Frosting and Glitter

Penn State Shooter Glass

2012-02-24T08:28:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday everyone! Sorry I have been slacking on the posts a bit this week. I've been feeling really sick and have been curled up in bed most of the week. Today I have a quick post about a shooter glass that I painted a long while back and never posted for some reason. As some of you might know, I attended Penn State University for my undergrad degree and it is my absolute favorite place on earth. Penn State has definitely had a rough year, but the university and the town that it's located in (State College, Pa.) will always hold a very special place in my heart. So here's my Penn State shooter glass:

The design itself is pretty simple and didn't take much time. I started with one glass from a pack of Libbey shooter glasses and cleaned it with rubbing alcohol. Using Americana gloss enamel paint, I painted the paw prints in dark blue going up the back of the glass and added the lettering on the front in white. Here's a better shot of the paw prints:

My favorite part of this glass is the tiny football on the bottom. I reverse painted it on the bottom, meaning that I painted the top layer, the laces, first, then added the football on top. I actually painted the laces twice, so that you can see them through the glass or when the glass is upside down. Here's a photo looking down into the glass:

See? It's so little! I love it. Hope you guys enjoyed this one, especially my fellow Penn State fans! Fight On State!

Hello Sunshine Card #4

2012-02-19T10:29:00.002-05:00

Hi everybody! Here comes the final card in the Hello Sunshine note card series. Here are cards one, two, and three in case you missed them.

To start, I used a yellow card from the Brights box of cards. I trimmed a black plaid piece of cardstock from a Recollections set of scrapbook papers, then punched the top and the bottom using the Double Bubble border punch and glued it down. I spelled out "hello" using silver glitter adhesive letters. I used the medium That's Amore punch to punch hearts from different yellow and gray papers in the Lemon Flower matstack. I attached them in two rows using foam adhesive squares. This card was pretty easy, but I think it's my favorite of the four. The envelope for this card is the same as yesterday. I really like these cards and had fun making them. They are very cheerful little notes that I will use to send friends and family. I hope you are all keeping warm and thinking sunny thoughts wherever you are!

Please see my list of craft supplies for details on the materials used.

Hello Sunshine Card #3

2012-02-18T10:15:00.002-05:00

Hi everybody! Here comes the third in the Hello Sunshine note card series. Don't forget to check out the first and second ones too!

For this card, I used another yellow from the Brights box of cards. I glued down a piece of thin black ribbon (repurposed from a Birchbox shipment) so that it reached almost all the way across the front. I used clear bubble letter stickers to spell out "Hello" and glued three yellow buttons on top of the ribbon. I know I purchased these stickers from Michaels a very long time ago, but I have no idea what brand they are. I then used the medium and large That's Amore punches to punch hearts from the Lemon Flower matstack. I glued some down and attached others with foam adhesive squares for dimension. Here's the envelope:

These are the second two envelopes I stamped for this series. I used hearts from the Stars, Hearts, Swirls set and letters from the Fanciful Swirl alphabet. I hope you guys have enjoyed number three, the last card is coming up tomorrow!

Please see my list of craft supplies for details on the materials used.

Hello Sunshine Card #2

2012-02-17T11:05:00.005-05:00

Good morning! Today I have the second card in my Hello Sunshine note card series. You can see the first one here.

For this one, I used a yellow card from the Brights box of cards and yellow flowered paper from the Fresh Floral stack. I trimmed the paper to a smaller rectangle, and used the Martha Stewart flower punch to cut out four flowers along the bottom. I spelled out “Hi” using black and white dotted puffy letter stickers and attached the flowered paper using foam adhesive squares. I punched four flowers from black papers in the Lemon Flower matstack. After bending their petals up a bit, I attached them using small adhesive squares. I love the extra “pop” they get from having the paper punched out behind with the black flower in front. The envelope design for this card was the same as yesterday. Hope you enjoyed number two, and keep an out for three and four!

Please see my list of craft supplies for details on the materials used.

Hello Sunshine Card #1

2012-02-16T10:48:00.023-05:00

Hello everyone! The weather has been really cold and dreary here lately, so I decided to make some cheerful little note cards to brighten my mood. I was inspired by the colors in the Lemon Flower matstack, specifically yellow, black, gray, and white. There are four cards in this series, which I am calling Hello Sunshine (makes me think of this song) because of their cheery nature. The first card is the simplest and, ironically, does not include a paper from the Lemon Flower stack. Here it is:

I used a white card from the Brights box of cards, which I recently purchased from Joann. I'm not sure how white counts as a "bright"... but whatever. I trimmed a yellow flowered paper from the Fresh Floral stack to cover most of the front of the card. I glued that down, and then glued a piece of black ribbon to the front along the edge of the paper. I constantly save things (like little pieces of ribbon, scraps of paper, etc.) to repurpose them, and this was a piece of ribbon from one of my Birchboxes. I spelled out "Howdy!" with silver glitter adhesive letters that I purchased at Michaels ages ago. I attached a gray ribbon embellishment that I believe is Martha Stewart and was purchased at Michaels. My old roommate Kate actually purchased these to make a scrapbook for her sister after her wedding (such a cute idea, by the way) and she gave me her leftover materials when she had finished. I really love the extra touch the little bow adds. This card was super simple! I wanted to add some punched shapes to it, but when I laid them out, they really distracted from the pretty floral paper. Here's the envelope design:

This is two envelopes, obviously. I stamped two of each envelope design to make my life a little simpler. I used a stamp from the Martha Stewart flower punch and stamp set and letters from the Fanciful Swirl alphabet. The little swirl on the back is also from the alphabet. I hope you guys like this little note card, and stay tuned for the remaining three in the set!

