Farm Fresh Friday - 2 Cool 4 School!

This week for FFF we've got a school challenge:  "2 Cool 4 School"!  Show us your best school-related projects, either for students or teachers, doesn't matter ;0)

I used the classic and ever useful "Teacher Anya" to make a fun little gift bag.  I'm going to fix it with pencils and erasers and glue sticks and other small things that I know Brooklyn's teacher always have a use for.  Broke out some old school paper (no clue where from) and a cute little shaker button thing with an apple in it.  Hopefully B's new teacher will like it!

The FFF challenges runs until Thursday, entries are due by 12 PM CST.

The winner will receive a free single TGF stamp of choice!

Please upload your challenge cards to TGF Galleria> Farm Fresh Challenges 2011> Farm Fresh Fridays 2011> 2 Cool 4 School

Stamp - TGF Teacher Anya

Paper - misc old stash

Viva Decor pearl pen - red

Martha Stewart border punch - scallop 3 dot
Martha Stewart photo corner punch

ATS Wed Challenge - Tissue Box Covers!

This week we want you to make a fun and also useful project...tissue box covers!  There's a great tutorial HERE.  Love the finished product!

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There is a new prize offered every week on the ATS Challenge blog but make sure you use a stamp that is sold in the All That Scraps store if you want to be eligible to win!  CC's Designs and Sweet November stamps along with all the other companies that ATS carries gives you quite a selection to choose from.  You have until 10 PM on the Tuesday following each challenge to link your entry.  Good luck!

Stamp - Cheeky Cherry Pie by The Greeting Farm

Copics

Paper - Basic Grey

Nesties - Labels 12



ATS Wed Challenge - Gift ideas!

The vast majority of us are making cards this time of year, but we are also making fun handmade gifts.  For the ATS Wednesday challenge this week we want you to share gifts that you've made.  I used the super-beautiful new Sweet November fairy, Neva and made a fun altered box which I plan to fill with candy for a special friend.

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There is a new prize offered every week on the ATS Challenge blog but make sure you use a stamp that is sold in the All That Scraps store if you want to be eligible to win!  CC's Designs and Sweet November stamps along with all the other companies that ATS carries gives you quite a selection to choose from.  You have until 10 PM on the Tuesday following each challenge to link your entry.  Good luck!

Ingredients:

Stamp - Sweet November "Neva"

Copics

White paperboard box (from Michaels)

Paper - MME "I Love Christmas"

Dies/Punches - Nestabilities "Curved Rectangles", Martha Stewart snowflake punch

Embellies - Misc jewels, stickles, Viva decor pearl pen

ATS Wed Challenge - Refrigerator Fun!

This week at the ATS Wed Challenge, we want you to create some Refrigerator Art!  My good buddy Kim made this fabulous tutorial awhile back, so that's what I used for my inspiration.  These are festive additions to your fridge and they also make great gifts, while being super easy and fun to make.  I used some of the medium size Tim Holtz fragment pieces for the mermaids and then some of the smaller ones to make some sentiments to go along with them.

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There is a new prize offered every week on the ATS Challenge blog but make sure you use a stamp that is sold in the All That Scraps store if you want to be eligible to win!  CC's Designs and Sweet November stamps along with all the other companies that ATS carries gives you quite a selection to choose from.  You have until 10 PM on the Tuesday following each challenge to link your entry.  Good luck!

Ingredients:
Stamps - Pearl Tidepool, Treasure Tempestwind, AmyR Summer Sentiments
Copics
Tim Holtz fragments
Glossy Accents
Tim Holtz distress inks - Dusty Concord, Peeled Paint, (orange)
Adhesive backed magnet strips

Container Altering Tutorial for TGF - Halloween style!

So Jessica asked me to put together a tutorial for the TGF newsletter this month and I decided to show you how I alter Crystal Light containers!  Halloween is my favorite holiday ever and I bought these two TGF digis last week so I figured that a holiday treat container would be fun.  They are cheap, easy to find and you can use them to hold lots of different things :0)  Here's one side of the finished product:

1.  Start off with one of the oval Crystal Light containers (the round ones are fine too, just personal preference) and just peel off the outer plastic label.

