CraftyEngineer

Kiai!

Or Hi-Yah! Take your pick!

My silhouette SD machine is working hard to become my best buddy. It certainly jumped up notches in that category after I figured out how to print and cut and manipulate a design into what I wanted. WOW! What a tool and so easy. I really could be a spokesperson for Silhouette. Can't tell you how many people I've told to get this machine!

Okay, so back to the story. Hi-Yah! My nephew turns 7 in a couple of weeks. He is having a TaeKwonDo birthday party. He takes lessons and absolutely loves it so he wanted to have his party at the TKD place. Well, I always like a challenge! No time to find karate/martial arts stamps so hmm... what to do? Silhouette to the rescue!

This is a tuxedo card and looked very tuxedo like. With some tweaks to the "lapel" and editing some of the points of the tuxedo I made it into a ghi. And a black belt one, at that! After I figured out how to do the cutting part, I had to try my hand at the printing on the inside. Again, another wow. I didn't know that I could print stuff before cutting and then have it all work together. SIMPLE. SIMPLE. SIMPLE. Love this machine. (so some of the inside is blanked out for privacy issues... you know the drill.)

So, what do you think? You know how simple this was? Well, I took my laptop, silhouette, and printer in my new SD bag to the lake this weekend and got it all working. Must be easy if I did it while traveling, right?

Anyway, I'm in love with this machine.

image used:

tuxedo_shape_card_C00211_21585

Twins first birthday invitations

A friend of mine had twin girls at the end of 2008 and so now they are one! Happy Birthday little ones!
My friend asked me to make some invitations for her little princesses. I always enjoy creating something for multiples because it's a different way to think. Anyway, I asked her what their theme/colors were and she sent me this:

Two peas in a pod. Awesome! I have just the stamp... A Muse has a cute little pea in a pod stamp. Perfecto! Oh, wait. It's a pea in a pod. I need 2 peas in a pod. Hmm, think.

Oh wait. I think I got it. A little omitting and some cutting and I think it might work! And I have the vine border that will go with this too!

Put it all together and what do you get?

The saying at the bottom is "Two peas in a pod! Double the Fun! Mia and Kara are turning One!". The inside has the party info. 

I hope she likes them. I think they match the party stuff pretty well. I hope!

Stamps: A Muse: pea pod, vine border

Papers: A Muse: Moss square notecards (retired), Yellow gingham 8.5x11 CS, white CS

Ribbon: A Muse: Lime polka dot ribbon

Inks, Markers, etc: A Muse black dye ink, Copic Original Yellow Green

On the inside, I used a little flower punch with some yellow gingham scraps. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR! MAY 2010 bring you much happiness and laughter and may you find some time to be creative!

Baby Shower Invites!

Last week I got an order to make some baby shower invites. It's the first baby shower order I've received since the new baby line came out from A Muse back in the Spring. I was so excited to use the new stamps! In the end, I didn't have a lot of time to make them because of summer! :) Another reason I love A Muse... the whole Think Simple thing...

A Muse blush notecards, A Muse chocolate gingham paper, A Muse french roast sheer polka dot ribbon, A Muse images: crib and tiny yawns

The dot embossed paper is some I have from a long time ago... when I used to scrapbook... a different lifetime ago, it seems!

a muse bouche is coming soon... and I have to say, this release is all about me. Well, not about me. But soooo "for" me. Hee hee... can't wait to share with you!

Happy Thursday!

Wedding Invitations.

As you may know, my husband's nephew is getting married in May. I've been playing wedding planner and helping my so-to-be niece with some of the stuff. Including designing, creating, all paper items for the wedding. So, wedding invitations. I worked on this design for a while before committing to it. I really like it but it had to be feasible. I needed really long paper. I've told you about my friend, Edye, who owns LMNOPeople. She found me this Stardust card stock from Papersource but at wholesale prices! WOHOO... it's 22x26" - Perfect. It's a shimmery ivory heavyweight card stock and it has matching envelopes (BEAUTIFUL)!

So, pressing on... I made the invitations I wanted to. I needed long paper to make an envelopment type structure to hold all the inserts (rsvp card, info card, map, and work-parties invite). I used my cuttlebug to dry emboss the outside flap. This cardstock took to dry embossing very well.

I'm so happy with them. I'm SO happy they are done. WHEW.