Please see my list of craft supplies for details on the materials used.

Valentine's Day Champagne Glass

2012-02-14T09:57:00.003-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day (or for my fellow single ladies: Galentine's Day)! I'm looking forward to spending my night with a group of wonderful friends! ♥ The item I have for you today is a Valentine's-themed champagne flute. I used a glass from a four-pack of Libbey flutes from Target. This was a really quick and easy one to do. I cleaned my glass with rubbing alcohol, and then painted hearts in different sizes using colors: white, light pink, medium pink, dark pink, and purple. I spaced them so they would appear to be "floating." Once the paint had set for 48 hours, I baked the glass. Ta da!

Heart storm!

I hope you all enjoyed it and have a wonderful Valentine's day!!

Valentine's Day Cards

2012-02-13T09:30:00.000-05:00

Hello all! As I'm sure you already know, Valentine's Day is tomorrow. I wanted to whip up a couple of cute and simple cards for the occasion. When I was in Joann a few weeks ago, I saw the new DCWV Fresh Floral Stack. I fell in love with it and immediately snatched it up to use for card making. This is a huge stack that has floral patterns in pretty much every color of the rainbow. The patterns are both romantic and cheerful, so I knew I would be able to use it for a variety of cards and themes. One thing I did notice is that these are truly paper weight and are much thinner than a regular cardstock matstack would have. These cards were super quick and easy and required very few supplies.

For the first card, I used a dark pink card from my box of jewel tone cards. I chose a red rose printed paper from the Fresh Floral pad and trimmed it to just smaller than the card. I glued it down and then trimmed a piece of white cardstock to the same width. I punched the top of the white stock using the Double Bubble border punch, then I used the large That's Amore punch to cut out three hearts from it. I lined it up and glued the white paper on top of the floral paper. I then used the medium That's Amore punch to punch three hearts from the glitter cardstock matstack in red, pink, and light pink. I attached them in the middle of the heart cutouts using foam adhesive squares.

For the second card, I used a light pink card from the box of jewel tone cards. I trimmed a piece of textured deep pink cardstock from the Mango Frost cardstock matstack to the width of the card and about two thirds the height. As you can see, I cut it just a teensy bit too small, but I'm not planning to mail this card so I left it as it was. I punched the top using the Double Bubble border punch (I love this punch, in case you haven't noticed) and glued it to the front of the card. I cut five small hearts from different pink papers in the Fresh Floral stack and glued two of those to the large white hearts that I had punched out for the first card. I planned how I would lay them out, then used the Martha Stewart glue pad and three heart stamps from the Stars, Hearts, Swirls set to stamp hearts in the open space with Martha Stewart iridescent glitter in Cotton Candy. I used the precision tip of the Scotch 2-Way glue pen to write the word "love" at the top and coated that with Cotton Candy glitter as well. I attached all the hearts using foam adhesive squares. I am still perfecting my glitter stamping technique, and I also wasn't crazy about how the wording came out on this one. I think I would have been better off using a stamp for that too.

If you would like more details about the materials I used for these cards, please check my list of craft supplies. I hope you enjoyed the cards and are having fun getting ready for Valentine's Day! ♥

Crazy Dot Wine Glass

2012-02-07T12:15:00.000-05:00

Good afternoon everyone! Today I have another piece of painted glassware to show you. I painted this one a couple months ago and the photos have been sitting in my folder of things to post, so I really have no excuse for the fact that I'm just getting around to it. I love this glass, especially the pattern. The "Crazy Dots" are my becoming my favorite thing to use/paint on things. You can also see that I created this pattern in Adobe Illustrator to use as the background of my blog. The desktop background has more colors than the glass does, mainly because it's a lot easier dealing with graphic shapes than wet paint!

To make this glass, I started with a four-pack of Libbey stemless white wine glasses from Target. I think these are the ones I purchased, even though the site doesn't say that they're Libbey. As I always do, I started by cleaning the glass thoroughly with rubbing alcohol. Because there are so many colors to this pattern, I painted it in many, many steps. I mostly painted one or two colors at a time, and let them dry for a while before picking the glass back up again. This is mainly because the glasses are much more difficult to hold/paint on than a flat surface, and I tend to smudge the wet paint if I'm not careful. I started by painting approximately five large dots of each color: light pink, dark pink, red, orange, yellow, lime green, kelly green, turquoise, blue, and purple. I spaced the big dots closer together near the bottom of the glass, and spread them out more towards the top. I was going for a graduated effect as opposed to a consistent pattern.

