Project 365 photos

I've finished the 3rd week of Project 365. Here's what I had documented in my family's life through photos...

Now off to run some errands. Happy Tuesday everyone.

Till next time,

Grace

January Wreath + Tutorial

Happy Friday everyone. Feeling glad for the warmer weather!

One of my projects for this year is to make a wreath for my front door for every month of the year. A tall task so I'm crossing my fingers I'd be able to get this accomplished. For January, I decided to make a "winter themed" wreath. Here's what I made...

thank you to Pinterest, I was able to gather so many different ideas that I incorporated in my wreath. To follow me on Pinterest, you can always click on the red Pinterest banner on my side bar. :)

 I used blue yarn to wrap around my foam circle and white felt for my flowers. I also used some twigs to give it that natural look.

Here's the tutorial....

What you'll need...
Foam circle or plumbing/pipe insulation. Found this trick here via Pinterest. It's cheaper than foam circles at the craft store. *wink*
Yarn (one big skein will do)
Felt, about 1/4 yard
Twigs
Glue Gun

These insulation tubes can be found at the Plumbing aisle of your hardware stores.

First, peel of the sticky tabs to close off your tube.

 2. Measure it into the circle you want it. I made mine bigger because my hubby doesn't like how my past wreaths have covered the peephole in our door. I secured the ends of the circle with some duct tape.

3. Wrap the yarn around the wreath. This part is a bit time consuming,especially if you have a big wreath to wrap. I did mine while overseeing my son do homework and while watching TV. Secure your ends with glue gun or tying the ends together into a knot.

 4. Then cut 1" strips (about 36" in length) from the white felt.  You can cut as many as you want, I made 10 but only used 9 on my wreath.

5. Then I folded the feld in half and started to roll it into a bun.

6. Then I adhered the ends with some glue gun.

7. Then my daughter and I went to the backyard and gathered some twigs.

8. Next, I assembled the wreath. I placed the twigs first, gluing it to the wreath and then adhering the felt flowers.

And here's where our wreath is displayed right now...

thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend.

Till next time,
Grace

WorldWin Projects

Today's share are a couple of WorldWin layouts that I made this month for my assignment with them. I made five and I'll share the others in another blog post. No need to crowd them all in one post. :)

100 Button Shirt

I have to say I really enjoy playing with cardstock and the challenge of making it the focus on my layouts. In this page, I used the Colormate papers for this in the following colors- Pink, Black, White, Slate, Cardinal Red, Blue and Spring Green. I grabbed the colors of the punched out circles from the buttons on my son's shirt. You can see the story of the 100 button shirt in this post.

I added a mesh stamp on each of the circles, using a combo of black and white ink so that the mesh image can show on both the dark and lighter colors cardtock. I also stamped my title on white cardstock and dry embossed the cardstock tag using a star design which I repeated in the star punched shapes I added to the layout.

A Cake Story

This story can be read here. For the layout, I focused on the fun Paper Layers collection. WorldWin had products pattern paper packs that are divided into smaller square blocks that are great to use with your die cut machine. One side of the paper has a whole page of one design and then the other side has 9 blocks of smaller squares with different colors of one design. I used those blocks to create my layered flowers which I had cut from my Cricut machine.

I decided to add some WorldWin Vellum between my layers to give the flowers some added soft touch/feel to it.

I also used the WorldWin Vellum to print out my computer generated title and journaling.

So there you have it. All Cardstock, Vellum and Pattern papers were from WorldWin and the pages were made using Glue Arts Adhesive.

till next time,
Grace

Boxes of Scrapbook Supplies for sale

A second post today. :)

Last week, a great friend let me have one of her shelves and that prompted me into major overhauling of my scrapbook room. I spend all day organizing and doing some major purging with my supplies.

So because of that, I was able to fill up three medium flat rate USPS boxes with scrapbook supplies and I was wondering if any of my blog readers would be interested in purchasing these boxes from me for a small amount.

These boxes contain new (never been used/opened) and slightly used products. There's about 4-5 packs of pattern paper, 2-3 mini albums, magazines, flowers, chipboards, ribbons, tags, journaling spots/blocks and adhesive. Pretty much everything you need to get crafting! And they are from some popular manufacturers like GCD Studios, Cosmo Cricket, Clear Scraps, SEI, Scrapbook Trends Magazine, Scenic Route and Maya Road to name a few. I have three boxes to sell and here they are....

as you can see, the boxes are filled and products are squeezed in there to give you the best bang for you buck!

So here's the deal-o....
-Each box is worth $30 and shipping is a flat rate price of $11.
-The first three people that can email me their paypal addy at graceelainetolmanatyahoodotcom will get the boxes.
-If you live locally and would want to forgo the shipping, email me too and we'll talk about logistics and time of pick up.

Although I'm not giving these products away, know that they're still my own little way of spreading the blessings I get from this craft. If you can see in the photos, there are a TON of supplies that you will get for your money. These items retail for 4x more than what I'm asking. Some of the mini albums are already over $15 per piece and paper packs are over $10 a piece.

Till next time,
Grace

Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument

So Saturday's Excursions are slowling coming back into our routines. If you have been following my blog last year, you know that in the beginning of the year, my family and I had gone out and explored fun spots in and around Colorado Springs. It was our own little way of "getting to know" our new home. Well because of work and other obligations, our excursions was put on the way side by mid year. So I'm just super excited when the family and I were able to get out on Satuday and discover a new place......

Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument is about a 45 minute drive west of Colorado Springs. The drive was pretty but we didn't expect to be walking through snow! About two nights before the weekend, I was watching the news, and they had announced that between Jan 14th and 16th, that all National Parks and Monuments will have these days as a free admission days. They had mentioned that there's two in our area which is the Sand Dunes and then The Florissant Fossil Monument. Sand Dunes was a bit far for us and we were having the missionaries for dinner so we chose the closer place.

We first stopped by the Visitor Center where we saw some fossill rocks, artifacts and even got to touch a petrified wood. While reading through the many information in and around the area, we found out that about 35 million years ago, Colorado was a much warmer area and that gian redwood trees existed in the area. During this time, there was a volcano in the area that erupted. The eruption caused those trees to fall and the stumps were covered by the ash. This had preserved the redwoods and made the wood petrified. Some really cool stuff!

After the visitor center, we took a short 1-mile hike around the Petrified Forest Loop. So when settlers started to reside in the area, they had dug up these stumps and made it a tourist area. It had gotten bad though because people would take these petrified woods home with them as a souvenir and the stumps gotten smaller in numbers so they made the area a national monument to preserve what was left here.

It was a beautiful area to look at but again, we weren't expecting the snow.

Here's one of the stumps in display. They have fenced most of these stumps so people don't attempt to take any wood pieces home.

Most of the trail were covered with snow.

the children were very excited at the snow and at times would run to the nearest pile and walk in deep snow. We lost count of how many times we had told Maddie that her shoes weren't made for playing in the snow!

Here's one of the biggest stumps on display. As you can see, Mitch and Maddie don't compare with the size of this stump and to think this is just a part of a big tree. I can only image how tall and huge these redwoods must have been.

The hike wasn't too long but it was definitely cold. But we survived it and we're glad that we made this trip out to the Florissant Fossil Bed Monument. Plus it's free so you can't beat that!  Marcus was a bit disappointed bec. he thought we were going to see dinosaur fossills. We had to tell him that fossills doesn't always mean dinosaurs all the time. Funny kid.

Till next time,

Grace

Chore Chart + Tutorial

I've had a few projects that I've been meaning to share with you and this week is the week where my brain in finally functioning and I can get that task done. :)

First off is my children's new chore charts. Now they're not fancy but with the help of Pinterest, I was able to think of a cute project that the kids not only make themselves but also will motivate them to do the chores listed on their boards. Here's the finished projects...

When I make projects, the functionality of the item is always the first thing to consider. I've done a chore charts before for the kids where it was a weekly type chart. It worked for us but this time, I'd like some flexibility in it so I opted with the two colums of to-do and done on there.

I found this really cute printables through pinterest and decided that I would go with these instead of trying to make my own. It had all of the usual chores like setting table, cleaning room and taking trash out. They even have boy and girl ones for making bed or brushing teeth. I didn't need to print more than one sheet bec. it had everything I needed there.

The chore charts that I've seen in Pinterest that were similar used magnets but I opted for Velcro bec. (a) I have it on hand already; (b) I don't have to invest in magnetized board. Again I was going for cheap and using what I have on hand.

Ok so for the tutorial....

Here's what you'll need....
clipboards (bought mine at the dollar store)
Pattern papers *you can make your child pick this or pick her/his fave colors to use
Letter stickers *you can make your child pick this or pick her/his fave colors to use
corner rounder punch
ruler
pen/marker
scissor
pencil
sanding block
Velcro (I used one with sticky backs)
Printable chore chart clip art
Cardstock
Contact Paper (can be found at the shelving or kitchen aisle of your local Walmart or Target)

Instructions: (sorry some don't have photos)
1. First off, measure your clip board and cut paper to this measurement. I measured around the clip part and made a template from scrap paper which I used to mark the back of my paper. I then cut this space out of my paper. Round all four corners with the punch.

2. Have your child (or you) adhere your paper on the front of the board. I didn't bother covering the back because it's going on the wall anyways. But you can cover the back too if you so desire.

3. With sanding block or paper, Distress the edges of the board. This will give your clipboard a finished look. A sanding block works well with kids, it's big enough in their hands that they won't hurt themselves.

4. Cut another piece of paper that is about the size of a printer paper (8 1/2 x 11"). I decided to do this so incase we no longer want our boards to be chore charts, we can just slip off the chart paper and use the board for something else. Next, make lines where your child's name will go and the division between your columns. Highlight these lines with pen or marker.

5. Have child (or you) place their name on the top line and then the "to-do" on the left column and "done" on the right side. Cover the whole piece of paper (front and back)  with contact paper and trim leaving about 1/4" all around with contact paper to seal the paper inside. If you've never worked with contact paper before, this is a cheaper version of laminating your paper. It gives it that water/mess proof finish.

6. Cut the blocks of chore clip art and then adhere them to cardstock. Trim cardstock leaving a small space matting the chore chart blocks all around. Wrap these blocks with contact paper and trim, leaving a little piece of contact paper all around the blocks to seal the papers.

7. Add pieces of the Velcro (we used the smooth side) on the back of each chore chart block. Add 8 of the other side (rough side) of the Velcro under each column.

8. Slip your paper on the clipboard and start filling up your chore charts with items that you or your child want to accomplish that day!

For the extra chore blocks that we are not needing that day, we just store them in a small ziploc bag.

This chart doesn't have a reward block (something that our old one had) but I'm noticing that my kids, especially my son, felt that he "deserved" a reward everytime he did some work. I didn't like that mentality because I want him to learn that he does chores JUST BECAUSE HE'S PART OF OUR FAMILY. No special rewards for doing his part at home. But if you think (especially if you have younger ones) that rewards will be a better motivation for your kiddos, then try to intergrate that with your chart. :)

So that's it. I hope that this inspired you to make something crafty with your kids today.

till next time,

Grace