June Birthdays 2012 style

Soooooo.....I never really said what has been keeping me form my crafty and blogging fun but our family had faced some big (but good)choices for 2012. We had several opportunities up in the air for my husbands job and we thought we'd be moving. at one point it was Idaho, Califonia or London. But we ended up staying here. :)

But before we knew our decision we had a lot of preparation to do......which meant low key parties for my two girls...my oldest daughter is moving back into parties where boys are invited again...argh! But she as even simpler tastes now. In fact she wouldn't even let me make a card in an envelope for her invitation so the compromise was a single piece of card stock decorated and with an announcement of her party that she could hand out. What's a crafty mom to do? New for this year was a simpler cake as well... So I made a banner for the cake, simple tags for the goodie bags and chauffeured teenagers back and fort for a skating party....they also had a chocolate fountain and played Kinect dance games and watched a movie...phew I was tired!

Here some of the stuff before I got it all out my savages wanted to start! At least I can show this since I don't have permission to post the other kids...and the dancing fun.

My younger daughter did allow me to send some invites through the mail so I made good use of a super cute Harajuku Party set of graphics from Lettering Delights in Photoshop to print these cute invites. She let me make some tags for simple goodie buckets which contained fun dollar store goodies for some summer fun....as you can see it was still a busy night and we had lots of fun, even if I didn't get to make a ton of decorations...

The graphics are super easy to put together in Photoshop and print out so nicely

Customized in Photoshop...drag and drop. Easy Peasy!

Tags using cut and print after they were customized in Photoshop using the LD graphics set.

 Silver stars were also part of the party theme for the slumber party so we decorated with a few (gasp) store bought decorations and sprinkled some on the the cupcakes. I fumbled my way through making some chocolate crusting butter-cream frosting for the cupcakes with a super jumbo one on top.....it was filled with Nutella for the birthday girl. And, a fun time was had by all. :) We skated, had pizza, a chocolate fountain again, and then did dance games and watched a movie....hmmm sound familiar? ;)

Fun but simple cupcakes, with a giant one on top....

Chinese New Year Craft-Spin Drums

It has  taken me awhile to warm up to 2012, even though it has some really cool things going for it. I mean seriously, it it the last time in my lifetime I will be able to enjoy a date like 1/1/1, 2/2/2, and so on. This year is gonna be 12/12/12 at the end of the year and well, it's a bit sad we won't see 1/1/1 until January 1, 2101! That's 89 years folks and I hope my DD's get to see it.

I was glad to see it's not too late to celebrate the New year! The Chinese New Year on January 23 that is. So I have a project....Chinese Spin Drums! I made these with my Brownie Girl Scouts, and will make a few more for home too since the are so much fun. I'll show you how to make yours and also share the cutting files below. I found the idea on FamilyFun.com and adapted it to make it fit my needs. The one below has a dragon cut from the Chinese New Year SVG set from SVGCuts.com....

The dragon cut so well on my Zing, despite the tiny bits due to being about 2.5 inches tall Great file!

OK so here is how I made the spin drums!

 You'll need the 6 cut pieces from the file: two large circles for the ends of the drum, the center band, the two end decorations(mine have Chinese dragons downloaded from the internet and printed on) and the little "pizza table" style cut piece shown in white here...Also about 14 inches of yarn, a Japanese style round chopstick, two beads, a piece of ribbon. And glue!

I drew in the score lines here to show where the "pizza table" goes and what the different holes are for

 First fold the funny pizza table looking thing so that it stands up a bit and has tabs at the end. Place a glue dot in the center of the square created with the score marks on the red piece of paper. Then glue the tabs of the table onto either side of the square, but don't push the "table" down...instead let it sit above the red paper.

 Place a glue dot in the center of the square. Then glue the tabs of the table onto either side of the square, but don't push the "table" down...instead let it sit above the red paper.

Overlap the ends of the long strip glueing it down and be sure to get the holes lined up and the edges flush.

 This is where the chopstick goes into the drum. Be sure to put the flat edge in first.