Once the large dots had dried (I believe I left them overnight), I painted the centers of them using the same paints. The centers all correspond to the dot colors, meaning that all the turquoise dots have orange centers, and so on. I actually figured out what combinations I would use ahead of time, just to make sure I didn't end up with a yucky combination (e.g. red and green) or end up repeating a color, etc. After the centers had dried, I painted tiny white dots all around the large dots, repeating that graduated effect. I love how this wine glass turned out and use it all the time. It's just so cheerful! I will try to remember to snap a pic of it with wine in it next time and I'm hoping to repeat this pattern on some other items soon. Hope you guys like it too!

Birthday Bubbles Champagne Glass

2012-02-05T13:50:00.001-05:00

I'm a little late on getting this post up, but I hope you guys like it! I painted this champagne glass a while back but I knew I wanted to give it to a friend for her birthday, and didn't want to post it beforehand in case she might see it. My friend Jackie and I are champagne-lovers, so I really thought this glass would make a perfect gift along with a delicious bottle of Korbel. I really hope she liked it!

I thought this was such a fun champagne glass to celebrate a birthday because it reminds me of a combination of confetti and bubbles. To make it, I used a glass from a four-pack of Libbey champagne flutes purchased at Target. As always, I started by cleaning the glass with rubbing alcohol. I then painted a series of circles with brightly colored Americana gloss enamel paint. I started by painting all the pink circles, followed by the orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple circles. I varied the size and spaced each color out, but as I added more colors I placed them near other to look like bubbles, similarly to the New Year's Eve Champagne glass. I let them dry for a day, then I filled in the bubbles with DecoArt Glamour Dust in the matching colors. After letting the paint set for 48 hours, I baked the glass for 30 minutes. I love how fun and colorful this one turned out!

Here's how it looks if you're looking down inside:

It looks kind of neat from the inside! I imagine this is how it would look as you drink out of it as well. Hope you guys like it! :)

Daddy's Frying Pan Cake

2012-02-01T14:18:00.001-05:00

So yesterday was my birthday, and in yesterday's post about my favorite things, I mentioned that my daddy had made me a frying pan cake. You're probably thinking, what on earth is a frying pan cake, right? Well, duh, it's a cake made in a frying pan. On top of the stove! This cake is pretty much a family tradition. My great-grandmother used to make frying pan cakes all the time, and my dad always made them for us when we were growing up. Since my entire family is on a diet this year, he made a cake from a sugar-free mix with sugar-free frosting. My great-grandmother used to make a cake from scratch, and my dad said that you can use the steps for a frying pan cake with any kind of batter. Here are the steps:

Grease the inside of a frying pan and its lid with Crisco. The frying pan should have a domed lid (see the picture for #4).
Prepare your cake batter like normal, either using a box mix or a recipe. Once mixed, pour the cake batter into the frying pan.
Turn the heat to medium. Watch the cake carefully, waiting for a bubble to rise.
Once you see a bubble come to the surface (even a tiny one), turn the heat to low (around 2) and cover the pan. Allow the cake to cook for about an hour and a half, although my dad recommends setting the timer for one hour and checking it. Depending on your stove, it can take between one and two hours.
The cake is done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let it cool in the pan for about 20 minutes.
Once the cake has cooled, flip it carefully onto your cake plate. Allow it to cool completely before frosting.

So, there you have it! A frying pan cake! It's not the prettiest cake in the world, but it will be delicious. It comes out really tender and moist, which is the main reason for making it on the stove instead of in the oven. If you're a fan of moist cakes, this is definitely for you! The sugar-free Devil's Food cake and vanilla frosting weren't horrible, but they are also not all that much lower in calories. The Weight Watchers points value for once slice would be 7. I think next time I'm going to find an actual diet cake recipe and make that. Hope you guys enjoyed and let me know if you try making your own frying pan cakes!

Favorite Things!

2012-01-31T14:14:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone! Today is my birthday and it's been a great day. I really love everything today, so I wanted to do a quick post of a few things that just make me happy. Here are my favorite things today:

1) Neon workout stuff. The other day, my mom was making fun of me because I always match my sports bra, headband, and socks when I work out. It's completely OCD but I like to match! I wondered if I truly did have coordinating items in every color (sadly, I do). But I love how fun and bright these colors are, so I had to snap a picture! The sports bras are all C9 from Target and the socks are all HUE microfiber. Headbands are Under Armour and Nike. Here's my crazy collection of headbands, for reference:

2) My daddy's infamous frying pan cake. What the heck is a frying pan cake, you ask? Well, stay tuned for a how-to post about frying pan cakes tomorrow! Yum.

