CraftyEngineer

Silhouette, silhouette, how do I love thee...

My apologies for not posting since, uh, August, really? Wow, that's the longest I've gone without posting. I've been making stuff, I think. Who knows? Isn't it crazy how time is flying? My oldest said to me the other day... "Mom, this year is really flying by." WHAT? Kids are supposed to feel that way. I didn't that way when I was his age. 

Anyway, so back to crafting. Silhouette has this DIY advent box kit for sale and since I threw ours away last Holiday season because it was broken in many places (it was cute... from Pottery Barn, I think, with little doors and such - it lasted several years!), I was tempted to get it. However, I don't have a lot of time to get it done. But then I kept seeing how other crafters had made one and read about how Silhouette gives you all the box templates and everything is all there for you. Ok, sold. 

It came in Wednesday night before Thanksgiving! Perfect timing. Something to do during the holiday weekend! If I had to wait until next week, it would have been TOUGH to get it done by Thursday with the kid's school stuff getting in my crafting way!

The hardest part of making this... picking out my color scheme. I have boys. It has to be boy-ish. But I wanted it to look clean. I'm not a fan of red so the traditional red and green combo was out. I like blues. I typically lean towards snowflakes (ironic since I live in a 99.9% snowfree zone and don't like the cold). But they are pretty. In theory.

My color combo is Chocolate Brown, White, and Aqua/Teal/Turquoise-ish. 

Silhouette is SO awesome. They even provided the template to cut the back of each hole. See the blue in the back here:

While this project took a few hours, it wasn't hard at all. I used white vinyl for the numbers and then the snowflake stickers are from Hobby Lobby. They turquoise and silver and are puffy and sparkly.

I hope you like it! My boys do and best thing is it's done and ready for filling for December 1st! Have any suggestions for what to put in the boxes?

Have a great day! Hope your Thanksgiving was full of reflection and family and friends!

Teacher Time! - Day 4 (even though it's day 5...)

OOPS. I'm a big loser. I didn't get around to posting yesterday. SORRY JENNIE! I'll make up for it. Today I'll post day 4 even though technically it is day 5. And I'll post day 5 by Tuesday (maybe even this weekend if I get my act together!). Be sure to check out Jennie's blog for our week of teacher time ideas! She's so clever!

Well, my day 4 project is really fun and I loved putting it together. I hope the teachers liked them. The are Survival Kits for their classrooms. I used these bead organizers from Michael's and filled them with all sorts of goodies. Used my Silhouette SD to cut the vinyl out!

  inside.

They include: highlighters, personalized pencils (with "from my son's name" on them from Oriental Trading), wipes, sanitizer, advil/tylenol, mints, cotton swabs, paper clips, binder clips, mini stapler with staples, bookmarks, liquid paper (does anyone use this anymore?), mini post-its, CHOCOLATE (of course!), pencil sharpener, band-aids, floss, and a Listerine pocket pac.

Fun, eh? I will be back with one more teacher gift sometime soon! Thanks for checking in!

Teacher Time! - Day 3

6 AM wake up calls are already getting old and it's only the 3rd day of school! WHEW. I'm sure it'll be better in a few weeks!

Day 3 of Teacher Time. Have you checked out Jennie's blog? She giving away a little something. Go check it out!

Here is my teacher gift for today. I really like how they turned out. I used my Silhouette SD machine to cut out the vinyl.

These are those great big hand sanitizer bottles from Sam's. With a little Goo Gone, the labels came off.

I hope the teachers (and the kids) like them!

Teacher Time! - Day 2

Day 2 of Teacher Time going on here... What is that, you ask? Well, it's where Jennie and I are blogging our teacher gifts.

Today's gift is similar to last year's first day survival kit (the original idea came from Lexi!) But this year, we made them for the whole school! Contents include a santizer wipe, Advil or Tylenol, a cool mint, and chocolate, of course.

Just the right amount of stuff "To Help You Get Through the First Day!"

  See the flap?

