Every once in a while, I go on a little card-making spree. I mass produce about a dozen cards that I store away to use for whatever occasion arises. These ones were super easy because it was only stamping – no extra papers or layers or bling.
This Stampin’ Up flower set is called Paint Prints, and the word set is called Sincere Salutations. I’ve used these two stamp sets way more than anything else I have.
So it just required some quick stamping (because I was going to a wedding reception soon) and a punched tag that I attached with a brad fastener. I stamped a few Best Wishes cards because I seem to need more wedding cards than anything else. But the rest are blank so I can easily stamp them with whatever message I need.
And just for variety, I did two different colour combinations!
It always feels good to know that I have a little stash of cards tucked away in a drawer . . . just waiting for the next occasion!
My daughter Min is serving as an LDS missionary in Mexico City for 18 months. I wanted to send her an advent calendar to help her enjoy the Christmas season. Shipping to Mexico isn’t the easiest thing, so I wanted an advent calendar that would fit nicely into a large envelope, rather than a package. Another brilliant missionary momma (Teri) had this great idea to make one out of baseball card holders. So I borrowed her idea of the card holder to make my version of an advent calendar.
Mac holding the finished product.
These are the three separate page protectors for baseball cards. Each page has nine slots. I just cut Christmas scrapbook paper into the right sizes and copied a scripture advent calendar on each one. This advent calendar is based on one that was printed in the New Era magazine in December 1989 called Come, Let us Adore Him: A Live Advent Calendar. I just copied the scripture reference and the hymn. If you click on the picture, it should enlarge it enough to be easily read.
This is the advent calendar we do at home every Christmas, so I thought it would be nice if our missionary was reading the same thing as us each day.
The back side isn’t looking to fancy to start with . . .
Also in each little pocket I included a gospel picture. Where possible, they correlated to the scripture of the day. So the idea is that she puts the gospel picture in the front of the pocket of each day once she’s read the scripture.
By the time Christmas arrives, she’ll have a page of lovely pictures of the Savior and other gospel items that she can have up in her apartment all year (or at least until June when she comes home!)
I tied jute string at the top. But the knots were a little bulky and made my package bigger. If I was doing it again, I’d use a smaller string, or ribbon or yarn that wouldn’t make the postal workers need to measure my envelope!
To attach the three pages to each other, I simply used clear packing tape and taped across the back side of the pages. Worked great – holds it tight and is still easy to fold up to pack into that envelope, and later, into her suitcase!!!
I also tucked a little Christmas quote or story for her to read in each day too. I was planning to put a balloon in some of them too, with Christmas messages for her to blow up and get, but forgot to do it when the family was all together. We’ll save that for another package.
And there it is. I mailed it on September 22 in hopes that she will have it by December 1st.
Simple, inexpensive, but fun for my missionary!
(Edited to add: She finally received it on January 19 – too late for Christmas this year, but it can be used forever!)
I made these wonderful Dinner Menu and Message Boards a while ago – you can read all about that here! Anyway, the boards are working exactly as I hoped they would – meaning that we use them all the time and are all getting trained to check them for messages. And there are no more annoying little pieces of paper floating around with messages on them, or no messages scribbled on that important paper I needed.
However, the colours weren’t quite working for me yet – probably because I got a huge book of lovely new scrapbook papers. I figured out that it was the pale yellow I didn’t like – so it was time to rip it apart!!!
After much deliberating, I chose this pretty light teal colour and simply glued it on over the yellow. (Yes, that is my bed I’m working on, mostly because my baby hasn’t figured out how to climb up on it so I can work in peace, not like at the kitchen table!)
Yes, I’m loving these colours much more – not that I have anything against yellow (unless I’m supposed to wear it – then I look jaundice!).
That “I Love You Message” has been on there for months. I can’t bring myself to erase it!!!
Notice the little strip of new paper right below the green – that’s over yellow too, and just ties the boards in nicely to each other.
And there are the two boards side-by-side.
And here they sit in my temporary kitchen – very convenient right by the phone.
And to wrap it up, I really recommend these boards!!! The Dinner board makes me plan ahead somewhat! (I can do better – notice the empty, unplanned spaces! I just find that my days go so much smoother when the dinner menu is already planned.) And the Message Board . . . let me compare it to Pinterest – how did I ever live without it???
St. Patrick’s Day is just a few days away and I’ve done nothing yet to decorate. I don’t do much for St. Patrick’s Day – mostly because we have four kids with birthdays in March (yup, four!), and there is also all the basketball playoffs, and the Relief Society Anniversary Party. So there is no time to celebrate the green day or Pi day. About all I’ve been known to do for St. P’s day is wear green and put some green food colouring in the milk. The girls are always a little startled to be pouring green milk on their cereal in the morning!
Anyway, Krystal at Sassy Sanctuary did this cute shamrock craft and I thought to myself, “I can do something like that!”
So I went to my stash of frames, and bingo – found the perfect little chalkboard frame!!! With moving and building, I hadn’t seen my stash in years. I have no recollection of ever getting this little chalkboard, but it must have been from a dollar store or sale bins at Michael’s or Walmart, cause that’s how I shop!
I roughly painted the outside edge in a beige, being sure to miss lots of spots!!!
I’m not set up for cutting out wood yet, so I decided to let cardboard be my shamrock base. I am set up for cutting with an exacto knife!!! I just traced my pattern onto the cardboard and green paper.
I think the part of this project that took the longest was choosing the green paper – again, from my stash! Then I distressed the edges and mod podged it together.
I used my Burnt Umber oil colour paint to distress the edges of the frame (after lightly sanding of course!)
Just lightly rub it on with a cloth, after rubbing most of it off on paper first!
Wait, what’s this? A blue frame? Well, this is the backside of my chalkboard! I thought it looked pretty usable too for something else – but that’ll be another post someday! Stay tuned!
When I did my top layer of mod podge – after letting the bottom layer get really dry (don’t want any bubbles in my shamrock!) I put a piece of fabric on top of the wet mod podge. Pressed it down firmly and then peeled it off right away.
It gives the top finish a “canvassy” look, which I like better than brush strokes.
The next step was simply to tie the shamock to the frame with some jute and add some words . . .
I love it! And you can be assured that I’ll be changing out that shamrock for other shapes for different holidays.
You often hear people say, “Oh, you’re so lucky!” but I think the more accurate phrase would be, “Oh, you’re so blessed!” Hence my words “Lucky means Blessed”.
The St. Patrick’s Day shelf . . .. . . add a few hydrangeas, burn candle wicks so they show up, and voila! (Oh, and I just added the hooks to my shelf – check out that screaming deal here!)
A few years ago I was asked to do centerpieces for our family Thanksgiving Dinner. We must have had a huge crowd that year because we held it in the Seniors Center with six round tables. Let me add that I much prefer doing centerpieces than preparing food!!!
I wanted to focus on the “Thanks” part of Thanksgiving so I made up six little scripture placards to sit in the middle of each table. They had a sprig of fall leaves behind them and loose leaves sprinkled around.
So here are my six top favourite scriptures about “Thanks” . . .
I simply printed them off the computer onto paper and glued them onto cardstock so they would stand. Oh and there was a little antiquing the edges and a leaf sticker as well!
And I think this one is my personal favourite:
Wonderful little messages to reread every Thanksgiving!!!
The Youth Theme for 2014 is Come Unto Christ (which I love by the way!!!) I’ve been seeing lots of cute boards and things on Pinterest with the theme on it, but I wanted to do something a little different. I’ve already made a Menu board and a Message board, so why not make a Come Unto Christ board?I like this idea because it’s so much easier to wipe off and change what you need to focus on.
It was super easy to make – I just printed the words out on card stock, chopped them up the way I wanted them, added a little distressing then glued them in place. The frame I bought was certificate size so it fit an
8.5 x 11 piece of paper much better.
I felt a need to create something today! My daughter is a missionary for
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Today was the day she was flying from the Provo Utah Missionary Training Center, where she’s been for the last six weeks, to her mission – the Mexico Mexico City Southeast Mission.
So I’ve been watching her flights all day!!! The craft gave me something to do and not be too far away from the computer! Oh, and she safely arrived about half an hour ago. Now she’ll get to see if she actually understands anything in the Spanish she’s been learning for the last six weeks!
Back to my craft . . .A dry erase marker is all you need now to write the goals you’re working on to help you Come Unto Christ. Write it right on the glass and wipe it off with your finger or a kleenex.
These aren’t my goals – I’m a little old for EFY! We’ll be making these next week in our Laurel class activity. So I wrote possible Young Women goals on here. Some other ideas include:
Daily: personal prayers morning and night, read my scriptures, write in my journal, attend Seminary, review Scripture Mastery, have family prayers, serve someone in my family
Weekly: attend all my Sunday meetings, worthily partake of the Sacrament, attend all youth activities, participate in Family Home Evening, index 25? names, read Sunday lessons in advance, work on Personal Progress, bless someone through an act of service
Monthly: read the New Era/Ensign/or both, complete a full 24 hour fast, pay a full tithe and fast offering, attend the Temple, index 100? names, write to missionaries, bare your testimony (either verbally or written in your journal or inside a Book of Mormon), read your Patriarchal Blessing
Yearly: watch General Conference in April and October, watch the women’s broadcast, attend YW Camp, attend Standards Night, attend Especially For Youth, read the Book of Mormon or the scriptures that you’re studying in Seminary, attend Tithing settlement.
This Stampin’ Up flower set is called Paint Prints, and the word set is called Sincere Salutations. I’ve used these two stamp sets way more than anything else I have.
So it just required some quick stamping (because I was going to a wedding reception soon) and a punched tag that I attached with a brad fastener. I stamped a few Best Wishes cards because I seem to need more wedding cards than anything else. But the rest are blank so I can easily stamp them with whatever message I need.
And just for variety, I did two different colour combinations!
