52 Things I Love About You Book

 These are the supplies that Allison used.  Standard Deck of cards, hole punch, adhesive, stickers, 1 inch metal rings.

 Allison printed out a list of 52 things she loves about her man and then cut them into slips of paper and attached each slip to a card.

For the front and back "cover" she covered the Jokers with scrapbook paper and used stickers to embellish the front.

Birthday Cards

This month Valerie had a lot of birthday cards to make.  She made these with stamps, colored pencils, stencils and chalk.  Happy July Days!

Fun Projects for the Kids

Since it was so hot this month I did a lot of projects to keep the kiddos entertained since we are inside more now than in winter!

 First up we bought these colored wood shapes on sale at Michael's.  Then I hot glued them to Popsicle sticks.  Now we use them with our puppet show box (big cardboard box with a hole in it:)).  

 Saw this idea on the web, but for the life of me can't remember where.  I took paint chips and use my square punch to make holes in them.  Then I ran them through my laminator and put them all on a ring.  The idea is find something that matches the color of the chip.  This kept us busy for quite a long time.  We also expanded on this idea by using buckets and the first person to fill their bucket with items of a selected color won.

The kiddos bathroom is painted a sand brown and there is sort of a beach them going on so I decided to go a step further and get crazy with my Silhouette.  I cut vinyl shapes out and placed them all over the bathroom.  It ended up looking pretty great and my youngest likes to laugh and say good morning to the crab everyday since its about his level on the floor.

Digital Art - Wedding Vows

Back to digital for me this month.  My friend Emily asked me to make a piece with her wedding vows that will be printed on canvas and given to her husband as an anniversary gift. The high resolution version of this file has extended borders and will be printed on a 16x24 in. canvas.  The picture above just shows what will be on the front of the canvas.  I used Adobe Photoshop Elements to create the piece.

Melted Crayons

Well... with it being so hot out it makes you feel like youre melting, I decided Melted Crayon Art was the perfect July craft for me.  I'm sure you have all seen these plastering pinterest and it is pretty self explanatory for the how to.  However, there are some different versions - I didn't want to glue my crayons on so I melted them through the hot glue gun.  This worked perfectly and used waaay fewer crayons, until my glue gun backfired and broke halfway thru :(  I then resorted to melting the crayons with a lighter which was much more hazardous for my singed fingers but came out with the closest effect to the first half done by glue gun.  A very special thanks to Gail and Erin for figuring out and making my silhouette people out of vinyl - couldn't have done it without you! 

Football Quilt

My friend, Lisa, made a quilt to look like a football field for her husband and wanted to decorate it to match the Atlanta Falcon's football field.  We decided to use fabric ink to make the logos.  This became a very large multi step project.  We used my Silhouette to trace the Atlanta Falcon's logo and found a free Falcon's font online.  We cut out stencils of all the different layers in contact paper and then painted the logo 1 layer at a time with at least 24 hours dry time in between layers.  This project took WAY more time than we thought it would, and if I did it again, I think I'd just use heat transfer vinyl instead just because of time.  I might be partial, but I think it turned out pretty sweet, even though it is the Falcons....

Workout Inspiration

 I will take any extra push I can get while working out.  I saw this saying floating around Pinterest and it made me chuckle. I took a small canvas I had, cut out the lettering and tears from vinyl with my Silhouette and attached it with Mod Podge.  It now hangs by our treadmill.

 There are several races that my husband and I have done over the years and at one point we just started throwing our racing bibs into a file folder in the file cabinet.  We like to write the race, date, and our time on the back of the bib.  I thought there has got to be something better to do with those.  I did a google search and it brought me to Etsy, where a lot of people seem to have the same idea.  I wanted us to still be able to flip through our bibs so I opted to put them on big rings, with the most current bib facing front.  The quote is one I saw on a t-shirt at a race.  I cut out everything in vinyl on my Silhouette and used Mod Podge to seal it to the black canvas.  One thing I discovered is that apparently vinyl does not  like to stick to plain canvas.  I didn't have this issue before when I did canvases, but than again I painted all of those before I stuck vinyl to them.  I screwed cup hooks into the bottom of the canvas to hang the rings.  I was pretty happy with how it turned out.  So was the hubby - thank goodness as it was part of his birthday present!

RAWR T-Shirt

We love dinosaurs at our house and when I saw this on Etsy and Pinterest I really wanted to come up with a way to use it. I had an extra plain shirt for my son and decided he needed this:)  The dinosaur and "I love you" are done in fuzzy heat transfer to make it pop more.

Big Sibling Gifts

 This month Vicki's neighbor had a new baby so she sewed up some cute gifts for the big brother and big sister.  She made a sunshine face taggie toy.  The clear ribbon "peeks" over the eyes.  Then she made another stick pony for the big brother.