M-I-C-K-E-Y... MOUSE!

Who's the leader of the club
That's made for you and me
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E
Hey! there, Hi! there, Ho! there
You're as welcome as can be
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

Mickey Mouse!

Mickey Mouse!

Forever let us hold our banner
High! High! High! High!

Come along and sing a song
And join the jamboree!
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

Now, you'll have that song in your head all day!

Gotta love it when you can get 10 invitations done from start to mailbox in an hour - um, ESPECIALLY when the party is 10 days away! ACK! Luckily, it's a family party so everyone already knows about it! Whew.

My youngest turns 3 on March 7th! YAY! For this past year, Mickey Mouse clubhouse was big in our live! So, simple and quick is the name of these invitations. I've had the design floating in my head for a while, just no time to actually get it done.

So, I suppose the old Mickey Mouse song was the "M-I-C" version and the new hip, happening one is the Hot Dog song. And Toodles... you probably don't know who Toodles is if you haven't seen this version of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. But my son likes it. :)

I'm a bit of an electronics gadget freak (go figure). So I got myself a new printer the other day. One for my stamp room. We have one of those HP does everything already but I wanted a invitation printer that I could feed paper in without it getting bent. My dear friend, Edye, who owns LMNOPeople, is in the business of making invitations and personalized notecards (at an AFFORDABLE price!) told me about her Canon printer. So, I researched and researched and found a little mobile Canon that is SUHWEET. I like it. And made this invitations super simple. I just fed the A Muse notecards directly in and voila! I use MS Publisher. Oh, since I'm mentioning Edye... one of my most FAVORITE things she makes is the itty bitty people books with 12 pictures in it... GREAT GIFT for grandparents or teachers! OMG. Remember that.

The Project Hero Mail challenge/contest ends today with all items needing to be postmarked by today to be sent to me. So, I'm on the lookout for them. I've received quite a few already and can't wait to see how many cards we've made for the troops! More soon!

Baby Shower Invites - part 2

ACK!!! One more sleep and I'm on my way to Seattle. I haven't traveled ALONE in 6 1/2 years. This is be a different!

Here are the other baby shower invitations I did over the weekend.

Very simple and quick! This little baby girl was born 2 weeks ago and she has a FULL head of hair! Anyway, I *had* to use purple on these! ;) I did photoshop out the specific details so that's why it looks a bit funny!

Happy Wednesday!

Baby Shower Invites - part 1

I think I posted last year about how this particular week of the year, the week surrounding Halloween is my busiest week of the year. Yes, Halloween has to do with it but mostly my son's preschool fundraiser is this weekend. It's mandatory volunteer (is there such a thing?) work. But seeing as how I won't be there this weekend and I'll be in SEATTLE (for A Muse Instructor Training! YAY!), I had to pay some money to get out of many things and do some of the work ahead of time. I'd say that I got outta doing a lot this particular week and I'm not really sad about that!

However, Saturday, I was making my list of stuff I had to get done before I could leave. ACK! TWO sets of Baby Shower Invites??? Where did those come from? Many other things on the list and I'm still working on those.

But for now, here is the first set of invites I made. My SIL's friend is having twin girls in January! Her first(s). I didn't want to focus on the twins just yet... more about the mom at this point ;).

I used MS Publisher to print up the invites on the inside. VERY QUICK indeed. I just fed the full sheet through my printer and then cut them. These are the A2 size and made with the A Muse 8.5x11 Kitchen Papers.

This is one reason I *love* A Muse so much. Seriously. It's about the QUICK and cute. I made all of these invites from start to finish in about 1 1/2 - 2 hours, I'd say. Of course, I didn't have to make that many...only 12. WHEW! And this maternity dress stamp is new-to-me. Isn't it cute? I, totally didn't look like that when I was pregnant but this lady does. She's the "cute" pregnant and she's having twins!!! That's just not right. :P

Happy Tuesday. Did you vote?

Glitter, glitter everywhere...

Did I tell you I'm planning a wedding in my spare time? ;) My DH's nephew is getting married and I'm planning the wedding. Luckily it's not until next May and it's not going to be great big, huge! But it is not here so that's a bit tricky. The bride and groom are here but everyone else (all their friends, other family) are in California.

