Documented...

Well, now it's my turn to be full of snot and germs and overall grossness.  Sigh.  Yay for preschool germs.

Adam is still sick, we went to his doctor yesterday and am hoping that he'll be on the mend soon.  It was interesting, I sometimes wonder what his Dr. thinks of us because while I'm telling him Adam's yucky symptoms (snot, fever, hacking-barking cough that makes my lungs hurt), Adam is climbing/laughing/hanging on or from whatever he can in the room.  Yup.  Thanks for backing me up with my "He's really sick..." comment, Adam, by acting like a crazed monkey.  Why does my child's energy level go UP with his snot production level?

Okay, enough complaining.  Here's something from the past that I still love and have been wanting to share for, well, over 3 years! 

This is Adam's birth announcement.  I wanted it to look like a shipment statement, so my Mom helped me create the document in Excel and I printed them up, 2 fit on an 8.5" x 11" and you can then mail them in a manila envelope to complete your industrial look. 

All of his birth information is here as follows:  Name, Date (birth date), Time (time he was born), Make (baby), Model (gender), Quantity (how many - if you had twins you'd put 2...) Delivered To (parents name and city) and then I used pounds and ounces on my chart to show Adam's weight and circled the numbers, since he was 3 lbs., 8 oz. I circled the 3 on the top and 8 on the size. 

I used Basic Grey's Baby Boy line for the patterned paper to back Adam's picture.  I bought 2 office style stamps from Office Depot - Completed and Final Notice (I used them both randomly), I used a 7Gypsies label stamp and cut it out of white cardstock and wrote "Paid in Full" on each label.

I still love these announcements.  I also printed out the pictures that I'd taken of Adam in a blue tint, if I'm doing boy, I'm going all the way boy!

That's it for today, I'm hoping that this post reminds you that you can always create something if you cannot find it in a store - I had the idea of a shipping document in my head, couldn't find what I wanted to complete the picture in my head so I (with Bubbles help), made it!  Very cute, very economical, exactly what I wanted. 

Have a great weekend!
Andrea

A Silhouette tutorial with Pictures! Yay!

Yay!  The LOML went to the techie store last night and found a card reader that would work - I spent over an hour downloading pictures of new projects that I've been working on for the past week!  And I'm so excited to do my first tutorial - it's using my Silhouette SD, Heat-Transfer Material and baby clothes!

{Fun and Easy Little Miss Shirts}

First, I washed 2 little shirts that I found at Walmart.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to put on them, but I knew that it would be a solid shape from the Silhouette Store, so I went with stripes.  These are $2.00 a piece, Faded Glory Organic Onsies in a 3-6 month and 12-18 month size. 

I measured each of the shirts from arm pit to arm pit to see how big I wanted my image, I then found the images on my Silhouette and adjusted each to be the size I wanted - I didn't take any pictures of this - I will next time (this is a learning process for me!).  For the wiener dog, I adjusted it to the size I wanted and was done.  The librarian glasses took a little more work.  I found the glasses images and sized that, but I knew that I wanted a chain for them (I debated doing pearl buttons, but kept thinking about choking hazards...), so I used the circle drawing tool on the software and made a "String of pearls" going from one arm of the glasses.  I then highlighted  the circles and clicked on the "Meld" button, which connected them.  I wanted the exact same string for the other side of the glasses, so I highlighted them, made a copy and also mirrored the image so the slight bend in the string would be going the other direction.  I moved it to the other arm and then highlighted the WHOLE image; glasses and both strings of pearls.  I then clicked my "Meld" button again and everything attached and became one image!  Super cool!

I then fed my Heat Transfer Material (from Silhouette) into my Silhouette and let it work it's magic.  Once it was all cut, I weeded off the material that I didn't want to iron onto the shirts.

{Weeding images}

Here's my wiener dog image and part of my glasses image.

{Placed glasses, waiting for ironing}

{Placed Wiener Doggie, waiting for iron}

You then place your images down onto the surface that you want to iron them onto.  Once you have it placed where you want, you'll need to cover it with a light towel (I used a cotton dish towel), and press down with your iron (I set mine to the high heat cotton setting or even linen!) for about 40 seconds - no steam.  If your image is large you'll have to do this step several times to make sure you heat up the whole image!

