All Things Alicia

Gift Card "Basket" In a Frame

Every year my regional PTA does a basket auction to raise money for scholarships.  Each school PTA donates a basket, and for the last two years my school has done a gift card basket.  I use the term basket loosely because gift cards are much more creatively displayed not in a basket.  Last year I put them in a flower pot; this year I strung them across a frame.   It didn't come out quite as I expected since we had so many cards.  I felt like it was kind of crowded; however, it was still nice and was one of the top money generators at this year's auction.

 

My original idea was to make a bunting type banner, but there was no way to display that at the event.  So then I thought I could drape cards on a string in a frame and layer the strings that way.  Right before I was heading to a thrift store to look for a frame to turn into such a masterpiece, I popped into Marshall's (for kitchen stuff of course) and found this frame.  For $12 I got a cute frame that was already filled with a pinnable surface and muslin.  Sweet!

I used hat pins I had on hand, plus linen thread to make the swag lines.  Then I used a small scallop envelope die to cut envelopes for the gift cards.  I sealed them and cut off one end to make a pocket.  I then used various embellishments that were on hand, such as pearls and ribbons, to jazz up the envelopes. 

After clipping the gift cards on with mini clothes pins, I punched paper scalloped circles in paper I had on hand (to make the flowers) and a few butterflies too.

I ended up using some pop dots on the back of the envelopes to keep them from sliding around.  They'll be removable enough to still use the frame afterward. 

I also make a card (forgot a picture) that matched in style to let the bidders know what cards were included and the amounts of each.

I'm pretty sure all of the materials I used were Stampin' Up! except for the papers.  Those were from a stack I got at Hobby Lobby from Paper Studio.  The stack design was called Olivia.

All in all, I think it came out pretty good for 1 hour of work!

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Turning Gift Cards Into an Auction Basket

Every year the PTA area luncheon has a silent auction.  Each PTA provides a themed basket, it goes to silent auction, and it raises money for scholarships in our local area.  This year, my PTA decided to do a gift card basket.  And then of course I was charged with making it into a basket. 

I'll admit my mind was stuck for a while.  I was thinking I could fold a bunch of origami boxes and put a card in each one...or make an envelope album with a card in each...I always came across a problem with my ideas.  

I finally settled on a flower bouquet, with gift cards attached to the back of each flower.

Please excuse the lack of correct photo set up and props.  I barely remembered to snap a quick photo before taking off to drop it with our president.

So I got out some old Stampin' Up! Designer Series paper and started using my large scallop circle bigz die for the Sizzix Big Shot.   I cut a bunch of the flowers, folded some, folded others more, and hot glued them all together.  Buttons and brads and smaller punch scalloped circles covered the centers.

I put floral foam in a flower pot and covered the top with Spanish moss.  Then I glued the flowers to bamboo picks (the kind you use for making kebabs). On the back of the each flower and pick I glued a clothes pin to clip the card into.  I had everything already on hand except the floral foam! 

That little envelope holds the gift card.  I couldn't be at the meeting where they were being collected so I stuck the sticky not on there so everyone would know what to do with this thing.  ;)

Have any stellar ideas for silent auction baskets?  I'd love to know so I have an idea for next year.  Leave a suggestion in the comments below!

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Sick, Sick, So Sick!

The weekend of Nov. 1-2, I went to a math conference in Palm Springs.  It was fabulous! It was also the last time I was among the living. :)

I got sick.  I don't mean the sniffles.  I mean on my butt, can't think straight, barely got laundry and dinner done and that's all (and not always that) sick!  Hence my recent absence. 

While I'm still fighting coughs and sniffles, my energy and brain are starting to return.  That means I have a game of catch up to play.  I've had to GREATLY ammend my plans, both for life and for blogging.

Here's the updated scoop:

-I'm dropping the 30 cookie reviews in 30 days.  Everything works out better this way.  If I pick up where I left off I'll be testing recipes too close to Christmas and my whole plan was to have things done ahead...ya.