Anyway, I made 100 quick (Think Simple, Think A Muse!) save the date postcards last night. I do believe that I am still wearing glitter... and so are the boys and the dogs and ...

So, guess which A Muse stamp I used for the focal image? HA! You guessed it... elegant pose. I know. You've seen it from me a million times. What's one more, I say? (I did photoshop out their last names.)

Here's a closeup of the GLITTER:
It's very sparkly in real life ... and so am I, the boys, the dogs,... :D

I'm sure as the wedding date gets closer, I'll have more to post about it!

Happy Saturday everyone!

He's going to be SIX!

Ack, he's going to be SIX next week... my oldest, that is. Last year when he was in preschool, I had plenty of time after it ended to get his birthday party organized. This year, his birthday is actually the day after school ends. He thinks that the last day of school is going to be one big party for him. So, anyway, my journey with A Muse started March last year (March 2007).... all because of Boris and my son's Mad Science party. Anyway, last year I was ahead of the game. This year, just barely sliding in under the wire.

I believe in home parties. You know, my kids, if they had one friend over or even their cousins, they would be in heaven. So, we have a rule in our house.... however old you will be, that's how many friends you can have at your party. So, six is the magic number this year. Well, my oldest, being the clever one that he is... realized this at age 3... that he has 2 cousins in the area (one year older and one year younger) - and he says, I don't want to invite them. Lovely. He figured that they counted towards his limit. So, we adjusted the rule to be friends. Family is always included, I told him. So, anyway, my DH this year says let's have the party somewhere besides our house. Really? Why? He said having 6+the birthday boy+ his brother+ 2 BOY cousins + family + all the parents ... in our house... really isn't going to be that fun. Huh. Maybe he has a point.

So, we belong to a gym... yes, the kind that you theoretically work out in... although they haven't seen the likes of me in a few weeks (DOH!). The gym has 2 pools - 1 indoor and 1 outdoor. Both have slides and they do birthday parties there. PERFECT. The party has a time limit. It's not at our house. And it's a pool party... Perfect!

Now, the invitations.... I needed to get these out in a hurry! So, A Muse to the rescue! My son's new favorite color is Green. His favorite color his entire life has been Red but he bumped that into 2nd place recently. He wanted me to make green and red invites. Hmm.... I told him how those are Christmas colors. So, in the end, he got standard boy colors... green, blue, yellow... :)

I used MS Publisher (set your paper size to 4.25 by 8.5) for the invitation deta ils on the inside. Type it all out and then just feed the paper in your printer! I've omitted all the personal information and my fingers that were holding it open! LOL.

All images, paper, card stock by A Muse.
Memento Bahama Blue ink
Copics: Lemon Yellow, Tahitian Blue
Foam Tape
SU! Circle Punches

Done, mailed. Now on to the cake... no, I'm not going to make it!

I still have more school gifts to share with you... just finishing them up! Stay tuned.
 

Quick! We need to make 91 Baby Shower Invites...

We need to make 91 Baby Shower Invites... and mail them out tomorrow. Well, that was last week. And we did make 91 baby shower invitations in a little less than 2 hours. And they did get mailed out soon thereafter. My friend Michelle, the one who's sister is getting married (those are the wedding invitations from a few posts ago) was in charge of "doing" the invitations for an upcoming baby shower. And time got away from us and all of sudden, we had to get them done. Michelle almost gave in to just printing some on some paper. WHAT? No way! ;) So, we kept it simple. And she and I are pros at the assembly line. We work well together. I do the computer stuff (get the wording printed out just so) and all the math and cutting :). She does most of the stamping while I'm doing the cutting part and then we do the assembly together. Hey, that doesn't seem quite fair does it???!!!! Actually, it's fine and it works well. And we have a great time doing it, which is all that matters to me.

The honoree is having a baby boy. We needed some kind of embellishment and we didn't want to tie 91 ribbons. Or punch eyelets. Or brads. Or... you get the idea. Then I remembered that I had the old retired Stampin' Up! Diaper Pin Punch. Yippee! Perfect.

We used all Stampin' Up stuff... the dilly dally jumbo wheel, the retired diaper pin punch, Bashful Blue and Certainly Celery. BAM! DONE! We didn't have a lot of time to make them extra detailed but they still are HAND MADE and I'll pick that any day over store bought! What do you think?

Labels: Stampin Up Artwork