Papertrey Ink- SAF Wooden Bangles

As I mentioned earlier, I definitely lost quite a few of these in the making- 50% to be exact. I also wasn't able to get them perfectly round or quite small enough. I'll have to find a better item to shape them in next time. Still, it was a neat project to try out. I decided to make a Halloween bracelet. I painted it with orange Martha Stewart glitter paint a few times to get a good coating. Once it was totally dry, I used the two little bat stamps from the Spooky House Petite Places set with Versamark and black glittery EP. I did find out one issue with heat embossing that Maile Belles didn't mention. :) It turns out if you use the heat gun on these too long, they start to straighten back out some. Oops. However, if you continue to use it long enough to heat it up substantially, you can get gently bend them enough, get them back into their shaper and reform them. Whew!

Papertrey Ink- SAF Pattern Mix & Match

Ok. I have to say that this was a bit of a cheat. I was trying to figure out how I could incorporate some PTI products from my thin collections when I recalled I'd received a pack of paper in my first PTI order- the Make It Market Christmas kit from last year. I hadn't used it at all because I just made houses from the set. Now this feels like cheating but Betsy Veldman did mention using papers from a matching set. I tried to find papers in the pack that had obvious small/medium/large patterns but pretty much they're all small. So, I used them all. I definitely want to get some other papers and do the mix but I'm happy to have done something.

The die is from Stampin' Up as is the cardstock.

Papertrey Ink- SAF Thread Nest

I've always liked the look of thread nests but I honestly hadn't really thought to use them. This was a good kick to try one. I used the Coats metallic silver thread that Laura Bassen recommended in her video.

I hate to say it but I didn't any PTI products to use on this one. I have mostly Petite Places stamps and dies and the Secret Agent set and they just weren't going to cut it here. Of course, I have more on the way now but they just won't make it in time.

Stamp & paper: Stampin' Up
Dies and Embossing Folder: Sizzix

Papertrey Ink- SAF Friday Night Fashion Show

So. Papertrey Ink had their big event yesterday- Stamp-a-Faire. They kicked it off Friday night with a fashion show where you could alter a tshirt in some manner. Well, don't expect to see me in an altered shirt- the crud went through our house last week and I'm still trying to shake the sinus crap and the oncoming chest cough. I was actually supposed to spend yesterday evening with gal pals and a solid dose of Rocky Horror Picture Show. I guess the upside is that I was able to craft instead. So, I've got a few projects to share, hopefully a few more to come and a few pictures of my "pre-work" that can be posted in place of an altered shirt.

One of the projects we could prep for was popsicle stick bracelets. I cooked 10 sticks and was only able to use 5 of them. And unfortunately, even those started to split at the one end. Oh well. At least i know how to do them now.

I also needed to clean my workspace- it was covered with, well, Papertrey projects I was in the middle of.

Pencil vase for teacher's gift

I've been making these for the past few years for teachers' gifts. The nice thing is that once the flowers we add die off, the vase makes a great pencil/pen/scissors holder. I was asked about making these the other day and I once again realized that I've never so much as taken a picture of one. I'm usually in such a rush to get them to the school I totally forget until I've dropped them off and of course, way too late at that point. This year, I got this! :)

 

I just get a straight-sided vase from The Dollar Tree and, as it turns out, 39 pencils. I use my hot glue gun on the high temp since I don't think the low temp would stay liquid for long enough. As it is, I only put a squiggle of hot glue wide enough for two pencils. Otherwise, I find I'm either scraping cooled glue off of the glass or remelting it with the tip of the glue gun and neither one is any fun.

The last pencil can be a bit iffy and unfortunately on this one, I found that I had way too much space for one pencil but not quite enough for two. In the end I went with two and one sits a bit on top of the two on either side. Last tip, I do my best to make sure that the writing doesn't show. I think it would look nice to have the writing facing out but doing it consistently while trying to quickly attach them to the glass isn't worth the effort.

Let me know if I missed anything!

Unity May/June Growing in Unity Blog Hop

If you're here from the hop, welcome to the end of the trail- I'm your last stop. If you're here because you wuv me, awwww! Thanks for dropping by!

I was invited to come back to do one more project for Unity, participating in the May and June GIU Gals hop. Well, of course I said "YES!" immediately after getting Maria's email. Then the nervousness crept in. Would I get a "cool" stamp? One that would "jive" with my personality? The answer to that question was a resounding YES! Kelli (I'm guessing it was you Kelli. If not, thanks to the person who happened to randomly pick me for to be the recipient of Lexi) sent me Lexi Girl which I'm thrilled with. One of my favorite lines of Unity stamps is Angie Blom's Angie Girls so getting one of them was just perfect by me. (Of course, I realized later that this is a Angie Girl hop but that's beside the point- I still love Lexi.)

I recently saw a challenge for paper piecing and realized I hadn't done that in a while so the boxes and flowers are pieced. I added dots to Lexi's shirt just because I wanted to, nothing more. I used Copics to color the image.

If you haven't visited the rest of the hop stops, here they are in order. Don't forget to comment along the way- there will be two random winners who will be announced on Wednesday's GIU post.

	Lucinde van Ballegooijen: http://lucilight.nl/cms/index.php/blog
	Laura Turcotte: laurascreativeworld.blogspot.ca
	Brittany Morgan: http://craftypaperbee.blogspot.com/
	Renee Moran: http://becauseofdelaneyjane.blogspot.com
	Sheena Brooks: http://kanatanewfpapercrafts.blogspot.com/
	Tara Sell: http://curlecues.blogspot.com/
	Angela Walters: http://www.lifewithawienerdog.com/
	Maria Levine: www.riacreations.blogspot.com
	Jen Gerwig-Dively: You're kidding, right?! You're already here!  :) Thanks again for dropping by and have a great remainder to your weekend!