Personalized Baking Dish

My sister did this as a craft for her Super Saturday Craft Day in her church and she gave them as gifts. This is a regular baking dish that she has faux "etched" the person's last name on the bottom. This is such a cool technique and you can do endless things with this.

The basic instructions are this...print out the person's last name in a large font, then you tape it to the glass dish. **Please note that pyrex does not work**

You then take some transparent contact paper and you stick it to the other side and then with an exacto knife, you cut out the letters of their name. You can also do designs or little symbols...whatever you want.

Then, you take this glass etching liquid and you paint it on the area that you have cut out. The area where you do not have the contact paper will leave the glass etched look. This is really a fun wedding gift idea because who doesn't take a casserole dish to a church function and then never get it back because no one knows who it belongs to? This is the perfect solution. You can get these glass dishes for less than $10 at your basic discount store and I love to give a personalized gift...so its a win-win!


She also added 2 small ornaments, a cute recipe card, some crinkle paper for cuteness, and the non perishable ingredients for the recipe on the card. On the food containers, she just covered them with cute paper and then wrapped the whole thing in cellophane and tied a big bow on top...it was so cute! (Note on the cake mix, she only covered the front side)

This one is already unwrapped so you can see all the goods inside. For more specific instructions, just see the instructions that come with the liquid and remember to be VERY careful because this is not the kind of liquid that you want to get on your skin or spill on your glass top table!

Craft-Envelope Notebook Set

Heelo from a very cold Nebraska....I am currently in Potter, NE and while I applaud the for having nothing open this Sunday morning...my husband really needs a bathroom! So, we found a local church, hopefully they can find it in their hearts to let this poor Mormon boy join their congregation for a song ans a pee!

Anyway..this is being sent from my phone so please forgive the typos....

Below is another simple gift, its a small notepad in a decorated large mailing envelope. You can make a pocket for a pen or stationary as well. Just add ribbon to the end and decorate as you wish.

My husband is now back from his potty break at the Prairie Hristian Church....low and behold their Reverend is from San Antonio, and was nice and even offered him a cup of coffee! He said is was 26 below here last night....brrrrrrrr! We turned down the coffee and are back on our way to WY....we are about 40 or so miles from the border!!!!

Happy Christmas!
Heather

Last minute gift ideas

I had not had the chance to make all the little gifts and things for the people at my son's schools so today I went and looked in my random gifts bin to see if I had some things I could use. I was so pleased that I had lots to choose from and here is one. I will try to post a few more over the next few days.

This is all paper and folds and you just make a little scrapbook. Its a fun and cute gift and I was so glad I had made 2 of them last year at retreat and they were all finished so 2 deserving helpers at his school got them today. When it is all folded up and closed, it is probably about 4 or 5 inches squared.

Its a simple thing and its just paper and accessories for scrap booking, so give it a try. I am sure there is a pattern for this, I will see if Lindsey has it.

Gift Ideas-Create your own Calendar

I know many people have the same problem I do...you have that one person on your list that you never know what to get for Christmas or birthday. That person for me is my Grandmother in law. I love this woman...she is wonderful and has always been good to my husband and is kind and caring...and has been an answer to many prayers whenever we prayed for some extra help, there have been a few times when a card came in the mail from her at just the right time.

Anyway...she is in her 80s...maybe even 90s...and lives in an apartment community with other "mature" in age people and participates in activities there. She has really everything she wants or needs and what if she didn't have something and needed it, then she bought it. So, what do you buy her? This year my sister gave me a great idea of making one of those personalized calendars. I have seen them before but when Linz called and asked me to take a look at hers before she completed it, I really liked everything she had done. Come to find out, its easy as pie and it comes with predetermined layouts, you just pick which ones you want and pick from a large variety of backgrounds. She uses shutterfly.com and has for years and has always been pleased with the quality. I decided I would make one for Grand Ma of us and her great grandson so that every month she could look at fun pictures of us and her other family members.