 The chopstick should be snug within the hole and then go through the pizza table too. Place your hand on top of your drum and push the chopstick firmly onto the glue dot.

 The tie the yarn or string right to the middle of the chopstick so that there are equal amounts on either side.

 After threading the yarn through the side holes make sure the "drum" portion is well rounded by adjusting it a bit and then tie a knot to help it keep it's shape. Do this on both sides and make it snug. This is important to help keep the whole thing form getting loose as it spins too.

 Fold the flaps of the long strip in a bit and put glue on the tabs.This shows the yarn tied and also the tabs gently folded in. This view looks through the inside of the drum and the glue goes on the outside of the tabs so turn i over to apply the glue evenly.

Be sure your glue is all the way to the edges of all the flaps for it to be secure. Place the large circle on the end and fiddle till your happy with the fit. It wont be perfect but it should be even.

 Once the end piece is a set a bit, turn the whole thing over and use a pen or something to press the tabs down.

 Mark the place for the bead with a pen by bringing it up and measuring(eyeballing) where it meets the center of the drum. Then tie a bead on each end where the mark is.

 Decorate the smaller circle with a fun drawing or print out and enjoy!

  It works best if you hold it between your hands with your palms flat and rub them like you are trying to warm up...My little one had fun demonstrating! :)

Here are files: Just for reference the largest circle should measure 3inches.
For SCAL just import the SVG...if you do not own an electronic die cutting machine, the PDF can be printed and cut by hand. Then use a hole punch where required.
MTC
SVG
PDF

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Little Red Riding Hood Finger Puppets!

As a first project with my new Zing cutter I decided to dive right in. I never do just dip my toe in.  

 The whole set is available at Lettering Delights as a "cut it set" you can print and cut as well as layer the papers as an SVG cut. And layer I did! These are pretty easy to put together but I wanted to be sure they would be durable, so this is where the Zing comes in. I was able to put all the different pieces organized by color and then also a last layer for chipboard...yes the Zing cuts chipboard and gives this set some very much needed support to endure all the play it gets already. The Make the cut software has been really easy to learn and use. As for the adjustments on the Zing, there's been quite a bit of  operator error. ;)

 This is the house sized at nearly 12 inches tall! I used the backs of my paper stacks as the most readily and conveniently sized "chipboard". Sometime crafty comes from (dare I say it?) lazy. LOL. I looked at the cereal boxes I had been saving for the purpose and just didn't want to mess with them.

The house was a bit difficult to emboss with my Big Shot and cuttlebug folders but after a bit of mangling it ended up OK. I even wet the paper and used the folder with a brayer to get the "brick" texture up further on the blue siding. Every thing was inked and embellished since I wanted this to be special.

these layered very nicely together and went quickly...

 Little red riding hood is my B's favorite of course and I altered her eye color to blue..

 Here is the Mom with shiny black hair and snazzy stamped trim on her apron. All the eyes were cut into the face layer but then colored over with a glaze pen. The mouths were just drawn on with a red glaze pen. Cheeks are chalked and the hair stamped over all with glitter ink using the mini G stamp pads in various colors from my stash.

 Grandma meets up with the wolf in her oh so cute shawl...can you see the embossing? It is tough since I was only allowed a very short time right before bed for my photo shoot. Bad lighting and an eager little girl who kept running off with the characters were not ideal conditions.

 Here is the wolf in all the Grandma's clothes, hee hee. You can really see his teeth here. His tail has already suffered some damage, since he has quite large role in the play after all. These were cut at an average height of just under 6 inches, and I can't imagine them going much smaller. My DH's fingers just fit into the wolf although he isn't allowed to "be" him when we split up the parts each night. He has to play the woodcutter. The woodcutter by the way has an odd monocle which I left it off since I didn't think he would really wear one...cute mustache though don't you think?

And luckily the results were a hit even if there were quite a few mistakes along the way. I'll add more info on my Zing (a list of "don'ts" frankly) and also my idea for the paperclip stands that I used for the photos here...