TIPS AND TECHNIQUES

Sunday, May 31, 2020

Tag Crate

So as I have been making my tags I realized not everyone has the capabilities to make a drawer.   Then besides that not everyone wants to spend the money for an old sewing cabinet, which could be pricey, just to pull the drawers out.  If you are a hunter............go flea markets, garage sales, thrift stores where you may be able to find just a lonely sewing drawer.  But if your impatient and want one now I have an idea.

Our local winery has an awesome gift shop.  You can buy little crates for making your own little gift basket of wines or jams.  So while I was there I picked up a few.  Not very expensive.  I think the smaller one was about $3 and the larger $5.

The smaller one measures (outside dimensions) 3.5"x8.25".  It can hold tags that are 2.75 inchs wide. The larger one measures 4.5"x11" and can hold tags 3.75" wide.

To see how these 2 compare to my homemade drawers here you go:

The larger one is pretty close but the smaller one could make a real cute gift of Tags for someone special.  I also know that Michaels has some of these little crates too so you really don't need to go to a winery.  Though who wouldn't want to go to a winery???  Its a fun place to visit even if you don't drink wine since they nearly always have a gift shop and Oh wine tasting too.

I am not sure if Hobby Lobby carries the crates but they do have a wide assortment of drawer knobs so be sure to check that out too.

Til Next Time........................

HAPPY CARDING!







Friday, May 29, 2020

Wine Bottle Tags

Usually when I am invited to someone's house I bring them my favorite bottle of wine.  Its called Summer in a Bottle. 

I never have those little bottle gift bags and although I know I could make one I never think of it.  But now with my new found love of a box of tags, I had decided to make a few Wine Bottle Tags so I can slip one over the bottle before giving it to my hostess.  Makes it seem more like a gift instead of a "Here's a bottle of wine".

While make some of these for my sisters tag box I had decided that the size I liked was 2.75"x10.5".  The base of the tag is then scored at 2.75.  I cut designed papers to fit the top portion and the lower portion and then using nesting dies cut the holes in the top pieces.  Base has smaller hole and layer piece is 1 size larger.  The decorating part is solely up to you.  Do alittle...do alot.  It doesn't matter.  I love that nothing is set in stone.  Here are the 8 I have made for my new box of tags.
In this last picture the tag on the left was made using all those circles I had cut out of the bases and the designer paper.  I mean they had to have a use right?  LOL

I sure hope I'm inspiring you to use up what you have and make some tags.  Find or make a box and put them where they are accessible.  Curious of the box size?  Just think sewing cabinet size.  My homemade drawers are 4.75"x13".  But any size will do. 

Til next time.................................
HAPPY CARDING!!!

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Gift of Tags part 3

The next set of tags are now done.  I must say this is quite an assortment when all put together.  I have sizes from 1.5"x2.5" all the way to 3.5"x5.5".  Everyday tags, masculine tags, holiday tags, birthday and thank you tags.  Here's the latest assortment ...Wine Bottle tags  You can see the previous ones in the last 2 posts.

The 2 end ones are 3.5"x10.5" and the center ones are 2.75"x10.5"  These were alot of fun to use up little scraps and my new Spellbinder dies of wine glasses and bottles was totally awesome.
Well this project is turning out nearly as I expected.  The hardest part was finding knobs for the crates.  Do they need it?  Not really but it was in the original thought.  The idea was to have something that would resemble an old drawer from a sewing cabinet. Fill it with tags and place it on a desk top for easy access when a tag is needed.  I have totally lost track of the number of tags I have in this drawer but it is well over 40.
I have plans to give this one to my sister as a "Just Because" gift.  She lives in an area where there is not a Hallmark nearby.  In fact to do any real shopping she has to drive over 20 miles and that's just so she can go to a Walmart.  For way bigger brand name stores she has a 1.5 hour drive.  So I thought having at least a box of tags available she can just grab and go.  Plus they are so versatile.  Put it on a present, tie it to a bottle of wine or even placed on a tray of cookies.  Can't wait to give this to her.

Of course I can't make just one of anything so I had my darling husband make me a second drawer for my own tags.  I have not yet filled it up but will soon.
And here are both side by side.
For my own I plan to have it out on display probably in my foyer.  That way whenever anyone needs a last minute card they can grab a tag instead.  I will always have it filled with a wide assortment of tags.

Speaking of tags...I think it's time to whip up some wine bottle tags for my own box.

Til next time..........................
HAPPY CARDING





Monday, May 25, 2020

Gift of tags part 2

Well I got a bunch more tags finished this time working on some masculine ones.  I had a few 6 x 6 pads by Authentique.  One was called Rugged and the other was called Quest.  Both had colors of blues browns and reds.    I was able to make 14 of various sizes that were masculine.  I also made 4 Valentine and 4 Christmas ones.   I'll add those to the previous 25 for a total of 47 so far.  Not too shabby.
I stillwant to work on some Thank you ones and maybe some specific Birthday ones.  So for now the project is not yet finished.