It was easy and with all the great choices Shutterfly had, I came up with the perfect colors to match the pictures and season and I am so pleased with it. I should get them in the mail any day and I can't wait to see them. I will post pictures once they get here so you can see how great they turned out.

I think they run about $20 each, but if you watch for sales, you can get them much cheaper. We got ours when it was $20 for the first one and $10 for each one after that. With more effort but probably less money, you could upload the pictures to photoshop and do your own layouts with some Digital Scrapbooking.

I hope this sparks an idea for your hard to buy for person in your life!

Heather

Craft-Frame Art

(again, ignore the polka dotted blanket underneath)

This is another super easy craft from retreat. This is a normal frame that you can get at Wal Mart for less than $4. The red paper of the back layer is embossed with black embossing powder. I went for the swirled look with a swirly stamp that I stamped in a Versamark stamp pad and then sprinkled with embossing powder, then held under an embossing tool (or you can use another heat source like a stove, just don't catch the thing on fire, please....you just hold it over the heat until the little embossing sand bead things start to get shiny and melt into each other.)



On the white strip, I embossed with an iridescent white embossing powder with the same swirly pattern, although you probably cannot see it. You take that strip and adhere it to the plain black strip, and adhere that to the red strip.



The words here are a cut out of the Big Shot from Stampin Up and Sizzix, so its just a cut out, although you could use vinyl letters or a rub on or something as well.



Then, you glue all those layers to the mat that comes with the frame, make sure it is centered, and then take some ribbon, and thread it in between the glass and the frame and tie a know. Then, with some black think twine, I attached the charm that is a snowflake.



You have so many variations with this and can do so many things. The original design had snow flakes instead of swirls, but I wanted to keep it up all year around so I did the swirls.


Isn't it beautiful?

Heather

Craft-Modge Podge & Papercraft

First off--Please ignore the messy table in the background...you don't really see that, its your imagination playing tricks on you! (I was taking a quick picture to send to my sister to see if she thought my secret sister would like it and I didn't bother to take a nice pretty picture before I gave it to her, so these are my only shots. Oops! I was scrapbooking and packing and making things all at once so there is quite a hodge podge of crap on that table! Sorry! And sorry for the use of crap if you don't like that word.)

This is a sample of taking something you would normally throw away and making it into something really cute! This is a cream puff container, the kind you buy at Sam's and can never eat just one, it comes with like 50 and they are yummy and great fro parties...I digressed to cream puff heaven there for a second....anyway, I took this container and cleaned it and removed the side labels, the top one isn't removable so I just covered it up. Then I took scrap booking paper (this paper is from the Bella Rose Designer Series with Stampin' Up!) and used Modge podge to glue it to the container and then I went over the paper with Modge Podge so that it would be sealed and shiny. I thought this turned out super cute. I also covered a peanut butter jar (plastic) and a pickle jar (glass) in matching colors and gave them all as a little ensemble of gifts. I filled the peanut butter container with M&Ms.

This was for my "Secret Sister" gift at retreat and she acted like she loved it so I can only assume she does! We do secret pal type things at retreat and its really fun to see what people come up with. This one was a hit!

Craft-Paper in a frame

Howdy again...

This is a take off from scrap booking and it is so simple and easy!! If you have a square punch, this goes really quickly. I made this for one of my primary girls who is turning 12 this week. All you do it punch out the squares and put them in a grid pattern and then embellish them with buttons, stamp cut outs, paperclips, ribbon, etc. If your squares do not have enough room to fit all the way across, you can trim them down just a hair to make them all fit nicely.

This frame cost me $1 at the dollar spot at Target and the paper cost is super minimum as well since I already had the stuff on hand. In fact, I think I mainly used scraps, so it was probably a total of less than $2, and it easily could have been cheaper than that! Really, since I had everything on hand, including the frame that I bought months ago, its really just a freebie in my head.