3) Spring/Summer 2012 polishes from Butter London in Disco Biscuit, Trout Pout, and Slapper. I love the names and I love the colors even more. I also love that Slapper matches my nightstand. Check out my post on The Cateyes Have It to see my mani with Disco Biscuit.

4) This super cute t-shirt from Southern Marsh that my friend Jackie gave me for my birthday. Jackie and I are both Southern girls at heart, so I adore the logo on the back. It's also the perfect color and matches my Slapper nail polish to a tee (pun intended, hehe). Thanks Miss Jacqueline!!! You really need to move your butt down here below the Mason-Dixon.

5) Black and white polka dot wrapping paper. I'm obsessed. I would make everything in my life black and white polka dots if I didn't think it would give me a headache.

I hope you guys have a fabulous day and all have some favorite things to make you happy today :)

Sailboat and Anchor Picture

2012-01-26T13:06:00.019-05:00

If you are familiar with my blog, you might know that I have done quite a few variations of these punch pictures. Click the links to check out the previous cupcake, sand dollar, heart, and palm tree versions. I really love making these, as you can probably tell. They are such a quick and easy project if you need some wall decor. Each picture has only taken me about an hour to complete. But what I really love about these is that there are countless variations you can create and they're very easy to personalize.

For this particular picture, my mom asked me to create something for my brother's bedroom, which has one empty wall that needed some decoration. My brother's favorite color is blue so his walls are painted a pale blue and he has a blue plaid Nautica comforter, so the obvious choice was to make a nautical picture. Back in the old days, my mom would have asked me to paint something like the picture below, which I painted in high school and currently hangs in my family's basement. She knows that I rarely make time to paint anymore, especially since I haven't felt very inspired (blah).

Hopefully I will find some painting inspiration soon! Anyway, for this picture I used the Fiskars Sail Away large sailboat punch and the Martha Stewart anchor punch. This was the toughest one of these I've done so far, for a few different reasons. First, my intention was to use three punches and make a line of sailboats, a line of waves, and a line of anchors. I tracked down the Sail Away and Makin' Waves limited edition punches specifically for this picture, but I really hated how the shapes all looked together. The Fiskars large punches are generally pretty consistent in size, although Sail Away is somewhat large, probably because it has three components. The Makin' Waves punch is really big in person. It's somewhere between a large and an extra-large in my opinion. Martha Stewart's punches are generally all one size, usually what I would consider between a medium and a large, closer to a large. When I lined the three shapes up next to each other, it looked absolutely ridiculous. I really wanted to give the effect that the boats were floating on water, so I even tried using the Boundary Waters border punch to make a line of waves between the sailboats and the anchors. That just looked kind of weird. My mom and I decided it would look best with just the sailboats and the anchors. We also had trouble deciding what color background to use. I had bought several options, and we had originally decided on using a sandy beige color. I set about punching all the anchors out of medium and dark blue papers, some plain and some patterned. I cut all the bottoms of the sailboats out of white textured cardstock. I wanted this picture to be very neutral and not girly, so I decided to cut all of the sails out of very neutral, faintly patterned papers. Once I had punched everything out, I lined them all up and my mom still hated it! She told me it looked very "blah." So we decided to use a pale blue background paper instead of the beige and I added some color by alternating brightly colored sails with semi-neutral ones. I tried very hard to use papers with stripes and bold patterns so that they would look like sails you might actually see on a sailboat. I used tons of different DCWV stacks to find the colored and neutral sails, but all of the anchors came from the K & Company Sheer Simplicity Blue pad. Please check out my list of craft supplies for details on the items I have used. Here's a detail shot of the end result:

In case you can't see the pattern, here it is:

Red, Semi-neutral, Orange, Semi-neutral, Yellow Sails
Blue Anchors randomly alternating patterned and plain
Semi-neutral, Green, Semi-neutral, Blue, Semi-neutral Sails
Blue Anchors randomly alternating patterned and plain
Red, Semi-neutral, Orange, Semi-neutral, Yellow Sails
Blue Anchors randomly alternating patterned and plain

For the anchors, I described them as randomly alternating because there's no real pattern. I just tried to vary the shades of blue and tried to place patterned anchors underneath sails that wouldn't clash too much. I am describing some of the sails as "semi-neutral" because they are not as vibrantly colored as the others. I had originally punched very neutral patterns, but I liked these better. If you click on the picture to enlarge, you can see that the colors in the "semi-neutrals" also follow the color pattern. As usual, I attached everything using adhesive squares. Looking at the photos, I can see that some of them are not quite straight, so I might need to go back and correct that. This was very challenging because I had to line up three components for each sailboat, which was much more difficult than lining up one or even two (like the cupcake has). It was also difficult to attach the anchors because the shape is so thin. I actually had to cut my tiny adhesive squares in half to attach them and it was hard to line them up straight. Although this picture gave me so much trouble, I really like how it turned out in the end! I think this would be absolutely adorable for a baby boy's room, except that I might use blue only. I have another spin on this picture in mind, so keep your eye out for it in the future. Hope you guys have a great day!