2.  Cut your paper of choice down to size.  Because this is a round/oval container I would use thinner paper for this part, I learned the hard way that anything close to cardstock thickness will not lay down flat or stick because it's too stiff.  Make sure you use a good adhesive too, like your ATG or Glue Glider. You also want to make sure to start and end the paper on the 'flat' side of the container so that it will lay down properly.

A great thing about using the Crystal Light containers is that they are opaque so if you use double sided paper you can see the opposite side when you look in the container

2.  I wanted to make this container two sided so I added a piece of another type of patterned paper on each flat side.  One side I just added a strip of paper, the other side I cut out a piece using my Nestabilities.

3.  On this container I decided to add a strip of "Goo" on the top and bottom, so I used my Martha Stewart border punch.  I also went ahead and added my images.  I prefer to add my image before I try to embellish because I think it's easier to see where I have space to fill in once the images are stuck in place.  I used adhesive foam squares to attach Anya and Ian because it gives some dimension.

4.  Now is where I added all of my embellishments.  I did a large Prima flower on either side with a fun Halloween brad in the middle.  I also added a spider with googley eyes on Ians side and some paper spiders on Anya's as well as some Halloween rain dots to help fill in the space.

5.  Finished product! You can fill these with candy or other treats, store your bookmarks in them (I have one for that purpose) and because they are plastic you can even put flowers in them, though I'd probably stick with fake ones so you don't get your paper and images messed up  ;0)

Hope I've inspired you to try something new!

~Rach

Ingredients:

Empty Crystal Light container

Stamps - The Greeting Farm digi images

Copics

Paper - K&Co "Spooktacular"

Dies/Punches - Martha Stewart "Drippy Goo", Nestabilities "Mega Curved Rectangles", EK Success spider mini punch

Embellies - Rain dots, Primas, misc brads, Stickles

TGF Altered Notebook

The Greeting Farm is having an Altered Notebook contest and I just had to take part! I like altering things but hadn't done a notebook yet so this was the perfect opportunity.

I had many ideas in my head but I kept coming back to the Twilight characters so I decided to just go with it because I figured that I'm not the only one who likes Twilight and hopefully it would catch people's attention if used at trade shows.  I used my favorite color scheme, which is incidentally kind of the unofficial Twilight color scheme too: red, black and white.  I did the front and back and I also stamped some of the pages in the notebook with Twi characters just to add a little bit of fun on the inside too.

I spent a ton of time on this, I really hope you guys like it :0)

 Front

Back

Inside pages

Up close

Ingredients:

Stamps/Digi Stamps - The Greeting Farm (Roll Call and Twilight Digis), flourish clear stamps

Copics

Paper - The Paper Studio (back cover and red paper), scrap

Embellies - Clips (The Paper Studio), Viva Decor red pearl pen, red flat backed pearls (various sizes), Primas, Stickles, computer generated sentiment 'The Cullen Crew'

Sweet November Previews - Caladium!

Amy has created yet another fab and stylish Twisted Sister... Caladium!  I saw her and this Inkadinkado stamp of mine immediately came to mind :0), I think it's her personal motto.

Make sure to check out both Amy & Traci's blog for more fun SN samples! These new Twisted Sisters stamps will be available on 6 Sep @ 10:30 PM EST!  However, you have a chance to WIN this sweetheart on Color Me Copic, check out the deets HERE.

Ingredients Tag 1

Stamps - Calladium by Sweet November (available 6 Sept), Inkadinkdo Kids Sentiment
Acetate tag
Copics
Paper - BG Sugar Rush
Embellies - Flat backed gems

Magnets & Fridge Art!!!

The fabulous Kim Costello made the BEST tutorial over at Club Anya this week on making magnets! I immediately had to try it out, it looked like so much fun :0)

I had such a good time I ended up making 3 different magnets:

On the Cheeky Mate (biggest one) I used Kim's method of coating the image in Glossy Accents (GA) and then mounting it on adhesive foam before attaching the magnet to the back.  I just colored it my regular Copic paper, btw, I didn't use anything special.

Pros:

This is nice because you can make the magnet any size you want and you could even use a Nestie on it. 
It's very flexible and will likely stand up to little fingers playing with it ;0) 
Easily done with materials I already had.

Cons:

I needed to add a second coat of GA did get a lot or air bubbles on the second coat. 
This was also kind of messy because all of the GA ran off the side at first.  I think this could be corrected the next time I try it, for a trial run though, this wasn't too bad.

