Papertrey Ink MIM #119 and School Projects

Good evening fellow crafters! I hope you have all had a fantastic week! I've been super busy working and making gifts and treats for the girls' school. Today was officially their last day of school! Insane how fast the school year went by, I became a bit emotional this morning comparing the photos I took of the kiddos on the first day of school and the last day of school. I am now super excited to start the summer vacation off tomorrow with my girls! I cannot wait to start the weekend, this is going to be the first Saturday that I have not had to work in a really, REALLY, long time. The last couple of months actually I have been working Saturday and Sunday, so haven't had much family time and I really miss it. We have lots and lots planned for this weekend, fun stuff and not so fun stuff like cleaning! (After this week in my craft room, it is a disaster!)

Tonight I wanted to share with you the card I made for this weeks Make it Monday Challenge over at Nichole Heady's blog. The challenge this week is from the lovely Dawn McVey, and she wanted us to create a project using Flagged Borders. For my project I wanted to create a welcome baby card.





For this card, I used a Grey Cardstock base and picked out some patterned paper from K&Company's Itsy Bitsy Baby Girl paper pack. To create the flags I used Papertrey Ink's Banner Die as well as Stampin' Up's Framelits Bitty Banners Die set. The Stampin' Up Ink colors I used were Pretty in Pink and Basic Grey. I also used Papertrey Ink's Wonderful Words: Baby Stamp set and die, along with one of their Fillable Frames dies. I used the Paper Studio's A2 Stripes embossing folder. I am okay with how the card came out. The only thing I think I would change is the use of the same patterned paper on the card as well as the small flags. I think it does clash a bit. Owell, whats done is done!

These are the projects I stayed up late this week a few nights to finish making. I made these Skittles Candy sticks for the girls classroom parties. I got the image from LemonSqueezeDesigns Etsy shop. As always my clear 1x8 bags are purchased from ClearBagsRUs Etsy Shop. I have also purchased the 1x10 bag size from ScrappyBeadsCorner's Etsy shop. Either size bag works fine depending on how much candy you want to put in them. The kids always love these favors! If you saw my last post, I made a ton of Wreck it Ralph favors for my nephew's birthday party, and I included some Wreck it Ralph Skittles treats as well.






For the girls teachers, we made these Teacher Money boxes. This project took me FOREVER. It was a big mess trying to fit everything together nicely with the dollar bills. After hours and hours of time and paper wasted trying to make a box to hold everything together, I was finally happy with my results. I LOVE THIS GIFT! And the teachers absolutely loved them! I used primary cardstock colors to create 20 different cards, each measuring 6¼" x 2¾". I used Microsoft word to print out the little "boxes" on white cardstock to mat on top of the colored cardstock pieces. I used a Hero Arts stamp set for the Apple on each card. I used Stampin' Up's Inks in Gumball Green, Daffodil Delight, Real Red, Tangerine Tango, and Pacific Point. The girls and I came up with 20 Reasons why each of their teachers were great, and I wrote them down for them. (Mostly because they take too long to write, and I wanted to write in pen and not have anything mess up). After the 20 reasons were written down, I included one last card for the back of the pile for them to write a little note to their teachers. In between each card, we placed one $1.00 bill. I figured we would have spent $20 to $25 on a gift card anyway, so might as well just give them some cash!







I love how these turned out. This might be my go-to teacher gift from now on!

One last note, if you were ever a follower and participator over at the Paper Variety Challenge blog, you may have noticed that they have been away for almost a year now. BUT I am soooo excited to have seen today that they are BACK, except this time they have started a NEW challenge blog for PROJECT LIFE! It is called Week-2-Week Project Life Challenges and Inspirations and I am sooo super excited for this, I haven't seen any other Project Life challenge blogs so I think this is brilliant. When I found out last month that my local Hobby Lobby was going to be carrying the Project Life kits, I was ECSTATIC! I found out the stores would be carrying them mid-May, so I called daily for almost a week to find out when the products would arrive. I didn't get any signed editions, but I did get the Blush Edition Core Kit as well as the Big Variety Pack 1 of the photo pages. I didn't find the Blush Edition Project life album, but the store was having a 50% off sale on scrapbooks so I just picked up one big one that matched my kit. Plus how awesome is it that you can use the 40% off coupon on these kits?! SCORE!

