sized cupcakes. 
For  extra stability I added a 5.75"x5.75" sheet of chipboard to the bottom of the box .

I love the scallops of this box!! Too cute!!

You  can really see the scallops from this view as well as see the gorgeous paper better too!

Speaking of...

For this project I used paper from DCWV's Cherry Limeade Stack.

I really do mean GORGEOUS!!  The colors are so luscious & vibrant! And, the best part... I bought it at Michaels' for $5!! They had a AWESOME sale of DCWV 12"x12" pads... this was one of the stacks that was on sale for the special promotion! Yeah, I picked up 2 of this stack! I'd be crazy not to. LOL

GLITTER & FOIL GALORE!!


There you have it... A beautifully decorated gift box! I can almost guarantee that it took me longer to make the box than it did the cupcakes! Aaaahhh, what we do for friends. But, you know what, it's the extra little things that make them know just how much you care. And, whenever a friend receives a handmade gift you know they can just feel how much love was put into it!

Have a beautiful weekend 
&
Happy Crafting!!