A Wedding Gift

Another home decor item featuring glass etching.  This one is for a family member's granddaughter who just got hitched!  Mirrors are notoriously hard to photography, but I did my best!

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Home Sweet Home

My sister flew in to visit me this week.  I haven't seen here in almost six months!  So it was a well desired visit for me and my kids who adore their auntie.  She has a friend who just moved into a new place so I agreed to make her a housewarming gift.  Years ago I began etching lanterns as a home decor item and it still fits the bill.  I built up quite a stash so I actually had this lantern on hand.  For those interested, I bought it at IKEA a few years ago.  I know they still sell these lanterns, although perhaps not this specific style anymore. However, the ones they have are very reasonably priced as well ~ under $10 for this smaller size.

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There is this BOY

For some reason I have been in the mood to make some more home decorish type items.   This has never really been my thing but in the last six months or so we've made some changes and upgrades to our home and the ideas have started flowing.

I came up with an idea to do a picture retrospective of each of my boys with one picture representing each year of their life.  It took a long time to find pictures that worked well together, I am not going to lie.  But it was also kind of fun going through folders of so many pictures that I had forgotten about.  They really brought back a bunch of good memories.  

I found some large frames on Clearance at Michaels.  Not being a fan of white or black frames perse I pulled out some primer and spray paint and got to work.  These pictures are hanging in our foyer, and I kind of like the sunlight you see streaming across.  It does make the pictures harder to see so I have posted those alone as well.  The saying was something I instantly adored and naturally I found it on Pinterest. 

And the prints - well normally something like this would run $30 each at a printing place but I opted for an Engineering print instead.  It's printed on really thin paper and only prints in black in white.  I had already converted all of the pictures to black and white anyway so that they would flow more easily together.  It's not the highest quality print, but it still looks great in the frames, and hey, you can't beat $5 each. This project cost me no more than $60 total!  Which makes me incredibly happy. 

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What the Caterpillar Calls the End of the World . . .

You know the saying right?  My core group of crafty gals do a gift exchange every year.  The first year we did it at Christmastime and realized quickly how badly that sucked, because HELLO! no one is more in demand right before Christmas than paper crafters!  

But, it's fun, and frankly no one appreciates the work paper crafters do like other paper crafters so we pushed on.  In order to take the pressure off we decided to move the gift exchange to the spring.  Call it Christmas in March.  We exchange wish list items and include one home made item for our elf.  Strange we call them elves, considering we are doing the shopping and creating . . . I digress.  Anyway, the long and short of it is that my *elf* loves butterflies, and since I had recently made a canvas I was in the mood to do that again.  Plus, butterflies are pretty, fun to layer, and well, who doesn't love butterflies?

I cannot tell a lie, I did not execute the magnificent painting on this canvas.  I farmed that out to my mother in law, artiste extraordinaire that she is.  Everything else is mine though!  I hope my elf likes it because I freakin' love it! 

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Sandora Family Mission Statement

Because I just had to do another one.  I love the way they look, what they stand for.  Everyone should have one. I put lots of hours for this version which is even bigger and better than mine.  It measures two and a half feet by seven feet!  My friend had a lot to say . . .

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I Love You To The Moon And Back

Hello everyone!  It's taken me some time to nurse my Superbowl wounds.  Let us not even speak of it any further!  Now, I've been crafting here and there, and have an interesting project to share with you today.  A good friend of mine recently approached me and asked me to help her design a canvas for her sister's two little girls.  I've spent some time scrapbooking them in the past, and since I've never done anything like this I was up for the challenge.  We started with a 18 x 24 canvas.  I am no painter, but my mother in law is and that came in handy.  She painted the ombre background for us, going from a night sky into a bright day.  We added some stencils and painted on the moon and some stars with gold and silver glitter paint.  We then added the phrase that I cut out of vinyl.  We found the fairies on the net and traced them into Silhouette and cut them out several times using the new Silhouette chipboard.  Some grass, a few butterflies, clouds and flowers later we were done.  I really, do love the way this turned out.  Her nieces will get to see this new creation for their bedroom this Sunday.  I hope they like it!

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Friduss Four Life

I recently made some pillows!  Okay, not exactly.  I recently cut out some heat transfer vinyl and applied it to pillows!  That's more accurate.  And I love, love, love them.  I actually have three more that I will share on another day.

"Live Each Moment" and the "Family" saying on the last pillow are files that I purchased from the Silhouette store.  I designed the Friduss Four Life myself.  Super duper easy and I love when it's easy AND the final product turns out great.

