EOS Lip Balm Christmas Cards

Wow, I haven't put anything fun on here in a while! Ha Ha! Leave it to the holidays to get me back on track.
So, my neighbor works for an Orthodontist and while I was over at her house last week she had a massive amount of the eos brand lip balm 5 packs on her counter (the ones you can get at costco).
I asked what they were for and she proceeded to tell me about this adorable Christmas card where you use the lip balm as a nose for Rudolf. Anyway, I had never heard of such a thing so I went onto pinterest and sure enough there it was. If you'd like to see the one she was referring to click HERE.
I was pretty excited because I had just bought a couple of eos packs at costco myself and thought "Hmmm...maybe I could do something like that for the 13 year old to give to her friends for Christmas." The only issue I had was that because it was a multi pack, not every Rudolf would have a RED nose so I searched for some other options and found THIS. Super cute right? I know, but then I came across THIS one and was like "Okay, maybe I could merge the two and make my own."
So I did, and I think they are pretty cute, and now each eos gets to shine! Yes, it's all about equality amongst the lip balms-I'm nice like that!

The 5 pack I bought only has Summer Fruit, Blueberry, Passion Fruit, Mint and Strawberry but I made a couple more for the Pomegranate, Honeydew and Tangerine ones because, like I said Equality amongst the lip balms...well, except for Lemon-which happens to be my favorite but I didn't like it with the colors of the Cards-so...It does NOT get to shine-UGH I'm a hypocrite!Maybe I'll do something nice for it for Easter! ;)

Anyway, you may use this all you want my friends because, once again, I'm nice like that. And hopefully this inspires you to give the gift of lip balm to someone special, or someone not-so-special but equally as deserving...like LEMON! :)

Here are the instructions, in case you have no clue what you are supposed to do with these babies!

One day I'll figure out the whole "download" thing and that will make {your} life SO much better!

Announcements and Parties

Well, It's been rather busy at our house for the last few months, and this is why...

We had a little baby girl and she has captured our hearts!

I wanted to add this adorable Baby Announcement that I made. Once again I must give credit where it's due. I got the idea from HERE, but like I've said before, if I can use my design degree to make something instead of pay someone else to do it, I will.

The same goes for this Birthday party invite I made for a friend of mine.

I saw the idea on Pinterest HERE, but when I went to go into the website it was on a hiatus, so I just used the pic on Pinterest as my example. I must say...it's pretty darn cute!

I LOVE that I can create things myself. I use Illustrator for most everything and photoshop when I need to crop or manipulate a photo. Adobe products are awesome and there are sooooo many tutorials on the internet for how to use them, AND they are free. I had to pay and go to school to learn them. Grrrr. ;)

Reindeer Head and Block Nativity

These are our fun and...interesting crafts for Christmas this year.

So, my family owns a plumbing supply business and occasionally they have random things, or too much of something that they can't sell or whatever...like white porcelain faucet handles. :) Well, back in October I was given two boxes full of these handles and told to figure out something creative to do with them. A month and some days later a Reindeer epiphany occurred. And Viola', Rudolf the Faucet Handle Headed Reindeer has emerged.

He was actually really easy to make, once we figured out the system, and busted out trusty old glue gun. The handle is hollow with a hole at the top and bottom, so what I did was string the ribbon through a red wooded bead, and pulled the ribbon up through the handle. Then I folded brown pipe cleaner in half and stuck that down the top of the handle until it butted up with the bead at the bottom. I glue gunned the bead to the pipe cleaner AND the bottom hole of the handle so they didn't move around, and tied a knot at the top of the ribbon so he could hang. I cut little pieces from the pipe cleaner to use as the antlers and folded them on the larger pieces. And of course, don't forget the googly eyes!
Easy peasy. . . if you happen to have some random faucet handles laying around. Hee hee!

