and also:

Last week I had an idea for a way to organize dates and cards all together, so I could be better about sending them out. Naturally, Bree had already beaten me to it with her Greeting Card File! So of course I HAD to make it using super sweet products by Traci!

So, without further delay, here we go!

Products: Chipboard for covers, crop-o-dile or hole punch, assorted adhesives, pens, ribbons, buttons, and your printed pieces.

I made this MUCH harder and more complicated than it needs to be. I printed all the individual pieces pieces of the pages from Bree’s templates, and then pieces them together in real life. A MUCH easier solution, is to just print the pages whatever size you want the file to be (mine is 8×8, Bree’s templates are 6×5.5). Now you know! LOL!

I used plain cardstock to cover my chipboard piece for the cover. This picture shows an easier way to get those corner folds pretty. Fold the corners in, then fold the other pieces over.

I used plain pieces of white cardstock as the bases for all my pages, and glued the rest of the main pieces on only 3 sides, to create pockets. This way I can slip the cards I need inside the month pockets and keep everything organized together! So just follow the digital layouts you made to create the pages in real life (if you go my route and assemble the pieces seperately), or just adhere the full printed pages on 3 sides for your pockets. Punch holes using the cover as your guide, slip some binder rings through, decorate them with ribbons, and you’re good to go! Here are my monthly pages I used “Just Believe”, “Sugarplum Fairies”, “On Frozen Pond”, “In the Air Tonight”,  “Icy Cool”, “Fly Catchin”, “Punkin Pickin”, “Preppy Autumn”, and “A Month At A Time: February, March, May, June, July” for my pages. Sorry for some of the wonky colors, my white balance was off and this was the best I could do!

I had a ton of fun with this project! If you do this, link us up in the comments! We love to see your work.

Til next time, stay inspired!

~Col

I printed a fairy, a wand, 2 word circles & a border edge and did this with them:

Supplies:

Styrofoam Tree (I got a package of 2 at Joann’s)

3 sheets of printed digital paper (I used And To All A Good Night)

Low Heat Glue Gun

Small Terracotta Pot or  Bucket

Step 1

Cut the paper into 1.5″ x 11.5″ inch strips.  Then cut those strips into 3/4″ pieces.  You will need a few strips cut up.

Step 2

Slightly curl the strips around your finger.  Use the low heat glue gun to attach the strips to the styrofoam in row alternating patterns.

Step 3

Continue making rows until you reach the top of the styrofoam.  You can then attach a printed out star or other element as a tree topper.  I didn’t add anything to mine as you can see.

Step 4

Turn the pot or bucket upside down.  Use some glue dots on the bottom of the styrofoam to attach to the pot or bucket.

 While in Michael’s a while back, I aimlessly wandered into the wood section and found these super cute little gift boxes. The cover slides out and you can put small things inside. And as a bonus, it looks cute on your dresser as a jewelry box. I plan to use this one to give a pair of earrings and a necklace to a girlfriend for Christmas (who said Christmas wrapping paper has to be festive? LOL!) I used Traci’s new triple dip with Heather and Sara, “Flower Child”.

 So, here’s your supply list:

Wood gift box, printed papers and elements, flowers, buttons, ribbons, and adhesive (I used Mod Podge this time).

Measure out the side of your box, and then print what you need and cut it out.

Adhere the papers to the sides, top, and bottom of your box. You can also ink the edges if you want (I think I’m going to go back and ink mine).

I used a metal brad to hold the 2 big flowers together, and then used pop dots to adhere the printed journaling spot/tag to the middle of the flower. Then I used a few more pop dots to adhere the flower to the sliding lid of the box. Super simple, and yet so cute! I’ll probably make a hybrid card to go along with this gift.

 I hope you liked this project and are inspired to give it a shot yourself! Have fun, and don’t forget to link us up if you do try it out!

Have a great night everyone!

If you have never done anything hybrid, this project is an easy way to start! If you can wrap a present, you can do this! I think several of them would be really cute sitting on the mantel. I plan to make a few more in different sizes (I’m thinking jewelry boxes, wooden blocks, maybe I’ll even raid the kitchen again & see what I can find…)

I used the December part of Traci’s new “A month at a time”.  I may even do this with other months throughout the year!