Love seeing them all lined up in the teacher's mailboxes!

I used my new accucut bon-bon die. It's a pinnovation so you print the words anywhere you want and the die will cut in the same place each time. TIME SAVER and most awesome!

Be sure to check out Jennie's blog for more teacher time!

See you tomorrow!

Teacher Time! - Day 1

Today was the first day of school around here! And MORE importantly, the first day of school for my youngest son. Wow, now I have a Kindergartener and a Fourth grader. Just can't believe it.

With the start of school brings teacher gifts. Not mandatory, of course but sure are fun. I LOVE making teacher gifts! Well, one of my best creative buddies, Jennie, also loves making teacher gifts. Last year, she and I and our friend Lori, did a Teacher Tag blog hop to showcase our teacher gifts for the start of school. Jennie asked me if I wanted to do it again this year. Well, YEAH. Of course, I do! I'm just a bit behind in the posting today due to that first day of school thing! ;)

Now, last night at 11pm (WHY can't I learn to do this earlier???), I decided both teachers needed a little "first day of school" gift. Quick and easy and hopefully cute and useful, too:

thank you cards

2 boxed sets of 8 cards & envelopes

Summer's over and it was a great summer at that. I love having my boys home. My husband got to take his sabbatical this summer (1 month off work) and we went to the USVI. It was wonderful. I wish we were still there. Sigh. School has started and with that comes all sorts of responsibilities.

But I'll have you know I didn't cry today. So what if I cried all weekend???  I didn't do it today. It wasn't about him starting Kinder. I LOVE his teacher. She was my oldest's K teacher, too. I LOVE our school. It's just that little guy won't be in the car riding around with me and keeping me company anymore. I'm sure I'll adjust to all of the free time but wow, what an adjustment!

Be sure to check out Jennie's blog and come back tomorrow, too. We're doing this teacher gift tag all week!

Stamps: Paper Smooches, A Muse (retired) tiny butterfly

TE Blast from the Past Blog Hop: Sending You Sunshine!

This month's Taylored Expressions Blast from the Past Blog Hop Theme is Sending You Sunshine! What reminds you of summer? Flip flops, the beach, bright colors, sunshine? Capture the essence of summer in your project!

Well, that's easy. I would say Lazy Days of Summer but that's not even a concept that anyone does anymore, is it? Summer means vacation to me. Vacation means beach, water, island, reading for fun, boating, sailing, crafting for FUN, sleeping past 6am, staying up later than usual, swimming, and of course, fun drinks with little umbrellas in them.

Here is my card that I think captures the essence of summer for me:

I'm sending this card to my friend, Heather. I have a feeling she thinks I have no idea how to chill-ax. :) What does summer mean to you?

Be sure to check out all the great inspiration for this blog hop for Sending You Sunshine below!

Have a great day and I'm sending you some sunshine! (Seriously, I'm sending you sunshine, you send us RAIN, please?)

 

A VIP, Jordan Knight, and Etch-a-sketch

Interesting title, eh? I'll explain. First, I LOVE. LOVE. LOVE my Silhouette machine. This was all done on that machine using their vinyl for a stencil.

I'm so very excited. I have been working on a surprise for my dear friend (the VIP) for a couple of days. No reason for it except that I wanted to try to make this and it sounded like fun. With the help of a long distance friend, Kathleen, I was able to put it all together last night. The VIP, Amy, is my neighbor so after I finished it, I had to deliver it. I'm sure she thought I was crazy for coming over at 9:30pm!

Anyway, Amy is the biggest NKOTB fan I know. She recently went on their crusie, went to the Dallas concert, and to the San Antonio concert. After the the Dallas concert, she had VIP tickets to the meet & greet, where she got to meet Jordan Knight. Photos were taken, of course. Well all great photos need a frame, right?

As I mentioned in a previous post where I said "Keep your glass away from me", I have been looking for stuff to glass etch! My son calls it etch-a-sketch! Why, I have no idea but it sounds cute.

