24 Friday Apr 2015
Posted in General occasion, Kids cards, Kids party, Star, Using up scraps, Washi tape
Hi
Just a quick post to share with you a card I just whipped up in less than 2 minutes for a kid’s birthday party this afternoon.
I had a vague thought the other day that some washi tape I was recently given with stars on it might go well with my star punch. A piece of card stock, a few strips of washi tape and a star punch and ta da!!!!
What do you think? Not bad for 2 minutes?
Thanks for reading
Caro
25 Thursday Sep 2014
Posted in Cards, Invitations, Kids cards, Kids craft ideas, Kids party, Owl, Punches, Word Window
Tags
birthday party, clever ideas with punches, Kids cards, kids party, owl builder punch, owl punch, party invitations, punch art, super heroes
Hello! Sorry it has been such a long time between posts. Life just gets busy! In my last post I showed you the card I made for my Frozen obsessed son’s 5th birthday. I’m pleased to report he loved it 🙂
Today I want to show you the invitations I made for his birthday party. He wanted a dress up party, but he (and I!) were going as super heroes, so he wanted to have super hero themed party invitations. So here’s what I came up with – super hero owls!
They looked pretty cute all lined up together:
Here’s a closer look at the super heroes, made from the Stampin’ Up! owl builder punch:
Here are a few pictures of how I put the owls together. Basically I just used various colours cut from the owl punch, and the yellow belts are made from the word window punch.
Making super owl:
One tip – it’s easier to cut the yellow belt to size from behind:
Making spider owl:
(the black circle is also from the owl builder punch)
Making bat owl:
Put them all together and you get some cute little super heroes!
I have to say I was a little sick of making owls by the end of this process though!
Thanks for reading
Caro x
01 Tuesday Jul 2014
Tags
Birthday card, Coastal Cabana, Dazzling Details, Frozen crafts, kids birthday, Kids cards, Olaf, Olaf the Snowman, punch art, stampinup, Winter Frost
Hello
Sorry I haven’t posted to my blog in a while. I’ve been pretty busy with not much time for crafting. I finally got a chance to make some stuff recently though, so I will show you a few things over the next little while.
It is my little boy’s 5th birthday today (where did that time go?!?) and, like seemingly most children, he is currently quite obsessed with the movie Frozen. So I decided to tackle Olaf the snowman for his birthday card. Here is the end result:
The card background is on Coastal Cabana card stock with some (retired) Winter Frost designer series paper. I used my dazzling details glitter to add some sparkly snowflakes in the background. I wrote the greeting (“I like warm hugs” with my Coastal Cabana Stampin’ Write marker and punched it out with the word window punch. I used the modern label punch to do the background, also in Coastal Cabana. I put a couple of dots of dazzling details glitter on either side of the greeting for some extra sparkle.
Here’s how I made Olaf (all pieces punched from Whisper White unless otherwise specified):
The base of the snowman – 1 3/4 inch circle punch, with approximately 1/2 cm cut off the bottom
The middle of the snowman – 1 3/8 inch circle punch, with approximately 1/4 cm cut off the bottom
Head – the large oval punch
Feet – the two large circles from the owl builder punch
Buttons – the middle sized circles from the owl builder punch (Basic Black)
Arms – 2 x branches from the bird builder punch (Chocolate Chip). I thought about trimming the leaves down to make the arms look slightly more twig like, but I decided that was far too much effort!)
Mouth – oval punch (cut off about 1/3 from the top)
Teeth – the base of the jewellery tag punch (retired). If you don’t have this punch you could easily cut a small rectangle freehand.
Nose – I punched a 1 inch circle punch and then cut it down to an oval freehand
Nose – the candle from the cupcake builder punch (I also thought about using the candle from the same punch, I think either would work) (Tangerine Tango)
Eyes – I glued on some goggly eyes with some mini glue dots.
I drew on the eyebrows with a black texta and have since been informed by Mr 5 that I should have drawn on his hair as well. Feedback was noted, hair has now been drawn on (although I don’t have a picture of that!).
Apart from the minor criticism about my attention to hair detail, Olaf was received with much excitement today!
Thanks for reading, and I’ll try not to be so long between posts next time
Caro x
04 Tuesday Mar 2014
Tags
Candy Wrapper die, Easter, Easter Bunny, Easter craft, Easter crafts, Easter decorations, Easter gifts, Gift box, little Easter gift, Stampin Up
Hello
Given we’re starting to head towards thinking about Easter crafts I thought I would show you some pictures of some little Easter gift boxes I made last year for our Easter brunch.
These are made with the Stampin’ Up! Candy Wrapper Bigz Die which is retired from the current catalogue, but thankfully making a return at a whopping discount in the current Clearance Rack *.
Here is a close up of one:
The eyes are made with circle punches, the nose is an upside down small heart punch, and the ears are made from the extra large oval punch and the word window punch (cut off). I drew on the whiskers but you could probably be fancy and use twine.
These looked so cute on the table and lots of mini eggs fitted beautifully inside.
I hope that kick starts you thinking of some cute Easter craft! Thanks for reading.
Caro x
*As always, please let me know if you’d like to purchase any of the Stampin’ Up! products you see on my blog, or any of the other products in the catalogue for that matter 🙂
15 Thursday Aug 2013
Posted in Big Shot, Dies, Kids party, Thank you, Top Note
Tags
Hello!
The other day I showed you a simple layout for a quick thank you card. I needed to make some thank you cards for my little boy’s recent birthday party so we made some together on the weekend.
