Memory Shadow Box for Mom

Last October I made my first ever altered printers tray. The link for that post is here.

While on my recent trip to Indy for my Mom's funeral, I went to a craft store to purchase some black foam board to create Memorial boards of Mom with assorted photos. While perusing the aisles, I saw a display of the shadow boxes/printers trays. I probably stood there for at least 5 minutes. I picked up a tray, thought about the possibilities, then put it back. I repeated that several times. I had only made one before, and although it was cute, I was intimidated by the ones that used real photos and such. Finally, I stuck it in my cart and searched for items to put in the tray.

Here is the completed project.

I only put in 3 real photos in my memory box. That made it fairly easy. I purchased an assortment of stickers, buttons, etc. to put in the various boxes. I tried to find items that represented Mom's interests & hobbies.

Mom LOVED to play Scrabble & other word games, so I found some letter blocks in the scrapbooking section. The sewing items are mostly buttons. I cut the backs off so they would lay flat. I adhered most things with glue dots. Lucky for me, Mom was a big crafter, so I was able to use lots of her own items.

The elephant & letter "C" charm were from the jewelry craft section. The puzzle piece was left from one of the many puzzles that mom put together. It didn't make it back to its box and my family had no idea where it belonged, so it was fair game!

The little books were also from the jewelry crafts. Notice the little crack in the frame on the side? I'm going to have to fix that. It was awkward to transport.

When it was finished, I was quite pleased with how it turned out. We put it on display at the visitation and funeral and received lots of compliments on it.

I am looking forward to making my next Memory Shadow Box/Printer's Tray. Not sure what theme it will be.

Halloween Altered Printer Tray

Halloween is my favorite holiday. I absolutely LOVE decorating the house for Halloween. Unfortunately, I have this unwritten rule that I can't put up holiday decorations if the house is not clean. It's the 3rd day of October and my house is not clean! Therefore, I cannot put up any Halloween decorations yet. Of course, one might think that the simple solution would be to just clean the house. No, instead I decided to make an altered printer tray with a Halloween theme!

I have become quite fascinated with the decorated/altered printer trays. They are so cute! Today I ran into to Michael's and saw a cute little tray that was just calling out to me.

Here's the package from the tray in case you're interested. I've seen several nice ones on Amazon, but I had a 40% off coupon that needed to be used.

I used some old, discontinued Stampin' Up! printed papers and various Halloween stickers that I had on hand. Most of the stickers were from Jolee's Boutique. I just slapped it all together and here's the finished project.

If nothing else, I think this is going to motivate me to clean the house so I can get out the decorations!

Scrapbooking Room Re-Do

Back in May, I wrote about my scrapbooking room. It was a teeny tiny room, but it was working for me. Then in February, we got new flooring in the basement. We had to completely empty out all of the items in my scrapbooking room. When it was time to move everything back, my wonderful husband decided to use that teeny tiny room as his home office and let me have a larger room. For the last few years, the larger room housed his desk and work area along with my stamping room. As an Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator, I have needed space to hold monthly card making classes. So now instead of having a separate stamping and scrapbooking room, I have one huge beautiful craft room.

Here is my old teeny tiny scrapbooking room:

And here are pictures of my new larger craft room.

Chris just hung up the white embellishment organizer, so that's no longer on the floor. And it looks like I was so eager to take pictures that I didn't even put the broom or cleaning wipes away!

The left most door leads to a closet. Pics of that are below.

The old scrapbooking room is on the other side of the wall with the paper racks.

Here are some views of the closet. I still need to do something with the top shelf, so please ignore.

And I bought a new desk for my computer.

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Pony Hair Streamers

Last fall I became obsessed with Pony Hair Streamers for Hannah.  Those are the cute ribbon pony tail thingies. I like hair bows, too, but I just can't make a bow to save my life. That's one of reasons I fell in love with the pony streamers - there are no bows involved! I picked up a few at a booth at a local school's fall festival. Then I started searching online. I bought a few on Ebay. I even got to choose my own colors for some. Then I came across an Etsy shop that sold a "No Sew" pdf instruction e-book. I knew that this was my calling. I purchased the e-book and got started making my own pony streamers.

I bought some ribbon. Then I bought some more ribbon. And more ribbon. My new obsession wasn't pony hair streamers, it was collecting ribbon! A girl can't just have one pony streamer, right? She needs different colors and themes to go with different outfits and seasons!

Here are a couple of views of my ribbon. I really need to organize them a little better.

I made a few last year, but probably no more than 10. My enthusiasm for the pony streamers quickly faded.

Well Hannah's dance starts up this week. Her dance company was assigned the color light blue. Last year's pony streamer isn't going to work this year! It's time to get out the glue gun and the ribbon.



Here are the supplies I used. The lighter is to heat seal the edges of the ribbon to keep them from fraying.

 And here are the finished pony streamers that I made this week.

Maybe I will be motivated to make some more this fall.

Altered Composition Notebooks

Hannah needed 7 composition notebooks for school this year. We were at Target picking up school supplies and Hannah found some cute ones with colored photo images on them. She started to pick out 7 different ones when I noticed that they were $2.50 each! I let her keep two of them, but I made her get plain ones for the rest.

She was a little disappointed about having to get plain ones, but she was really good about not complaining about it, so I decided to decorate her plain ones for her.
 

I started with a plain composition notebook  - 40 cents from Target. 

I traced the notebook onto various printed scrapbooking papers, then cut them out. I used a corner rounder on 2 of the corners of each paper. I used Tacky Tape to adhere the paper onto the notebooks.

I covered each notebook with clear Contact paper when I was finished to protect the covers from tearing or smudging.  

 
 
Here are the finished ones. 

Hannah's dance company colors are purple and zebra print. 

 I thought this one was so pretty and delicate.

 

 Orange, pink, and brown polka dots.

 Tiny white flowers on turquoise.

For the last one, I printed out a bunch of pictures of her and her friends and pets. This one was her favorite one of all. I put the pictures on both sides of the notebook.

I was so pleased with how they turned out. Hannah is requesting more decorated notebooks for herself.