-I'll just be posting my holiday baking as I do things, which will have more than just cookies.  Some recipes will be tried and true family favorites, some will be new and will include a review.

-I'll do a post soon to catch you up to where I am in Project Life.  I'm almost caught up, but haven't posted here in a while.  That post will likely be a  single shot each of several weeks in one post kind of post, rather than a several shots of one week kind of post.  You can always ask questions in the comment section if there's something you see that you want clarification on.

-I'm prepping for my December Daily!  I am super excited this year!  I'm doing it a little bit different this year.  The first year I made my album (2010) I did most of it ahead of time and filled in as the month progressed.  In 2011 I didn't get it done. :(  Last year I put a bunch of supplies togehter to draw from but didn't do anything ahead of time.  I really wanted to work more organically last year.  This year is a bit of a compromise.  I'm prepping some stuff, but in a way that leaves it flexible. 

I'm making an 8x8 this year.  I am using Stampin' Up!'s divided 8x8 page protectors.  These are a super good deal and I think they're on sale right now too.  Love them! 

For the album I just purchased a chipboard one today.  I really wanted a ring album, but all I could find in 8x8 was post bound.  Who knew?  I've been searching high and low.  I'm not a fan of the Stampin' Up! holiday 8x8 so I finally resorted, after searching many craft stores, to getting a chipboard one online.  It should be here soon.

-I'll do a post soon about how I'm preparing for December Daily.  I've set aside some purchases for paper and embellishments, I've created an "inspiration board", and I've started thinking about what'd going to go into it.  I'm not sure how I'm decorating my album yet, but I'm not too worried about it.  It's not going to stress me out if the album cover is the last thing to get done.

-I've also, in the past, worked on my album at the end of each week because my craft room is not at my house.  This year I've decided to bring my main items here to my house so I can work each night after the kids go to bed.  I can't bring my whole craft room, so I still anticipate having to finish off the pages once a week there, but I won't feel behind.  I'll be using a lot of sticky notes. :)

-I am still planning on creating a separate blog for The Elementary Professor.  That way those of you who visit for teaching ideas only and don't care about my homemaking fun can access just that.  :)  I was planning on making it a while ago, but alas, I thought it better to wait until I could think straight again.

So that's the update for now.  I'll be back soon with happy stuff!

 

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Project Life 2013 Week 11

Remember that you can click on any photo to see a full size view!

This week was such a hodge podge of style and color of items, that I decided I don't care.  I would normally print some photos in black and white and pull other items in to make things that don't go together well a little more "matchy", but for this week I just decided to let it all be what it was. 

This week we had a weird heat wave, a baseball game, a beautiful sunrise, etc...

Here's a better look at the title card:

I used a card I got in a stack at Target, some Thickers, die cut numbers with my Big Shot, my K&Co. date stamper, and a Stamp' Write Marker from Stampin' Up!

The left side:

I had photos of wedding invitations that I finished.  I blogged about them here.  The left side of the middle row is the back of Olivia's writing from the previous week.  I decided to just let that show through.  I put in a conversation about the game the kids invented (bounce slap- on the trampoline) and  quirky quote about Olivia.  I also had the back side of Josiah's Hebrew from the week before showing through.  On the top right of this page is a pic I printed from a weather web site showing our crazy heat wave.

On the right side I have two pictures of a beautiful sunrise.  I journaled right on the photo on the left.  I also have one journaling card with the score from our first baseball game of the season , a journaling card with a quote I love, and on the right of the middle row is an internet pic and info about the new Pope being elected.  The bottom pics are from our baseball game.

And that's it from week 11! 

 

 

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Vintage Style Wedding Invitations

My friend Liz is getting married this year and I was blessed with the opportunity to make her wedding invitations for her. 

She wanted a kind of vintagy feel to them and this is what we came up with.  The outside is wrapped with a doily sleeve.  I got a big pack of them at Smart and Final.  Everything else I used in the invites is from Stampin' Up!.

