Recipe Board

Here is another cute gift that was made for Christmas. It is a recipe board made from a wood base and a metal board. The metal is obviously magnetic so I made the chef magnet and an additional rock magnet to hold the recipe card on the board.







Here is my little chef. I stamped him from Stampin' Up's Voila stamp set. Colored him in and then went to Kinko's where I had him laminated. If he is going to be in the kitchen he is going to have to be waterproof, it gets messy in the kitchen, don't cha know. Then after he was laminated I added some black brad buttons to his chef coat. It gave the flat chef some dimension and a little bit of personality.





On the metal board I used my black StazOn Pad and stamped Bon Appetit on the top corner of the metal board.

I painted the wood block with a cream colored acrylic paint. But I didn't want the block to be a totally solid color. I thought it would look good if the grain of the wood showed through so I decided to add some water to the paint and it just white washed the wood. The saying is made out of vinyl and I had a variety of sayings that I put on the blocks ranging from "The Cook Is In" to "Bon Appetit" to "Live Laugh Love" (which can be used as a recipe board or as a photo board).

This is the action shot. The board being used. The recipe that is on there is one that I got from a Bridal shower and it is yummy! Look at that only 5 ingredients.

Sweet Sweet Chilli

1 pound cubed stew meat

2 stalks celery, chopped

1 can chilli beans, undrained

1 can diced tomatoes with basil, garlic and oregano, undrained

less than 1/2 cup of brown sugar

Combine all ingredients in a slow cooker and cook for 6-8 hours on low or on high for 3-4 hours. (Works well doubled.)

I like this recipe, but I added some diced onions as well and it worked out nicely. Yummy! A great quick recipe that is a twist on the classic type of chilli.

Piggy Banks

My husband needed to give out a gift to co-workers and his employees at work. This year we gave out piggy banks. The banks had no character when we bought them, so I took Porcelaine Permanent Paint and gave the pigs, eyes, eyelashes (female) or eyebrows (male), and a personalized name on their butt.

Then we wrapped them up with cellophane and a bow and they were ready to go.



I made a few others that were given to a niece and nephew. They got dolled up a bit more with blue polka dots and red swirly dots in addition to the eyes and names. The paint is wonderful and comes in a wide variety of colors, available at Michael's Craft Store. Once it is applied you let it dry for 24 hours and bake it in the oven. After it has baked in the oven, it is microwave and dishwasher safe. Not so important when it is on a piggy bank, but great when you put it on a ceramic dish of some sort.

Another cool thing that I learned... I have had this paint for several years and one small bottle goes a looooong way. It hasn't run out and it hasn't gone bad either. But this year, when I went to go buy some other colors I discovered that the paint was available in pen form. It was great for writing the names on the back of the pigs, and even for drawing in some of the eyes. I made the eyes a variety of colors so they each had their own personality.

Hair Clips and Bows

These are some clips and bows that I made for my daughter... I think she is going to like them. I used a variety of items from Stampin' Up, such as their Felt Flowers, their Pretties kit that has the white flowers and the pearls, plus some of their brads that are gems. The other large flowers, are layered with a monochromatic theme and a matching pearl inside.

Most of the flowers on on alligator clips, but a few of them I decided to put on large bobby pins. So much fun!

Clip Boards

Here are some clip boards that the kids are getting for Christmas. We are driving to CA right after Christmas and I wanted them to have something fun to write on and play on for the long drive there. We will be spending lots of time in the car once we leave our home on Dec. 26 until we return on January 8th or so. Road Trip! Yay!

This is the front...


This is the back...

I used a normal clipboard that I had picked up on sale. Then I used a variety of papers, tore them into pieces and glued them on with Mod Podge. Then added a layer to the top of the paper. It gives the clipboard a less than smooth surface, but with a pad of paper it works well. It is mostly for a solid surface for the kids to color on. Plus they look great.


Hopefully they like them. I added their names to the bottom. Then I put flowers on Samantha's with gem brad centers, and a variety of ribbon tied onto the top of the clipboard. The papers on Samantha's are bigger pieces, while the pieces on Jared's are smaller. It worked fine either way. Samantha's was probably done quicker though with larger pieces.


On Jared's I added stars and put brads that have the head of a screw. It needed a little boyish charm other than the blue color. These were a really easy project and didn't really take very long. The longest part was waiting for part of it to dry before moving on.

Shiny Christmas Tree

I found this craft on Martha Stewarts website. It is recommended to use newspaper as the paper (which is a great idea I think), but I have so much patterned paper that I figured it would turn out cute if I used some of the green patterned paper that I have. I used a bunch of paper for the envelopes for my Christmas Cards, and there was left overs so I used those scraps of paper again on this tree.

Here is my stand made from clay and a wooden skewer.

Here are the varied pieces of paper that I cut up. Starting at 4 1/2 inches and the smallest is 1 inch.

Here are all of the papers after they were skewered onto the wooden pole.

Then I used a spray on adhesive, sprayed all over the tree, and sprinkled a green diamond glitter. Finally I topped the tree with a two sided star. I want to go back and cut out about 5 or 6 stars and put them all together to made a larger 3-D star for the top, but will get to that later. It shows a little of the sparkle here, but it looks so much better in person. A great little decoration made from paper.

This is the year of using up paper. I love having supplies on hand for crafting and scrapbooking, but I have so much paper, it is starting to get out of control. Between my SU! paper and my non-SU paper, there is a lot. So I am looking for projects to use up the paper.



Merry Christmas!

Little Angel Ornaments

Every year we give the kids a new ornament that they can add to their collection of ornaments. When they grow up and move out (will that ever happen??) they will have a box of their own ornaments that they have collected over the years.


Here are the ornaments that I decided to make for the kids this year, plus one for my own tree.


I used ceramic ornaments and stamped this little angel using black Staz-On. Then I took my Versamark Marker and colored the area for the halo. Then sprinkled it with gold embossing powder. Used my heat gun and melted the powder. It adhered to the ceramic ornament very nicely.


Finally, each of these ornaments tend to have their names and the year that they got them. So I used the Versamark Marker again, wrote their names & the year. Then sprinkled the embossing powder over it and heated it up. I sprayed them with a protective top coat to keep them Fabulous for many years to come. Finally I tied on some gold cording to hang them on the tree.

A great project that was done in about half an hour.

Christmas Card Envelopes

Every year I enjoy making Christmas cards to send out.

This year I decided to do something a bit different. I designed my own Christmas card on the computer with a compilation of pictures,

then made a designer envelope to mail out all of my cards. It was a great way to use a variety of patterned papers that I had here in red, green, burgundy, copper and silver. I added a stamped image on the outside of the envelope and they were ready to mail!


So much fun.

Here are some of the tools I used.

Bone folder to make nice crisp edges... especially important when using cardstock.

Used SU 5 in 1 template... not a normal size of card, but it is the perfect size for a picture that is 4 x 6 since the envelope comes out at 4.5 inches by 6 or 7 inches... which made it the perfect choice for this Christmas Card.

Envelope glue... made it more real, worked really well. This dries and gives the envelope a normal envelope seal. Lick it and it seals.

Finally the other life saver was the adhesive eraser. It helped when my mono tombo tape went over the edge, I erased the excess adhesive so it didn't stick where it wasn't supposed to.