Difficult things

I have some exciting news, I have a job interview on Monday! Better yet, it is at a local scrapbooking store. Talk about dream job! I have to take with me to the interview an example of a latest scrapbooking page & card. Talk about difficult!!!

I have a great group of friends who I have been able to ask to help me pick a scrapbooking page, and WH was kind enough to sit on the floor with me last night & go through my latest album & give me his opinion. Thanks honey! So I have picked my scrapbooking page, it is just the card that has given me alittle bit of trouble. The trouble being, when I make cards they are always for someone’s birthday, anniversary, etc.. So I don’t actually have any of my handmade cards. Abit of a problem right?

Last night & today I have sat myself down at my desk & created 3 cards. Now I just have to pick one, yep just one.

These are the cards that I have created, I am very happy with all three.

A blue one made from circle shapes cut in half & layered like scales, finished with a ribbon, bow & little tag that says ‘joyful’.

Here is a Christmas card, again with circle shapes & hand drawn lines to make Christmas baubles.

And finally is this matchbook card, this one was probably the simplest. A piece of scrapbooking paper & a fabric brad.

I am really happy with all three cards…it is going to be really hard to pick just one. Which one do you think I should take to my interview?

Craft Lift

I love reading blogs from people around the world, there are some seriously talented people out there. I am always saying ‘that is such a good idea’ or ‘I could do that’, but I never do. Whether it is because of procrastination or just lack of motivation I never end up doing any of the ideas that I find. So here is where craft lifting comes in, here is where I actually have a go and making something that I have seen on another blog. Click here & here is see my pervious craft lifts.

Today’s craft lift comes via the blog Who is Tracey? by Tracey Schultz. She has come up with a great idea to keep track of birthday’s & anniversary’s as well as a place to store cards, I really loved this idea because other than a gift you have everything at your finger tips & hopefully will help me not forget anyone’s birthday’s or anniversary’s again (it has happened twice in the last few months already!!!). Click here to head over to her blog & check out how she came up with her idea. Tracey is also offering a free printable of the birthday calendar that she made (love a free printable).

I decided to modify the idea alittle, mostly with making the pages A4 so they will fit into my Household binder.

1. I created in Microsoft publisher 12 calendar pages that were 1/3 page in size. I used cardstock just so when they are made into pockets they will hold up abit better than plain paper.

2. Flipping the calendar part over place double-sided tape on 3 sides (keep the top of the calendar part open, that is how the pocket is formed), I unfortunately use white double-sided tape which didn’t photograph well so I have added the red squiggle lines in photoshop.

3. Now get a another piece of A4 cardstock, pull off the backing to the double-sided tape & adhere the calendar piece to the bottom of the A4 piece of cardstock.

4. Now you have your pocket (this is where you slip birthday/anniversary cards)

1. To added these pages to your folder (I am using a two D ring binder) gentle fold over your A4 page & only crease the very edge.

2. Only creasing the very edge leaves you with a mark to line your hole punch up with.

3. Line your hole punch up with the small crease you made & punch your holes.

4. There you go, one completed page. Repeat all the steps for the other 11 months of the year.

I have also created a title page & placed my title page & all 12 months calendar pages into my household binder. Now I just have to make some cards to put in the pockets (actually have a couple of birthday’s that I have to make cards for so). This was such an easy craft to finish…..now to get off my butt & do some of those other drafts I have been meaning to do (I have tagged alot of pillow tutorials!).

Craft lift & Travel Tip

As of today there is only one whole week before we are get setting to New Zealand. Can’t believe it! Sorry things have been alittle quite since I finished taking pictures for my Week in a Life. We are having a housesitter stay in our home while we are away so I have been crazily cleaning our house from top to bottom. Still have alittle ways to go on the cleaning. But I am taking a quick break to share another Craft Lift project that I have recently completed, this project is something that I made for our trip. I think that it is such a good idea for people who travel with gadgets (cameras, e-readers, mp3 player, etc…), so this is also a Travel Tip.

I love Martha Stewart, her style is clean, simple & very soficated. Don’t know if I would really want to live in a home exactly like hers (too many wasted  rooms), but while I was reading one of the many Martha Stewart newsletters I get (I subscribe to 3!) I notice at the bottom a link for a Gadget Travel Tote.

(Source)

I loved this idea as soon as I saw it, basically it is a repurposed tea towel that holds all the cords (power cords, data cables, etc) that you need for the gadgets that you travel with. I have quite a few tea towels that I have bought at op-shops & collectables fairs, so this craft project was just calling me. Here is my version;

I love the result! This gadget tote is going to be so useful, now all of our cords are going to be in the one same place. And how organised are things going to be (ticking all the boxes!!!!).