Originally, I thought I'd just do a song title or something small and simple in the corner. Kathleen had sent me some of the lyrics from JK's solo song, Catch A Wave, that seemed fitting for such a photo. Lyrics seemed like too much lettering but after thinking about it for a while, I decided I've always wanted to try my hand at subway art! So, with the help of Kathleen and google :), I found some more words to put on there. You know what the hardest part of designing this was? FONT SELECTION.

So, here's what it looks like:

close-up of etching

Finally, one thing I re-learned with this project. Etching creme GOES BAD. It gets old and it turns brown/gray rather than white/off-white. YUCK. I applied a bit of this and realized that it wasn't right. I was too scared to see if it would actually work so I scraped it off.
 
Here are some pics of the process:

Vinyl all weeded out and placed on glass

Etching creme applied to vinyl & glass

So, what do you think? I see lots of customized frames in my future. So easy to do! Although weeding out all those letters was a bit of a pita! But worth the effort!

Happy Wednesday!

Big news...

I posted this on my facebook page and sent an email to many of you but somehow forgot to mention it on my blog:

BIG NEWS!!!! I am so excited to tell you that I am now a Unity Stamp Company Endorsed Teacher and I'll be teaching at Scrapology in Lakeway on Saturday, August 13th at 10am. Spaces are limited so call 512.609.8188 and reserve your spot now! Hope to see you there!

And to celebrate, here's a Unity card we did at a class I taught in June. That class was a silent auction item that I donated to my son's elementary school. So much fun to get crafty with some of my PTA friends!

Hope you are having a great weekend!

Items used:

Unity Stamp Co Rockin' it Unity Style

A Muse ribbon, A Muse notecards

Copic Markers

Judikin's DG3 (like diamond glaze)

Kiai!

Or Hi-Yah! Take your pick!

My silhouette SD machine is working hard to become my best buddy. It certainly jumped up notches in that category after I figured out how to print and cut and manipulate a design into what I wanted. WOW! What a tool and so easy. I really could be a spokesperson for Silhouette. Can't tell you how many people I've told to get this machine!

Okay, so back to the story. Hi-Yah! My nephew turns 7 in a couple of weeks. He is having a TaeKwonDo birthday party. He takes lessons and absolutely loves it so he wanted to have his party at the TKD place. Well, I always like a challenge! No time to find karate/martial arts stamps so hmm... what to do? Silhouette to the rescue!

This is a tuxedo card and looked very tuxedo like. With some tweaks to the "lapel" and editing some of the points of the tuxedo I made it into a ghi. And a black belt one, at that! After I figured out how to do the cutting part, I had to try my hand at the printing on the inside. Again, another wow. I didn't know that I could print stuff before cutting and then have it all work together. SIMPLE. SIMPLE. SIMPLE. Love this machine. (so some of the inside is blanked out for privacy issues... you know the drill.)

So, what do you think? You know how simple this was? Well, I took my laptop, silhouette, and printer in my new SD bag to the lake this weekend and got it all working. Must be easy if I did it while traveling, right?

Anyway, I'm in love with this machine.

image used:

tuxedo_shape_card_C00211_21585

Keep your glass away from me!

THIS IS SO COOL!

I am a HUGE fan of glass etching. And well, I found this new blog, How Does She, where she had done some glass etching on some teacher gifts using her Silhouette. HELLO. OMG. I can do that. In fact, I copied her idea almost exactly except that my vase was a different size!

So, first, the story of why I made this (for some reason I have to have a "why"!). My son's elementary school principal gives out "Birthday Pencils" to the kids at school when it's there birthday. Well, everytime I met with her I'd look at that container she had and think "I'm going make her something else". Never knew what I wanted to do until now. Only downside is that it's glass but it looks cool so hopefully that will make up for it!

It was SO easy to glass etch with the silhouette. Oh my! Now, I can't stop looking at glass stuff at every store I go into and think about how I can etch it!

Now, what else can I make?