Hooray for new crafting toys!

I finally got to use a new toy I got for Christmas and I just had to share it!

I was at a crafting store a couple of months ago and saw a demonstration of a heat gun/embosser, so naturally, I just had to have it! 

Here's the one I received, made by the wonderful Martha Stewart.

Now, to use this with stamps you will need a couple more items:

A watermark stamp pad

And some embossing powder.

I also have these handy craft trays used to catch the extra glitter/embosser powder/etc., so it's easier to save the excess and put it back in the bottle.

To use the heat embosser with a stamp, place your stamp in the watermark stamp pad and place on paper. Then, dust the damp area with the embossing powder.

Hold the heat gun a couple of inches from the paper, so the powder will start to melt together. 

The gun worked faster on the second stamp I did. Guess it just needed to warm up!

And voila! Here's the finished product:

It didn't take too long to dry.

Can't wait to use it again! 

What craft toys did you get for Christmas??

DIY Christmas Book Page Wreath

And I'm back after a long hiatus! 

I'm here to share my latest project, a Christmas book page wreath.

This project came about because my friend Rachel King and I were co-hosting our first ever BYO craft night at The New Leaf in Riverton, New Jersey. Rachel and her mom co-own this adorable tea shop.

Here are the supplies you will need:

- 7 and 3/4 inch foam wreath

- approx 30 book pages (notes on that next)

- tape

-stapler

-hot glue gun and a bunch of glue sticks

I used encyclopedia books that I had from all of my wedding crafts. I used about 30 pages of the book and cut off the blank edges, so I was only left with text. Then I cut the pages in half, so I had enough to make 60 cones, although, you'll probably only need around 45-50 for the wreath. If you don't want to use book pages, you just want to make sure the paper you use isn't too thick. I couldn't find double sided Christmas scrapbook paper in the store, so I tried combining 2 pieces to make the wreath, and let's just say it looked awful.

Now, how to make the paper cones:

Hold down the top left corner and fold over the bottom right corner.

Fold the left hand side over and tape down the flap. The bottom will be narrow, almost pointed, compared to the top.

Next, staple the cone about an inch from the bottom, so the bottom is flat when it is glued down.

When you have about 45 cones, we're ready to glue.

First, start gluing like the face of a clock: 12, 3, 6, 9.

Then, go back and fill in the sections, making sure the points of the cones are somewhat level on the outside (don't worry if they're level on the inside).

Once you've gone all the way around one time, you're ready for the second layer. I try to put the cone of the second layer, in between two cones of the first layer, and continue this method onto the third layer.

The wreaths that were made at the class, and for the sample, used 3 layers of cones, but I also made one with 4 layers.

After you have all the layers completed, you're ready to fill in the middle!

For the sample, I made a paper rosette with a picture of Santa in the middle. For the class, we purchased fake poinsettias and other floral arrangements, and regular and mini ball ornaments, so everyone could design the middle of their own wreath.

Here are a couple different options for the design in the middle:

To attach a ribbon to the wreath, I made a "U" shape with the ribbon and attached either side to the back of the wreath with hot glue.

 To give the wreath a finished look in the back, I added an extra book page to cover the hole of the wreath form.

These wreaths were pretty simple to make. Everyone said they had  great time and all of the wreaths turned out great!

Stick(er)y Situation

I am currently helping plan two parties for important people in my life: a first birthday for my nephew, and a party celebrating the recent marriage of my brother-in-law and his wife.

I came across a pin on Pinterest on how to make monogram stickers using Avery labels. I thought having a custom sticker on dessert bags/boxes would look awesome, so, I moved on over to Avery.com to check out their templates. They have soooooo many products to choose from.

I went with the 2in. circles below.

Here is how to navigate to the templates below:

Since I already knew the product I was using, I was able to search for it. 

Once the product is selected, Avery already has a ton of really great designs that can be customized using text boxes. I went with a custom design I made myself since I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for.

I used PowerPoint to come up with my design using a circle shape so I could change the background and add textboxes, etc.  Then I saved it as a "JPG File Interchange Format" to upload the image onto the sticker. This method of saving as a JPG doesn't always come out the best, so the other option is to save the file as a PDF and find a PDF to JPG converter online. 

Also on Pinterest, I found a site with the most amazing free font downloads. Where has this been all my life?!? Go to Dafont.com IMMEDIATELY!! I am so mad I didn't find it sooner, but so glad I did. There are so many to choose from! It was hard not to download them all! Here are a mere 25 of my favorite fonts, with links in the caption (fonts are free for personal use and they all have licensing terms):

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 

So once you have your stickers designed, you're all ready to print! Start by printing only one sticker at a time, or else you'll get a full sheet of papers that look like this: 

What the hell is that white space on the right side?!? It didn't look like that in the preview!

 Make sure you use the "printer adjustment" to get your stickers just right. 

I had to go back into the design screen and move my sticker around a little bit to get them just right.

So hard to decide which one to use! I think I'm going with the plain pink background.

So excited to use these at upcoming parties!

Bridal Shower Banners

After my co-worker saw my awesome rosette banners from my cousin's bridal shower,

Awesome rosette tutorial can be found here.

 

She enlisted me to make banners for her sister's bridal shower. She let me have free rein, with only two requirements: they had to involve pink and cheetah. How fun!

While I love my rosette banners, they were just a bit too much, not to mention time consuming. I decided to make a variety of banners in different styles in my standard "bridal shower package": 1. the wedding date, 2. "bride-to-be", and 3. the names of the bride and groom.