As it was a rugby themed party of course we had to have rugby themed thank you notes – which means we definitely needed to use Wallabies colours!
These cards are so easy to make – cut an A4 piece of yellow card in 4 pieces to make the card backs. Fold a white A4 piece of card into 4 pieces then run it through the Big Shot with the Top Note die. Hey presto – 4 lovely white shapes for a message. A thank you stamp and you’re done.
Although in this case we weren’t quite done. Mr 4 wanted them to match his rugby party so we had to find a picture of a rugby ball! I cut and pasted from a web photo into a word document. I made the image the same size as the large oval punch so we could punch out the balls. Then a whole bunch of “copy and paste” and we had enough balls for all the cards. [Actually, most of the cards. We didn’t make quite enough so we had to decide which people weren’t big rugby fans to not get a ball! I didn’t have the heart to break it to him that most people would probably fall into that category!]
Anyway, about an hour and we were done. Perfect for a 4 year old attention span as well 🙂
09 Friday Aug 2013
Posted in Big Shot, Bird Builder, Dies, Kids party, Thank you, Top Note
You may have noticed a recurring theme on my blog is ‘simple’? Simple cards, simple layouts, simple tricks. As someone who works and looks after a family, I am usually pretty time poor. So simple is good. Simple works!
Here’s another idea for a simple thank you card.
I made these a couple of years ago as thank you cards for my son’s birthday party. I divided an A4 piece of card stock into 4 pieces (this is Pacific Point). I then ran some white card stock through the BigShot using my TopNote die. You can cut 3-4 at a time so it’s really fast.
I decorated this with the branch from the Bird Builder punch and a bird and thank you message from the Cheap Talk stamp set. But pretty much any thank you stamp and decoration would work.
I need to come up with some thank you cards for my son’s birthday party this year (I’m running just a little late …) I might use this idea again as it’s so simple. I’ll show you what I come up with!
Thanks for dropping by 🙂
PS Most of my posts so far have been the result of me going through photos I’ve taken of cards I’ve made over the past few years. I’ve been so busy lately I haven’t had much of a chance to do anything new – other than kids birthday cards! I can’t wait to have some spare time and create some new stuff. One day!
05 Monday Aug 2013
Posted in Big Shot, Cards, Cupcake Builder, Decorative Label, Dies, Kids cards, Kids party, Modern Label, Owl, Punches, Top Note, Using up scraps, Word Window
Hi
It seems that lately the only crafting I get to do is with a 4 year old sitting on my lap being the artistic director! (I’m not complaining, I love it!) It does mean though that most of my craft time is spent thinking up fun ideas for cards for kid’s birthday parties! This past weekend’s challenge was a card for a pirate themed birthday party.
So off to my office/craft room we went and did a little Google searching for inspiration. Mr 4 was most impressed by the idea of an owl pirate – and he thought we should make a pirate like this one on Lynn Starzi’s blog.
I’m not too sure about this card (remember Mr 4 was the artistic director!) but here it is:
Most importantly, both my munchkin and the lucky recipient thought it was great – so I guess that’s what matters!
The waves were made from some scraps of Pacific Point. I’d saved some off cuts from cutting out some Top Note shapes, and the edges of where I’d cut out the Top Note actually worked quite well as waves!
The rest was the card was a mix of free hand cutting and Stampin’ Up! punches.
The pirate was made from the owl punch. The pirate’s shirt had to be “red and stripey” apparently, so I found an old bit of Poppy Parade DSP (now retired). Please note the peg leg! Made from the candle from the cupcake builder punch. The eyes were cut from the owl punch with “goggly eyes” stuck on top with mini glue dots.
The pirate’s hat was the side of the decorative label punch, flipped horizontally.
The boat was a large oval punch cut off across the top (Soft Suede card stock). I cut the mast, the sail and ‘the plank’ freehand. And a white Signo pen was perfect for drawing on the crossbones (no skulls for me).
Mr Artistic Controller was most insistent that the card had to say “Ahoy, me heartie!”, not “Happy Birthday”. Given that my stamp collection doesn’t quite stretch to pirate messages, I wrote in on in pen. (I’m still not convinced I spelled ‘heartie’ correctly but what can you do?!?)
The frame for the message is a modern label punch and the white is a word window punch.
There you go – our owl pirate card!
Caro x
13 Saturday Jul 2013
Posted in Birthday, Home decorating, Kids cards, Kids party, Uncategorized
Hello!
A while ago I showed you the invitations I made for my rugby obsessed little boy’s rugby themed birthday party. The party was a great success and he had a ball.
He told me he wanted a Jesse Mogg birthday card (for those of you – most of you! – who have no idea who Jesse Mogg is, he plays for the Brumbies, my son’s favourite team)
Here is my effort:
I used a paper cut out doll from a 2 dollar shop and coloured in the Brumbies colours. Jesse Mogg is number 15. A large oval punch substituted for a rugby ball shape – and he was very pleased with the end result!
In case any of you ever have to host a rugby/sports themed birthday party, I had a brain wave and turned a piece of green felt into a “field” table cloth:
A few straws, some masking tape and some blu tak and we had some goal posts:
I also have to show you the cake – I don’t even want to tell you how long it took to colour the blue icing and cut out all the letters! My hands looked like Smurf hands by the end of it!
Still – he had a *ball* (groan!) so all the effort was worth it in the end 🙂
Thanks for reading
Caro
Caro's Pretty Things 