Luggage tags and a birthday card

This post is a bit belated, but before we get too far into August, I have one more July birthday project to share.  This one was for my bestest friend, Dawn.   Dawn has been an inspiration me in more ways than I can count. She's forever growing, expanding, and celebrating her latest, well-deserved success. She's been there through it all, ever since we became insta-friends 13 years ago, and I'm so grateful for her friendship, the memories we've created together, the crazy adventures we've had, and for the beautiful woman she is inside and out.

One the many things that adds to Dawn's fascinating character, is that she never stands still for too long. Whether it's a new degree, a new job or a new hobby, she always has something new and exciting in the works. Right now, she's planning a trip to Morocco and Spain, and I decided to make her a pair of cute luggage tags to celebrate her journey.

Whenever I think of Morocco, I can't help but think of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, and that exotic, 1940s elegance of Casablanca, so that sparked my inspiration for the design.  I also came across these cool old tags at Fresh Vintage that she scored on an ebay auction...

I love the colors, the funky shapes, the simple illustration, the fonts... I just love me some vintage.


So, with a little fusion of ideas, I came up with these:

I started with some vintage travel posters of places she's been, like Australia and (of course) NY, and the places she's planning on going.  I downloaded some old stamp brushes for Photoshop to give it a parcel-y feel, and created a shipping label so her cargo can always find it's way home safely.

On the other side, I used an old map texture in the background, and added her initials on top.

The tag itself is actually a manila folder.  I couldn't find any manila tags in quantities less than 100 (well, I probably could have if I didn't wait till the last minute for everything), but I also needed to be able to print some of the graphics directly on the tag, like the map and the postal stamps.  So I printed it on the folder, cut out a custom shape for the tag and "scrapbooked" everything together.  Luckily, we have a laminating machine at work so I was able to laminate it for free.  I think it was a little too thick though, because it took about seven passes through the laminator and I still couldn't get it to seal off right up to the edge.  Oh well :)  The silver rings are binder rings, which I had (98 of) left over from another project.  They're easy to open and close so I thought they'd work perfectly to attach the tag to a suitcase.


Since I found all those paper supplies I forgot I had, I made her a birthday card, too.  One of the things I found was a package of plain cards Dawn and I bought maybe 10 years ago.  One day we decided to buy ourselves some Crayola watercolors and some rubber stamps, and we went to the park and painted cards for a few hours like little kids.  Weren't we always getting ourselves into some random thing or another?  Oh Dawn, you live too far away now!!  I miss our shenanigans! {sigh}  Anyway, that's what I used for the base of the card.  I love that it has that little piece of history.

 My other favorite part is the flower.  I had this plain pink flower, but I thought it was a little blah so I added some embroidery floss to punch it up.  First I poked a hole in it so I could attach it to the card later, and to hold it in place while I glued the thread on...

then, I took one piece of floss and looped it around and around, following the shape of the flower.

When it was dry, I poked a hole in the card and attached the flower with a button and some pink floss.

And there it is, handmade with love and best wishes for a beautiful year ahead, wherever your journey takes you!

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Memorial Day weekend... the unofficial start of Summer, and what more American way to spend it than at a Yankees game?  For my Hero's birthday, we planned a vacation to New York and I surprised him with tickets to the game.  It was awesome!  I was going to just stick the tickets in his birthday card, but I thought it would be more special if I made him one instead.

I went online and found all kinds of images to use.  The Life photo archive is a great resource for every kind of historical photo you can think of.

The photo of the field on the inside of the card is actually the view from the seats we'd be in!  I got it from the Yankees site.  Of course, this guy wasn't there the day they took that picture...

This guy must have been the biggest Yankees fan I've ever seen...literally!  Seriously, look at his friend next to him, normal size dude, and there's GIANT man.  Thank God he moved finally.

I wish I would have been able to take some pictures of the new stadium, but we got delayed on the train (good old LIRR) and we didn't get there till the 3rd inning, so we didn't get to walk around too much.  We had a great time though, and I got to eat the best pretzel I might have ever had.  I can't tell you how thrilled we were just to be home in NY, and to be there with the Yankees on his birthday??  Awesomeness.

Halloween Blocks

I found some adorable Halloween scrapbooking supplies at the Dollar Spot at Target. I don't scrapbook, but these were so cute I knew I had to find something use them for.

Amanda at Imperfectly Beautiful makes these really cute blocks (go buy some!), and I wanted to try to do something fun like that for Halloween.  My Hero picked up a piece of 2x6 from Home Depot for me and cut it down into pieces roughly 7 1/4" long.

I used his awesome Dremel sander to smooth out the ends and the corners. (I love this sander, by the way.) Then I painted them with regular black acrylic craft paint, and they were all ready to be decorated.