I love how these came out! 

Handmade with love!

While I didn't want all rosettes, I think the rosette banner was my favorite.

Usually I attach the letters to string on the back. Practical, but BORING!

 This go around, I decided to branch out and use ribbon to jazz it up a little bit. I went with a classy, sheer black ribbon, so the banners weren't overly busy.

I hadn't made a triangle flag banner before, but it looks awesome!

Now, I just need to figure out how to tie perfect bows to attach the letters together...

Time for a name change...

After all the planning for the wedding was over, I really missed it. I loved having my creative side come out, which I don't really get to on a daily basis as an accountant. So, naturally, I decided to start my own event planning business and roped my sister-in-law, Sam, with me, as a project we could do on the side.

Hire us now!

We'll cover all event aspects from decor to planning and staging.

 Stay tuned for a peek at our debut event at the end of September!

DIY Paper flowers

After sending out my invitations, I had all these encyclopedias that I wanted to use in some kind of craft for the wedding. A friend sent me a link to a blog post from Offbeat Bride, "How to pull off some awesome decor for your literary wedding".

 I loved the paper roses, so I decided to give them a shot.

I found this awesome tutorial at A Beautiful Mess. There's a great, short little video (without words) that I found super helpful (obvi., why else would I tell you about it?!). I started out by cutting out 1" x 1" and 2" x 2" squares from the encyclopedia pages. I tried 3" x 3" squares, but the flowers were too big and looked a bit ridiculous. I (and mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and hubby) ended up making about 5 dozen roses. I wanted enough for 3 roses per bridesmaid bouquet, 5 for my bouquet, and one for each of the groom/groomsmen's boutineers, with the extras going to the centerpieces. 

The hardest part is getting the flowers started. Then you start adding "petals" around the flower. I tried to depict it below, but ehh, you should probably just watch the video.

Add a small amount of hot glue to the bottom of the "petal"

Fold the "petal" for the starter (p.s. these pictures were impossible to take).

Again, you should probably watch the video.

Ta-da!

Pretty flowers ready to head to the florist.

My bouquet.

Terrible picture, but you can see the pictures on the groomsmen's boutineers

The flowers really weren't that hard to do (I mean, even the hubby was able to do it!), once you get it started, and I received so many compliments on them! You should totally try them for your wedding!

Brickhouse Banners: A Paper Rosette DIY Tutorial

Taking a break from wedding posts to talk about paper rosettes. We'll just entitle this:

Brickhouse Banners

I started making banners for family parties and am toying with the idea of selling them, but I always make the same style, similar to this:

My first banner, made on a whim for my brother's welcome home party. 

 When I got the invitation for my cousin's fiancee's bridal shower, I decided it was time to switch it up and try something new. 

I saw some ideas for Fourth of July decorations on a website (not Pinterest) and decided to try rosettes using crepe paper. The directions on the website weren't too descriptive, but how hard could it be? It involved a piece of crepe paper cut to 8" x 20", and then you glued two strips of crepe paper on top in different colors, and folded like an accordion. Well they looked god awful. Turns out crepe paper is difficult to work with.

So, I set out scouring the internet for a paper rosette tutorial and they were all terrible. None gave measurements whatsoever! They basically said to have a piece of paper 12" long, fold like an accordion, glue the two ends together, push the center in to flatten it out, and it should be perfect. Many failed attempts later, they weren't even close to perfect. So here I am to tell everyone how to make the perfect paper rosette --now, including measurements!

To start off, I would recommend buying the Martha Stewart Crafts Scoring Board and Envelope Tool. It is just over $13 on Amazon and it is amazing! I wasn't going to buy it at first, and just make the accordions by hand, but I am so glad I bought it because it made it so much easier, and I will totally use it for other projects!

I used 12" x 12" scrapbook paper and 8.5" x 11" cardstock. I wanted to have layered rosettes on the banner, so I made some strips that were 2.25" wide and some were 3.0" wide (and 11 or 12 inches long). 

There is a ruler at the top and sides of the scoring board, and it comes with a bone folder. For the 2.25" wide strips, I scored them every 1/4 of an inch. For the 3" wide strips, I scored them every 1/2". Here's what I didn't find on other tutorials: two strips are needed for one rosette. I tried scoring every 1", but it didn't work out (I have a feeling it might have worked had I used three strips instead of two, but didn't attempt it).

Once all the strips are scored to the proper width, line two up end to end to make the first rosette. You want to glue them together so there is a seamless transition from one strip to the other (so the zigzags all flow together). 

Here I had to cut off a little piece from the one strip. Below you can see how the piece on the right is going to sit like a hat on the left piece, so there is a seamless transition. 

I put hot glue on the piece on the left before sliding the piece from the right, on top. Then, you're going to do the same to the other ends, so they form a circle. 

Next, you're going to pinch the top and push down to flatten the circle. 

And, voila!

Squeeze the edges to make the center smaller,  and put hot glue in the middle to hold it all together. I like to put a piece of scrap paper over it, for extra security.

Hold down until mostly dry, so it all stays together.

For the 2.25" strips where I scored every 1/4", I probably could have gotten away with shorter strips (length wise), because I had to really squeeze them together to glue the center close enough to glue, but they still turned out nice.

I went through a lot of hot glue and burned my fingers a lot, but am so happy with the finished product! I still have to figure out how hang them perfectly, but they still look pretty awesome. 

So, who wants a banner!?