CraftyEngineer

Going to try something...

If you've followed my blog for any length of time, you probably know that I'm really into to making gifts and mass producing home crafted items. This holiday season is no different. So, I had an idea the other day and I'm not sure I can pull it off but I certainly will try. I've had LOTS of personal stuff happen in the past 4 days and if I manage to live through all of that, I can get back on schedule.

So, here's my plan. I will try to update my blog everyday for the next 25 days (hopefully!) with projects that I'm working on. Think of it as the 25 days of Christmas. Original, eh? The only problem is I had in my mind that Thursday was Dec. 1st NOT tomorrow. ACK! But it'll work out. I have a few done and ready to post so that'll give me a heads start. Now, the other problem is I only have stuff for 17 days! Yes, I have 17 projects that I'm working on. Most are for the boy's schools. And school ends on the 18th. So, you do the math.

I do hope you join me and let me know what you think along the way. I hope your Thanksgiving was uneventful.

To all of my family in India (yes, most of my uncles, aunts, and 1st cousins are in Mumbai), our thoughts and prayers are with you. Stay safe. Lots of love.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my American family and friends! I am thankful for many things this year, including all of you that come visit me here. I wish you a safe and happy day doing whatever makes you happy.

My 6 year-old son decided to make some Thanksgiving cards ( I KNOW!!! - I'm so proud) the other day for his grandmothers, a far away aunt, and his eldest cousin! Didn't he do a great job?

Images and note cards by A Muse

And the mass production begins...

with my neighborhood Holiday Party invitations! The party is less than 2 weeks away! This year it definitely is a last-minute-casual party! Those usually turn out to be the best kind!

I had to make 45 invitations in a hurry. I was doing SO well until my printer decided to throw a little fit. I used MS Publisher to write up the inside (details of the party) and then run it through the printer. I got through 30 of them... clean ... then BAM! no worky anymore... I've had this issue before and didn't fix it then either. But soon, I'll look into it if I remember ;). Somehow I fiddled enough to get 15 more invites printed. But those took me way longer than the everything else combined. Yikes.

Again, my most favorite thing about A Muse... Simple. This card is SUPER SIMPLE and yet festive enough. My priority was to get them out yesterday so I didn't have a lot of time. I put them all over my dining room table Sunday night and applied stickles (Eucalyptus and Christmas Red) to the garland. I *LOVE* Eucalyptus stickles. In fact, I have used an entire bottle up now. I have lots of stickles and this is the first time I've finished and entire bottle (not all on this project but through my classes, etc). Have you finished a bottle before? Anyway, the stickles added just enough sum-thin' sum-thin' (as my friend Michelle says). My oldest DS gets up at 5:30am every morning and comes down and gets his b'fast, etc. I was a bit worried that my cards would be in the line of fire of his yogurt! But all was well...

So, as I'm pu tting these together I find that my printer actually striped some of the tinplate note card off. Curses! That darn printer! So, 4 of my cards were messed up at 10pm Sunday night. NOW WHAT? Fiddle with the printer again? UM NO! Improvise, instead!   See the scallop border? Yeah, between me, you, and the world :), I'm covering up the scrapes. I think I might even like this version better but not enough to redo all the other 41!

So, the mass production of stuff has begun in my house, which you know I'm quite fond of. It's not the mass production I get a kick out of. It's the doing something for some event/occasion that would not necessarily *need* a paper invite/decoration/thing. For example, this paper invitation is one of the few that we do for our neighborhood events. Everything else is with evite. I like evite but I like paper more :).

Happy Last Day of School before Thanksgiving for many of you Americans out there.

More coming soon...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RHONDA!

Rhonda, aka craftyblessings or aka manyblessings or aka one of the FAB 4 (wow! she has a lot of aliases!), is celebrating a BIRTHDAY! Happy birthday!

In traditional Fab 4 style, we (Jennie, Michelle, and I) *TRIED* (honestly we did Rhonda) to get our acts together. I think Seattle and OLD AGE (these are my excuses and I'm sticking with them :P) got a bit in my way. We typically chat with each other and figure out a theme to do as a group minus 1. I'm not certain we pulled it off this time and I KNOW my card will be late! (same old story of my life...)

Yeah, anyway, on to the theme... MUSIC!!! Music Player to be exact!  I really liked this gift card holder that Jennie made. That Jennie, she's so clever!  I decided to modify it a bit for Rhonda's and I really like the result. I made my be a buckle card for the closure. Then on the inside an I Tunes gift card... aren't themes grand? :)

Oh, look at that... my I Tunes card is upside down in the picture. LOL.

A Muse Black Kitchen Notes, A Muse Popsicle Pink Notes, Music Player, You Rock, Happy Birthday Bold, Twinkle stickers clear

Anyway, send a shout out to Ms. Rhonda... Happy Birthday sweet lady! I'm so glad I got to meet you in person!

I'm done! Time to holiday-ize...

Just got home from my last two A Muse classes for this year! WOHOO what a WILD year this has been! I've had so much fun teaching around Texas. Thank you so much to all of you that have come out and stamped with me in 2008!

I taught two A Muse classes today... pretty little packages and A Muse Calendars. It was lots of fun! Here is a shot of what we made in the packages class plus a gift card holder that I'll post soon.

I'm glad to be done for a while because I'm itching to start on all of my mass production items for the holidays! And I'm quite behind on some invitations that I need to get out. Have you started your Holiday cards yet? I haven't. Oy vey! The to do list is long but it's all fun stuff so I'll be happy to start them soon.

