Cocoa & Crafts 8-4

Here we are at the end of August and our last Sweet as a Peach project. The layout and colors are based off this card I found a long while ago that I really liked. 

I apologize as once again I had some technical difficulties with my camera and it cut off near the end of the project. I was a wee bit frustrated at the end there, or as our Penguin Place stamp set says I was frustrated a "lottle"--it's like a little except a lot. Oh well, such is life. We did a bit of research and are hoping the trouble is just with my memory card. I'll find out later today when I record next week's project. Here's hoping all goes well. 

There you have it, I hope you enjoyed the projects we made with this month's kit. I think it was a great summery one to work with, and next month we will be switching over to some fall projects with the new Gorgeous Leaves stamp set. So pretty! 

I hope you have enjoyed today's post. If you decide to place an order through my website, if your order is less than $150, please use the Host Code listed above (on the right), so I can send you an extra free goody. If your order is over $150 don't use the code as you get to pick out the goody yourself when you place your order. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings!

Cocoa & Crafts 8-3

Hello there! Today we are using the Sweet as a Peach set to make this cute little gift bag. It's made from a 6 x 11 1/2 sheet of Designer Series Paper, so you can get two of these from each 12 x 12 sheet. I love that it showcases both sides of the pretty paper. What kind of goodies would you put in this little bag? 

As promised, here are the measurements:

Designer Series Paper 6 x 11 1/2

• Score on long side at 1 1/2 and 5
• Score short side at 1/2, 4 1/2, 6, 10

And here is what I used to make it:

I hope you have enjoyed today's post. If you decide to place an order through my website, if your order is less than $150, please use the Host Code listed above (on the right), so I can send you an extra free goody. If your order is over $150 don't use the code as you get to pick out the goody yourself when you place your order. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings!

A Hand-Penned Thank You Gift

Don't forget about Sale-a-bration going on right now!! Some of the free stuff is just too, too cute!

Hello there! You may have noticed that I am posting a bit more than usual. Ok, a lot more than usual. For one, I'm finally getting the hang of remembering to take photos of projects before I send them out and secondly, I'm trying to schedule my days better. My youngest heads off to college in a couple of weeks 😭 and I know that I will adjust to an empty house better if I have my days planned out for me rather than just floating along with nothing definite planned to do. Without a schedule, and some deadlines, it's too easy to let time slip away while staring at a screen. So, all of that to say I've been spending more time in my crafty space and trying my hardest to figure out the best ways to photo, edit, upload and all the other things that go along with keeping a blog. I do hope to post more regular than I have in the past and share some fun projects with y'all. 

A couple of projects I worked on earlier this month were Thank You cards and gifts for my awesome customers. Each month I like to send out a card and small gift as a way to say thank you for shopping with me. Here's where having a schedule would have worked in my favor. I wasn't paying attention to dates, realized it was much later in the month than I thought, rushed to finish up the projects, photograph and get them sent out, only to realize my lighting was terrible for photos that day and these didn't come out so great. Ugh! I'm learning a lot of lessons this week. 

I did like the way the cards came out though, and I especially like the little charms. I used the Hand-Penned DSP as the focal point on the card and stamped the envelope with the matching stamp. For the charm I used Staz-On to stamp on some shrink plastic and colored the image with our watercolor pencils. After shrinking the charms found the perfect color beads in my jewelry making stash to finish them off. Some people use these to mark their scissors, especially if they craft with others a lot, but I usually find it gets in my way. I like to use mine as a zipper pull. The one on my purse right now is 15+ years old. Does anyone remember this stamp set? 

Here's to a better "work" schedule for me, more posts in the future and learning how to iron out some of the kinks of having a blog. 

While we don't sell the jewelry findings or shrink plastic, here is a list of the Stampin' Up! supplies I used in these projects:

I hope you have enjoyed today's post. If you decide to place an order through my website, if your order is less than $150, please use the Host Code listed above (on the right), so I can send you an extra free goody. If your order is over $150 don't use the code as you get to pick out the goody yourself when you place your order. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings!

Beauty of Friendship card

Hello there! I finally got to play with my Beauty of Friendship set. I have come across several cards lately using thin rectangles of patterned paper behind a focal point die cut and thought this was the perfect set to try that with. 

And as you can see, I used this as an excuse to play with the alcohol/Blends technique. So, gorgeous and so fun!! I used Dark Pumpkin Pie, Dark Daffodil Delight and Light Poppy Parade Blends. If you haven't seen this technique yet, it's super easy; you scribble colors randomly on a piece of non-porous paper (I used vellum), and then you drop rubbing alcohol in various places. You can then use a straw to blow the color around a bit if you want softer edges. I did a couple of layers of this letting the paper dry between them. There are a lot of videos online showing this technique if you need a visual. 

