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....

Easter Crafts-window stickers, vinyl eggs

My favorite one is the yellow flower on the teal egg. Got bold LOL.

 Hi everyone. Hope you all had a wonderful Easter Day! There are a couple things I wanted to share even if it's late and I technically have some other posts I should do first.

The first is this years Eater eggs.I love making them using vinyl as a resist to the dye. I have a few recommendations however.

First, boil your eggs at least a day ahead to ensure they are very dry. The eggs we boiled the morning before coloring them did not seem dry enough even though they were done and in the fridge for at least five hours. They were dry to the touch but somehow had enough moisture in them to make the vinyl peel off a bit.

Also be sure to keep your images small...the egg's shape makes it difficult to apply evenly sometimes.

Finally the vinyl sticks best when the egg is a bit warmer, I use my hand to warm the vinyl a bit and really press it on well. Sealing the edges if possible.

 My next project is print and cut with window decals!

Somehow I couldn't find any window clings this year for my 4 year old to put up. So, I decided to try something I had stashed away...some clear window decals I picked up at Office Depot.

These printed and cut nicely with MTC and my Zing

These aren't as pliable as the static cling ones I have purchased but it is so fun to think that all the designs I use to decorate my home can be from the same collection. 

for these I used my MTC software to layer images from Nancy Kubo's Lettering Delights digital collection and added their shadows. Then used the print and cut feature. The sticker and it's backing adhered well to the mat and I had no problem cutting them with my Zing. I did learn a few valuable lessons. I will definitely adjust the settings on the printer next time so they come out darker. The shadow needs to be set to color=white and then placed in a layer underneath the image you want printed. You cant see the image when it has a white shadow layer on top..LOL. It took me a bit to figure what I was doing wrong, even after I had some great pointers from members of the MTC message board!

Once again I hope you had a wonderful holiday!

Our Valentines Day

 I love to surprise my girls with some treats for Valentines Day. Mostly a few candies but this year I found some Target dollar section goodies they would love. One thing I loved is all the cute SVG files I found at Lettering Delights. To be honest I had lots of options with some stuff from SVGcuts.com as well but settled on these "conversation heart boxes" and some graphics files for a super quick card for two of my girls. My littlest has found a cute movie from Netflix called Disco worm so when I saw the worm card form on the Lettering Delights store I knew I had to make it. My oldest has a thing, against pirates so I had to get the Valentines set and then my G loves her ipod touch and music so it was lucky that I had the  file too. I used the print and cut feature and made super quick Valentines. After spending a lot of time on the projects below....

 I made about 40 of these Conversation Heart lollipop covers. I used the basic set to create my own file but somehow I am not sure it was enough bang for the buck. I print and cut a sentiment on the back so that the girls could just sign them and hand them out...they usually do more to help but since this was a late night project.

My littlest one had her first ever Valentines Day party at preschool so we went all out with these treat boxes. Yes they are mini bug boxes! How cute is that? The file and kit are at..wait for it...Lettering Delights. B saw these cute bugs and decided against the kitty cat Valentines we originally planned, the ones I liked from the SVGcuts.com site....but this wasn't a very difficult project and I didn't mind the switch. The front sentiment was a print and cut, and I printed a sentiment on the back for B to sign. We found some really cute conversation heart candies to put in the back. It makes the girls feel so good to give out something a bit more fun.