St. Patrick's Day Birdhouse - Luck O' The Irish Pub

Yup - it's time to switch holidays, lol! Relax - I have surprisingly few papers and zero embellishments for this holiday so there won't be much. I LOVE doing these little mini birdhouses though! There will definitely be one for every holiday by the time I'm done! I started with the Reminisce papers and then got a little Prima crazy. I considered completely covering the rooftops with them, but didn't have enough of the green. I had a bottle of iridescent shamrock green Scribbles and used that to do the flower centers and the perches. The bird - from the same package that the ones I used for the Valentine's Day birdhouse (from the miniatures section of Hobby Lobby), but there wasn't a green. So I took a blue one and used shimmer chalk from Pebbles to alter the color! The darker green spots on the wings were done using a touch of Sakura paint pen. At this point I decided I wanted to make it into a little pub for the St. Patrick's Day theme but couldn't figure out how I was going to make a little sign (or what to call it, even). I stumbled across this little scrap of paper and found my answer! The paper collection I used was "Luck O' The Irish" from Reminisce. Guess what the edging of the paper had on it - the cutest little title identifier for the line in just the perfect size to cut out, mat on the darker green, and cover in Glossy Accents (Ranger) to make my little sign! Of course, it sports a fingerprint from testing to see if it was dry (I just can't ever help myself with Glossy Accents for some reason) and a crack, but I still love that little sign! Then I used some letter brads (with the tabs removed) from Provo to finish off the look. I seriously had zero embellishments for St. Patrick's Day, which surprised me since I have overloads of every other holiday, it seems! So a quick trip to my soon to be extinct Hobby Lobby (what the heck are we supposed to do with NO craft stores in town anymore???) to see what I could find to finish this off. The selection was pretty sparse there too, but I did come across these shamrock buttons from Jesse James Dress It Up collection. I used more than I planned because I thought it was kind of cute to think of them as little shamrock shrubbery surrounding my little pub, lol! And there it is, my second in what I've decided will be a series of holiday birdhouses! :)

Valentine's Day Wooden Tree

This was a little unfinished wood tree kit from Joanne's. The tiny finished sample pictured was just painted and I thought "oh no, we can't have THAT". Yea. I wish I had, lol! This was, in no uncertain terms, a pain in the butt to do. Even with the Basic Grey file kit I broke down and bought. I ended up giving up and leaving it kind of ragged. The paper is from Reminisce (same collection as I used for the gift bag and mini album). I was originally going to paper all the hearts too, but after the tree, there was NO way I was going to mess with them, lol! So they just got painted and then decorated with Sakura Glaze and Souffle pens - which was actually a lot of fun! Did those while one of my favorite movies of all time (Fried Green Tomatoes) was on last night.

50th Post!

Wow! Just realized my little blog has hit a milestone! It makes me glad this is a picture-heavy day, lol! This is the matching album to the wooden gift bag I posted yesterday. It's made from a wooden mini-album from Kaiser Craft (I desperately need Hobby Lobby to pick them up so I have easier access - I LOVE their stuff!!!). This went super fast because I found a quick, easy formula and stuck with it. I used the same paper I used for the gift bag (total between the two projects was under two pieces - I still have tons of scraps) and Mod Podged it onto the fronts of all the discs. I painted the backs and edges with Lipstick paint from Making Memories. All the glittered chipboard hearts are from Scrapworks and again, I have tons of these left over from the original box. This was my one attempt at proper "design" - I used the visual triangle to "frame" my pictures. The pictures themselves are printed on self-adhesive cotton from Shortcuts (now distributed by DMD). This stuff is amazing! It can go through your printer, you can stamp on it, whatever! Gorgeous texture - you end up with a canvas-like end result. I have tons and tons of this and had forgotten all about it but will try to bring it out again to show you some of the fun tecniques you can do with this. The last thing I used on every page was 3D paper paint from PSX that I outlined all the pictures with. I used a few other things on the cover and back, but will mention those near the pictures.

The whole album


The cover. I used Papier Glass Finish from Plaid inside the hearts. This is very similar to Ranger's glossy accents. The one I used happened to be a tinted version in baby blue. Which I totally did not notice for some reason (and actually thought it would eventually dry clear because I just wasn't paying attention) but it worked out nicely because of the blue in the paper...crisis averted, lol! I literally noticed this when I grabbed the bottle just now to make sure I credited the product correctly. I KNEW this product usually dried crystal clear, lol (and it does...when you don't use baby blue...). Anyways. Now that I've embarassed myself, just wanted to let you in on HOW I did the heart on the left that's hanging off the edge. Since the outline hearts are open in the middle all the way through I was kind of bummed that I wouldn't be able to fill that one in like I had the one in the middle then I got a brainstorm. I took a piece of clear packaging (in this case it was the little plastic box the Target ribbon came in) and glued it under the overhang. Once that dried, I was able to fill that heart in as well and after the glass finish (blue...) had dried, I was able to use a craft knife to cut off the excess plastic and it left the heart transparent. As always, I've uploaded these in hi-res so if you click on any picture you can get a gigantic version to see close up (eek, and any mistakes I've made). I mention this here because only close up can you see the oops moment I had when I was trimming the excess and just under the left side of the heart I cut into the dark pink stripe. I used a tiny piece of scrap to Mod Podge over it. Another crisis averted. Are you sensing a pattern? LOL!


The inside pages.

The back cover. Here I've used a chipboard coaster I've had forever from Little Davis. I love finding things I'd forgotten about just at the right moment! I surrounded it with Prima's and used the same PSX 3D paper paint as the centers. I use this a lot for flower centers because I love the way it keeps its chocolate chip shape after it's dried.

And the whole gift. You'll notice I didn't photograph any of the backs of the pages in the album, well those will be used for the sentiments for the recipient so I figured they didn't need to go on the blog. At least PART of this project will be a surprise for her, lol, since of all days, she started reading my blog yesterday. Thanks, mom, lol!