Stocking Gift Card Holder

I've kinda thought that gift cards are a bit impersonal when it comes to gift giving. However, it's very convenient, and generally well accepted, so it works. This gift card holder gives a bit of personality to the gift card you give. This holder would also work well for a small gift.

1.  First create a template of the size of stocking you will be using.

2.  Fold a bit of fabric, right side together

3.  Trace your template onto the folded fabric and pin fabric together.

4.  Cut the folded fabric.

5.  You should now have two pieces of stocking shaped fabrics with right sides facing together, and pinned. Fold down (into the wrong side) the top of each fabric by about half an inch and pin (see image).

6.  For each fabric, sew down the folded top.

7.  If you've unpinned the fabrics, pin them back right side together.

8.  Sew around the stocking.

9.  Turn the stocking right side out.

10.  Put your gift card or small gift in, and give it away. :)

Quilted Christmas Card

For me, this is the time of year when I finally decide on what I actually want to do for Christmas cards.    Here is an easy homemade card to sew up.

What you need:

- felt

- ribbon

- fabric

- tape (I used painters tape, but masking tape would work well too.  Not sure about scotch tape.)

- card stock

How to:

1. Cut a felt triangle, it doesn't have to be perfect, but make sure it fits the envelop you want to use, if you plan to place it in an envelop.

2. Cut a fabric triangle about a half inch larger (all around) than the felt.  Place felt on top of the wrong side of the fabric.

3.  Starting with the corners, fold fabric over the felt.  Tape down the corners with a small bit of tape.  Try not to tape on to the other side of the felt.  Fold in the edges.

4. Cut some card stock roughly larger than the size of the triangle.  You can cut it the size of the felt, but I found that it was difficult to sew it in place.

5.  Sew the card stock onto the back of the fabric/felt triangle.  On the very top corner, stick a ribbon loop in before sewing.

6.  Trim the card stock to the size of the triangle.

7.  Glue a piece of ribbon around the card to cover the sew line. 

8.  That's it.  You can write your message on the card stock and send it away.  

Happy Holiday Crafting!

Quick Post Amazon's 25 Days of Free

Just a quick post:

Amazon's doing their 25 Days of Free mp3 music again this year.  Every day from December 1st to the 25th, they are giving away a holiday song for free.  http://amzn.to/hqt43H  Okay, so I usually wait till the 24th or 25th, and download all the ones I want then, but you can go in and download them daily if you want something to listen to before Christmas. :)

Happy Listening! :)

DIY Christmas Ideas

It's that time of year again... where we start trying to think of good christmas gifts to give the special people in our lives.  Here are some Do It Yourself Christmas ideas that may make a special gift and maybe save you some money in the process.

Marble Painted Glass Ornaments

As promised a while ago, I'm finally posting this tutorial on marble painted glass ornaments. I can't say that I fully perfected it, so I may on occasion add new tips as I learn them.  This is a simple, elegant, and inexpensive ornament that can be given as a gift or used to add special decorative touches to your Christmas tree.  I received one of these as a gift a few years ago, and have always wondered how to make them.  Well, with a bit of googling, I found what I needed.  Here's how to do them.

Materials:
 - plain glass ornaments (I like buying them on the after-christmas sales because I've seen them for as much as 70% off).
 - paints of different colors. (these cheap acrylic paints seem to work just fine and are available in many different colors.
 - small cup to hold/catch  excess paint.
 - straw (optional)
 - ribbon for finishing touches

How to:

1. Remove the metal cap of the glass ornament.

2. Add a few drops of each paint within the ornament, that you want to include.  Try dropping the paint in random locations within the glass ornament.  I used 3 - 4 drops of each of the 6 paints in the picture.

2a. This is an optional step.  As an added way of spreading the paint around, you can use a straw to blow the paint around the inside of the ornament.


3. Slowly rotate the ornament to cover the inside surface of the ornament.  You may choose to occasionally let the ornament sit for a few hours before continuing to rotate and cover the inside surface.  While you rotate the ornament, you'll begin to get more of a marbling effect on the paint.  By letting the ornament sit for a few hours here and there, you get less vertical lines when you begin to drain.

4. Once the inside surface of the ornament is completely covered in paint, you are ready to drain.  Place the ornament upside down (with the opening faced down) on a small plastic cup.  The paint will slowly drain out of the ornament and into the cup.  Allow it to dry for several days, a week to be safe.  (Seriously, it takes this long for it to fully dry).

5.  Once it's fully dry, put the metal cap back onto the ornament. Tie a ribbon on with a bow, and as a hanger for the ornament.