My husband has been working on the crates.  I have him starting with making 2.  I never do just one of anything lol.

So now til later...............
HAPPY TAGGING???

Saturday, May 23, 2020

The Gift of TAG

Well in these ever changing time we are all struggling as to how to go on and make our lives as "Normal" as possible.  Children are having parties cancelled due to the distance rules currently in place and gifts are hard to shop for.  As a crafter those tasks are a little bit easier for me.  I have still been able to give smaller, though much more meaningful gifts, to some children for their birthdays.  I have made craft activity boxes for some.   Art journals for others.  Card making kits and Scrapbook page kits.  My ideas have kept me quite busy.  I saw a cute idea on line where someone made alot of tags, placed them in a box and that was the gift.  Hmmmmm....nice idea!  So now it's gift ideas for adults.  Ok mainly ladies lol.  Right now most of the idea is in the process and draw out stage.  Here's the plan.  With the help of my husband a crate is going to be made and stained and then filled with a variety of gift tags.  Christmas, Birthday, Anniversary, Kids, Baby, Thank You, Just Because...etc.  In the future I will post the completed box/crate but in the meantime I wanted to share a few tags.

What I like best about tags is the ability to use up all your scraps and your not committed to making an entire set of one type of theme.  I tend to get bored if I had to make 25+ different Christmas tags in one sitting but if in 1 sitting I made 25+ of a variety...well then my creative juices start flowing.  Her are some of the "Everyday General tags".  They are non specific so they can be used for Birthdays, Anniversary, Thank you's what ever.  I so far have 25 of these made.

I have not attached any of the ribbons yet.  I'll probably do that all at once while watching tv some evening.

Time to get some masculine ones made so check in later.

Til next time.................................
HAPPY CARDING

Thursday, May 21, 2020

Quarantine Picnic

So what do you do for a Quarantine Birthday?  A social distance picnic!  Both my son and granddaughter have their birthdays this week.  Like everyone else we have a Birthday parade planned for the weekend but my granddaughter turns 12 Friday and we wanted to do something special.  You see usually we have her choice of dinner ready and we invite the other Grandma over for dinner, cake and presents.  This year is a bit hard but my daughter-in-law came up with the idea of a picnic dinner.  Hmmmmm...great idea.  we will all be at a social distance but still able to gather.  She'll have her favorite dinner and get cake & icecream as well as gifts.  Thank goodness for Amazon.  We got her gift and her dads but I had no wrapping paper.  Ah ha but I do have newspaper, coffee filters and streamers so I wrapped with the newspaper, made a little bow from streamers for my sons gift and a flower for Toris gift from coffee filters.  Ya do what ya need to do when in quarantine.  lol



























Here's a close up of the flower.
I used 2 filter which I cut into a leaf shape and then used food coloring to die them.  They got all wrinkled from squeezing out the water.  Then I folded 4 filters into fourths and cut petal shapes and died those pink and then 2 filters cut into a smaller scallop edge and died those yellow.  When dried I scrunched each flower in the middle, added glue and stacked all the layers.  Then glued it on to the leaves.  Super easy and it made the newspaper not look so....well...drab. Aimple but large tags will top them off.  These are 4" x 8.5".  The layers were scraps that I had in my scrap basket so I have no idea of the company for the papers except some were from an old 4x6 pads from Stampin Up.  Obviously the Pink one is for my Granddaughter.  Altho my son has been known to wear a Tutu.  Long story lol.



 I can't wait til our picnic.  Hope your finding alternatives to things too.

Til next time......................................
HAPPY CARDING!





Saturday, May 16, 2020

Encouragement Challenge Accepted

So how are all of you with challenges????  I stink at them!!  Seriously, I am never on time or I forget or I don't read all directions or I do read them and still screw it up.  That is what has happened with this one.

A friend had asked if a few of us could do the Splitcoaststamper Tea Party Challenge.  So I went over to the site and read the story.  Ended up it was for her daughter who was going through a rough time.  The challenge was an encouragement card where you got to choose whether you were Team Dogs or Team Cats.  Then for example if you were Team Dog your card must have elements that began with the Letters D (dog) O (orange) G (green or grass) S (sentiment).  Easy Peasy right???  Yeah......I screwed it up.

