Thankful for Challenge: Cards by Courtney Lee

I am so excited about this assignment from Doodlebug. It is such a great thing to take time to stop and remember things you are grateful for. Courtney Lee from Court's Crafts here and we just moved quite a ways from "home" and are in a new neighborhood. There have been a couple of people who have been just SOOO kind and I was excited to make cards to let them know how thankful we were for their kindness.

First up is my grateful card. This card took on several iterations with lots and lots of pieces of things strewn around my craft desk until I decided on this design. I wanted to showcase the sunflowers in a jar and the wheat. 

The sunflowers and the wheat came from the Odds and Ends in the Flea Market line. The background is from the Labels and Tags in the Flea Market line. If you haven't checked out Flea Market - you MUST. It is easily one of my favorite doodlebug lines ever (and that is saying something!)

I tied some doodle twine in bumblebee around the jar and popped out my sentiment. The background patterned paper is the amazing swiss dots. Did you know that doodlebug makes a complete swiss dots line that coordinates with all of their colors? And the backside is white with that color swiss dots (as shown in the next card) if you are looking for something a little more understated. 

For this next card I wanted to make a wreath out of fall things. I started with the sunflower odds and ends and worked my way up. This is the "b" side of one of the swiss dots papers. It's just the right kind of "white" with a touch of color. 

I added some of the icons and an older generation leaves shape sprinkles. I love how they add a pop of shine.

Lastly I added the acorn cute clip from the Flea Market collection and popped my sentiment above it all. These pictures don't do the dimension on this project justice. It's really lovely as I popped some once or twice or not at all and it gave it some beautiful dimension.

Here they are! I hope this inspires you to pull out your Flea Market collection that you have hiding around and make some cards for anyone who has done something nice for you - or keep them in your purse for a waitress or waiter that went above and beyond their job! You never know when your thanks is exactly what someone needed at that time - a little appreciation. Spread joy through the season!

Kids Craft Challenge: Paper Ball Garland by Tya

Hi Everyone! Its Tya here , and it is my turn to share with you my project for the Kids Craft Challenge. I have older kids so finding the time to craft with them is a little tricky, so I wanted to share a quick and easy craft that is really fun. My 14 year old daughter is crafty like her mama and she loves making things to decorate her room , so when I stumbled on this cute paper ball garland that she had mentioned she wanted to try I knew I had to showcase this project.

 To make this project I used the following:

-Petite Print paper strips 1/2 inch x 12 inches

- Glue dots, or sticky strip

-Boutique Buttons

-Chunky Twine 

Let me walk you through how to make the garland:

Step one-

Trim the paper into (4) 1/2 x 12inch strips

Step 2 -

Gently fold the strips in half. We do this so when glue the strips together we can see where the center of the strips are.

Step 3-

Take 2 of the strips and add adhesive to the centers of both strips .Make a cross.

Step 4-

Take the other 2 strips and criss- cross them on top of the first group of strips Add adhesive to the center of just the bottom strip. You don't need adhesive on the very top strip.

Step 5-

To create the ball , add adhesive to each end of the strips. Start folding all the strips to the center as shown.

Here is what the balls look like when they are all put together-

To complete the garland I made a few of the balls and strung them on a piece of Chunky Twine. To finish them off we added a cute button to the top the ball.

These are so easy to make and honestly a little addicting too! We thought of all the fun ways these could be used - as a room decor, as party decor or a fun ornament on a Christmas tree as well. Lots of endless possibilities! Thanks for joining me today! Happy Crafting!

Swiss Dots Challenge: Reinventing the Wheel by Melinda

Electronic cutting machines have certainly taken the craft industry by storm over recent years but that doesn't mean we can't dust off the old hand held punch to create fun designs on our projects. It just takes a crazy idea to reinvent the wheel, a leaf punch and some seriously cute Swiss Dots paper in dreamy shades of pastel.

Introducing my (dust free) leaf punch and using the bold side of the new Swiss Dots patterned paper I punched a whole pile of leaves in six different shades. Let me just say, I had a desk full of leaves and a very sore hand when finished.

I wanted to have one side of the leaf more prominent than the other so I cut little slits along the edge that would overlap each leaf.

I cut a circle template to use as a guide and began by adhering each leaf starting from the outer most edge and working my way into the middle of the wheel.

At first I thought it was going to take an eternity, however it actually came together quite quickly once I had worked out a system.

I was really pleased with the finished piece and to be honest a little nervous to move onto the next step of embellishing because I had planned on adding some hand stitching and I knew that I couldn't make a mistake as I truly didn't want to redo all that work... my sore hand would never forgive me.

Fortunately everything went smoothly as I added more layers of embellishments finishing with the journaling using Doodlebug rub-ons and a scatter of sprinkles that match the Swiss Dots paper perfectly.

Ingredients:

5052: cupcake swiss dot petite prints CS

5060: bumblebee swiss dot petite prints CS 

5065: pistachio swiss dot petite prints CS

5067: bubble blue swiss dot petite prints CS

5070: lilac swiss dot petite prints CS

5048: sweet things this & that sticker

4541: lilac glitter sprinkles

4537: bumblebee glitter sprinkles

4533: cupcake glitter sprinkles

4015: beetle black sprinkles

I hope today's post has given you some ideas on using the new Swiss Dots patterned paper and also some inspiration for dusting off your old punches again.
Thanks for stopping by - Melinda