Backing your vellum with a sheet of Basic White cardstock makes the colors really pop, but figuring out how to adhere the vellum to the cardstock can be tricky as the edges of the adhesive usually shows through. My solution was to cut a piece of adhesive sheet the same size as my vellum and adhere that to the entire back side and attaching that to the Basic White piece. This way the adhesive was all over and you don't see any harsh edges. I then cut out my rectangles using the Stitched Framelits dies. 

Here's a shot of the inside of the card. If you stamp this set the way you usually stamp, you will end up with an image that looks like the leaves are all behind the branches rather than around them. I didn't want that look so I played around till I got what I wanted. While I didn't video the alcohol technique for the front, as there are a lot of those tutorials already out there, I did do a quick video showing how I stamped this image so you can get a more realistic looking tree as well. 

Here's a list of what I used to make this card:

I hope you have enjoyed today's post. If you decide to place an order through my website, if your order is less than $150, please use the Host Code listed above (on the right), so I can send you an extra free goody. If your order is over $150 don't use the code as you get to pick out the goody yourself when you place your order. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings!

Cocoa & Crafts 8-2

Oh my, my, my. I'm not gonna lie. This card was a doozy! The video is quite long because there is a lot of stamping and assembly, I miscounted pieces in the kit, my videography skills are sorely lacking (no more open window!), and my camera decided it had had enough. Also, please ignore all the scratches on my arms. That's the price you pay for fresh picked, wild blackberries. 

I think this card is worth all the extra effort though, especially because it has a fun little surprise inside:

...a cute little crate full of juicy peaches and a punny sentiment. How sweet is that? 

I hope you enjoyed the video, even with all my flubs. We're not going to let some technical difficulties stop us from creating, now are we? And, I hope you have someone wonderful in mind to send this card to. 

Here are the measurements for this card for those who may want to reproduce it.

• Card base: 4 1/4 x 11 scored on the long side at 2 3/4 & 5 1/2
• DSP Panels 2) 4 x  2 1/2 and 1) 4 x 5 1/4
• Crate strips 2) 1/2 x 4 1/2 scored at 1/2, 2 1/4, 2 3/4 and 1) 1/2 x 1 1/8

And here are the items you would need to make it:

I hope you have enjoyed today's post. If you decide to place an order through my website, if your order is less than $150, please use the Host Code listed above (on the right), so I can send you an extra free goody. If your order is over $150 don't use the code as you get to pick out the goody yourself when you place your order. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings!

Cocoa & Crafts 8-1

Hello there! It's the beginning-ish of August and we are starting our 8th round of Cocoa & Crafts. I'm running a bit late on my videos this month as I've been super busy. Along with the regular gardening and berry picking to be done this time of year I've also been the "schoolmarm" for a local museum. I get to time travel to the late 1800's and spend several days a week teaching little ones what it was like attending school in the pioneer days in rural Wisconsin. It's a lot of fun, but doesn't leave me much energy at the end of the day for much else. 

I am thankful for my patient, understanding customers who were more than willing to wait an extra week for our classes. I hope y'all enjoy today's simply sweet card. 

We'll be using the sponge dauber included in the kit to give our focal point a light shaded background and also to give our peaches some color variations and make them look a bit more realistic. It's super easy and fun to see how each one comes out a bit different. 

The measurements for this card are pretty basic.

• Card base: 8 1/2 x 5 1/2
• Mat: 4 x 5 1/4

Remember, you don't have to order the kit from me to make this card. It's pretty easy to replicate with the items listed below: 

I hope you have enjoyed today's post. If you decide to place an order through my website, if your order is less than $150, please use the Host Code listed above (on the right), so I can send you an extra free goody. If your order is over $150 don't use the code as you get to pick out the goody yourself when you place your order. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings!

A Peachy Gift for Some Sweet Customers.

Hello there! How are you on this nice summer day? I wanted to pop in quick and share a project I worked on over the weekend. 

I have some amazing customers who are so kind. I reached out last week to let them know I was running behind on preparations for our Cocoa & Crafts class, and every one was quick to respond back and tell me not to worry about it. After a particularly busy week where my To Do list kept getting longer no matter how many items I checked off, it was nice to not have to worry about that one at that moment. Kind of a little breathing room for me. 

I decided to show them my appreciation with a little extra gift added to their kits. Since the kit this month centers on the Sweet as a Peach stamp set, I found some super yummy peach flavored candy and fancied up some of our Mini Jam Jars to put them in. 

Isn't it cute!?! I cut out a 2 inch circle from the DSP for the top and just adhered it with Tear-n-Tape. The leaves and peaches were adhered with glue dots, and I tied some of the Pale Papaya Open Weave Ribbon around the top to finish it off. A sweet little gift for my awesomely sweet customers! 

If you find yourself in need of a sweet gift yourself, here's what you would need to make it:

I hope you have enjoyed today's post. Should you decide to place an order through my website, if your order is less than $150, please use the Host Code listed above (on the right), so I can send you an extra free goody. If your order is over $150 don't use the code as you get to pick out the goody yourself when you place your order. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings!