Craft night...my favorite resolution!

I love my "craft night" New Year's resolution! On Thursday nights, Chris is in charge of the kids so I can do whatever!

Last night I swept and mopped the kitchen (to avoid doing it today!), then it was off to the craft table! It's so nice to get the night "off"...no baths to give, no bedtime stories to read. Not that I don't love doing those things, but a girl needs a night off every once in a while!

I enjoyed making a set of cards for a friend who is getting married next weekend. Her last name begins with "S". (I threw that in because Chris said, "Why 'S'?" He doesn't "get" stationery!)




A couple of weeks ago on my craft night I drew my friend Regina's boys' names and made gift tags out of them.

Brady is into pirates...


And Bennett is into superheroes!


To draw the little icons on the letters I found cute clip art on the computer to give me an idea of some simple drawings I could sketch. I had to Google "superhero logos" to find all those pictures to use for Bennett's name! After I had drawn them, I scanned them and put them in a Word document to print on cardstock. They turned out really good! I did some for Aaron and Claire too...just ABC pictures. It's the same drawings I used on their chore charts I made back in September.

Another art project - Hatcher

Last week we had a birthday party to attend for Aaron's friend Hatcher. I scrapbook with his mom and she had been intrigued by my recent hobby of writing names with doodles. I had the idea to do names on notecards as gifts, so I used her as my guinea pig! Hatcher loves trains so I drew his name with a train car on each letter. I was very pleased with the outcome!

I scanned the name in, then put the .jpg onto notecards. Then I did some "gift cards" by printing several of the names on white cardstock, which I cut into little cards for her to include with gifts.

This is so much fun! Shelly raved about her new stationery and thinks I need to sell it. I can't fathom many people wanting to buy this, and I'm not sure how I would do it, but we'll see!

Our Chore Charts

Today has been just glorious. Well, as glorious as it can get staying home with the kiddos.

I spent most of the morning in my jammies working on crafty stuff! I never do that, and it was great. Except for the frustration when the kids would get all into everything, but I dealt with it. It will still great to have all my crafty stuff out and pretend the floors don't need to be mopped.

I finally came up with a plan for the chore charts. They are so pretty!


Every morning I will put 3-4 cards in the bottom triangle pocket of their charts. As they complete the chores, they will put the cards in the pockets, which are just strips of paper glued on 3 sides.


If they complete all the chores for the day, they get a dollar! If they give me lots of problems (ie excessive whining, refusal to cooperate), they have to give me a dollar back. We're going to start small so Aaron will catch on to the concept and be able to earn alot of dollars this first week. Claire has a chart just so she feels like she gets to participate, but I don't think she'll "get" it.

I did the chore cards using clip-art in Microsoft Word. Aren't they pretty? I printed the play money from this website.


I had so much fun doing the names.



Of course me sitting in the floor with a bunch of markers is what prompted Claire to color with me, and eventually take an open pink marker onto my bed, where she and Aaron wrestled and got pink marker all over my white sheets. (Thank goodness I had not made the bed or it would have been my comforter! See, I know my making-the-bed-laziness would pay off!) The sheets are currently in the wash with bleach but I have doubts the ink will come out. It's permanent for scrapbooking, for heaven's sake!

But I digress...back to the names! I'd really like to do some names like this and somehow make some stationery--I'm thinking little gift cards or notecards. How would I do it though--just scan them? My scanner is pretty hoopty. Any input here would be nice. I think these would make nice gifts and I'm enjoying doing them!

Wish us luck with getting the kids motivated to help around the house!

Because you know you wanted to see...

You know you wanted to see my scrapbook titles I referred to Saturday night. Or maybe I just want to show you! I'm pretty excited about finding new ways to do titles.

This one was fun to do. I just took crayons and made the letters in blocks. So easy! I like the effect.


This one took me a few minutes--I was copying the "Neptune" lettering from one of the books I have. It was fun to embellish it once I was done. I did chalk around the edge for a faded look. Clear beads are scattered around the page and look like water droplets.


This puppets page is one of my favorite. I absolutely love the title! I followed the "Button" lettering in the LMNOP book, then embellished it.

Here's the whole page--I used pieces of yarn that I had actually used as the puppets' hair.

Finally, the journaling box needed a little something, so embellished it with more buttons! They're so easy to draw!


This was the first time I've worked on my scrapbooking in a while, and now I'm very motivated to do more.

Calling all scrapbooking friends--I sense a crop in the works!

Scrapbooking!

This was the weekend of a scrapbook retreat in Arkansas that I had really wanted to attend. I decided not to reserve my spot because of everything going on with my Grandma. So I had some down time today and decided to drag it all out in my bedroom and do some pages!

I had to share, because I had so much fun making titles using these books:



I made some super cute titles! My favorite was one called "Puppets" which is done in a lettering that has buttons and threads going all over it. I colored the buttons with some bright fine tip markers and drew spools of thread and extra buttons all around. I have definitely found a new little hobby-within-my-hobby!

I also worked on organizing which pages I have done and which I have yet to do. I spent an hour and a half last night going through pictures on my computer and creating pages in my head, and getting it all down on paper. I felt less confused about where I needed to start once I started working today. Why didn't I think of that earlier??? (Probably because it took so long!)