Beachy Birthday Card

2012-01-24T16:04:00.000-05:00

It's pretty warm outside today (for a winter in Maryland), so this card really fits my mood and it turned out so cute! I really wanted to do something using the Marvy Uchida summer punch I ordered a few weeks ago to complete the palm tree picture. I started with a light turquoise card from the jewel tones box of cards. I punched the wave using the Fiskars Boundary Waters border punch and a blue paper from the Sheer Simplicity blue paper pad and glued it down. I used scissors to cut the island shape from a textured cream/sand colored cardstock and glued it on top of the wave. I punched the palm tree from a green leaf-print paper in the Animal Crackers matstack and trimmed it down to the leaves. I punched another palm tree from brown cardstock and trimmed that to only the trunk. I glued the trunk and the leaves to the card. I punched the crab from a red printed stock in the Sweet Stack matstack and used a pen to add the black eyes. I attached the crab with an adhesive square for dimension. I punched the starfish from a coral colored paper also in the Sweet Stack and glued it down. I punched the sun from a yellow polka dot paper in the Lemon Flower matstack and attached it using an adhesive square. Finally, I used the Fiskars cloud punch to cut a cloud from white glitter stock in the glitter matstack and glued it behind the sun. I used the fanciful swirl alphabet to stamp the message inside in green and yellow ink. The yellow did not show up very well so I will probably try not to use that color in the future. The picture of the inside also turned out very weirdly, but it's actually just white like the other cards. For more details on the materials, check out my list of craft supplies.

Butterfly Birthday Card

2012-01-20T11:59:00.001-05:00

Happy Purple Friday everyone! I am getting so pumped to watch the Ravens win the AFC Championship on Sunday. For today's post, I have a birthday card that I made a few weeks ago. For this card, I started with a pink card from the DCWV jewel tones cards box. I punched a bunch of butterflies in oranges, greens, blues and purples using the Martha Stewart butterfly punch and papers mainly from the Pocket Full of Posies matstack. Because the inside message says "Wishing you a one-of-a-kind birthday," I wanted to make one of the butterflies stand out. I punched one butterfly from pale pink glitter stock from the glitter matstack and glued a thin line of purple gems down the center of only that butterfly. I glued the patterned butterflies to the card in varying positions. I attached the special pink butterfly using an adhesive square that I trimmed with scissors so it would not show through the cutouts. I used stamps from the happiness messages stamp set with turquoise and pink ink for the inside message and butterfly. I have been having some trouble stamping on these cards, and it's almost as if the cards absorb too much ink and it bleeds a bit. I will have to work on my stamping technique on the next few cards. Please check out my list of craft supplies for detailed information about the materials I used for this card and other projects.

January Beauty Army Box

2012-01-17T09:51:00.003-05:00

I received my very first Beauty Army box over the weekend and I love it! Look how pretty everything looks wrapped up in pink tissue paper! Head over to The Cateyes have it if you want to see what I got.

January Birchbox

2012-01-16T14:07:00.001-05:00

I also received my January Birchbox on Saturday and didn't get a chance to write a post about it until now. Please head over to The Cateyes Have It to read my full review.

Stylish Birthday Card

2012-01-16T13:11:00.000-05:00

First, I must say that I am super excited that the Ravens won yesterday! My mom and I were like human popsicles after the game, but we are so happy that the Ravens will be advancing to the AFC Championship!!!!! But let's get back to normal, here's a birthday card I made a little while ago that's been sitting in the queue.

For this fun card, I started with a plum colored card from the DCWV jewel tones card box. I chose a glittery paper from the All About Girls matstack that had a shoes and hats print on it. Using scissors, I cut around the design at the top of the paper tracing around the shoes, etc. I used my paper trimmer to cut the paper to fit the front of the card and glued it down. I did not have any punches that I could use for the shapes, so I drew the purses and shoes freehand on a piece of paper and used them as a guide to cut the shapes. For the purple purse, I used a hounds-tooth print paper from the All About Girls matstack to cut the body of the bag. I cut the flap and the strap from a purple print paper in the same matstack. I glued the pieces together and then glued them to the card. I cut the turquoise heels from a polka dot paper also in the All About Girls matstack and glued them down next to each other. I used a glittery gray patterned paper from the All Dressed Up matstack for the silver clutch and glued that together and then to the card. I glued tiny loose gems to the items to make them a little more snazzy. I glued a purple gem to the purple bag and a silver gem to the clutch to look like clasps. I then glued turquoise heart-shaped gems to the shoes. I stamped the inside message using a stamp from the happiness messages set and purple ink. You can find more details about the materials here.

