Zany for ZigZags

I'm not kidding... we are crazy for Chevron over here.  We're zigging and zagging, and we like it this way!

Wednesday started my feature on Gigi's Petals - Yep, you guessed it, Chevron Pillow Covers.  There's a few left of some of the colors - A Yellow & White Chevron is sitting on our couch as we speak!  I really like the pink and white one... if I had a little girl, she'd be forced to have one in her room!

Today my Chevron Pillow Covers are on GroopDeals Daily Deals website...

It's National Chevron Design Day over there and they're doing it right!  Look at all of the fun Chevron Pattern items...

I'm not gonna lie, I bought this necklace for myself... I love it!

This necklace was super cute too!  There's a limited quantity left, so hurry on over!  These would be great for an Easter Basket gift.

And can't you just see a few of these chevron table runners for different holidays?  I'm thinking the black and white for Halloween, the Coral & White would be great for summer, the Red and cream for Christmas... Maybe the Tiffany for Spring?

You can always check out my Etsy shop; Kutz, Paper, Scissors, and see any of the pillows, signs, whatever I've been working on there!  And if you tell me that you saw the deal on Gigi's Petals or Groopdealz, I'll honor the discount!

Have a great weekend - I'll be cutting and sewing and even working on some super cute Subway Signs - I'll share them next week!  Even my husband thinks they're awesome, which is something!

Next week I'll be sharing fun Easter projects, See you then!
Andrea

A Card To Match

When I was working on this month's Page's Design Team projects, one of the assignments was to make a card or layout with a handmade embellishment.  I made the pincushion and a card as a gift set...

My hand made embellishment is the button card...

I hand cut the button card from the back side of Her Bureau and sewed on buttons.  I also grabbed a paper doily and cut it in half and then fan folded it so it would have texture.  I added some gold glitter tulle on top of the doily because I love me some sparkle!

I punched the label and added some words from the OA Words Stickers along with some bling.  The ladies silhouette is a sticker from the Words sheet that is popped up off the scallop circle and covered with Crackle Glaze.

I used scraps from the Shadow box to add a little something in the top right corner along with a word sticker...  I also took a pair of scissors and rubbed the edge of the scissors along the paper to distress the papers and give them an antiqued look.

If you didn't see my past few projects, I had October Afternoon's Farmhouse line to play with, which I love and is used on the card!

I'll see you Friday with some Easter fun!
Andrea

Pinned Up Mondays

Good Morning,

Well, today is my Pinterest inspired project day!  Yay!  And my project is , quite literally, about pins!

Here was my inspiration...

{Photo courtesy of From makeit-loveit.com via Pinterest.com}

Aren't those SO pretty?  I love the idea of using a mason jar that you can store your sewing supplies in with a pin cushion on top...

So I made this for part of my Page's DT projects...



It was pretty simple, but I would do it a little, errr... a lot different.  I was trying to see which method would work best for the pincushion top, so I ended up cutting a circle from canvas fabric and then stuffing it with pillow fiber.  I then hot glued it to the inside of the rim of the lid.  I then glued on the top so that the stuffing didn't come out into the mason jar.  Next time I'll make it smaller and I'll sew the circle... so it doesn't look like such a huge bulbous mass on top!

From there I just started decorating the jar with scrap paper from OA's Farmhouse collection.  I also used a strip of burlap, since canvas and burlap seem to fit perfectly with the Farmhouse line!

I used the Word Stickers and punched paper to decorate the jar.  I added a little bit of ribbon and a button to give the jar a little umph.  And that was it!  I'm hoping to fill it with some sewing supplies and give it to a friend as a little "Thank You".

I'll be back Wednesday with more projects to share!
Andrea

Heart Garland Tutorial

Hello!

Today I'm sharing how you can create the heart garland from my Tray Shadow Box.  The garland was very easy and inexpensive to create, so let's get started!

Sewn Heart Garland

Supplies:
Fiskars Heart Punch (you could use a die instead of a punch)
Old Book Pages
Sewing Machine
Wet Glue (I used Scrappy Glue)
Distress Ink

You'll want to punch a lot of hearts from old book pages.  I used a book that I'd already read and was in the Goodwill box.

Ink the edges of all of your hearts.  This is the most time consuming part, and you don't have to do this step, but it does help since we're layering hearts.

Stack your hearts on top of each other (I used 2 different types of paper for the tutorial so you could see both easily)

Now start sewing!  You'll want to pull your machine and bobbin thread as long as you think you'll need for the tails of your banner and then start.  I don't backstitch, I just start at one end in the middle of the heart and keep going!

To create my banner, I just sewed to the end of one heart and then grabbed another heart and started sewing again.  If you want more space between your hearts, you can sew extra empty space with your machine before you start your next heart.

There you go!

Since I don't backstitch, I like to put a dab or glue at each ends, where I started and stopped sewing.

Fluff up your hearts by grabbing the top heart and folding it up.

And that's it!  So easy, you could do this with any shape and any paper!  I do use a light weight needle in my machine when I'm sewing on paper, but that's the only modification that I made to my machine and it's not necessary, I just like to make my needles last longer.

Have a great day!
Andrea

Page's Design Team Reveal

Hello!

Today I'm sharing my project from Page's March assignment. 

I had October Afternoon's Farm House Line, which I love!  If you remember, I primarily used Farm House for my 1 Sketch, 6 Cards set... I think it's such a versatile line, it's easy to use and play with and so pretty with the typical OA colors and vintage feel!