Happy Weekend!

Another Sympathy Card

My dear friend, long time hair stylist, and stamping buddy lost her husband last week unexpectedly. I am heartbroken for her. They have many kids, grandkids and a brand new great grandbaby.

Here is the card I'm sending her today.
While in Seattle, Julie taught us her way of making a bow. I am not proficient in bow-making and in most cases prefer a square knot. But her way was easy to do and easy to REMEMBER. I thought this card could use a bow and goodness knows I can use the practice! What do you think? Maybe, just maybe you'll see a few more bows from me!

ETA: by the way, this card was inspired by Julie. Thanks Julie!
 

Baby Shower Gift - part 2

You knew this was coming. Part 2. Went to the second baby shower this weekend. My SIL's BFF, Maria. Maria is having TWIN girls. She's due in January but already on bed rest so we brought the shower to her. She has to make it through Thanksgiving week and then she's home free. I *think* she can do it!

When I made the baby shower invites, I used the maternity dress because I wanted the shower invites to be about Maria. I knew she was going to have twin girls then but focused on her instead. Now for the shower, as you know, I like to give thank you notes as part of my gift. Well, the thank you notes *did* focus on the girls. :)

The funny story is I walked into Maria's house and she immediately said "Would you make me 20 thank yous?" Um, okay. Maybe. Sure. We'll see. Yes.

It wasn't exactly what I envisioned but it worked.

Darn sweet baby feet.

Twins. Girls. Can you even imagine?

Baby Shower Gift

Remember a couple of weeks ago, I was scurrying (what else is new?) to get baby shower invitations done? Well, now it's time for the baby showers! One was yesterday and one is tomorrow. So, for the one yesterday, I made a set of thank you cards (12). I used the Fairy Dust A Muse note cards. They're kind pink but kinda purple. I can't decide which color they are. Very soft in any case. Since I couldn't decide if they were pink or purple, I used the new-ish White Sheer Ribbon from A Muse.

Sentiment from A Muse. Embossing folders by Provocraft (Cuttlebug: Just my type and Boy folders)

Simple and cute? Right?

I'm a sucker for baby feet. In the past, I've made thank you cards with stamped baby feet.  I've kept an SU! stamp set (Cuddles and Tickles) only because of the baby feet stamp! Now, if only A Muse had one ;)

FRIDAY! FRIDAY! YIPPEE! It's Friday!

ETA: The feet are a Cuttlebug embossing folder (not a stamp). Sorry for the confusion! GAK!

Nametags!

When I was trying to decide on what to make for the A Muse crew for our Seattle trip, I *knew* I wanted to make something that was personalized. I thought about notebooks but again... 40 notebooks in my luggage seemed awfully hard to transport. So, back to the thinking board! Oh! Hey! What about name tags? OOOH that might work??!!!!???!!

So, I made 37 name tags for the event. I put lanyards on them "just in case" some liked that vs the clips. I figured the girls might be able to use them when they're teaching! My friend, Michelle, came over the day before I left and helped me tie all the ribbons! Thanks Michelle! All of them but mine are green and pink (or just pink) but mine is purple... go figure ;).

What do you think about them?

More test tubes!

First, I have to say thank you and sorry to all those that have emailed me asking for my source on the test tubes from this post. My apologies for not responding. I was waiting until after the Seattle A Muse Training to do so because of this...

I wanted to take something to all my A Muse sisters but had the hardest time figuring out what! For things like this in the past that I've gone to, we all "MAKE" each other gifts and hand them out. The issue came down to the fact that I didn't really know how many to make for AND how to pack them in my suitcase!

Ah ha! Those test tubes would work! But it will be after Halloween... don't really want to give Halloween candy! Hmm... (Of course, this was all done a month ago but you get the idea). So then I looked at getting custom m&ms made with the words A Muse on them. GAK! Have you priced out custom m&ms? That's so not going to happen. Oh wait, it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month! YIPPEE! Pink and white M&Ms everywhere!

Then ... oh no... I don't have enough test tubes!!! Good grief. My first order was 120 (much cheaper to order more than a few!). But I sold a bunch of those to friends that wanted to do my Halloween idea. Mind you those 120 came with yellow tops. (please note - the tops come with the tubes but not attached because they are "sealed" once they are screwed on... ask me how I figured that out ;)!) So those that I used for Halloween I spray painted black. Yellow covers NICELY with black. (Fusion spray paint found at Michael's - for plastic).

So, I order another 120. This time I'm not sharing :P. GAK!!!! The lids are bright blue this time. OMG! And I have pink spray paint (again... fusion for plastic). It took like 10 coats or something to get it somewhat decent.

In any case, I took 50 with me to Seattle. They took a lot of suitcase room! But that's okay, made lots of room to bring stuff back! :)

I hand cut all the tags. All I have to say is the Crop-a-dile is a beautiful thing... punched holes through multiple papers!

A Muse Pink Kitchen papers, "mmmmm... Chocolate" image by A Muse artstamps, A Muse Pink Sheer Ribbon

As for the test tubes, I researched and researched for 2 or 3 months. I was a bit picky on the size I wanted. I wanted them to be big enough around to hold a lot... not skinny and tall like the Martha Stewart ones. They came out to $0.50 a piece for the 120 lot. They are called Baby Soda Bottles and are shipped very quickly!

SOURCE for the test tubes: Steve Spangler Science

What do you think? I *think* the gals liked them. Also, they're reusable - great containers for snacks in your purse! ;)

Happy Wednesday!