Offline Activities to Help You Decompress

I don’t know about you, but I am feeling a heightened amount of anxiety and stress right now due to the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. It is so important for all of us to stay informed and be responsible world citizens right now, but I find myself constantly refreshing every digital app in a way that is not good for my mental health. I decided to make a list of offline things I can do during my free time and am sharing it in case it helps others.

-Make cards or write letters.

-Transcribe family recipes.

-Dust off and use the sewing machine/crochet hook/knitting needles/[insert craft tool here].

-Read books or magazines.

-Light some candles and take a bubble bath.

-Cook or bake a favorite treat.

-Update your bullet journal or diary or start recording your experiences during this time to look back on.

-Do some Spring cleaning around the house.

-Take a walk around your neighborhood (keeping social distancing in mind). 

Let me know in the comments: what things you would put on your list?

Rainbow Pop-Up Card for St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day is a great holiday for crafting. This year I decided it would be fun to make some pop-up cards. You could really use any motif for these pop-up cards: shamrocks, a pot of gold, a leprechaun, or a rainbow like I did. 

All you need for this project is paper in rainbow colors (I used cardstock), scissors, and some glue dots. You could use liquid glue or a gluestick, but I didn't want the paper to warp at all, so I decided to use glue dots.

For this project, I free-handed all the shapes, but if you don't want to do that you can use a template from the internet. An easy way to remember the rainbow colors in order is "ROYGBV" (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet). Cut out a half circle or gumdrop shape of each of those six colors, making each one a little smaller than the next. The white paper is for the cloud shapes.

Once your shapes are cut out, you are ready to prepare your card base. Fold the piece of paper (mine was 8.5x11") in half. On the folded side of the card, use scissors to cut four slits (two on each end) of the card as shown below.

Start with one cut on the left end of the folded side of the card...

...then cut the other three notches as shown below.

Once you've cut your notches, you can open the card and pop out the paper tabs. This is what you are going to attach your rainbow shape to for the pop-up card.

First use the glue dots to assemble your rainbow in ROYGBV order.

It's optional to cut out the center of the rainbow. I think it could look cute either way. Once you are satisfied with your rainbow shape, place glue dots on the bottom part of the tabs cut in the card.

Line the bottom of the rainbow shape up with the bottom of the paper tab slits, then press onto the glue dots to secure.

You should now have a functioning pop-up card. Hooray!

 Now you can embellish the rainbow card with clouds and a happy message for St. Patrick's Day.

I plan to send these happy cards to my grandmothers for a little love via snail mail. Who would you make a rainbow pop-up card for?

Upcycled gifts for Valentine’s Day

I like to celebrate the people in my life with small tokens of appreciation during holidays like Valentine's Day, but sometimes I don't have a lot of cash in the budget for gift giving. This year I decided to get creative, upcycling some items I had around the house to make special gifts for my Valentines.

The items that I used to make my upcycled gifts included:

-pink, metallic cardboard from a body soap gift set box

-used candle tins (from Aldi)

-used fruit cup (from Panera Bread)

I decided that the piece of pink, metallic cardboard would make a sweet Valentine card and used the Cricut machine at my local library to cut out the heart shape. I'm still learning with the Cricut, but I was able to take a free heart image from Cricut's Design Space and slice out half circles around the border to make it look like a lace/doily card.

I love the way that the heart Valentine turned out, even though it is a harder item to photograph because of the metallic finish on the cardboard! It's the perfect shade of pale pink, and I am glad I was able to repurpose or upcycle this piece of cardboard from a bath set box.

For my next upcycle, I cleaned out candle tins from Aldi to make little gift holders. I used a candle warmer to melt the last of the candle wax and then wiped out the tin. I also used soap and water to wash them out, since I wanted to use some of them to give candy.

I used some gold ribbon to package the candies inside some of the empty tins. In the others, I used tissue paper to give some heart earrings that I made specifically for Valentine's Day.

The design on the candle tins were so cute, I couldn't bear the thought of throwing them out, so I'm glad that I was able to recycle them to make these Valentine's Day gifts.

The last item to repurpose was the plastic fruit cup. I washed this out with soap and water and peeled off the fruit label from the lid. The plastic cup would be a cute way to gift candy, cookies, or even a cupcake! I decided to show a way to repurpose the food cup with a non-edible gift. These adorable llama (or are they alpaca?) socks were actually a gift to me from my sister-in-law, but they look sweet as a cupcake rolled up inside.