I can't believe I forgot to get a picture of it with the doily sleeve off but the front of the card!  I'll upload one to my facebook page later.  The wrap is from crumb cake seam binding, a keyhole punch with their names on vanilla cardstock, and tied on with linen thread.  Those little tags were so easy.  I just used the small return address label setting on my word processor and it put 80 on a page in just the right size to punch.

 
The base of the invite is crumb cake, 12x12 cardstock, cut in half.  I used smaller pieces of the crumb cake to put pockets on the sides for tucking info into (like registry and reception info).  I sponged the base with the doily die cut cut with my big shot and white craft ink.

 

I printed the wording on vanilla cardstock and mounted it over the early espresso that covered the middle portion of the invite.  The espresso was on the crumb cake when I sponged those doilies so you can see a bit of a frilly edge sticking out under the wording.

Simple postcard RSVP stamped with Hello Doily and printed with their names, white craft ink run along the edge over soft suede, just to age it a bit.

Same treatment on the other side of the post card.  That "post card" stamp is from the Winter Post stamp set that is now retired.

And the envelope is the last part.

I stamped and inked the edges of the envelope the same way I did the post card.  These were a slightly shimmery vanilla envelope I picked up at Staples.  The bride had a friend (or maybe it was her father?) make address them with caligraphy and they were awesome.

And there you have them!

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Project Life Week 3 - 2013

I know it's late posting, but I just needed to photograph this.  It took me a while to get around to that part.

Here's the two page spread:

The left side (closer up) contains pics of two of my kids being silly with their snacks, the week in review card, the title card, more money from yet another lost tooth, a pic with evidence of our windy week, and a little Chinese New Year envelope my son brought home from school.

 

The right side has some self portraits my girls took with my phone.  They're constantly doing that so I put a few together with my iPhone app and put them on the page.  It also shows  a sick little one in the car, some physical fitness things and my husband's birthday.

An even closer look at some elements:

 

My title card base is a chevron card from my local scrapbook store.  I don't remember what brand.  They had a bunch of these in assorted styles in one area and I grabbed several. :)  I printed "week" on my computer and scraped an ink pad along the edges, then adhered it with washi tape.  I THINK I got the washi tape at Pretty Tape on Etsy.  Again, think...The 3 I die cut with my Sizzix Big Shot on Early Espresso cardstock.  I tied a little scrap fiber from years ago along the side of it, then stamped the dates with my Smash date stamper.

 

For my "windy" pic I just drew directly on the picture with my silver Stampin' Up! marker.  It's available in gold too.  I drew some swirlies and wrote the words to show the windiness.  We get Santa Ana winds in my area and the millions of local palm trees get all their fronds blown off.  Then the city has to come around and clear the streets.  I took this pic to reflect both the weather of the time and something kind of unique to my area.

 

One of my kids' favorite snacks are Trader Joes onion rings.  These two were up to all kinds of alternate uses for them and I snapped a few shots.    On the right you can kind of see the edge of a Chinese envelope.  That was from my son's class.  They were reading a story in language arts (near Chinese New Year) about how a tradition there is to give a red envelope with money.  The teacher had given the students these little envelopes with one of those gold wrapped chocolate coins inside.  He ate the coin and I snagged the cute envelope for the book.  I mounted it on black cardstock since it was slightly smaller than the pocket.

 

The week in review card was another of those that I picked up at my local scrapbook store.  I think I'll need to head back there to get more soon :)  and I'll pay more attention to the maker so you can find them too. :)

I just wrote with a basic gray marker from Stampin' Up!  I like bulleted lists.  A lot.

On to the right side!

I forgot to take pictures of my husband and presents, etc... at his actual birthday so I managed this card to represent it.  I took a pic of the leftover hot pink chocolate chip cookies we made him and the kids' gift for him.  Just so you don't think it's weird, his favorite color is, and has always been, hot pink.  And he doens't like cake, but he loves chocolate chip cookies.  And he likes that grated parm in a can which I don't allow in the house. :)  But the kids talked me into buying him some one day while we were grocery shopping.  :)

I also typed (in photoshop) right onto my FIT journal from our new church series.  I just bulleted my goals for mental, spiritual, and physical fitness.  Have I mentioned I like bulleted lists?