Ravens Shooter Glass

2012-01-14T11:27:00.004-05:00

So, I happen to have the most awesome mom in the history of moms, and she purchased me Ravens playoff tickets as a Christmas gift! I have been practically bursting at the seams waiting for this game, which is finally happening tomorrow. Although I have been to quite a few Ravens games, I have never actually been to a playoff game, so I'm extremely excited!!! I'm really hoping the Ravens win, which will give me a chance to take a victory shot out of this Ravens shot glass I painted:

I bought this set of four Libbey shooter glasses at Target a while back and I will be posting some other variations soon. I have never tried to paint an official logo before, so I really wanted to give it a shot (pun not intended). The first thing I did was print out a few different Ravens logos in different sizes. I used this website which has the current and previous logos for pretty much every team in existence. The website allows you to click on an image and copy it or save it. I copied and pasted several logos into Microsoft Word, resized them, and printed the whole page on regular paper. I cut out the logos, leaving a square of paper around them.

Once I had decided which logo I wanted to paint, I taped the logo inside of the shot glass with regular Scotch tape and cleaned the outside of the glass with rubbing alcohol. I used Americana Gloss Enamel paints in black, purple, white, gold, and red for this particular glass. I decided it would be easiest to paint the black first, which served as an outline for the rest of the colors. I let the black dry before filling in the rest of the logo. Once I had filled in the colors, I went back and added the details of the eyes and nostrils. I let the logo dry for several days before painting the team name at the bottom. I did this mainly because I tend to mess up letters pretty often. You can easily wipe away mistakes using rubbing alcohol, but I wanted to make absolutely sure that the logo was dry so that I would not accidentally remove any of it as well. Because of the way this glass is made, I had to freehand the name based on a printout. As you can see, the name wraps around the glass a bit, but I didn't want it to be super tiny. After the name dried for a short while, I used DecoArt Glamour Dust to add some glitter for a little extra "oomph." I painted gold glitter around the lettering and added purple glitter on top of the purple parts of the logo. Once everything had set for a few days, I baked this glass in the oven for 30 minutes.

I am really happy with how this turned out, I just wish that the brush strokes were not so obvious. This is a problem I have noticed with using the Gloss Enamels paints. I also really struggle with painting letters. That is definitely a skill that I will have to practice. Here's some shots of the lettering:

I hope you guys like it! GO RAVENS!

New Zoya Polishes!

2012-01-13T15:19:00.001-05:00

I just received my new Zoya polishes that I ordered last week during their Get 2 Free promotion. I am so excited about these colors! Head over to The Cateyes Have It for the full post.

New Scentsy Stuff!

2012-01-13T10:19:00.000-05:00

I just ordered some new Scentsy items that I am super excited about. If you remember from my original post, my friend Angie hosted a Scentsy party last month. She brought a lot of people's items in to work to deliver them and I was able to see some of the items that other people had purchased. One of the items I really loved was the Scent Pak. Scent Paks are small cloth packs with a mesh back that are filled with scented beads. They give off a ton of fragrance and are perfect for stashing in gym bags, closets, drawers, or pretty much anywhere. I really wanted to purchase some, and of course I couldn't resist getting more Scentsy Bars! The are running a "Bring Back My Bar" promotion now for the month of January that allows you to buy some of their most popular retired scents and some of them sounded too good to pass up.

I used the Combine and Save promotion for the Scentsy Bars and ordered a few Scent Paks. Here's what I got:

Scent Pak in Black Raspberry Vanilla - This smells exactly like my Teavana Raspberry Black tea that I love to drink.
Scent Pak in Coconut Lemongrass - Smells really tropical and delicious and not overly coconut-y.
Scent Pak in Clean Breeze - Literally smells exactly like fresh, clean laundry.
Scentsy Bar in Berries and Bubbly (retired) - Supposed to smell like strawberries and champagne. I don't pick up those notes so much, but it smells sweet and clean all at once. I really like this one!
Scentsy Bar in Bubblegum (retired) - Smells exactly like a piece of Double Bubble and reminds me of being a kid and having bubble-blowing contests.
Scentsy Bar in Mad About Mint (retired) - Smells just like a piece of Doublemint gum.
Scentsy Bar in Buttermints (retired) - This smells creamy and buttery with just a hint of mint. Love it!
Scentsy Bar in Skinny Dippin' - Smells fruity and yummy and perfectly summery.
Scentsy Bar in Sunkissed Citrus - This one smells citrusy and delicious and reminds me of an orange-scented suntan lotion, in a good way! Makes me think of sipping an orange crush while laying on the beach.

I'm so excited to try out all these new scents in my Scentsy warmer. I am also loving the Scent Paks. I put the Black Raspberry Vanilla in my car and it's working great so far. I am hoping it will function like a car freshener that just lasts a lot longer. I'm going to stash the Coconut Lemongrass in my duffel bag for when I travel. I put the Clean Breeze in my gym bag and it smells so refreshing. It's sitting in my bedroom and my whole room is full of that wonderful clean laundry smell! I hung it from the interior zip pocket using one of my Bath & Body Works PocketBac holders.

If you're interested in ordering some fun Scentsy stuff for yourself, you can try to find a consultant near you or you can go through Jamie, which is who I have ordered from. I'm so impressed with how quickly both of my orders arrived.

