November's Sincerely... for Kiwi Lane

Can you sense the holidays in the air?  The excitement?  The joy?  The overwhelming aroma of cinnamon pinecones at the craft store? ;)  There's also the hustle and bustle that goes along with the holidays, which can be a little stressful, right?  And one of those stressful things is coming up with some cute and creative cards for friends and loved ones.  That's where this month's Sincerely... cards and Kiwi Lane Designs Templates come in- I came up with 5 different cards for your viewing pleasure.  Hopefully there's something here that can help spark your creativity and make your card making a little less stressful this holiday season.... So let's get started!

Poinsettia:

 Supplies: cardstock (The Paper Company); patterned paper (Making Memories); brads (Imaginisce, Basic Grey); glitter glue, ink (Ranger); shimmer mist (Tattered Angels).  Kiwi Lane Templates:  Tiny Nature 5T, Tiny Holiday 7T, Tiny Tags 7T, Adorn 1A & 1B.

To make this poinsettia, simply cut out two of the tiny holiday 7T template and one of the Tiny Nature 5T.  Layer them and attach them together with a brad.  Spray the flower with shimmer mist, shape the petals and leaves and let it dry for a few hours.  Make the background of the card.  Attach dried flower to card.  I added some glitter glue to the center of the flower to make it more sparkly, but you can leave your brad as is.

Folded Christmas Tree:

 Supplies:  cardstock (The Paper Company); patterned paper (Making Memories); twine (Divine Twine); jewels (Doodlebug); ink (Ranger).  Kiwi Lane Templates: Rings 3, Adorn 3A, Tiny Strips.

This folded Christmas tree is pretty easy to figure out- trace and cut a circle and cut that circle in half.  Each half circle makes one tree.  Different size circles will make different sizes of trees.  Make sure you like the pattern on both sides of your paper, as you will be seeing parts of each side.  I do suggest trying your folds on a scratch piece of paper first, then mark and score where you want to fold on your pretty paper.  I also need to note that I adhered EVERYTHING down so it's all flat, but you could leave some parts of the folds unattached to add some dimension.

Washi Tape Tree:

 Supplies: cardstock (The Paper Company, craft supply); patterned paper (Making Memories); washi tape (Downtown Tape); glitter glue, ink (Ranger).  Kiwi Lane Template: Celebrate 6

Super easy Christmas tree!  Ready?  1- Trace and cut the cone/pennant/triangle shape onto white or cream card stock.  2- Cover shape in washi tape (or tissue tape or decorative masking tape), folding the torn edges over the shape.  3- Layer some background papers and adhere tree to card.  4- Add a star and a trunk.  And done!  You can add more embellishment, if you want to (or have time ;) ).  I added some dots of glitter glue to the dots that were already on the red washi tape.

3D Ornament:

Supplies: cardstock (The Paper Company); patterned paper (Making Memories); twine (Creative Impressions); ink (Ranger).  Kiwi Lane templates: Tiny Holiday 1T, Christmas 1, Adorn 3B

This card looks way harder than it really is!  Here's how you do it- cut multiples of the ornament shape. Fold them in half.  Glue them together.  Adhere to the card.  Hmmm.  Those directions made sense in my head, but don't seem adequate now... maybe I'll come up with something brilliant to show how to do it a bit later today :) Meanwhile, here's a slightly different view to help see what I mean:

3D Christmas Tree:

Supplies:  cardstock (The Paper Company); patterned paper (Making Memories); ink, glitter glue (Ranger); small star punch (Carl); jewel (Doodlebug).  Kiwi Lane templates:  Tiny Holiday 8T, Tiny Accents 3T.

This 3D card is done much like the ornament one, but you'll notice that the template is for only half a tree.  So when your tracing, trace one half, then flip the template and trace the other half.  Cut multiple trees (I did four), fold, glue together, adhere to card.  I added a lot of glitter glue to this one- to the edges of the tree, to the red star, to the white star- to make it look like it was glistening with ice crystals.  Beautiful!  Again, here's another slightly different angle to help you see the dimension:

Well, that's all I have for you today!  Debbie has a few more cards on the Kiwi Lane blog, too, so don't forget to check over there for more holiday inspiration.

Thanks for stopping by and happy scrapping!

Floral Birthday Card

I made this little card for my neighbor to give to her daughter-in-law:

Supplies: cardstock (The Paper Company); patterned paper (My Mind's Eye); brads (My Mind's Eye, The Girls' Paperie); pearls (Doodlebug); ink (Ranger); rub-on (Pebbles); alphabet stickers (Making Memories); shimmer mist (Tattered Angels).  Kiwi Lane Templates: Tiny Nature 1T & 6T, Tiny Shapes 7T

Thanks for stopping by and happy scrapping!

Paper Pumpkin Centerpiece

In my previous post, I mentioned that I did a centerpiece of paper pumpkins... and here it is!

Supplies: patterned paper (Imaginisce); die and die cutting machine (Cuttlebug by Provo Craft); brads (Imaginisce, Doodlebug); hole punch (Crop-a-Dile by Imaginisce)

I had seen these simple paper pumpkins around the paper crafting world a few times, and thought I'd try my hand at them.  It was so easy!  I don't have a picture or video tutorial, but here's the basic idea:

~Cut paper strips (the longer the strip, the larger the pumpkin).  My large pumpkin was 12 12" long strips that were 1" wide.  The small pumpkins had 12 strips that were 3/4" wide and 8" long.