Our second project is wooden block Nativity Scenes. These are all over the internet and pinterest, etc. so I'm not taking credit for them, I'm just telling you its another craft we are doing.
I found the Me And My Big Ideas brand Nativity stickers at Hobby Lobby ($1.99 for 3 sheets), bought some 3 foot planks of wood from Home Depot and cut them to the sizes I would need, stained them with whatever random stain I had laying around, then put the stickers on them. Yes, I know my instructions are awesome. If you want more ideas and better instructions, there are some---> HERE and HERE. I'm not sure there is a wrong way to do these. You could use ink and stamps, or hand drawings or clipart and mod podge. It's just a fun little project and a great little gift for a family with kids.

Birthday Treasure Hunt

For my daughter's last Birthday, she wanted to have a treasure hunt around our neighborhood.

I was able to talk some of my neighbors into giving out the clues as the kids came to their doors... I was even allowed to bury the treasure in the sand box of one of my awesome neighbors. It was a fun party and the kids had a blast running around the neighborhood in their different groups.

I made my own invite in photoshop and sent it to Costco to be printed, but the original idea came from zazzle.com. They have tons of options that you can add your own text to. I usually make my own stuff, if I can, since I have graphic design degree and need to use it for something, but I get that not everyone has that ability or option!

Going Away Party Invite

Are you planning a going away party for a friend or relative?

Are you moving yourself and want to announce it?

Here's a fun idea. 

Teacher Appreciation Week!

Door Decorating idea.

Well, I'm not going to say this was an easy idea for a door, but it was fun.

The monkey was made in a few different pieces using brown and tan poster boards. I cut out a circle for the head and smaller circles for the ears. Then just kind of used the head circle to create the tan face design, and made smaller circles for the insides of the ears. The hands I traced from my five year olds hands and attached them to the arms which were just cut strips of the poster board. The belly isn't much bigger than what you see hiding behind the leaves (it was a weird egg shape, with a smaller tan egg shape over top). 

The leaves were made from green butcher paper. I folded pieces of butcher paper in half and drew what I thought the leaves should look like, then cut them out, unfolded them and viola'... leaves. For the bushes I also used butcher paper and just made random bushy scallops. 

If you have a Cricut Machine then making the letters will be easy for you, if not, I would recommend just finding some paper letters and using those. I did use a Cricut machine for the letters AND the bananas, although I had to tweak a moon shape because I didn't have a banana.

Overall, it was a pretty fun door to make...a little time consuming, but fun!

Staching through the snow!

Well since it's all the rage, I thought I'd hop on the bandwagon and join the Mustache craze!

I found the cutest mustache candy molds online and HAD to get them!!! They are not for making hard candies like suckers (because the heat of the candy will melt them), but they are perfect for melted chocolate... and who couldn't use a chocolate mustache (am I right)?
Anyway, I bought two different types of meltable chocolate. The first was a Kroger brand Candy Coating Chocolate in a convenient microwavable tray. I just followed the instructions and it worked awesome. The second chocolate was Wilton brand Candy Melts, these worked great too (I melted them in smaller increments). I believe you can also buy melting chocolate disks by the pound from places like Orson Gigi or Winco (Winco has great prices too).
I melted the chocolate and spooned it into the mold with lollipop sticks already resting IN the mold (the ones I poured, then added the sticks to, pushed the chocolate down around the stick-if that makes sense). After I poured all my molds I put them in the fridge for about 20 minutes. It was super easy and they popped right out.
I took the completed lollies and lined/stacked them up (in the amount I needed for each gift) in cellophane bags. As for the tags...well I made them (with a little help from Summer Time Designs' Believe Kit) but -because I like you, and I'm cool like Mr. Mustache Tom Selleck, I will post them below and you can use them.
Okay, now that I've written a novel, I MUSTACHE you to forgive my babbling and SHAVE this to your Pinterest page or desktop or whatever! :{

Yes there are two versions. The version I made and printed had THRU and not THROUGH. Although I prefer THROUGH, it fit funny when I only wanted two lines of text, so I went with THRU because my designer brain wanted to. So there. But for you english buffs I made a THROUGH one just for you! 

By the way, the font is Baskerville in BOLD if you want to put it into Photoshop or another computer program and add your family's name at the bottom...or there should be plenty of space for you to hand write it in.