January 11th, 2012
January is one of my favourite months of the year. Yes it’s a long winter month and one where we really tighten our belts to compensate for the excesses of the Holiday period. Yet I love looking forward, to the New Year to come – to making plans and declaring goals.
This is one of the reasons I ADORE this site! Jen is just a planning genius, isn’t she? I share her love of list-making and this year I’ve given myself a head start by creating a hybrid year planner. I call mine ‘My Creative Life Book’, in the hopes that these plans and goals that I commit to pen and paper will inspire me throughout the year.
For my planner I’ve used Jen’s Weekly Planner 2012 digital kit, a few of her fab organising freebies as well as a few supplies (I like to keep my hybrid projects quick an easy and ultimately STRESS FREE!).
Here’s what I used:
- Jen’s Weekly Planner 2012 Kit, available at Design House Digital. These files are editable pdfs that you can alter to suit your own needs (as I’ve done).
- Free files available here at TPG Blog: Perpetual Birthday Calendar & 2 Week Schedule
- One sheet of Jen’s Stella & Rose Patterned Cardstock (for my cover).
- My Binding machine (I bought a super cheap one from my local stationery store).
- A piece of recylced card for my back cover.
- Paper for printing (I used that best quality I could find).
- Some lined paper to add for my journaling and random lists (you can never have too many lists!).
This is an easy-peasy project. Simply decide what forms will work for you, print them out and bind using the binding of your choice. Alternatively, simply use a ring binder!
And there you have it – a creative start to what is certain to be a creative year!
Happy New Year Hugs to you all!
December 23rd, 2011
I’m sure you all can agree that it’s been a busy holiday season. At first I was excited about Christmas being on a Sunday… but now it just seems really inconvenient as far as trying to get everything ready by a Friday.
I tried to give myself a break this year and not beat myself up about doing everything that I wanted to, and one of those things that did not get done was our Christmas card. We just never had a good time to get pictures done, and ended up having my friend Gennifer take them on the fly. There was still time to get them printed and sent, but with our travel schedule, it did just not work out… so our card this year is an e-card delivered via my blog, facebook, and email. So really we are just super “green” right? So in lieu of a card in the mail, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
The decorating mostly got done – I couldn’t slack on this since its our first year in the house and I was excited to see how my existing decorations fit the new house. I still need a bit of filler since the house is so much bigger than our apartment, but I can pick some of that up on clearance on Monday! Here are a few snapshots that I took of our decorations this year:
(the iphone 4s takes THE BEST night-time christmas tree photos)
I saw the ruffled tree skirt tutorial that was floating around pinterest. I got everything ready and started to glue all of those ruffles, but only made it a few inches and decided it would be MUCH MUCH easier to just sew the ruffles on (actually my mom was visiting and she sewed them on for me – which is why this is even finished BEFORE Christmas). And trust me, if you do this, SEW the dang ruffles on, you will save your fingers and yourself from going crazy.
I totally need two more cream stockings from pottery barn! And extra points for anyone who spots the baby!
One other exciting thing that happened this week was that our back splash tile went in the kitchen! It looks amazing and I’ll share it very soon!
I hope you all have a wonderful and relaxing holiday weekend!
October 31st, 2011
I have a few laying around the house, providing a stunning base for an ordinary household item such as a lamp, or a vase.
They are all intricate in design, various sizes and shapes, but I treasure them all the same.
They are doilies hand crocheted from my mother’s mother, a fine and talented woman.
The Gertie “Girly” Stamps from My Mind’s Eye Stella and Rose Collection reminded me so much of Grandma’s Heirlooms.
I searched the internet for inspiration and found many stunning displays of doilies that could easily be transformed in a card format.
(simply click on the inspiration image to be taken to the source sight)
Each card features the stamping technique, heat embossing.
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Let’s start with a bit of sparkle. Doilies, Diamonds and Pearls.
Perfect for a congratulatory wedding or engagement card.
In addition to the white embossed doilies, I added a fancy sentiment that was heat embossed in silver and a few small pearls as accents.
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Moving from the glitz and glam to the comfort of home. Doilies and Woodgrain.
Woodgrain dry embossed card stock provides a base for the many layers of heat embossed doilies, like they were scattered on top of a table.
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And finally, doilies bring an extra special touch to holiday decorating. Doilies. Snow. A touch of blue.
This card features the “resist” technique in addition to the plain heat embossing.
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There are so many opportunities for this one beautiful stamp set! I now have a good start to a card set to give as a Christmas or Birthday gift.
I’m thinking that my Grandmother might like these…
Thanks, and I’ll catch you later. ~ Karen, The Bald Dragonfly
October 1st, 2011
How many parts will there be? That I am not sure yet! But I do know that I’ve been having so much fun decorating!
TA DA! My fireplace is almost done being decorated. I stayed up way too late last night getting my eclectic halloween banner finished. I do have a few things still left to do – the chalkboard will have a creepy recipe or saying on it, and the burlap frame will have some sort of art pined to it, but really it’s ALMOST done, and it looks fantastic. I am so happy with how it’s turned out.
If you would like a detailed step-by-step tutorial on the banner, visit my halloween banner tutorial blog post at Design House Digital. I didn’t want it to get too wordy over there so I saved a few things for my blog. First thing was that I used burlap ribbon for the base-layer. I took this bolt of ribbon that I had (bought it clearance from Ballard designs last year for like $6), and basically hand pleated and fed it through my machine in a very sloppy manner. I wanted the whole thing to look spooky and unkempt.
Once I had a bunch of it pleated, I hung it on my mantle to make sure it was a good length.
Once I was happy with the length and draping, I cut it to size and then started building my flags.
You can read a bit more about that process on the Design House Digital blog. But basically I used my new Vintage Findings Halloween digital papers, printed them out and made some super cute flags using the printed out papers, plus some doilies, ribbons, and My Mind’s Eye brads. I did take some pictures about the process of staining the doilies, but I’ll post about that later next week.
What I wanted to share with all my readers is an awesome free download of the .SVG files (cutting files for digital cutters) for the banner shapes and the letters for this project (If you don’t have a cutter that will cut SVG files, I’ve also included a template that you can print out and use to cut your shapes by hand).
Click image below to being downloading zip file.
Click on the image above to download a PDF and SVG version of my printable banner project . The downloadable files in this article (and across my entire site) are free for personal use only. If you would like to blog about this free download, please accompany and images from my site with a credit and link back to this article. As a courtesy please do not link directly to a downloadable file but rather to this page.
September 19th, 2011
First of all, I want to thank all the awesome crafty ladies who sent me entries for the new contributor team. I was in awe all the great talent and creativity! I was originally planning on bringing on 4 contributors, but I could not help myself and I did the best I could to narrow it down to 7! Oh my!! I guess we’re going to be having fun and getting A LOT of inspiration. For those of you who did not make it, I’m so sorry!! I wish I could have all of you on the team! All of the entries were so great and it really was hard to narrow it down… even to 7. So without further ado, here are the new creative contributors (I totally stole these photos from their blogs. hehe.)!
Nicole from Farmgirl Chaos
Alicia from Love Life and Celebrate
Karen from The Bald Dragonfly
Melody from The Sunflower Crafter
Angie Hinksman
Deena from That I Would Be Good
Candi from My Welchy
That’s seriously a good lookin bunch right there!! But they don’t get paid for their looks… okay they don’t getting paid at all… but if their creative projects and articles are half as cute as they are, we’ll have a lot of fun inspiration from these project girls.
Welcome to the team girls! I can’t wait to be see what you create!