~Punch a hole at each end of the strips. 

~Stack the strips and put a brad through the holes on either end of the stack of strips.

~ Fan the  strips out.  Doing this makes the pumpkin shape.

~For the stem- cut a strip of paper. Loosely roll up and adhere so it doesn't unroll.  Attach to the top of the pumpkin with a pop dot on the brad.

~Die cut leaves and adhere.  

~Add curly tendrils made of paper or wire, if you'd like.

 I added a leaf garland and put my pumpkins on a clear glass footed serving dish.  I think it's cute!  What do you think?

Thanks for stopping by and happy scrapping!

Gratitude Journals

For this month's Enrichment meeting at church, our theme was Gratitude (how appropriate/generic for November, huh?).  We had a speaker and some treats and we got to visit with each other and just be women... instead of moms, taxi drivers, housekeepers and whatever else we are during the course of our day!  I always look forward to this monthly meeting, and this month was no exception!  However, this time I was nominated to do a whole bunch of preparation- we wanted to give a gratitude journal to each of the ladies that came and I was asked to decorate 60 steno notebooks with something fall-themed... I think they told me to keep it simple, but I'm me.  I did keep it simple.... for me.  Here's one of the finished journals:

 And here's the box of all of them:

They really weren't that complicated to make- I used a bunch of dies and punches and used scraps from my scrapbox for the leaves.  I had vinyl made for the word on the journal.  And every journal ended up being slightly different from the next... just like the ladies in my ward!

I also made a dessert (Pumpkin Swirl Cheesecake) and a centerpiece.  We ate the cheesecake, so no pics.  I'll post pics of the centerpiece later, though.  It was a quick project that anyone can do!

Thanks for stopping by and happy scrapping!

I lost count...

Yep.  I have no idea what number project I'm on because I forgot to keep track of recent projects that were given away, or used, or pages that were put away in a box (and will hopefully find their way to an album as soon as I find where I put my page protectors...) yada, yada.... To make this "gaol" even more disastrous and un-met, I went on my yearly pilgrimage to the Scrapbook USA Expo in September and spent... ahem... a LOT of money on scrapbooking supplies!  And added to the already huge stash of supplies I have.  I must confess, I got home and wondered what I was thinking... but, that place has some sort of spell it puts on me when I walk in and it makes me want to spend money!!  

Even though this goal has not been met (or maybe it has.... I just don't know!), it has gotten me to try to keep up with blog posts.  It has also helped me to get a few more personal projects done by participating in online challenges.  So, in my book, I'm not calling it a total loss...

And now here's what I have worked on for the last few months (well, the ones I remembered to take pictures of):

(Waaaayyyy back in September) I made 50-ish invitations for a church event, plus 3 12x12 posters:

 I will admit, this project got a little out of control.  Usually, I let my creativity just kind of roll for these kinds of things, then scale it back so I can make a whole bunch without taking a long time... this one was another story.  I wanted the invite to double as something the recipients could use as fall decor, if they wanted.  So I ended up cutting out and embossing three ovals for each invite, plus hand cutting a stem, twisting wire for the vine, sticking on a paper flower and a button.... for each invite!!  Plus two more pumpkins,  additional flowers, buttons and wire for each of the posters.  It was a bit labor intensive, but I thought they turned out cute!  I just don't really want to make pumpkins ever again... or at least for a while.  ;)

My neighbor asked me to make some cards for her twin sons' birthday, which was October 30th.  This was one of them (I ended up doing one more that was similar, too) and the other one is in a previous post (the washi tape background):

 Supplies: cardstock (The Paper Company, Provo Craft); patterned paper (Imaginisce); vellum (Provo Craft); twine (Lilly Belle's Paperie on Etsy); alphabet stickers (Making Memories); ink (Clearsnap); button (craft supply); brads (American Crafts); Kiwi Lane Templates: Tiny Holiday (ghost), Tiny Tags (tombstones)

This is another birthday card I made for my neighbor- this was for her granddaughter, who turned 4:

Supplies: cardstock (recycled file folder); patterned paper (My Mind's Eye); stamp (Studio G); embossing ink (Tsukinedo); embossing powder (EK Success); twine (Lilly Belle's Paperie on Etsy); button (craft supply); ink (Ranger); jewels (Doodlebug); alphabet stickers (Making Memories); Kiwi Lane Templates: Celebrate (cupcake top), tiny shapes (cupcake bottom)

This layout is one of the few I got done in October.  I threw this together from scraps from a paper kit by Echo Park.  I've used the kit for at least 7 layouts, this was the 8th.  Not bad for one paper kit, huh?  Of course, I used my trusty Kiwi Lane Templates, which made this layout go together extremely fast- we're talkin' 20 minutes fast!!  Sometimes I even amaze myself! ;)

Supplies: cardstock (We R Memory Keepers, DCWV), patterned paper, stickers (Echo Park); pen (Staedtler); ink (Ranger); ribbon (Pebbles, Inc.); staples (office supply); Kiwi Lane Templates: Tags, Tiny Tags, Spook Alley (zig zag border)

That's all I have documented as of late.  I do have some decorated steno notebooks done (nearly 60 of them) that will be handed out at this month's church activity (tomorrow).  I should take some pictures before those leave, too...

Thanks for stopping by and happy scrapping!