You may not have the same items on hand for upcycling your own Valentine's Day gifts, but you can get creative! I think upcycled gifts and packaging are good for the environment, and make your gift stand out. What do you think? What items do you have around the house that you would repurpose for gift giving?

Happy Valentine's Day!

Crafty definitions: Craftcident

Craftcident (noun): an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury to yourself or your craft project. 

Who's had one of these? Like when you glue your fingers together or you spill your perler bead project on the floor before fusing it...

Baby Gifts on the Glowforge

There is an awesome trend happening with libraries: maker spaces! The Louisville Free Public Library has two locations with maker spaces housing 3D printers, sewing machines, vinyl cutters, and even laser cutters and engravers. Recently I was able to use a Glowforge at the library to make two adorable wall decorations for my cousin's baby shower.

She's having twins(!!) and when I learned of the theme for their nursery, I wanted to make some palm leaf signs to match. As an Elizabeth, I am usually able to find my name all over things at stores and souvenir shops, but these little guys have unique names (Brooks and Ellis), so I wanted to personalize the palm leaves for them.

The first step for this project was to design some cut files (.SVG) in Inkscape (a free, open-source design software). You could use Adobe Illustrator or other design software as well. For this project, I did two separate cut files: one of the palm leaf design and one with the baby names in a script font.

Once I had my cut files, the next step was to arrange them in the Glowforge web app. The palm leaf design was cut twice out of 12x12" plywood boards.

It's really fun to watch the laser cutter do it's thing. I didn't have any engraving on this project, so it was pretty fast with just the cutting. You might be able to see that I had a stray line at the bottom of my vector file, but it's okay because it didn't affect the finished look of the leaf.

This might be weird, but I like the smell of the burnt plywood because it reminds me of a fireplace. When I lifted the leaf out of the Glowforge, the background and middle holes stayed behind to be re-purposed for other projects.

Once the leaves were cut, it was time to upload the babies' names in the script font. This screenshot is what the file looks like when it's been uploaded into the web app, but you haven't yet placed the material in the machine. Unfortunately I was a bad blogger and didn't take any in process shots of the cut for the baby names.

Once the pieces were all cut, I decided to color the palm leafs. By using baby wipes to apply the acrylic paint to the palm leaves, I hoped to give them more of a wood "stained" look than a painted look. The paint color was "Parakeet Green" by Handmade Modern, which you can find at Target. I left the baby name pieces unpainted for the natural look, and used some tacky glue to attach them to the palm leaves. I made sure to let them dry overnight before wrapping them up for the baby shower!

What do you think? I think they turned out pretty good! Have you ever used a Glowforge before? Got any tips for beginners?

2020

It's been too long since my last post. Thus is the way with blogging sometimes, but it can be embarrassing. Crafting is such a big part of my life and I've always got a project going, so my vow is to share that by blogging more in 2020.

Be mine, Valentine!

Valentine's Day is upon us once again. I love love! And I always feel it's best to use this holiday to show my love with cards, candy, or even text messages to people I care about. I'm fortunate to have not only my husband to share it with, but my parents, siblings, and plenty of friends I like to call my "Galentines." One of my Galentines hosted a brunch for us gals over the weekend, which was a lot of fun!

Another one of my very best Galentines, Julee, is known to many of you for her blog DIY Louisville. This year the two of us have decided to take our love of holidays, crafting, and party planning to the next level by collaborating on a new project called Party in Lou! I hope you'll check out our website and follow our Instagram page @PartyinLou!

My creation for this Valentine's "Smooch" party decor was an ombré pink pom-pom banner. I love making pom-poms with yarn. It's so relaxing, and which a plastic pom-pom maker it's super easy, too! All I did was buy one skein of the pink ombré yarn and made several pom-poms in varying sizes (from 3-4 inches) in diameter with the pom-pom maker. Then I trimmed the pom-poms down with scissors, which is how you get such a soft, fuzzy look for your pom-poms.

Using a large sewing needle, I threaded the pom-poms onto a length of yarn to turn them into a pom-pom banner. It is a great decoration, and easily customizable for your theme. Julee came up with the idea of a "Smooch" lips theme for a Valentine's Day party. With her crafted cake toppers, my pom-pom banner, and some simple red, pink, black, and white decor, we were all set to have the cutest party decor.

It didn't hurt that there was cake to match the theme as well! Julee and I agree that handmade items go a long way to make a party feel special. That's why we're so excited to be collaborators on Party in Lou. We hope you'll join us on Instagram and follow our website.

Not it's your turn: What is your favorite party decoration to handcraft? Or, what is the party decoration you would like to learn to make?