The pic of my daughter on the trampoline was really just to show how they're always getting static in their hair while they jump.  I had a blurry lower corner so I just wrote right over that part. :)

 That's it for week 3.  I have finished up through week 6 and I'll get those up soon!

Remember that you can get any of the Stampin' Up! supplies (including a lot of those fibers, crochet trim and the red patterned papers) from my Stampin' Up! website.

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Project Life Week 2 -2013

This is the first week I used an insert.  I'm trying not to do that a lot since I know I'll have full albums, but I just couldn't decide which ice pictures to ditch!

We had done a salt/food color/ice thing that was so fun and made such beautiful pictures.  I already had a hard time deleting some and couldn't really narrow things down to one or two for this week's spread, so I decied to add and insert and throw some in there.  I don't remember what letter insert this is, but it's a Becky Higgins one and is 3 pockets tall.

Here's a pic of the layout with it flipped:

Here's a closer look at the title card.  I just realized I didn't put the dates down, so I'll go back and add that in with my date stamper.

I don't remember what brand that paper is but the letter stickers are Creative Imaginations.  Got them on sale at a craft store.  I like the burlap-py, canvas-y look to them.  I also used the some crochet trim from Stampin' Up! and the number 2 is die cut with Big Shot from Stampin' Up!.  I used Soft Suede and Whisper White Stampin' Up! cardstock for it.  I went for this look with the title card because the pictures put a lot of blue-ish color in the layout and I wanted to coordinate and balance it out.

My husband replacing a boot in the brake system.  I thought it was pretty clever to mount this and journal on some ledger paper I had for my curriculum writing business.  This year, so far, something costly has broken EVERY WEEK!  I'm typing this during week 5 and it's still holding true.  :(

 

During the end of Christmas break we had started this osmosis lab together.  It needed time to sit to get results so this was the week we looked at it to see what happened.  I put an overhead shot of the results in the same slot as an up close shot of the baking soda that formed on the string.  I mounted them on Pacific Point Cardstock from Stampin' Up! to help coordinate with the blues in the layout, but ground it a bit with darker color.  The paper above it in my layout is one of my kids' lab sheets. 

 

This is a shot of the insert with ice pictues in various melting stages. 

...and the other side of the insert.

There's also a page from my son's school.  He's in a special language program and they study Spanish culture and holidays.  This week they had 3 Kings Day and I put in his picture from school.

A picture of my son with his ice block about a quarter of the way through the experience.

I combined the "toothfairy" money with my week in review list onto one black paper for a slot.  The label I put "Week In Review" on was part of a K and Company (I think) sticker sheet with various labels.

That's it for week 2.  If you need any of the Stampin' Up! supplies I've listed here, everything I used in this layout is current and can be found in my online store!

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Project Life Week 1 - Hello 2013!

Don't be fooled by my late posting of this.  I've had it done for a while, but I've neglected to take pictures and upload and blog them. :) 

So far my organization for this project has worked out very well for me.  Last week I couldn't make it into my office and I got a week behind for the first time.  It was far easier than I thought it would be to remember what I needed to put in there because of my system.  Whew! 

Remember that for all my pictures on my posts you can click to make the image larger.

Here's week 1:

I thought it'd be hard to fill each layout, but decided it wasn't so hard after all if I remember that my goal here, and the whole reason I started this project, was to capture everyday stuff, not a billion special things.  I've found the everyday to be special enough and that's what I really want to remember.

On the left side here I've got shots of the girls at a new gymnastics class.  We'd had to change days after O's birthday to keep them in the same class.  Same teacher but different day.  Olivia was excited to be in the same class as Rae, she feels like such a big girl.