First of all I am Team Dogs.  Which kind of excited me because recently I got a set of doggie stamps and papers in my magazine as a freebie and I hadn't used it yet.  So I picked the pup I wanted to use and the dog house stamp, grabbed a few dies and chose the paper I received that I liked the best and went to work.  I'm not a great colorer with markers so I used color pencils instead.  I worked and worked and worked.  Finally finished up with a little bit of encouragement inside.  Yay for me!    Well not really.
Lets see..........D.........Dog, Die cuts and Dog house.          O..........ummmm ok no O.    G.......Green, Grass, & Gray.       S................Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm  no S.  Yep I failed twice!!!  Ok so what.  Its still an ok card, I just can't enter it in the challenge but....I can mail it to her daughter.  So that's what I'm going to do. She still needs the encouraging words and probably wouldn't care that I didn't follow directions. lol

Off to the mailbox.

Til Next Time.............
HAPPY CARDING!





Thursday, May 14, 2020

Simple Get Well

Greetings from Shelter.  LOL  I don't know about you but all my days seem to be melding together.  The other day I answered the phone with "Happy Friday!"  My daughter in law on the other end was like "What????  Friday????  OMG are you sure???"  Oops it was Wednesday.  She wasn't thrilled when we figured it out since that meant 2 more days of home schooling. 

So today I'm sharing a super simple get well card.  A friends daughter went in for tonsil removal.  Previously another one of her daughters went in for the same thing and had a super hard recovery so all were hoping this one would be easier.  So far so good although today is the first day as they were removed this morning.  For a little cheer I thought I'd send her a card.  I liked how it turned out but I'm second guessing myself that it is too adult looking for a 14 yr old.  Oh well.
In order to keep the card flatish I embossed the cream card stock and added punched flowers on top of the pictured flowers.  I also added some stickles and liquid pearls instead of my usual rhinestone blings.  I die cut the green sprigs above and below the wreath and added some green sprigs to the wreath as well.  Basically a flat card that will go through the mail with no problem.  

We are all hoping for a speedy recovery.

Til Next Time.......................
HAPPY CARDING






Saturday, May 2, 2020

Tickets Please

Hello crafters.  I believe I am now on a first name basis with Pinterest.  I would not be surprised if I log in one day and Pinterest says "You again?"  I seem to have this routine.  Get up, check my emails, make the family breakfast and then sit down and enter Pinterest. lol  I caught a glimpse of Altered Tickets the other day.  So cute.  I have no clue what one is to do with these once they are done but they are adorable. A couple posts ago I made some paperclip tickets.  HERE Which were ok since they had a use but just tickets?  Hmmm what can I do with those.  So I made a few and just added a few little scraps.  I figured these could be used on a gift tag so I just popped a dimensional to the back and set them aside.
What I really wanted to try was a string of tickets.  I am also a shabby chic type of person so I thought I'd try that as my theme.  These are rather simple but I like how they turned out.  Apparently you can't get too crazy adding a bunch of stuff to them because they wont fold up nicely so whatever you do needs to stay relatively flat.
Here are the first 4 I made.  Like I said I have no clue what to do with them now.  You can't glue it on a card or scrapbook page because I decorated the last ticket which the way it folds the decorated part would be glued.  I suppose you could place them into a pocket and maybe journal on the back or place a secret message on the back.

I am going to have to work on this more so lets consider this post a preview post.  lol  Next time I will show how each of these could be used and then probably have a new and improved string of tickets for viewing.

Til next time
HAPPY CARDING!








Friday, May 1, 2020

Miss Your Face Card

Ugggghhhh..............Quarantine.............I Miss my friends!!  So while jumping around on You Tube, shhh don't tell Pinterest. lol  I came across this guy.  He talked about a card kit by "Love from Lizi"   Its a monthly overseas membership where you get a collection of papers, stickers embellies ribbons etc and what you make with it is totally up to you.  Anyway he used the things in the kit and came up with this card. He was sharing it with a group of ladies in New Mexico who were getting together for their normal crafting time and invited him to join in. We get to benefit because he also provided the class to You Tube!!  Yay for us! Thank you Scott of CardCutups for sharing the video.
Here 

I Changed it up a tad.  I'm always looking for the easier way lol.  I used Washi tape around my mask and I hot glued the ear pieces on the back.  He also printed out the sentiment where I instead decided to use my WRMK Word Punch board .
     https://www.amazon.com/We-Memory-Keepers-661599-Multicolor/dp/B07FBQQB5R  

This is about the best price I have found.  They are running around $40 on alot of other sites.  So check around before you buy.

So the "REVEAL"!


Isn't this ADORABLE???  I made these for my crafting buddies as a little surprise in the mail.  I sure do miss crafting with them.  I mailed them in regular envelopes which now I am kind of regretting because I don't know how they will arrive.  I had just popped them in the mail today so I'll have to check back with them in a few days to see if they survived.

Til next time...............................
HAPPY CARDING!