DIY: Home Made Moving Announcement and House Warming Party

We recently bought a house and are moving. This is not our address (I may address that in another blog someday) and this is not the date the house was ready either....But when it was finished and the dates and address corrected, this was by far the cutest and MOST creative home made cards I have every made. Also the most expensive, about $10 each, with postage about $12 and I made 75. I got all the supplies from Michael's, except the labels, I got those at Staples, and did all the printing at home. I got the clip art: the moving van, the "return" finger, the up arrows, the fragile symbol and other box symbols off the internet.  

So this is what I used and how you can do it yourself and make your own Moving Announcements, or House Warming Party invitations. 

In the list of supplies are inward 5X7 opening cards with envelopes in "cardboard" brown (they came 10 to a package). I also got grated or cardboard textured scrap booking paper which came in 12X12 sheets and worked out to make 5 "side pieces" each. I also used double sided tape, an exsacto knife and lots of other blades, scissors, a pointed pen, a black sharpie, scrap booking tape, a cutting board, masking tape in light tan and red, and address labels in CLEAR and white for the "packaging" look. 

I also bought and used that clear bubble wrap to make my new work contact information. I would have used it anyway, to still give it that packing material feel, but turns out I slapped a clear label on there with the information and it looked even better. 

Here you can really see why I wanted the inward opening cards. I wanted to give the cards the feel of "unpacking a box" when you were opening it. I taped with masking tape the front folds and back, to give it the taped box look! It worked!!

I made so many it was hard to stuff and stack them, so this is just a photo of how I kept them organized. Hope you like this! I loved making them and it was a lot of work, but really worth it. Enjoy!!

DIY: How to make Bridal Shower Decorations

DIY: How to make Bridal Shower Decorations

DIY: How to make a towel cake

DIY: make a spoon bouquet

Mission: to make Briday Shower Decorations for sisters shower/bachalorette party in VEGAS :)

DIY: Pennant "Congratulations" banner for bridal shower

all the supplies

finishing touches on the letters, I added glitter and sticky rind stones for bling.

DIY: Making a towel cake.

ahh all done, now I need to decorate it.

DIY: add some ribbon to the towel cake.

more ribbon.

DIY: add a cake topper to the towel cake!

And here is the towel cake and the "spoon" bouquet. Classic~

Here are some of the decorations, ready to go!

this is the "bling A". I put glue in the shape of Zebra strips, and added glitter!

this is the Tower Suites at Planet Hollywood - Now called the Ellura suites by Hilton. Room 2928 and 2929. Anyway, some of the coolest things I have ever had the pleasure of staying in. Plus you could rent the two adjoining suites (rooms) to either side of you. Which we had one of them too. Altogether is was awesome.

This is after the decorations!

This is the sash I made her. That is 3 inch satin ribbon, cut to size and 1 1/2 inch sparkle lettering. Love it!

more of the suite and enjoying the party.

DIY: Paper Decorations for 60th Birthday - Office Decorations on a budget!!

Do it yourself (DIY): Paper Decorations for a 60th Birthday. These I needed for a co-worker and we wanted to decorate their office for their 60th birthday. So, let your co-worker turn 60 in style!! Surprise them and decorate their office. It doesn't cost a lot and you can make them at home, or with your co-workers in no time with paper and stuff you find around the house or office!

Things you need: tape, glue, white paper, black paper, glitter, and scissors.

Another "go-to" paper pennant banner!! I made this one a little different with the round letters, gives it a different look and looked great when it was hung up (see photo below).

These shinny "60"'s hung from "mobiles" in the office and on the door. Just gray large font "60"'s = cut and add glitter for depth. Tape and hang! Repeat.

This is the finished product, although it was hard to photograph, there is stuff on the ground - a walker and a grave stone. But you can see how the decorations really added effects to the office. If you ask me - invest in some glitter for just such occasions. It comes in handy - makes a BIG difference and costs very little...oh yeah, it lasts forever. A little goes a long way :)

We also hung photos of him around the office, and decorated pill bottles with "Over the Hill Pills" and put candy in them. Enjoy!