And that's it.  Ready for your decorating or gift giving pleasure.  Sorry it took so long to post this up. At least it's ready for next year. :-)

Super Easy Wooden Clothspin Gift Tags

Here's another option for fancy homemade gift tags.  It takes a bit more time to make than my fabric gift tags but it really brings out the individuality of each gift.  With some precut wooden shapes from Michael's and some wooden clothspins, you have yourself some inexpensive and super easy wooden gift tags.  So, here's how I made them.

Materials:

 - precut wooden shapes from Michael's

 - clothspin

 - tacky glue (or wood glue, whatever you have on hand).

 - various paints for paint wood  and a paint brush.

 - Sharpie pen to write the name.  You can paint it on too, but I'm just not that talented. :-)

Preferably you'll want to pick shapes that will cover the clothspin completely.  I've played around with shortening the cloths pin by just cutting of a small amount of each side, but really, it's just easier to pick different shapes.  You might get away with cutting just one side (the one that's getting glued to the wooden shape) - but I haven't tried it (if you try it, please let me know how it goes).

1.  Put a small amount of glue onto one side of the cloths pin, as shown and glue it onto the back of the wooden shape. You'll know which side the back is by where the sticker was located and let me tell you, those stickers do not like coming off. I'm just saying.  If you're wooden shape isn't completely flat, you might need to clamp it down some way while the glue dries.  I just used a hair tie to hold it in place.  Just let it dry now.

2.  Once it's dry, you can remove the clamp, and clip it onto somewhere.  It sure does make it handy to paint.  Paint to your liking.

 

3.  Write in the name and clip to gift.

Gosh, I have more pictures than I do steps.  See I told you it was easy.

Happy Gifting!

(oh, and yeah, I do realize that Christmas is two months away. :-)  but if someone can request my Christmas wishlist this early, I can start posting Christmas crafts this early. hehe.  Besides, those two months go by fast.)

Christmas Card Designs 2008

Okay, so Christmas is over. So you might ask, why in the world am I putting out a Christmas post. I'd like to say that I love this season so much I'm trying to prolong it as much as possible. I do love this season but the truth is, I've been holding on to this post so it would be a surprise to the people I give the cards to. Since I've given the majority of the cards, it's about time to share my other designs. Besides, it's never too early to start planning for the next Christmas season, right? :-) Anyway, hope you guys like them.

Easy Gift Card Holders

As Christmas gifts, since we usually end up having to travel in a car with our dogs and our luggage and several gifts, it has become easier to resort to giving the impersonal gift cards. Oh well. So, as an effort to make it a bit more personal, I decided to make my own gift card holder. :-) Anyway, I found this site that showed how to make Easy Peasy Snap Wallets and basically used the same technique with Christmas fabric and called them giftcard holders.


Here's how I did it:
Materials:

• fabric (in this case Christmas... but can easily be for a birthday or any other occasion)

• interfacing (I don't know if this is really necessary, but it does make it slightly thicker to have)

• easy no sew snaps (trust me, these are the way to go if you are a beginner to sewing – super easy to use.)

*Please note that I started making one wallet with one fabric then decided to use another fabric afterwards because the details showed better on it. Sorry if that makes it confusing.

Instructions:

1. Cut your fabric. You need two rectangles that are about 5 x 8.5 (I cut out a piece of paper to that shape as a guide.... and yes, TigerDirect.com is pretty awesome).


2. Cut your interfacing. You just need one rectangle of this... about 4 x 7.5, basically enough to cover the center area of one of the rectangle so it doesn't hit the sewing line.

3. Iron the interfacing on one of the rectangle fabrics (onto the wrong side of the fabric). You'll want to center the interfacing onto one of the rectangles and make sure that the smooth side is on top and the bumpy side is on the bottom. Then go ahead and iron it on, it should take a few seconds on each area. The interfacing will basically attach itself to the fabric.

4. Sew together the two rectangles with the right sides together and the wrong sides away from each other. You'll sew almost all the way around leaving a small opening in the middle of one of the small sides. See the picture for the sewing line. The small opening is on the right side.



5.Cut the corners off. This gives you cleaner corners when you invert the fabric.


6. Invert the fabric by pulling the inside out and the outside in.

7. Use a pen to form the corners from the inside.


8. Optional: Here I try to iron down the long edges flat on the sewing line. This makes a cleaner fold when you fold down on the sewing line. (I actually did this after step 10 then did step 9 again, but it probably would have made more sense to do it on before step 9.