On the two smaller ones I did Kim's method of using Tim Holtz's Fragments pieces.

Pros:

This was SO easy and looked very professional when I was done. 

The pieces are also very lightweight so you don't have to use a heavy-duty magnet, you can still just use regular thin adhesive backed sheets

Con:

There are not many squares in the Fragments pack suitable for larger images

Bottom line

 This is really fun and makes a great project for you and your kids too if they want to try it.  Great idea for small gifts!

Also going to enter this into Quixotic's "Alter It" challenge since I altered the fragments & paper into magnets!

Ingredients:

Stamps - The Greeting Farm (Cheeky Mate, Miss Anya, Spooktacular)

Copics

Glossy Accents

Adhesive magnets

Adhesive foam

Tim Holtz Fragments

4th of July FUN!

As most of the US folks know, the 4th of July is coming up!  I had to use this sweetie ASAP (she's def my new fave) so I altered a Crystal Light drink container with patriotic paper and am going to put sparklers in it for the kids :0)

I used the "outside the frame" Nestabilities technique for this one, kind of challenging but I love the results.

Side:

Back:

I added a bunch of bling to this so I could enter it into the Anya Ink "add some bling" challenge.  She's got pearl earrings, some red stars on her boots, blue and clear stars scattered around and some red jewels in the center of the flowers. 

Ingredients:

TGF Stamp - Cheeky Mate

CC's Design Stamps - Honey Sailor

Copics

Ribbon

Stickles

Dome shaped jewels

Flat back pearls

Star jewels

Pink Cat Digital Release Day!

New Releases at PCS today, including a free Lily with any purchase today, 6/24!

My son and his best buddy had a great time at the water park and I got this super cute pic of them peeking out of the "cave" there, but hadn't done anything with it.  Once I saw the Billy PCS release this week, I decided to alter a little frame so Westin could have this pic in his room, Billy is just perfect for it :0)

Ingredients:
Pink Cat Studio Digi Image
Copics
Paper Mache frame (I would suggest finding a totally flat one, this was a PAIN)

Hershey Sweet Treat

For "Wild Card Wednesdays" @ CA&F's this week, Lysa challenged us to make a Valentine's sweet treat item.  I picked a Hershey bar - I like my chocolate straight up, lol - and decided to cover almost the whole front of it.  I used Lolli Anya because I haven't inked her up yet and she was lonely.  Delish!

Used:
TGF Stamp - Lolli Anya
Copics
Nestabilities - Circle, Scalloped Circle
Martha Stewart Cupcake border punch
Paper- Target $1 aisle
Stickles

ATS Wed Challenge - Tissue Box Covers!

This week for the ATS Wednesday challenge we want you to make tissue box covers! They are cute and fun and the possibilities are endless :0) HERE is a great tutorial!

____________________________

There is a new prize offered every week on the ATS Challenge blog but make sure you use a stamp that is sold in the All That Scraps store if you want to be eligible to win!  CC's Designs and Sweet November stamps along with all the other companies that ATS carries gives you quite a selection to choose from.  You have until 10 PM on the Tuesday following each challenge to link your entry.  Good luck!

Stamp - Cheeky Cherry Pie by The Greeting Farm
Copics
Paper - Basic Grey
Nesties - Labels 12

(Updated) Altered Christmas Mini Paint Can

Yes, I've been MIA.  I'm incapable of handling more than one hobby at a time and have been reading for the last few weeks.  Then I "woke up" and realized it's December already and I need to move my butt!

This was orignally a clear mini paint can type thingy that I got some flowers in at Michaels.  I had already started to cover it to make a gift for my friend when I read that Club Anya would be having a contest soon and some of the categories are for altered items (All Wrapped Up) and best use of Santa or Mrs. Claus (Ho Ho Ho), talk about perfect timing!

Anyways, the top says "Christmas kisses and holiday wishes" and it's filled with Hershey Kisses.  It's for my best "in real life" crafting buddy, she knows who she is and she saw this in the early stages but didn't know it was for her ;0) 

Hope you like!

The set (made the card earlier):

The can:

Used:

TGF Stamps - XMas Sweeties

Copics

Liquid Applique (THANKS TRACI!) ("puffy" looking parts)

Nestabilities - snowflakes, scalloped circle

EK Success Snowflake mini punch

Stickes

Computer Generated sentiment