Valentines

I was thumbing through a scrapbook magazine the other day and came across a this great idea! I practically had everything I needed - well minus the suckers. And I forgot to take a picture of the process, lucky for you it is super easy!! Which was really one of the reasons that I did this.

Supplies you need:
suckers
various colors of tissue paper
scallop circle punch
green cardstock with sentiment printed on it

You take your cardstock and punch out a whole lot of scallop circles. It is best if you do at least 10 sheet at a time. Using less makes it not punch as well, and more just doesn't punch.

After you have like 100 of those scallop circles punch a small hole in the center of them. Again about 10 sheets at a time works great. I used between 10-20 punches for each sucker.

You then insert your sucker stick into the hole and slide the scallop circles up to the bottom of the sucker. I scrunched mine a bit to make it look like a flower. Repeat for something like 50 suckers - really this is just how many me and my kids made. ;)

In a wordprocessing software create a sentiment - 'Be my Valentine'. I used a text box and got about 16 per page. You want to make sure that you can cut a leaf out and have a good sized space on the left side of it to stick the flower and still see the sentiment. Print.

I eyeballed the leaf I wanted and just cut these out. I made Thing #2 cut her own leaves - she was super excited!

In the good sized space you have on the left hand side punch a hole and stick the sucker through it.  Now you have a great easy valentine! Oh and have your child sign their name before you stick the leaf on - much easier that way!

Next I have two cards to share with you. My first one is completely copied from Then She Made. I just fell in love with the simpleness and beauty of hers that I had to make one myself. Go to her blog to she her version.

It not that just simple and perfect!?

This one here is for Conan. I saw something like this a couple of years ago, but I cannot remember exactly where. But obviously I liked it if I remembered it still. It was also super easy to make.

First I took my card base - Kraft cardstock - and distressed the edges with a red ink pad.

Then I got a piece of cardstock that looked like paper. I glued that in the top middle.

I printed the words 'You're Hot' because I had no stamps that would work. I stamped the curly label in red and punched out. I distressed the words you're hot so that they would stand out more. At this point I had run out of glue, I wanted to finish so I broke out the kids white school glue. I glued these on.

You should really wait for the glue to dry here, like I did not. You can see the smudge up by you're. I am just not used to using liquid glue.

Anyway, cut a square of plastic from a lunch sack slightly bigger than your paper cardstock. Place over and sew 3 edges with red thread. Do not pull tight as you want to stick a few red hots in there. Add red hots and sew shut. Sew around edges a couple of times until it looks good. Done!

There you have it, super easy last minute valentines!

Rosette Wreath

I am really not that creative. I like to make things, but I rarely come up with anything on my own. I usually just see something that I like and make it. I guess you could call me a copy cat. ;) And today's project is no exception! I saw this beautiful wreath done by I'm a Yarner and I fell in love with it! I started racking my brain to see if I had the supplies to make this project without going to the store. I had everything but the glitter. But since that was the last step I got started! I did not take pictures of this step by step because I pretty much just used her tutorial.

I got out all the red paper I had - which was about 25 sheets. I then got out my circle cutter and proceeded to cut as many circles as I could before Thing #4 figured out what I was doing. (He seems to love it when I get out my scrapbooking stuff). It only took me about 15 minutes to cut a huge stack of circles out. Then on movie night while I was sitting not really watching the movie with my kids I proceeded to cut the spiral into all of the circles.

I was a little nervous about how long it would take to roll these up, but I got a little tool - can't for the life of me remember what the name of it is - at Archiver's with my coupon just under $5. It made rolling these up so easy. I then just started the glue them onto the wreath form until it was full. I then had to cut out a few more little ones to fill in the blank. I had picked up some glitter with my JoAnn's coupon and then sprayed the wreath with glue and sprinkled glitter on it. (Even being careful I found that I had accidentally glittered some of my counter - but a little elbow grease took care of that.) Then attach the ribbon and hang on the door.

 I was even able to fit this between my door and the screen. I just love the way it looks - it is so pretty! I would have to say that the hardest part of this project was trying to get all the hot glue strands off of the rosettes before I glittered it. It took forever!!

Linking to the parties listed in my tab on the top.

Don't forget about Fantastic Friday tomorrow, be sure and come and link up all the fantastic things you have been working on!

I {heart} U

I have never really decorated much for any other holiday except Christmas, but that has changed this last year. I have really gotten into this crafting stuff. As I was blog surfing the other night - I know you all spend your evenings doing this - I came across this craft:

And yes I had to copy it because it was so simple, clean and not to mention easy! We actually made these at my craft group I host. And another nice thing about this craft is that I had everything I needed to make these right in my home!

I have a neighbor who has a grain business so they get huge orders of grain in on pallets. This last order all her pallets were brand new. She was just going to throw them out with the trash, but I intervened. And these pallets were food grade, so I felt safe to use them in a craft in my home. I just cut them out with my circular saw. Someday I will have some big girl tools, but until then we just make due.

What I did to make these was I took a brush and just dipped the ends into the paint - not a ton of paint on the brush - and then dotted it on the wood and them ran the brush along it to paint it. It is called dry brushing and I read about it somewhere, but I cannot remember where!:( But anyway, it gave it that rustic/weathered look that I wanted, and I did not have to do a ton of sanding!

I just out some letters on my Cricut, and I use the SCAL to make them tall on skinny so they would look good on my boards. I used a re-positionable spray adhesive to make them a stencil. It worked fairly well. You do have to make sure that you have the edges all pressed down.

You then paint them. We did realize that after about the 4 set of these that the stencil was not really holding its own as well. But we found if you painted from the outside to the inside then you had less chance of the paint leaking out the edges. But it looked okay when you did have little areas like that because it is a rustic look. I messed up on the bottom of my I. And yes these boards are not all the same size, but that adds to the character of it.

I then just tied them all together with a ribbon and viola! you are done. I have thought about gluing them, but I have not got to it yet. I placed them on the floor in front of my great quilt tin, and well they only lasted a day there before Thing #5 had them all taken apart and was playing with the ribbon. So now they are on my little counter. 

Linking up to the parties in my tab.