Diana's advent calendar Project #3

Project #2 for Black Friday project class

Here it is! It's a 25 Drawer Treasure Chest. Kaiser Crafts (not affiliated with them) makes the drawers. The crafter decorates. The paper used was Echo Park's Holly Jolly Christmas 6x6 pads. For the purpose of the class, however, the paper crafts on the top of the Treasure Chest are not included; I only wanted to show you a way to decorate. Perhaps you have some miniature Christmas village pieces or something.

The Cricut Cartridge (not affiliated with Prove Craft) I used for this project (my version) was Winter Woodlands. I did not realize my snowman would come out so big. Likewise, I did not realize my house would come out so small. I could have gone an inch shorter on the snowman and an inch taller on the #D house. I am going to explore my carts and see what else I can cut out to decorate my 3D house :-)

The banner, numbers, and letters are 3 different Tim Holtz Alterations die strips (not affiliated with Tim or Sizzix). The "snow" is cotton. Michael's pissed me off extra special today so I didn't feel like giving them any more of my money that I didn't have to give by purchasing one of those Christmas snow blankets. Cotton is cheaper even if I had to spend time pulling it apart and gluing together. Also, the only reason I cut out my own numbers is because I lost the cardstock pieces that came with the Treasure Chest.

Diana and I are still talking about pricing for the Black Friday workshop class but I promise it will be soon. I will post pics of her projects as well soon. She is doing an advent calendar and tags:

A great way to store and identify your Distress Stains

I don't know if anyone already thought of this. Sorry if they did. I was working with my Distress Stains this weekend (project viewing coming soon) and realized that I did not like pulling all of my stains out of the drawer to look at the front of the bottle for the color name. BOOOOOO! So...I dabbed a circle of each color on a piece of paper, carefully lining up the bottles so I wouldn't get them mixed up and confused, punched a circle (3/4" punch), ran the circles through my Xyron in an orderly fashion (again, so I wouldn't get them mixed up and confused), stuck the circles on the caps of the bottle, and voila!

Yes, those are my Smooches behind the stains in my drawer.

:-)

 

Freda

Blogger update

Hi everyone! Apparently my bright idea to have my comment permissions set to only those who follow this blog backfired. Soooooo, I've adjusted those settings. My thinking was to make life easier for me for the next time I have blog candy to share and wanted to be a little bit more efficient so I didn't have to verify if those who replied were indeed blog followers. However, and this is how it backfired, when I post my projects, unfortunately people couldn't just comment and give me some blog love. Therefore, I've lifted that restriction and in the future I will go back to verifying blog followers the old fashioned way the next time I have blog candy up for grabs :-)

Have a great weekend all! I will have another cool project to share with ya'll soon.

Freda

Christmas Shape book

 Hello all! It's been VERY busy around my home lately but I'm trying to find time to work on projects and show you some really cool stuff. Now, what I'm about to share with you is not really an original Scrap-a-rama design; I must give credit where credit is due. It's originally from Bug Junkie and I purchased the file from her. No, I am not going to share the file; if you want the file you will need to go over to her blog and purchase it (or take my Black Friday Project Class to get all the pieces to put together). But I did "tweak" it a little bit and added a Tim Holtz inspired tag to the front.

The paper used in this books is Echo Parks Holly Jolly Christmas

I am not affiliated with Bug Junkie in any way. Just thought she had a really cool shape book which I learned about from one of the yahoo groups I frequent :-).

New ribbon rack!!!!!!

Yup! I have a new ribbon rack! ?This really beats using dowel sticks - which I found to be very inefficient. I wish I could remember the person's blog where I got the idea for my new ribbon rack. Her's was on a much smaller scale; and she shared on her blog the instructions her husband used to make the rack. Anyway, I'm still organizing, and obviously I barely have enough space for all my ribbon, lol, but I will have it (eventually) how I want it. Right now it's organized according to holidays/seasons, themes, and color. BUT, I have duplicate rolls so I have to find and remove those and put them on the top shelf. So with no further adieu:

ok, that was my nutty DH. I was trying to get a pic of the sections before he brought them upstairs but he jumped in front of the camera just as I was taking it. There were four parts to the rack, left, right, bottom, top. That's because there is a chair rail and we had to work around that. The four parts is so the entire unit was not too heavy. So here it is, for real this time!:

 

All that's left is adhering the 3 inch rhinestones all the way around the black border!

Oh, on the front of the shelves on the ribbon rack is molding strip. That is what creates a gutter so the ribbon rolls stay in place. :-). that was part of the original instructions on that crafter's blog (who's name I can't remember).

Enjoy! 

Freda

My Princess Castle Cake

Ok, I know I've been incognito lately. It has been busy BUSY BUSY around the house ever since we returned from vacation. Anyway, it's starting to calm down a bit and I think I may actually get back to "work" now on scrapping (yay!).

However, today DH's son and family came over for a little birthday celebration for one of the grandkids. DH, knowing how resourceful I am (and that I worked in a bakery for 8 years with training in cake decoration) asked me to make a princess castle cake. He didn't know I had a saved video of one; I think he was expecting me to use my Cricut Cake Machine (nope!).

Anyway, I think it was someone from the frugal group who posted a link to a video on how to make a princess castel cake. I saved that link and made the cake. I wanted to show you all how easy it was to make. Here is the original video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqOP4iygW2k. The photo of the cake I made is below.

I also had time to make a few pennants for the towers. Those are S's on the pennants, not 5's. The birthday girl's name begins with an S. Unfortunately, the alphabet die I used, the s looks a little like a 5. BTW, the birthday girl ate the "tower" (the cake, not the ice cream cone).

Also, here is a little tip: If you are icing a cake it's better to freeze the layers before you frost them. If you need to level the layers you can still do that even if it's frozen. If you ice a frozen cake you will not get cake crumbs all over your icing. Therefore, I didn't have to take some of the steps shown in the video since I was armed with a little bit of cake decorating knowledge and I worked quickly so my layers remained frozen while I was icing the cake :-). So, yes, bake, cool a little, remove from pan, cool some more, wrap in saran wrap, and freeze.

Ok, tomorrow I *PROMISE* you another GREAT surprise!

Enjoy,

Freda