Go Wild! Birthday Cards

2012-01-12T09:45:00.001-05:00

These two birthday cards were super quick and easy to make! For the first one, I used a paper trimmer to cut strips of neutral colored animal print papers, all from the Recollections Animal Kingdom paper pad. I trimmed them to fit and glued them to the front of an orange card from the DCWV jewel tones card box. I cut 1" squares of textured cream colored stock using the paper cutter and spelled out "WILD" using a gold glitter glue writer. Once they were dry, I attached them using adhesive squares. I stamped the message on the inside using the fanciful swirl alphabet stamps with brown and orange ink.

For the second card, I used a dark purple card from the same box of cards. I used the Fiskars Round 'N Round punch to cut circles from animal print papers in turquoise, green, and orange tones from the Animal Kingdom pad. I glued the circles to the front of the card to mimic a large polka dot pattern. I used the paper trimmer to cut 1" squares from textured aqua colored stock. I spelled out "WILD" on them, just like above, using the purple glitter glue pen, which I sprinkled with a bit of Martha Stewart iridescent glitter in Sugar Plum. Once they were dry, I attached them diagonally with adhesive squares. I stamped the inside with the fanciful swirl alphabet using purple and turquoise inks. Please see my list of craft supplies for details on the materials.

Pink Dotty Thank You Card

2012-01-10T10:31:00.010-05:00

Final card in my series of Thank You cards, take a look at cards one, two, three, four, and five. I started with a pink card from the DCWV box of jewel cards. I spelled out "Thanks!" using black and white polka dotted puffy stickers that I purchased at Michaels (and luckily the message fit perfectly). For the background, I used a black paper with pink dots from the All Dressed Up matstack. I trimmed it to fit using the paper cutter and punched the top and bottom with the Double Bubble border punch. It wasn't super easy to line up the border punches so that the top and bottom matched, but I think it still looks okay even though they're a bit off. I punched hearts from the same matstack using the medium and large heart punches. I attached all of the hearts using adhesive squares. I love this one! Probably because it is polka dotted, haha.

Here's the envelope, stamped with hearts from the Ink 'n' Stamp set in pink ink:

For detailed information on the supplies used, please check out my craft supplies list.

Purple and Teal Thank You Card

2012-01-09T10:18:00.007-05:00

Fifth in my series of Thank You cards, take a look at one, two, three, and four. For this card, I started with a plum colored card from the DCWV jewel cards box. I trimmed a piece of textured white cardstock to fit the front, then punched both the top and bottom using the Double Bubble border punch. I glued it down, leaving a bit of space between the paper and the bottom of the card. Using the Fiskars medium heart punch, I punched hearts in coordinating purple and teal colors, mainly from the All About Girls and Mango Frost matstacks. I arranged the hearts in two rows and attached them with adhesive squares. I cut a rectangle from tan textured cardstock and glued a smaller rectangle of white cardstock to it. I stamped a message from the Happiness Messages set of clear stamps using green ink, then stamped on top with glue and added glitter in Wintermint. I punched a hole on the right side of the tag, looped thick string through and tied it in a bow, then attached the tag with glue. This card was definitely the easiest, but I love the look that doubling the border punch created!

Here's the envelope stamping, done using hearts from the Ink 'n' Stamp set in pink, purple and green inks:

For more information on the materials I used, check out my list of craft supplies.

Plaid Hearts Thank You Card

2012-01-08T10:07:00.003-05:00

Fourth in my series of Thank You cards, check out cards one, two, and three. For this one, I started with a light turquoise blue card from the DCWV pack of cards. I used textured white card stock for the bottom, trimmed it to fit, punched it with the Double Bubble border punch, and glued it to the front. I then went through all of my matstacks looking for papers with plaid patterns and punched them using the Fiskers medium heart punch, except for one which I punched using the large heart. Once I had enough hearts, I arranged the small hearts in color order along the bottom and attached them with adhesive squares. I attached the three multicolored plaid hearts above the first row of hearts and attached them with adhesive squares as well. I used a textured tan piece of cardstock to create a "tag," which I cut using the paper cutter and scissors. I stamped the message using a clear stamp from the Happiness Messages set and green ink. I punched a hole at the top of the tag, looped thick string through the hole and tied the string in a bow. I attached the tag using a large adhesive square. I think this one might be my favorite, and it was fairly simple!

Here's the envelope stamping, done using hearts from the Ink 'n' Stamp set in a rainbow of inks:

For details on the supplies used, please check my list of craft supplies.

Cupcakes Thank You Card

2012-01-07T09:20:00.007-05:00

Third in my Thank You card series, check out cards one and two. For this card, I started with a pink card from the DCWV jewel card pack. I chose a patterned paper from the Sweet Stack matstack, trimmed it with the paper cutter, punched the top edge using the Double Bubble punch, and glued it to the front of the card. I used the Fiskars cupcake punch to punch the tops of the cupcakes from several matstacks. I punched the bottoms out of glitter papers in the glitter cardstock matstack. I attached the cupcake tops and bottoms using adhesive squares. I used a stamp from the Fiskars Sweet Life set for the message. These stamps need to be used with a stamping block and stick on like a clear stamp would, except that they are rubber so they actually stamp better! The only downfall is that they are not clear, so it's harder to line up your stamp. I stamped the message in purple ink on plain white cardstock, then stamped on top of it with glue and added glitter in Sugar Plum. I definitely had trouble lining up the glue on top of the ink because I couldn't see through the stamp, but it turned out alright (and only slightly off). I trimmed the cardstock with scalloped craft scissors and glued it down.