So, enjoy this super simple craft!

Heather

Columbus Day & Preparing for the Holidays

Well, Happy Columbus Day! And thank you Christopher for taking a chance and sailing across that big ocean of ours!

Its early, about 6:41 am and I just got back from doing a Ward Boot Camp. This is our week off of our normal boot camp that I participate in and so we thought we would offer a similar program to the ladies at church during this week and hopefully motivate some people to be more fit. My friend Angie and I are leading it and we were concerned at times that the two of use would show up and no one else...but low and behold we have 10 lovely ladies show up today to work out with us! Way to go ladies!

We hope they were glad they pulled themselves out of bed this morning for a 5:30am workout out...I know I feel energized and ready to go for the day!

Now...did you know that Christmas is only 73 days away?

If you haven't started thinking about gifts...you need to start now. A gift doesn't have to be something expensive, just thoughtful. Really think about the gifts you give this year and try to cater them to the person's needs and wants. For instnace, my little sister is one of the busiest people I know and she also has 2 cute little toddler girls. Last year I have her the
" Gift of Time." I made her 6 freezer meals that she could stick in her freezer and use any time she had a busy day and didn't have time to get a home cooked meal on the table. All she had to do was stick it in the oven and add a can of veggie and she was done! I did 3 different dinners and I doubled them, so she had chicken and rice casserole, lasagna, and Mexican lasagna or enchilda casserole. She thought it was a wonderful gift, she even got a little teary eyed (which for those of you who know us IRL (in real life) you may not find that surprising). It was also nice for me to be thinking about her the whole time I was preparing her meals.

So, really think about the gifts you give. You may find that you can save some money and the gifts are more meaningful to the receivers because you can tell them why you got them the gift and how you were thinking about them during the process.

Other gift ideas

• Free babysitting one day a month for 6 months so the couple can go out on a date. This would also be fun to go in with someone and get some movie passes or something so they have a free "date".
• Prepare a meal for someone on their busiest day of the week.
• Do 4 versions of soup! During the Winter, prepare four different varieties of soup for someone one day a week for a month, or one day a month for four months.
• Bake a fresh loaf of bread every week for a month.
• Offer to take someone's children to school for a week or to early morning seminary.
• Take a bouquet of flowers to someone to brighten their day.
• Make a canister full of hot chocolate mix and give them 2 hot chocolate mugs and some candy canes to keep them warm through the Winter.

Simple Craft and Easy Gifts-Legal Pad

I did this at a Stampin' Up (SU) Club night last week up with Lindsey's SU Group. We had a fun time doing it and did this plus 2 other crafts in about an hour and a half...and this one was the easiest so it only took a few minutes. This is similar to the notebook I posted a few posts ago but this one is done on a legal type pad, so its glued/gummed together at the top instead of a spiral. This is probably going to be a gift for one of my visiting teachees. I think you can buy these pads in a group of maybe 6 for about $3 at WalMart. The size on this is probably 5X8. Its easy to do, you just....

#1. Get some craft paper and cut it a little longer on top so it will fit over the entire front and then probably 2 inches on the back, so add about 2.5 inches to the length of the pad.

#2. Glue the edge on the top of the back so that it is even with the bottom edge on the front.

#3. Take some ribbon and tie a bow or knot around the entire top.

#4.Decorate at will!

I used stamps, ribbon, punched out paper, and the bottom edge has a scalloped edge...although I chopped it off in the picture (sorry!). These take just a few minutes and you can use up some of your scraps if you are a scrapbooker like me and have paper remnants hanging around.

I do these for teacher gifts for holidays and such. I also gave one to each of my Primary girls (10-12 yr old) for Christmas and had their name personalized in stamps across it. It could also be done for a Young Women's activity where they decorate it themselves. The one pictured below is a simple one but you can really bling it up if you want with rhinestones, brads, stickers, etc.