 Sorry to be posting this so late! I was good and had my project done early on sunday and even took my pictures early, but then I forgot I was out on inspections all day today. So I’m just now catching a breath to post, I hope you’ll forgive me

So, I picked up this cute wood and metal sign for maybe $2 at Walmart recently. I was going to do something else with it, but my fiancee requested that I make a cute hanging to put at the door, where we could hang our keys (he didn’t ask for cute, I assumed it was implied ). It doesn’t have the hooks on it yet, but as soon as I get a chance, I’ll be stopping by Home Depot to get some

Here are your supplies:

Wooden sign, acrylic paint, printed digi papers (from Traci’s *new* Preppy Autumn), embellies of choice (I ended up using flowers and brads instead), and chipboard alpha (mine is Basic Grey’s Dark Chocolate Chip – Dahlia).

Go ahead and paint your sign. I painted the outside edge and one side completely (the back side), and then just made sure the outer edges on the front side were painted. Since we’re covering the front with papers, there’s no need to paint the whole thing. I made my printed digi papers slightly bigger than the width and the tallest height of the scroll. Leaves extra on the sides since it’s curved, but I don’t have a scanner to make a custom template. So I just deal with it So once your sign is all painted and ready to go, lay your paper printed side down on your work surface and trace the shape of the sign. Then cut it out. (I forgot to take a lot of pictures this time, sorry folks.) Then glue it down with whatever adhesive you like (I used my Xyron Cheetah and it worked well, no problems getting the sticky to stick to the painted parts). I then took a nail file, and filed all around the edges to get rid of the excess paper, and also give it a slightly distressed look (I love a good distressing!).

Now, I loved the curled mat that Traci included in the kit, but I couldn’t get it to fit on the sign properly, so I decided to try and replicate it IRL instead. So I printed my striped paper, and then I folded one of the long edges. I folded it back and forth to get it nice and folded. Then, I wet the edge of the fold (think licking a letter to seal it) on both sides. This makes the paper tear a little differently that it would if it was just dry. It gives it a little bit of a torn look, which is what I liked. I put the edge about where I wanted it on my sign, and then estimated how wide I wanted the strip to be, and repeated with the other side of the striped paper. In my excitement, I forgot to go back to each side and curl the torn parts inward more (oops), and just glued it right down where I wanted.

After that, I added my chipboard message, threw some cute flowers on it, and said”Wha-la!!” (yes, I really did say that.) As I said before, I’ll be adding some small hooks to it so we can hang our keys on it.

I hope you enjoyed my project and are inspired to try something yourself! Have a great week everyone!

~Col

The book I used was a 4.5″ x 6″ hard board toddler book from the dollar store. I thought the binding on this would be a nice change from the loose chipboard albums. I designed my pages 6×9″ putting both the left and right sides of the book on a single page to print.

You will have to forgive me, when I started this project, I didn’t intend to make a blog post about it, so I don’t have a very good “before” picture of the book I altered. I am making a blog post about this project because I learned a couple good hybrid tips doing it!

I intended to keep both pages as one whole paper. That did not work, because it was hard to fold the book. So I ended up cutting the pages down the middle and adhering each side separately.

The next problem I ran into – my xyron did not stick to the glossy pages of the book.  I tried sanding some of the gloss off the book, but that didn’t help enough.  I tried some glue that I had picked up awhile back at Walmart. It worked wonderfully! It’s called Scotch Scrapbookers Glue with 2 way Applicator.

Here are some more pictures of my finished book:

Hello ladies and gents!

This weekend I was shopping at my favorite store, Target and check out what I found!  I bought a super cute purple bucket for $2.50 and several packages of Halloween themed pencils for $1 each!  I plan on giving them to my daughters kindergarten class.

The first thing I did was make pencil toppers.  Mine are fairly large at almost 2 inches across.  Here’s a basic template.

After I printed these out, I used a hole punch to cut holes for the pencil to slide through.  I finished the toppers with a coordinating ribbon.

I then created a face for my bucket.  I measured the sides and created a template in photoshop.

Have fun and I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

A photo of the digital insert:

My printed insert, the empty sippy cup & some buttons from Joann’s that I added to the printed insert before putting it in the cup:

A couple different views of the finished product:

Have a great week everyone It’s almost October already (yikes!) and I’m sure we’ll have some awesome Halloween projects featured here on the Hawt Mama Blog in the upcoming month!!