I love love love all the project cards in this kit! My only problem is that it has been about 3 weeks since I've picked up the kits and haven't started ANY pages at all. I was even MORE excited to find out about Project Mouse and immediately bought and printed out all the Bundles available for Project Mouse. And now? It's all sitting on the table of my craft room untouched. So the thought of there being a challenge blog for Project Life is awesome, talk about a great motivator! I can't wait for the first challenge! Head on over to their new blog now and become a follower if you love Project Life, they are doing a giveaway for the Blush Edition Core kit!

Congrats if you have made it down to the bottom of this post. This is one of my longest ever! Thanks for stopping by tonight, I hope you all have a great weekend!

Happy Thursday! Long post!

Hey guys, how are you doing?! I am doing great, enjoying a beautiful morning here to myself while the girls are at school and my DH is at work! The last couple of days have been really windy and gross here in El Paso, but today, the wind has finally died down. It is nice and calm outside, so I took my little doggy for a walk and cleaned up the yard a bit, and now I figured that it's about time that I fill you in on some projects I have made over the last month. I have a lot to share, so there will be lots and lots of pictures, and it is all random! These are things I have made that I just didn't have time to share!

Before I share all the photos, I just wanted to say that I cannot believe what these tornadoes and storms have done in the south, it is terrible. My heart and prayers go out to all of you.

These are the gift bags and the birthday cards we made for Angel this year for his birthday. I used Angie's Gala Bag tutorial here to make the bags. In the video, she uses 8x8" sheets of paper to make her bag, but I also made one using 12x12" sheets of paper and scored and cut them the same.






I made 2 diaper cakes and 2 baby boy cards for 2 of my co-workers who both just had adorable little baby boys!








These are all the Easter projects from this year! These are bags I made to hold jelly beans for "Bunny Poop" and I used the bunny from the Create a Critter Cricut Cartridge. We handed these out to the students in my youngest daughter's class. They all thought it was just hilarious that they were eating bunny poop.




I had so much fun making these! I absolutely love the Mini Milk Carton die from Stampin' Up, but I don't actually own one. I found this brilliant tutorial here and I am going to love making more of these for Halloween and Christmas! These are filled with jelly beans, and I meant to add a little bunny to these as well, but I just didn't have time.




I made this Easter gift bag for a co-worker who is also my dear friend and the girls' after school babysitter. I made some jewelry for her and added an Easter card and Hersheys Nugget tin.


These are the Easter Hershey Nugget tins and cards I made for my co-workers and family this year.




Birthday cards for my nieces.




Goodbye card for a co-worker.


Mini note card sets, I just love these, I can have them available for any occasion!


Mini Thank You Notes!


These are mini lunchbox note cards I made using the Way to Go Kiddo stamp set from Papertrey Ink, they are so cute!


And last but no least, I made these little candy favors for a girls' birthday party, I plan to put them up on Etsy.


Whew! Thats it for now, I didn't realize how behind I was on posting until after I started this post! Thanks for stopping by, if you have any questions on any of the projects, leave a comment and let me know. Until next time, enjoy the rest of your week!

The Paper Variety: Tic Tac Toe

Good morning fellow bloggers! How is your week going so far? Mine is going okay, went back to work this week; I had the entire week of spring break off to spend with my family, it was great! Definitely wish I could just do that every week! I did get a chance to do a ton of stamping and crafting (and spending way too much money on Stampin' up and Papertrey ink!) I also got a chance to clean up and organize the craft room a bit, can't wait to share some pictures!

This week over at the Paper Variety is Tic Tac toe week! The challenge is to use 3 in a row to create your project!



A friend of mine is going to have a baby boy next week, she already has 2 girls, so it has been exciting shopping and creating things for a boy! In my family, there are 10 nieces and 1 nephew, but my nephew lives in CA so I don't get to see him often and haven't really made anything boy-related in a long time!

So for this challenge, I have chosen "Have a Baby Theme, Use spring colors, and Make a card"! Here is my submission:



It is a standard A2 size card, I used the Cuttlebug Swiss Dots embossing folder and the Welcome Baby stamp from the Stampin' Up Punch Bunch stamp set. I stamped the image 3 times using Stampin' Up classic colors. I don't have the coordinating punches that go with this stamp set, so I cut the image out by hand and adhered them using dimensionals. If this card looks familiar to you, I got the idea from the lovely Kerry over at Kerry's Paper Crafts, she made this card here. I loved it and had to use the same colors and idea and add my own touch to it.

Thanks for stopping by, enjoy the rest of your week!