HOW TO: DIY Homemade 60th Birthday Invitations for mom

Without giving to many details away (come on I run a business here!). Here are the 60th Birthday party invitations I made for my mom! I used a couple different fonts (including a 60's font), hard card stock and creative computer skills to make these, print and cut them out. After printing them I added glitter, and a matted it with a light pink paper, and ribbon.

This and a computer are the only supplies I used! I can make custom creative invitations for less than a $2 each.

HOW TO: DIY Yo Gabba Gabba Birthday decorations

This is a series of photos of items I made from paper and other craft materials for my daughters 3rd Birthday party. She loves Yo Gabba Gabba, so that was the theme! I used images I got off the Internet and I used a font similar to that of YGG called "yahoo" and believe it or not I completely designed the radio from YGG by myself as there was not an image available anywhere that I could use. So I used a series of circles, squares and the best color matches on my computer to make it and it turned out great!! Enjoy!! 

This was a pennet banner I made that said Happy Birthday. We also used similar colored paper to make a bunch of rainbow paper chains and used that to add to the decorations. I love paper chains because they are easy to make and use and make a HUGE statement and look so festive!!

Above I cut the arms off the characters so they were more mobile and also made a pennet looking banner that went over the window.

This is a centerpiece I made - i actually ended up making two because it turned out so cool. Just goes to show you what you can do with materials that are just sitting around the house. So metallic duck tape and a printer!

This was the party bags - using my favorite DIY bag pattern I plug in some YGG and voila a custom party bag!

And of course what would a party be without invitations. So I used my awesome radio and went to town to design a unique custom - open in the middle invitation that really ROCKED!! Yes, I am for hire :)

DIY: How to make Homemade Felt Food for kids and Homemade Yarn Food for kids.

DIY: This is how to make FELT Food and YARN or CROCHET foods for your kids pretend play or for a great gift. I got this idea from our Children's museum, they used scrap craft materials such as felt, yarn and ribbon - with no real shapes they just let the kids make what they want out of what pieces they find. I like the idea of having to use the imagination, and these days the plastic toy food is so realistic, it hardly leaves anything to the imagination. So I figured I would leave the "sandwich", and the "salad" in forms of vague shapes and shades resembling food, so there could be some creativity and freedom of imagination. However, I couldn't resist making the rest of the food as realistic as I could. And because I had no patterns, it worked out that while they resemble the intended food, they still leave something to the imagination :) Plus, it's handmade, using some recycled materials and makes for a precious gift that took time, effort and love to make! Enjoy!

"Making Bacon" - Crochet Bacon using brown and white yarn.

Finally looks like breakfast is ready :) - making crochet bacon, and crochet fried eggs.

The pile and box full of recycled containers I am going to use to "package" the food. Hey it's fun for kids to use real containers that they see us use. Plus, it's great to recycle and saves some money, as I did not have to buy containers.

These are cute little "milk" containers, I have recycled Dannon yogurt containers, washed them and then made cute little labels for them, great addition to my homemade breakfast.  Or as you see in the last photo with the crochet Oreo cookie - it's cute to make cookies and milk!

And of course encourage your little ones to be creative and use various shapes and sized fleece scraps to make a "salad".

ENJOY!!

DIY: Homemade Paper Crafts - Decorate with Paper!

DIY: This is an addition to my last post - how to make a homemade paper banner. This one is personalized - you can see I drew it out first. I used LIME GREEN, BLUE and white paper to make this, I also added bright colored ribbon, and yarn to the ends and the middle to make it more festive. The options are endless, and still pretty cheap. Plus if you are making the decorations yourself - you can make them all match!

This is basically the look you get with a homemade banner. This was my Christmas one.

I then tried homemade paper books this year. At the community center one of the groups is called the Book Making Club and I took a couple of their samples to learn how. Basically you can make them any size and color. I used red and green for the Christmas. Plus I used stamps, glitter and the other supplies are scissors, a punch, thread and a threader, a sharpie and a computer to make the photos that went in the "books". I also made these books ornaments. It was a lot of fun and really popular.

This is the what the front looked liked after I finished.

Here is the photos and a finished one.

Enjoy!