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Friduss Family Mission Statement v 2.0

It's the end of the year and my family has spent a bit of time reflecting on this past year.  My husband and I sat down to re-write our family mission statement because where our kids are today, well, we felt like we needed an update.  We kept the things that we need to continue to work on as individuals and as a family, and added some new ones.  Always one to try to outdue myself (working on that!), I wanted this one to more closely resemble actual subway art than the last one.  And so with a few ideas I got to work using Make the Cut.   

It's in the same spot as the last one - our kitchen which looks out to our deck.  Yes, it is big.  I was initially going for something that would be 2' x around 4' but once I got into the design program I quickly figured out it would have to be bigger.  So it's actually 2' by about 6.5'.  I know, right?!  

Thankfully a good friend of mine has a sign shop and she was able to cut it for me on her machine using a roll of vinyl I purchased.  Weeding was NOT the time of my life, however, the actual application was a breeze.  We decided it would be easiest to cut it into five pieces from top to bottom and they all went on like buttah!  I also added a collage of photos of the four of us through the years to hang next to it.   

I am super stoked at how great this turned out.  It took me five days of designing to get it just the way I wanted it.  Make the Cut was an easy choice because I needed to able to export it in a file format my friend's sign shop could use, and really that program is much better at manipulating fonts than the Silhouette Studio.  There are probably at close to twenty different fonts.  I honestly lost count. 

So there it is.  The Friduss Family Mission Statement v 2.0.  We're moving into 2014 with the right frame of mind for sure.

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Dust Devils Move It Move It!

A good friend of mine has a daughter who plays softball.  Every year they have a contest for the best team banner and the prize is nothing to sneeze at - it's a sizable amount of money for the team's end of the season party.  My friend is fairly crafty and incredibly competitive so she jumped into this one with both feet.  I helped a bit with the design and lots of the cutting and there you have it.  This is the banner and it's great if I do say so myself.  In case you're wondering - yes, it won!

We used DCWV's Tie Dye 2 paper, laminated it, and set them on action wobbles so not only is the banner really cute - it's interactive! 

This was totally outside of my wheelhouse and because of that a lot of fun.  I am sure the girls are going to enjoy the year end party like never before!

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Our Little Lambs Vinyl Frame

Happy New Year's Eve everyone!  Are you ready for 2013?  Because it's going to be here in less than two hours on the East Coast.  My family and I had a really wonderful Christmas and I have enjoyed not working,  hanging out at home, and a few home projects.  Yesterday Brandy and I tackled my storage room.  Again.  Sadly we did this a few years ago and well, we've let it go to hell since then.  So eight hours of hard manual labor later I have a room that I can again walk in and even a new storage section for my craft room overflow.  Yes!  My craft room is a less cluttered place today and I am once again feeling creative in here.  This evening I spent a few hours putting together this vinyl on a frame that Brandy brought me to give to her mother.  She and her family recently took some family photos and this is a collage of her three angels.

I did a little something different with this frame than I usually do.  I used spellbinders dies for the corner flourishes and the middle flourish.  I'm not sure why I've waited so long to use them because I love the way they look and it was much easier than using my Silhouette.  I have so many of these dies I haven't used yet and the ornate ones lend themselves perfectly this type of project.  I already sent Brandy a picture of it and she's decided she wants one for her office now.  I should be flattered right?  She knows I love her and these kids. Great pics by the way.  They were taken by a local photographer, Lisa Polucci.  You might recall that she was the photographer who shot this fantastic photo of Brandy's oldest son that I scrapped earlier this year.  This photo still melts my heart every time I see it.

Be blessed and safe tonight and I'll see you in 2013!

Craft Room Wall Art . . . In Accordance with Necessity

I've been moved by this saying every since I saw it a few months ago.  It even made an appearance in Saturday Morning Musings (something I need to get back to, I know).  Since the holidays have come around I've been playing with etching, and vinyl a lot more.  I've had this blank spot on my craft room wall for quite some time and I thought this quote was just the thing.

I used my Cameo to cut everything out, and I really love this, especially the flower behind the quite. 

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Baby Shower Bucket

I haven't played with vinyl is sooooooo long!  But I did tonight.  Brandy came over and we decorated a silver bucket that another friend is going to use for a baby shower gift.  It's a boy and apparently the Mom to be is going with a Lion King theme.  I can work with anything safari.  Ha!  Here's what we came up with:

This was such fun to make.  And it only took a few hours.  Brandy is the queen of weeding which is great because I LOATHE doing it.  I am hoping our friend will take a picture when it's all filled up with baby goodness and I can come back and share that with you as well.

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