Posts Tagged ‘paper’

Sponsored: Handmade Envelopes

103 Comments

This post is brought to you by Scotch® Double Sided Tape Double Sided Tape. 

I love making my own envelopes. They’re so much more fun than buying plain envelopes, as I can use any color/patterned paper I want. If you’d like to learn more about how to make your own envelopes & download a free template, check out my envelope printable here.

I recently got some new papers & goodies & I wanted to play around with them a bit, so I made an envelope & wrote Chris a little love note. Granted, the note is a bit feminine, but Chris appreciated it anyway.

I could just use a glue stick for this sort of stuff, but double stick tape is my go-to for paper assembly. It’s so easy, it never dries out – I think I have 15 dried out sticks of glue in my craft supplies, and a little goes a long way!

Crazy Cat Lady Vinyl Decal

9 Comments

Have you seen the vans/suburbans/people carriers with the stickers of stick figures of mom, dad, kidlets and pets? You know what I’m talking about, right? Well, I made a pretty hilarious set of vinyl decals at my aunt’s request. When I made Scott’s decal, she commented,”Can you make those family decals that are so popular to have on your Utah minivan? Uncle Loren wants one for his truck that looks like a crazy lady and then about 12 cat decals!”

How could I not make those?? Seriously. I didn’t make 12 cat decals, but you get the idea. I hand illustrated the lady & the cats. Surprisingly, the cats were easiest to illustrate; it was the lady that irked me. I ended up getting inspiration from the Simpson’s cat lady and Hang Mioku (a woman who injected cooking oil into her face).

I also whipped this up the other day. This was one of my favorite quotes in seventh grade. It’s just so obvious, you know?

Pom Poms & Paper Circles

36 Comments


Many of you who know me, know that I’m not a scrapbooker. My mom has always been the one with the eye & the patience for scrapbooking. She’s awesome at it. I do, however, have an unhealthy obsession with scrapbooking supplies.

In the last 8 or so years, I’d say the scrapbooking industry has really come into its own. Papers & embellishments no longer boast of unsightly forest greens and maroons and the artwork is artwork, not some automatically generated microsoft clipart on repeat. Ew.

Scrapbooking is all about pretty these days. No? I have a friend who works at We R Memory Keepers in the product design and development end of things. She’s been back and forth from Salt Lake City and China a few times in the last few months in preparation for last week’s CHA. WRM has been very busy coming out with new papers & tools to make our eyeballs pop out of their sockets. What you see above and below is a small fraction of what they’ve been working on. When Jen gave me the samples* to play with, I could tell she was really excited (and proud) of what they’re releasing to stores soon. Aren’t these papers and embellishments fun?

I think I need to host a baby girl shower soon. I think these papers would be so cute cut out into little doilies for serving cupcakes. The stamps would be an easy & inexpensive way to add color & cute to black and white printed invitations. The pink flower lace you see above is adhesive backed. AND Glittery. Isn’t that genius?!? Use that for a closure on an envelope or wrapped gift. Awesome, right?

So, I didn’t have time to plan and/or execute a baby shower, but I did have time to spruce up Penelope’s room a bit. Remember the scalloped border I did a couple of weeks ago?

First, I just want to tell you how much I loved your comments. I loved hearing from you & I really appreciate how nice you are to me. Thank you! Second, the scalloped border was getting a little lonely. A lot lonely. He needed a friend up there by the ceiling, so I made a little mobile for the Nels. This particular arrangement was heavily inspired by this beautiful nursery I saw here. I was just blown away at how gorgeous it was & had to have it. . . part of it, at least.

I made tissue pom poms via Martha Stewart, attached them to ribbon and stapled them to the ceiling. Then, I cut a million and a half irregular circles out of the WRM Hippity Hoppity paper and sewed them together. Sewing paper is tremendously easy and SUPER satisfying. If you haven’t done it, try it. NOW. You don’t need any special equipment, a threaded sewing machine would do just fine. You can’t tell from the picture, but the little circles spin around gently from even the softest little breeze. It’s so mesmerizing.

If you don’t have a sewing machine, or you’re too afraid you’d mess up the paper trying, you could buy pre sewn paper from WRM. I was just a little giddy when I saw the 12×12 sewn sheets of paper. Did I mention that I love sewn paper? It’s wonderful!

Not wanting to cut up this perfect piece of paper, I wanted to do something with the whole sheet. Again, I’m not a scrapbooker, so a pretty 12×12 with pictures of the Nels on it won’t happen. A door sign with almost all of Penelope’s nicknames was just what the doctor ordered. Penelope really has so many little nicknames, and they’re all just so cute, so I did a hand-calligraphed cloud of her nicknames. When I showed Chris, he let out an audible, “ooOOoooOOoo!” That made me feel so good inside.

The above paper is a nice cardstock, so I just needed some double-stick some tape, ribbon and a thumb tack to post it to Penelope’s door. It’s thick enough that it doesn’t look silly all by itself, but I have to admit it would look cute framed in swirly gold.

*note: I received free product.

Back to the Drawing Board

5 Comments

For a long while [nearly a year] I didn’t sketch or draw anything. It was totally lame. Since the beginning of the year I’ve been sketching and have yet to post anything on my little Sunday meanderings [It’s not often that I sketch on a day other than Sunday]. Two stories:

I love poppies, and being inspired by the book 1000 Tiles: Two Thousand Years of Decorative Ceramics, I drew a little bitty of a poppy and photoshopped it onto a texture. I haven’t quite decided how I feel about the background. Is it too contrived? Static? Opinions are appreciated:

handdrawnpoppysmrnd

Then, last night when Chris and I were so wired from watching Solitary 3.0, we noticed an egg-shaped figure on the wall. I couldn’t photograph it because it was too dark. So this is what I drew in the dark at 2:00 this morning:

walleggwithtoothpicksm

The wall was a dark grey, the egg shape was black, the eyes were white and so was the toothpick/staff the egg guy was holding. It all took me back to my childhood looking at the clouds with my mom, figuring out what they looked like. I’ve got to do something with this little eggy guy, maybe I’ll make a little plush.

All You Need Is Love

38 Comments

love stationary

Using my spooky prints tutorial and Martha’s business card holder pattern, I’ve made a stationery kit to spread the love the remaining months of the year. And I’ve given it away.

_dsc1646

This stationery kit comes with a leather pouch [7″ x 5 1/4″] with three heart cards, three “love” cards and six matching envelopes.

_dsc1651

The pouch was made by cutting out leather from an old jacket & fusing it to polka dot fabric using ultrahold Heat ‘n Bond. I did a satin stitch around the edges for a more finished look.

mobile site