  I also have pictures from a mall date with Rae, she's such a shopper.  Antoher pocket holds a picture of the cover of my album from last year (where I did a  layout a month).  I was really focused on finishing it and I did!  I also took a pic of my One Little Word journal, Focus, as I embark on that for a new year.  I put my Week In Review on the right side of that picture.

The 24/7 embellishment card was something I made from my stash, which I'm trying to do a lot more of.  I used bits of crumb cake card stock and the Comfort Cafe DSP.  The brown scallop trim is from a really old Simply Scrappin' kit and the 24/7 is from (if I'm remembering correctly) a "side notes" set from a year or two ago. 

For the "Focus" / Week in review card, the yellow patterned paper is more from the Comfort Cafe collection from Stampin' Up!.  The lined paper is from my stash and was a scrap, I have no idea what it's from but I'm pretty sure it was a local scrapbook store.  The stamp I used for the title along the top is from "Just Believe" which I believe it retired.  I used soft suede ink for that and wrote out my journaling with a Midnight Muse Stamp N' Write marker on a little scrap piece of Very Vanilla cardstock that I layered over the stamp.

 

Please forgive the glare on the right side.  I just couldn't seem to find an angle where it wouldn't show.  Here I have pics of them "snow painting" and a pic of the final result.  Josiah got a haircut and lost another 2 teeth.  I also decided to put my title card on the right side of this layout. I'm not feeling tied to any one location for my title cards so you'll likely find them in lots of places as the year progresses.

For my son's smile with less teeth, I wrote directly on the photo in photoshop for my journaling, then had it printed that way.  The tag tucked behind the photo had a joke from the tooth fairy on it and I kind of planned it sticking out a bit more than usual to make the end of the tag and the ribbon hanging from it part of the title card, visually speaking.

The title card uses a blue herringbone paper from the Comfort Cafe collection again, a die cut "1", a scrap of twill tape left over from a long time ago, as well as a piece of washi tape.  I printed the "Week" on my computer on regular paper and sponged a little soft suede ink on it.

I'll be back this week with more of January.  For now, if you would like any of these materials, you can get the ones that are still available here.

 

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I'm almost done with this album.  I thinking I'll finish catching up on Monday when I have time again in my office.  :)

For now, here's 2 pages:

Day 8:

The journaling reads "The kids and I made Salted Caramel Pretzel Bark for a small group Christmas party at our house.  New recipe, new hit!"

I have a page later where I inventory what family favorites we made this year vs. new recipes we tried.

And day 9:

I tried a new wreath inspired by Pinterest this year.  This is a pic of it.  Simple layout, single photo. 

I used a snowflake punch in the upper right corner and will need to work that into my day 10 page.

I used some retired Deck the Halls paper on both of these.  I also used my Big Shot to cut the numbers from Cherry Cobbler. 

I've got a back log of posts to type and share since I had a computer crash earlier.  I'll be posting more soon!

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A Simple Cash Holder for Fall or Christmas

Sometimes the cutest things are really so simple!

 

I have to admit I've always been a sucker for monochromatic things!  This little cash holder was made with some paper from our holiday mini catalog and is perfect for both fall and  Christmas.  We have a lot of fall birthdays around here so I love that.  The tag on this is shaped like an ornament (thanks to my Big Shot die cut machine and the ornament framelits), but I could easily make a leaf shape for a fall one.

Here's what the inside looks like:

These are so easy to make.  I never measure them either!  I just take an 8.5"x11" piece of cardstock and fold it around the money. Easy peasy!  Then I use strip of designer paper to decorate, kind of break up the solid a bit, you know.  Tie on a belly band from ribbon or paper and embellish. Viola!

You can get the supplies for this from my website! 

And if you've thought about signing up as a demonstrator, now is a fabulous time! Not only is the totally awesome, totally customizable kit only $99, but you get a free set of inkpads in addition to the kit when you sign up this month!  That's a fabulous deal!  That's a $50 value!

Go now to get your Christmas supplies!  Even better, get yourself a demonstrator discount and lots of great free stuff by signing up now!