Paris Under the Stars Birthday Party

I’ve been  working on things for my daughter’s birthday party. It’s finally finished. I’ve shared some of the pieces but not all, and not all together.

Here’s everything together.

The tower and Hot Air Balloon together

The tower close up

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Hot Air Balloon Close Up

Bag Close Ups

 

 

Links to the projects can be found here: Tower, Hot Air Balloon, Hobo bag and Clutch, Gift Bag

Eiffel Tower – Further Proof I May be a Little Crazy

I’ve had this file for a while. I’ve wanted to make it for a while. It seemed like quite the undertaking, but my daughter’s having a Paris themed birthday party so this really seemed like a good time to try it out.

It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be 🙂

Some tips, though, in case you want to give this a whirl.

1. Because of the intricate cuts, don’t use an ultra sticky mat. Obviously, it needs to be sticky enough to hold the paper, but you need it to release the paper easily, too, or all those little pieces can tear.

2. Be patient while your machine cuts the pieces out. Mine took a bit, but it cut well, so it was worth it 🙂

3. Temporary adhesive is your friend. So many similar pieces, but there are different. While placing the top pieces on (in my case the black pieces) i used temporary adhesive to get the pieces where I needed them then went back and added permanent adhesive.

4. Have fun 🙂

Thanks for stopping by!

Xoxo

File here: Eiffel Tower

Halloween Village Started and a Glaring Mistake and How I fixed it.

Life is crazy here. If you’ve poked around my blog, you have a good idea why it’s so crazy 🙂 But I try and steal a little bit of free time to work with paper. I have crazy ideas that need to be explored sometimes 😉

During some of those stolen pockets of paper time, I go a little nuts and do something like Maple Manor from SVG Cuts. It’s the beginning of the Halloween Village Square I have in my head. It’s mostly decorated, but I’ll probably go back and embellish it some more after I have more of the village square finished.

Here’s a look at the finished (for now) manor house.

I mentioned there was a glaring error. I’ve disguised it in the above pictures, but let me tell you what I did. See the front door? It doesn’t exactly go right there. It’s close, but not quite right. Mary designed a way cool front porch for this house. When I tried to put it on, I realized my door was too low…I guess I should have watched the tutorial all the way through, but I was too eager to get started 😉

What I ended up with, were porch supports that were too short to fit because I’d made the distance between the bottom of the porch and the top taller than it had been designed when I had to leave out the rest of the porch. Here’s a picture of the fix and disguise I came up with to offset my eagerness.

On the right, you can see the foam tape I used to make up the height I was missing. On the left, you can see the disguise. I made the corn stalks from white paper then colored them the colors I wanted. I figured the twine needed a purpose to be there, so corn stalks it was 🙂

Other altered areas:

The paper on the roof was the design I wanted, but not the color. It was a little washed out for what I had in mind. So I used my inks and added yellows, oranges, and browns around the edge of the papers to give me the richer fall color I wanted.

Here’s a before and after of the papers.

So why mention the mistake in the first place? If you’re just casually looking, you probably wouldn’t notice it.

No matter how good our intentions are, we make mistakes. We’re flawed. It’s what we do. But fixing those things, making something different or even better than what we started with, that’s how we become better.

Many times, what we do after the mistake is more important than the mistake. Do we trash the whole project because of one glaring flaw? Or do we fix it and make something better?

I spent a lot of time on this house. It was worth it to me to work the mistake into something better.

Our lives are so much more important than this paper house. Sometimes we mess up. It’s okay. Even the best people have made mistakes, so we’re in good company. Don’t give up. Once you know where you went wrong, fix it. Make your life better.

If this paper house is worth fixing, so are we.

The spooky pic:

Thanks for stopping by!

xoxo

Links to items used:

Maple Manor, Brick embossing folder

 

Woot!

For the first time in a few months, I have a huge urge to jump back into writing. I’ve been so overwhelmed emotionally and physically on this new journey of ours that I just haven’t had the time or energy. Seven kids takes a lot out of a person. But then you factor in that three of mine are foster kids, that’s like having five more, instead of three, so in my head – which admittedly can be a very confusing place – that’s like having nine kids.

But, I’ve spent the last month or so rearranging things to try to free up a consistent amount of time, even though I really didn’t feel like writing. It’s paying off. The writer part of me is screaming to get out, and now, she’ll finally have time to play.