Tray Shadow Box

Supplies:
October Afternoon Farm House Her Bureau
October Afternoon Farm House Attic Trunk
October Afternoon Farm House Words Stickers
Wilton Cake Doily
Inksentials Crackle Glaze
Buttons
Dew Drops
Twine
EK Success Scallop Border Punch
Bazzil Cardstock
Pearl Ribbon
Tulle
Old Book Pages
Fiskars Heart Punch
Sewing Machine

I found this cardboard tray in the $1 Aisle at Target and loved the pattern - I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, but I knew that I could figure out something!

I started off with covering the bottom, inside of the tray with patterned paper.  I wasn't sure if I was going to leave this as a tray, but I started covering the sides with strips of border punched paper and ended up turning the tray into a shadow box. 

I started treating the shadow box as I would a page layout.  I started layering papers and stickers and did a lot of hand cutting from the Her Bureau sheet.

I also used a lot of dimensional tape to add height to the layout and keep it interesting.

I put crackle glass on the handcut key and Pride and Prejudice Book.  I added sparkly tulle behind the book for some extra pazzaz. 

And my final embellishment was this cute, sewn heart garland.  I draped it across the top of the box and a little down the sides.

And, of course, the cutest embellishment in the shadow is Little Miss Stella! 

Well, that's it for me today!  I hope this project makes you rethink how you can use a supply, like the tray, and create something that you want to display in your home!

I'll post the heart garland tutorial tomorrow, so check back in!

Have a great day!

Andrea

Pinned Down Mondays - St. Patty's Day Fun

Hello!
I know, I know, you might be groaning from all the corned beef and cabbage that you had over the weekend... and you might be over the whole Green thing, but, well, here - we're always into green.

Green is my little boys favorite color - always has been.  So, when we started talking about St. Patrick's Day at the beginning of the week, once I mentioned that EVERYONE had to wear green or get pinched, he was all in.  I got pinched since I stayed in my pj's for most of the day, Papa got pinched because he wasn't wearing green... we take our pinching duties seriously around here!

Anyway, the Husband was out of town this weekend and we normally go to a local restaurant every St. Patty's Day for their All-You-Can-Eat Patty's Day dinner, but since Alan was gone, I decided to have a potluck here.  We had some friends and their kids over and it was a lot of fun.  It was easy for me, I just threw the corned beef in the crock pot and walked away.  We also made rainbow chip cupcakes with homemade buttercream icing -

Sorry, I had to use my iPhone for these shots - here he is stirring...

And pouring in more sugar... there is a serious amount of confection sugar in buttercream icing...

Yup - I let him use the mixers.  I was nervous about this, but I was very serious when I told him how/where to put his hands and we never had the mixer above a low speed... Can you see how he bites his bottom lip while he concentrates?  I love that -

And since it was St. Patty's Day, I let him put as much green food coloring into the icing as he wanted.  He was pretty impressed that the icing changed color -

For the cupcakes I used a rainbow chip cake mix - which I thought was a pretty good and an easy alternative to doing a rainbow batter like I was originally planning that I had pinned on Pinterest...

These look super fun, but I was trying to take it easy and not over do-it, which I have a tendency to do...

But, I had to kind of over-do-it...

Adam and I did make little treat holder's to give to his friends - I used a 3-D Leprechaun Hat from Silhouette and they turned out so cute!  And very easy to assemble!

We filled each of the hats with a little bit of kraft shred and then "gold and silver"  - which were rolo's, peanut butter cups and kisses!  They were super cute!

That's it for us today!  See you Wednesday!
Andrea

Fun Bath with Sicky Boy

Hello!

Well, Adam's in the 2nd week of his two week spring break and he's sick... again.  So, in less than two weeks we've:  both been sick with sinus/chest colds, I broke an ankle and now Adam has the stomach flu and all that that entails.  Yep, the sto.mach.flu.  Blah! 

So, after Adam went to the bathroom in his clothes yesterday, I grabbed him and ran him to the tub.  He was so upset, didn't understand what was happening, was afraid he'd be in trouble... all of it.  So, after I showered him off, cleaned the bathtub and then drew him a bath, I decided to do something fun with Adam.

Shaving Cream Bath Paint!

I grabbed a Dollar Tree can of shaving cream, a cupcake tin, foam brushes and food coloring.

I filled 6 cups with shaving cream...

I put a few drops of food coloring in each tin.

I then mixed the color drops into the shaving cream - We had Blue, Red, Purple (looks like a brown/black horrible color), yellow, green and orange.  I followed the directions on the back of the food coloring package to make different colors.  Obviously, purple was not the best one.

The best part was when Adam was so happy and in awe of getting to "paint" in the bathtub wall that he kept saying, "Mama, I can paint?  I can paint on the walls, Mama?" 

We painted Flowers, trees, a sun... he was painting tracks around the tub... and then there was an accident in the tub and we had to shower off again.  The best part, the shaving cream paint washed off the bathroom walls no problem! 

We'll definitely do this again - it's a very easy, inexpensive fun bath time activity.  And maybe a summertime, outdoor activity?  He can paint himself?  I don't know or me?  Or his toys?

I hope you all stay germ free and give this a try - it's really cool!  I was wondering it there are glow in the dark paints that I could use? 

See you tomorrow!
Andrea