I found one collection of free vintage Halloween images here, and another great source for vintage holiday images here. Free! It was a tough choice because they're all so stinkin' cute, but I picked these four, resized them in Photoshop and used Mod Podge to mount the images on heavy duty black cardboard to give them a little depth.

I don't know how I've never used Mod Podge before, but this stuff rocks. I used it to adhere my scrapbook papers to the wood and then went to town embellishing them. A few hours later, and here's what I made!

Okay, besides the mess, these!

 

I don't know which one is my favorite, I love how they all turned out...

 

Aren't those polka dots perfect for that little clown?  I had the ribbon left over from the lemonade stand.  (One day there will be pictures of this lemonade stand, I swear.)

This black and green ribbon was the only other thing I bought, $1.19.

The burlap was left over from a project a hundred years ago. And I made little bats out of ribbon.  I love them!
 

This pretty orange bow came off a package of potpourri I bought.  See, you never know when those bits and pieces come in handy!

These were so fun to make, and cheap, too. The wood cost about $5, the Halloween papers and stickers cost $3, plus the ribbon... puts me at under ten bucks!  Ain't no recession gonna keep me down!

Got crafts?

This post is about a week and a half overdue but, the weekend before last, my friend and I went to the CHA Craft SuperShow at our local convention center. Holy crafting madness! This show made me wish I had a clone so one of me could go to work to support the other me's craft addiction. A good number of booths were devoted to scrapbooking and paper crafts. I haven't done too much paper crafting besides a few basic Christmas cards, but I really admire the craft and I'd love to get into it. It was amazing to see so many beautiful, creative ideas. (Sorry for the bad photos; I only had my phone with me.)

My mouth was watering over the vintage stamps, images, and accessories. I heart vintage and these postcard kit project samples they had on display were absolutely gorgeous.

We stopped by the Little Windows booth, and that was where we both fell hard.

These little resin gems were soo cool! They could be used for necklaces, bracelets, magnets, and all kinds of gifts. There were a hundred ways to style them, using photos, postcards, stamps, beads and anything else you can fit. I had to have it. The way I saw it was, I was really saving money on Christmas presents by buying this stuff. Really! Ok, so maybe I just couldn't resist. It was so. cool. I promise I'll post when I finish making my own.

There were make-and-takes all day, some free, others for $3 or $5. There were so many choices, it was tough to decide which one we wanted to do. This one happened to be free, and actually a pretty cool little project:

A while ago I picked up a free project booklet from Michael's, but I haven't made anything from it yet and I'm glad I had the opportunity to try this. There a lot more project ideas on the Styrofoam website that are easy and relatively inexpensive, which might be a great idea for anyone who happens to have vast amounts of empty wall space. Ahem. I know this sounds totally contra-green movement and, if I had any actual readers, I'm sure many of them would be throwing up in their mouths a little. At least the website devotes a section to sustainablity (stop choking), so I can pretend I didn't just declare myself an enemy of the state.

These are the instructions for the bird that we made, using an enlarged version of a stamp to create the silhouette. I bet it would be cute to use a silhouette of your kids, too. Or leaves. Or letters. Or... somebody stop me...

The bird can be mounted back in the "frame" for a 3D piece or the pieces can hung on the wall separately, which also looks very cool.

Bird Silhouette Wall Art
by Dondi Richardson

Materials:

• Styrofoam Brand Foam 1" x 12" x 12" sheet (or cut 1" x 12" x 36" sheet into thirds)
• Styro Cutter® Plus (If you don't have a Styro Cutter® Plus, there are tips on cutting and more)
• Coordinating scrapbook papers from COLORBOK
• Craft Glue
• Bird Silhouette Rubber Stamp and Black Ink
• 1" Ribbon or 1" strips of paper
• Metal picture hangers
• Scissors
• Poster board
  

Instructions:

1. Rubber stamp the image onto a piece of paper. Have image enlarged to fit centered inside the 12"x12" sheet of Styrofoam. You want at least a 1" frame around the image.
2. Once you have the image enlarged, trace onto a piece of poster board and cut out to create a template. Pin the template centered onto the Styrofoam sheet and cut out using the Styro Cutter® Plus. Follow the instructions on package carefully for proper use of the tool! Be careful when cutting bird image from foam as you can use the cutout bird as a separate wall art piece. Cut in from one edge of the foam, cut all the way around the tamplate and then exit carefully from the same edge you entered. The paper will cover the cut edge. Glue the cut edge together.
3. Lay the cutout bird onto a sheet of paper, trace and cut out with scissors. Glue paper to cover the cutout bird. Lay the 12" x 12" framed bird silhouette onto a coordinating sheet of paper, trace and cut out silhouette with scissors, carefully cutting in from one edge of the paper. Glue the paper to cover the frame.
4. To cover the 1" edge of the Styrofoam, glue 1" ribbon or cut 1" strips of coordinating paper and glue to cover edge.
5. Attach picture hangers to the back of the Styrofoam pieces and secure with glue.