That Time I Added Mugs to My Blog

In my catch up blog, I said I would post some of the projects I’ve been working on when I have a few spare minutes.

So, today, I’m posting the mugs I’ve been working on. These are the types of things I do as fundraisers for Paws 4 Autism and Bandit

To do these, I started learning how to sublimate. I looked easy, and theoretically it is. But it’s the small stuff that trips me up lol

This is a fun idea. I took a child’s artwork and put it on a shirt for him and a mug for his mom. It’s like fridge art – but better!

I’m also able to put pictures of cuties like this onto mugs. This particular grandma needed a mug with her granddaughter on it. It was so much fun to do ❤️ Can you imagine waking up to this smile in the mornings?

For Halloween, I had a BLAST making color changing mugs. We call them magic mugs. I need to figure out how to post a video here, but for now, trust me, they’re cool. They start out black. When you add hot water, the black disappears revealing and image under it.

And before we knew it, it was Christmas time. I did a Naughty/Nice Magic mug (because I LOVE them lol) and also did a set of matching mugs and kitchen towel set.

And then, I saw a pattern that I really liked, but couldn’t find, so I got to design some things using just a few images and tricks to recreate and refine the look I’d seen. I also did a matching tumbler 😊 I think this would be fun for Mother’s Day ❤️

This last set of mugs I did because I found images I fell in love with. A friend suggested they might work well as Magic Mugs. And I agree!

I did the Sagittarius mug for me (and I just noticed I misspelled it, so I will be fixing that right away!)

The Aries mug is for a friend of mine and I LOVE how the colors came out on this 💕

So those are some of the mugs I’ve been working on. There are some missing so there will be a Mug post part 2 coming soon.

As I mentioned at the beginning, these are the types of things I’ve been doing for fundraisers for Bandit and Paws 4 Autism.

For more information about Paws 4 Autism, click here: AWESOME DOGS

For JJ’s donation page, click here: AWESOME KID

Thanks for stopping by!

XOXOXO

For Birthday Girl Two!

And in just about a week, there’s another birthday 🙂

This time, we celebrated an 18th birthday! Wowzers! She didn’t ask for anything too exciting – just iTunes gift cards – so I made a few things for her 🙂

She’s been studying French in school for years and would love to visit some day. I bought these files from the Silhouette Store with her in mind 🙂

Close ups 🙂

Project links: Paris saying  Pattern/paper/background

You can’t see from this angle, but the back ground is a cloudy sky. The tower was printed, then cut out. I cut just the outline (no printing) out two more times and layered everything with foam tape to give it some dimension.

Project Links: Eiffel Tower, Pattern/paper/background (came with the software)

I printed these out, but they were a little flat. I used pencils and markers to give them a little life 🙂 I added the word Dream beneath the pictures. The “stamps” are affixed with foam tape 😀

Project links: Paris “postage stamps“, background 

This card was fun 🙂 I used the plain boxcard template from SVG Cuts. I gathered the other elements from the Silhouette Store and somehow this happened. I think there may have been a little magic involved 🙂

Project Links: Box card template, clock and gears, standing witch, close up witch, birthday candles

Thanks for stopping by!

xoxo

I Needed to Color…Like Really Needed To

So I did. And I found a kinda creepy thing to color.

October is busy here. Two birthdays, parties for those birthdays, parent teacher conferences, and Halloween. I have stuff to post, just haven’t had the time 😦

But this is an easy post 🙂

Thanks for stopping by!

Xoxo

Halloween Lantern

Because I could 🙂

Originally, this was designed to be smaller and sit on a table top. I enlarged it and I’m working on a way to hang it 🙂

It’s such a fun design!

Thanks for stopping by!

Link to file: here

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

 

Good-bye Halloween

I love, love, LOVE Halloween! My kids love it, too. It’s exciting to see them come up with costumes on their own, and watch their creativity at work. It’s also fun for me to help with their make-up 🙂

This year we had Bat Man – along with the deep, scratchy voice so no one could tell who he was, a little vampiress, Enchantress – from the Avengers cartoon, The Phantom – complete with messed up face beneath the mask, and me. A harlequin themed marionette. I mentioned helping the kids with their make-up was fun, well painting my own face was just as fun!

Here’s my make-up and homemade hat from last night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 This was so much fun! Too bad it’s socially unacceptable to dress like this at other times of the year. Although, I was thinking about dressing up on my birthday, because, well, I can. It’s my day, right? Okay, so I probably won’t, but it was a good thought!

Hope everyone one had a fantastic and safe Halloween! On to Thanksgiving!