Tea Cup Instructions

I have had a few requests for instructions on how to assemble the tea cup design for the Silhouette. So here the are!

Home Ec Here I come!

I am extremely excited for a "Home Ec" Class that I just signed up for from the Rachel Denbow (you can check out her awesome blog here). It's a 5 week online beginner's sewing class with 26 projects, and you learn a new sewing technique with each project. I am stoked to actually learn the right way to use my sewing machine. Not to mention, I think its time I know how to make more than pajama pants.

Here are a few things that I am excited to learn to make:

Fabric Cubby/Tray

Hanging Shoe Organizer

Flying Geese Quilt

Bahh now I just have to hope that I follow thru and do all the lessons!

Wedding Shower Invites

I am in love with these new wedding shower invitations that I just designed for  my etsy shop.

Being a mac user, I have been having problems figuring out how to use the print and cut feature of my Silhouette. I usually just cut it out right from Illustrator with the Mac Plugin.

So, when I finally figured out a way to use it to produce all my own custom design ideas that I have been storing in a little file in my head, I pretty much died of excitement (My sister can testify of this. I have bugged her about it like 6 times in the last 24 hours!).

I am selling this in my store as the actual invites that I would ship to anyone would purchase. However, I am wondering if any Silhouette owners would be interested in buying the personalized design files (for this or anything else I have in my shop that I cut out)? If so, send me a convo thru etsy, and I can sell you just the cut files!

Tea Cup

After I finished designing this for the Silhouette, I thought, "Now I need to plan some kind of party just so that I can use this tea cup!" It would make a great favor holder or gift box.

Look for it this week in the Silhouette Online Store!

while browsing the interweb...

I ran across this site. The Paper Place. It has beautiful paper and good web design! I fell in love. I may need to purchase some of this paper. For what, I'm not sure!

Elephant POOP wedding bouquet

I wanted to post a few photos of what I have been working on this week.

I had a customer contact me via etsy who is having a Green Wedding. She asked if I could make her wedding flowers out of non-tree paper. I had never thought about it, but I figured I could find a way to make it work.

I found a site online who sells paper that is 75% elephant dung. yes. you read right. ELEPHANT POOP. (disclaimer: it doesn't smell like pooh! Thankfully! What bride would want a bouquet that smells like pooh?)

Pearl Paper

I recently designed some bridal shower invites for a friend. She wanted to have one of the colors be silver on the invite-- but still keep the printing prices relatively low. That pretty much ruled out the use of a silver spot color. However, my sister-in-law referred me to Prodigitalphotos.com where they print on this awesome metallic paper! They call it pearl paper on their order forms. I just received the invites in the mail yesterday, and they grey color totally turned out silvery! It was like Christmas!



I don't think you can really see the metallic finish in this pic, but here is the design of the card. Throwing a tropical bridal shower yourself? Check out my etsy store to purchase this card design!

Adirondack Stencil Tutorial

I have been thinking for a while about patio furniture and what I want. Prior to yesterday, JB and I have been using our camp chairs on the back porch. Sad, I know!

So, yesterday I went to Lowe's and purchased 4 Adirondack chairs. I was planning on buying tan ones and then spray painting the whole surface of each chair into different crazy colors, but I was pleasantly surprised to find these blue ones already there. I love the color of them, plus leaving them blue cut the work in half, which I am all in favor of!

Ok. So here is the process:

1. Wash the chairs. Make sure they are really clean.
2. Cut out stencils (on my silhouette, of course) of the designs I wanted to use. I will provide free downloads at the end of this post!


3. I sprayed a light layer of spray adhesive on the back side of each stencil before i put it on the chair. This way, the spray paint doesn't leak under the sides of the stencil. After I put the stencil where I wanted it, I covered the surrounding area with newspaper, using masking tape to secure it.


4. I then applied a thin layer of spray paint the chair, where the stencil is. After waiting a few moments, I pulled off the newspaper and stencil, and started on the next spot.

**because I am not a patient person, I did one portion right after the other. But, I was really careful not to touch the previous sprayed sections with the other stencils or even the newspaper. Doing so will smear the paint!



I am including cut files for the flower stencil used on two of the chairs pictured above.

Here are the links to download a zipped folder of cut files (.svg and .gsd) and also a .pdf for anyone who wants to go at it with an exacto knife. There are so many possibilities for their use. You could use them to stencil a wall, a bag (I think I am going to take them to a canvas tote next), or a scrapbook page. If you do use them, I would love to see! Also, these files are for personal use only.

4th of July

For the 4th of July, JB and I went up to Utah to visit family. The kids went on a treasure hunt and got a bunch of glow sticks. I had a blast playing with the shutter speed on my camera, and they were good sports trying to hold still for the shots!