Craft lift

I love reading blogs! Especially blogs about crafting & creating a stylish home (on a budget!). Lately I have been taking some of my favourite projects & giving them ago for myself & so far I am very happy with the results. Thought that I would share my first two projects.

First is a Bunting Cosmetic bag by Just Another Hang Up, this tutorial is also made with a tutorial from Noodlehead (scrapy make-up pouch tutorial). Suzanne from Just Another Hang Up took the tutorial from Noodlehead & created her own cute front section with a bunting detail. Here is my version;

I am using this bag for our trip to New Zealand (had enough of me going on about  it yet?), the first Travel Tip I posted was about creating a bag that  holds all your needs for a flight (lip balm, ear plugs, MP3 player, etc…).

This bag will hold all my airplane needs & it is cute to boot! It was actually really easy, both tutorials were super easy to  follow, even someone with very basic sewing skills (me!!!!) could produce one of these cute & useful bags. I am going to be making one for WH &  my little sister too.

Second is this tutorial from The Precious Little things In Life, Texturing a Wooden Letter Using Rolled Up Book Pages. Such a simple but very affective idea, I got some faded books from an op-shop (5 or $1 score!). Took awhile to roll the paper & then attach it to the letter (I used a “J” that I had also found at an op-shop for $1). Here it is:

Looks fantastic sitting in our bookshelf, and I have plenty of book pages left over for another project or two (this project didn’t even take up one book & I have 5!).

Did it again!

Forgot about Mothers’ Day till the last-minute. Worst is that we are coming to the end of our pay month, where pretty much every dollar has been accounted for and we don’t usually have alot of spare money, well defiantly not enough to purchase two Mother’s Day presents. Unfortunately this happened last year!

Because of this forgetfulness I have been using up all my free time this week creating two Mother’s Day gifts. I am feeling alittle overwhelmed, but I am almost done.

If my Mum or Mother-in-law are reading this and don’t want to know what their gifts are close your browsers now!

Little to no money = handmade gifts. I do like making gifts for people, but usually like to have plenty of time to come up with an idea & to create it. But I think that I have come up with some  simple but prefect gifts  for the wonderful Mothers’ who will receive them.

Firstly my Mum, she has recently been diagnosed with diabetes. My Mum & Dad have big sweet tooths (can’t tell I’m their daughter!!!), so I have found some diabetes friendly recipes for desserts & other sweet treats. I have typed the recipes on some recipe cards that I got for free somewhere, now all I have to do in laminate them (great for any accidental spills in the kitchen) & tie them together with a ribbon.

I think that Mum (& Dad) will get some use out of these recipes. Now for my Mother-in-law, she is usually always difficult. She is a practical person and usually doesn’t use gifts unless they have a practical purpose. So I thought that she would love to spend a morning or an afternoon having tea with WH (wonderful husband), I am making a voucher that will state that her and WH will go out together and just spend time together. To present the voucher I have bought a simple cup & saucer from the thrift store (cost me a whole $3 for both!) that I will tie the voucher on to.

To make the voucher I have some printable buttons from Creature Comforts, they have been hand painted & then scanned to create this printable PDF. Too cute. Click here to download your own copy. I will use these buttons for a card for my Mums’ gift as well.

Better get back to the gift making…..hopefully next year I will be more on the ball. Hopefully!

Magazine file project

After some serious editing using my favourite toy (my Wacom Bamboo tablet) I have finished & printed out the images that I am going to use to cover the magazine files in our TV unit (click here for more info).

I found this vintage camera images online

(The Graphic Fairy)

I wanted two different types of vintage camera images, I found heaps very similar to the one above. But found it really hard to find one that was a different type or style og camera. I ended up finding this image on Flicker

(I didn’t take much notice of where I found this image, if you know please let me know so I can link it properly)

I used Photoshop to crop out the top right box camera image, when I blew in up to fit my purpose in came out slightly grainy but still looks how I want in.

I placed both images on a background from my digital scrapbooking supplies and this is what I ended up with

I like to look of these cool vintage images against a fairly modern background with the grid paper. As these images are bigger than standard A4 I have divided the image & printed it across 4 pages. I taped them together & will attach to the magazine files as soon as I have the Faithgirlz craft over & done with.

 

Busy busy busy!

I am sitting in a quite house (nothing on TV) reading some of my favourite blogs.

Side note: Think that I am alittle obsessed with blog reading……I read blogs while I am preparing dinner, watching TV, folding laundry & doing craft projects…..probably why I started writing one!

And I had the thought that I hadn’t blogged in ages ‘Must be a week since I have blog!’ I thought….wrong! Only a couple of days. Opps! Ha!