{Ironing on Heat Transfer Material}

When I think my image should be good and stuck on, I try lifting a corner of my plastic covering from the transferred image.  If it starts to pull off easily and the image sticks to the shirt then I keep pulling.  IF the image starts to pull from the shirt as well, then I quickly put it back down and repeat the iron step.

{Pulling back the clear sheet from the image.  Cross your fingers for a quick and easy pull!}



Since I'm a little anal, I always iron over the image once the clear film is all the way off - just to keep my mind at ease. 

And here they are!  We have 2 fun and original shirts - my favorite is The Librarian shirt - it's kinda Gleeful - which I am a huge fan of!

Well, that my first tutorial!  I think that I can do better next time, I'll definitely show all the steps in setting up the images with the Silhouette software...

See you later - and don't forget to check out the Design Team Call from Pages!

Andrea

A Classic twist on a baby shower

I'm throwing a baby shower for a fantastic friend of mine... she's having a little boy in a few months so we asked the Daddy if he wanted to pick the theme.  I was a little concerned about this, the Dad prides himself on his "unique" tastes, but I really like the theme he picked although it's a little challenging.  It's hot rods, or classic cars - which is really fun and cool but it's a hard theme to keep baby-ish.  So, I came up with these for the invitations,

(Front of Invite, lift tag for wording)

(Close-up of Silhouette Car)

I cut the car using my Silhouette SD machine, and added a little bit of silver stickles for the trim which totally made it!  Hey, it might be for a boy, but glitter is right for the mommy!  I put the car on a tag with a few embellishments and tied the tag to the invitation... why? you ask?  Well, we liked the little cars so much and it was a lot of work so we put an insert with the invitation asking people to bring back their invitations to be entered into a drawing for a prize BECAUSE the mommy will then take the tag off and use those as the thank you cards!  Awesome, right?  Double-duty work - which I LOVE!

The invitation wording was also really cute (can't take credit, my friend found it somewhere):

It's time to gather for a baby shower

But instead of ribbons and flowers

we're crank'in up the horse power!

The shower is in a few weeks so I'll keep sharing all the little goodies we make!

Andrea

Card 9: 30 Days

Sigh... babies... they're just so sweet and innocent, such an amazing miracle... so here's a baby card that I made using The Girls Paperie line of paper.

(Stella's Card)

It's a very simple card, I double matted my white mat, heavily distressed with a Distress Disc and Distress Ink all of my paper. I then added the 5.5 x 5.5 in. green/white dotted paper, then added a 2.5 x 5.25 in. piece of sheet music, glued a piece of lace trim along the edge of the sheet music, hand cut the flowers from another sheet of The Girls Paperie Line, added a few areas of Clear Stickles and adhered it with foam tape to the card. I added a little cream butterfly to the flowers, and added 3 clear Dew Drops going down the left hand side of the sheet music. I used Making Memories rub-ons to spell out baby.

Hope you have a great weekend!
Andrea

Stella's Garden

I know, it's been FOREVER since I last blogged... but I have a great reason and it's called "Stella's Garden". Some of our best friends are expecting their first baby and it's a sweet little girl! I've been inspired by some other applique quilts that I seen so I decided to go ahead and try my hand at it. The result is very cute (although the technique leaves a LOT of be desired!), and here's a picture of it sans binding! My Grandma, who is a wonderful quilt maker is coming over this afternoon to help me with the binding. Anyways - I just wanted to show you guys what I've been doing so that you don't give up on me! I've been consumed with finishing the quilt since the baby shower is on Saturday!

Please, leave me any questions or comments that you have. I do have to say that I used the Sizzix Butterfly die from Stamp'in Up and the QuicKutz Butterfly 4x4 Die, the QuicKutz Paper Doll clothes for the clothesline and I just free handed and made my own patterns for the clouds, flowers and mushrooms. I still want to add some ruffles to the grassy hills but we'll see if I have time for that!

Happy Wednesday, Everyone!
Andrea