9. Iron the edges of the rectangle. Particularly, fold and iron in the opening so that the edge is straight


10. Sew the edge with an opening from long side to long side.

11. Fold up the side with the sewn edge to form the pocket area.

12. Sew along both side edges, do a small reverse sew right where the folded up edge meets with the rest of the fabric.

13. You're done at this point. The only thing left to do is to add on the snaps. The craft blog (craftster.org) where I found the original easy peasy wallets also do a great job of explaining how to add on these snaps to the wallet. I wanted to do the instructions for these as well but, my pictures didn't come out... so just follow the instructions on the craftster site. Sorry!

14. Put the gift cards in, attach a gift tag inside, and give the gift to someone special.

I hope that gives an idea for this Christmas (tho, it might be a little late, sorry again), or maybe for other gifts throughout the year.... or maybe for a wallet or for a business card holder, or whatever. I've recently made a camo one to store some gift cards that I've recently received.
Also, as this will probably be the last post that I'll put out before Christmas, I'd like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

Christmas Goodies

So, this past week was pretty hectic: shopping for Christmas gifts, several parties, all the wrapping, and packing to get out of town, to enjoy some decent baking to give cookies to the neighbors and to enjoy some for us. Phew! I think I'm finally about done (minus the packing). Anyway, I kinda feel bad that I don't have pictures along the way, but I decided to do a post on all the baking along with the recipes of the stuff I made. So here they are in no specific order. :-) I think I may have overdone it a bit.

Gingerbread cookies : I actually just wanted to decorate some cookies... I would have done a house, but those don't travel well. (maybe, a gingerbread car next year -- would be really cool to hook up a motor too? haha... I'm only half serious.)


Cranberry-Coconut Oatmeal cookies (I used a regular oatmeal cookies recipe, below, and added craisans and shredded coconut, very yummy)


Oatmeal Cookies: My cousin's fav.

Fudge with Marshmallows (My friend and I have dubbed this Geek Fudge because it's from one of the coolest foodie sites ever. I've mentioned before Cooking for Engineers)

Reese Peanut Butter Cup Cookies. I bought a bucket of cookie dough from one of my neighbor's kids for a school fundraiser. It's for a good cause, and it was easy and quick.

Fudge Brownies. I cheated here, this is from a boxed fudge brownie's set. It was in the cupboard, so I decided to go ahead and use it. Also easy and quick, and yummy.


Awesome Banana Muffins: These muffins are really good, and not overly sweet.


And that was my Sunday! Now to finish packing! ugh!

Fabric Gift Tags

I was thinking about fusing some fabric onto cardstock one day, and decided to google up how to do it. Anyway, I found this site that shows how to make gift tags by fusing fabric onto cardstock. So, I gave it a try. Thought it would look really good with matching cinch bags like the ones I made a month or so ago. Anyway, here's my how-to.
Materials:

• Card stock
• fabric
• no sew adhesive (heat n bond) fusing material.
• Ironing board and iron
 

Download Template Here. (for 8 x 11 paper, not 12 x 12)


Instructions:
1. First, I start out with penciling the lines that I'm going to cut for the tags


2. Next, I cut the adhesive to the size of the cardstock.

3. The adhesive material has a paper side and the adhesive side. Put the adhesive side next to the wrong side of the cardstock (where you don't have the drawn lines). Place both the adhesive and the cardstock lined up on top of an ironing board with the adhesive's paper side up. Iron, the sheets together, staying at each spot for about 2 seconds. Once you've thoroughly fused the two pieces together your about ready to introduce the fabric.

4. Cut the fabric to the same size as the cardstock and adhesive.
5. Remove the paper side of the adhesive. The adhesive should stay with the cardstock as you peel the paper away.
6. Put together the fabric's wrong side to the cardstock's newly fused adhesive side and place onto ironing board fabric side up. Iron all together same rule as last time... about 2 seconds on each spot. Be careful when ironing the fabric on. Start with one side and work your way slowly to the other, or the fabric might bunch up. You should now have a good fuse between the cardstock and fabric. Let's finish it up.

7. Alright, so remember those lines you drew on? Time to use them and cut out your tags. Don't forget to erase the lines once your done.
8. Use a hole puncher, and punch a hole out for the ribbon. I used an 8” piece of ribbon for a tie down.

9. In addition, you can stamp on a To:/From: label onto the card... and there you have it. Optionally, instead of drawing lines or stamping, you can print out some gift tag designs onto cardstock and fuse fabric on the other side.

These cards pictured are about 1 1/2” x 3” and a 12 x 12 cardstock gave me 30 gift tags.

Now that that's all done, all I need to do is buy the gifts to tag. :-) Happy Shopping!