Things have been so busy around here the last couple of days (maybe that’s why they felt like a week), Thursday was my first day at work in 2 weeks (everyone was sick & since I am a casual they thought it better that I not go in till all the germs were gone) so I have lots to do, none stop all day. Friday I had my church Mother’s group (yes I said Mother’s group, and no I don’t have any kids. I am really good friends with everyone & I don’t work a full time job so I go along for fellowship, also until the last year I wasn’t the only one who cam  who didn’t have kids. But now I am) at my house, so I got up early on Friday morning cleaned the house & baked brownies. Then on Friday arvo I started a couple of craft projects, one is an Easter theme project for Faithgirlz (church’s pre-teen mentoring program) & the other is a household project. And today (Saturday) I am continuing where I left off with the two craft projects.

Craft project 1: Easter Craft for Faithgirlz

I was scheduled to do the Easter craft for Faithgirlz this year, which is a big ask as last year the girls made rocky road easter eggs (hard to top I know!). I wanted to do something that wasn’t chocolate (to be different from last year & cause the girls will get alot of chocolate at Easter anyway), so I  have been going through all my favourite craft project sites. And found this;

I can’t for the life of me remember where I came across this idea, so sorry this is no link (if anyone knows where this comes from please let me know). But I thought this would be a fairly simple straight forward but fun craft. Also liked the idea of haven’t one to display on our TV unit (bit of seasonal decorating).

So far I have collected some frames & am spending today spraying them white (I like to get frames from Op shops, their cheap but generally you end up with a mish mash of colours & styles a coat of spray paint fixes them up nicely), I usually prefer a flat black colour but white will look better against the colour of the buttons.

All I have to get now is the background material (bought some olive-green felt that I kind of thought would work….but having thought about it some more I think that a hessian would look better….returning the felt tomorrow) and the buttons.

Craft Project 2: Household project

Back in March I posted about the problems I have been having organising and styling our TV unit (http://johnsonsuzie.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/having-trouble/). In the picture in the post you can see that I tried to use some various magazine files to hold & hide some of the clutter that bothered me, this kind of worked. The only problem being that the magazine files didn’t totally fill the space & were different heights. Soon after I posted the post I got some cardboard & tape and extended all the magazine files so that they were all the same height & filled the whole space that they were sitting in. Great! Solved a couple of problems. Now the only problem was a visual one, they looked awful.

So to remedy this I am going to decorate them. I am still working on things so I will get back to you with pictures of what I am doing. So far I am liking the direction that I am going.

>Newest creation

>A good friend of ours had her birthday recently and I made her this card

I love the result

The image I found on Martha Stewart’s website, it was meant for a Mother’s Day card, which I had every intention of making. But when I sat down to do it the image just didn’t seem right for either of our Mother’s (mine or my WH’s (Wonderful Husband)). But then our friend T had her birthday, T is vintagey hippy type of girl. She lives in a small converted dairy on her parents property, and it is filled with furniture and decor that she has found on the road side or at Op Shops. So the image would suit her perfectly.

On Martha Stewart’s website the image was designed to have the buttons sew on, I glued them on (laziness, mostly), and that was it. Which looked great but to me wasn’t finished. So I cut a couple of slits into the card and threaded a piece of ribbon, alittle folding and tada! A scarf! The image to me had a windswept feel and the scarf ribbon gives that feel perfectly.

I am considering adding similar cards to my Etsy shop SuJoh, using vintage photo’s and postcards. But I am still playing with the idea.

>Achievement

>My WH (wonderful husband) has this jumper that we bought a year or so ago, it was purchased to be worn while he is running. But he loves it so much that it gets worn almost always. About 3-6 months ago somehow the zip got broken, WH was devastated. I decided to have a go at replacing the broken zip myself. I have done abit of sewing when I was is high school, year 8 as most students as well as year 11 & 12. I do enjoy using a sewing machine and making things, I currently have the use of my mother’s sewing machine.

Yesterday I spent sometime carefully unpicking the stitches that held the old zip in place. Discovered that replacing the zip should be pretty straightforward (thankfully!).

Today after church I popped into Spotlight and bought a new zip, found they were having a 20% off store wide sale (score!). Then when I got home I inserted the new zip and sewed it all up. I found it easy enough to replace the zip, still not the greatest sewer in the world. Quite proud of myself.

WH was absolutely thrilled, wore the newly repaired jumper around for the rest of the evening. Feels very good to repair my WH’s jumper, much better than throwing it away and wasting money on buying another one.

Someone couldn’t leave me be at the table, loves to chew the pins (certainly not something I want him to be doing)