Here's the envelope stamping, done using stamps from the same Fiskars set in purple and pink ink:

For details on the materials used, check out my craft supplies list.

January Julep Maven American Beauty Box

2012-01-06T17:30:00.000-05:00

Just a quick pic of my January Julep Maven box, you can read all about it here. Me and a few friends decided it would be fun to launch a joint beauty blog where we can post all of our respective beauty subscriptions, discuss trends, and review our favorite products. It's so much fun and we are so excited that it's getting started up. Please head over to The Cateyes Have It and check it out!

Flowers Thank You Card

2012-01-06T10:29:00.002-05:00

The second in my series of thank you cards, check out the first one. For this card, I started with a green card from the DCWV jewel cards pack. I used the Double Bubble border punch on a piece of white textured stock, trimmed it to fit and glued it to the front. I then used the Martha Stewart flower punch to cut flowers from a slew of different matstacks. I wanted to create a rainbow effect so I punched flowers in each shade and pink. Once I had punched all of the flowers, I used the stamen stamp that was included in the Stamp and Punch set to stamp glue on the center of each flower. I added glitter in coordinating colors: Bubble Gum, Candy Apple, Orange Sorbet, Lemon Drop, Limeade, Blueberry Slush, and Sugar Plum. I let that glue set for a short while, then added a very small amount of glue on top using the precision tip of the glue pen. I added gems to the center in each color and let them dry. I glued four of the flowers down, one at a time, by adding glue on the center only. I attached the three remaining flowers using adhesive squares. Once the glue had dried, I gently folded the petals up slightly so that they resembled actual flowers.

For the message, I used the same subtly dotted paper as in the previous post. I used a clear stamp from the Happiness Messages set with the glue pad. I stamped the glue then quickly tapped each color of glitter, except pink, in a thin line to create a rainbow glitter effect. I will say that this was not a great technique and I definitely won't use it again. Stamping from the glue pad does not transfer very much glue to the paper, and in turn the glue doesn't hold much glitter. This is not an issue if you have already stamped the message in ink, but because I wanted a rainbow effect I wasn't able to stamp with ink first. I am really hoping the message survives the mailing process, because I'm honestly scared it will be gone by the time it reaches my aunt! I definitely learned my lesson on the glitter stamping. To finish the message, I trimmed the paper with scalloped edge craft scissors. I glued it down then glued small buttons in rainbow colors below. Here's a closeup of the message, you can see how faint the glitter is:

And here's the envelope stamping using a flower stamp from the Happiness Messages set in a rainbow of inks:

For details on the supplies I have used, please see my craft supplies list.

Teal Hearts Thank You Card

2012-01-05T10:04:00.003-05:00

Last weekend I stopped into Jo-Ann Fabrics on a whim and saw that they had many of their scrapbooking supplies on sale! I ended up purchasing a few items, including this Fiskars Double Bubble border punch. As soon as I got the chance, I sat down and went crazy making cards using this punch. I really love it and am already plotting to buy some more border punches. Over the next several days, I'm going to be posting the cards I made using my new punch. They are all variations of thank you notes that I will send to my lovely family members to thank them for my holiday gifts. Here's the first card:

I used a teal card from the DCWV box of jewel colored cards. I used the Double Bubble border punch on a piece of sea-foam textured paper, then I used the paper cutter to trim it and glued it to the front. I punched some hearts using Fiskars medium and large heart punches, mainly from the Mango Frost matstack. I glued most of them directly to the paper except for two, which I attached with adhesive squares. I used a very subtly dotted paper for the message, which I stamped in orange ink using a clear stamp from the Happiness Messages set. I used the glue pad to stamp over the message with glue, then added glitter in Orange Sorbet. I trimmed the paper around the message using scalloped craft scissors. I glued it to the card and it was done! This was probably the quickest of the cards I made.

And here's the envelope stamping using hearts from the Ink 'N' Stamp set with green, orange, yellow, and blue inks:

For details on all of the supplies I used, please check out my list of craft supplies.

Purse Frenzy

2012-01-04T17:24:00.002-05:00

Over the past month I have been going absolutely crazy for purses (okay, I'm always crazy for purses but usually not this much). Anyway, I'm really excited about my latest purse gifts and purchases and I wanted to share them with you guys! In order of awesomeness, saving the best for last:

New Purse #1: Dooney & Bourke Nylon Crossbody Pouchette in Fuchsia

My mom received this purse in black for Christmas from my dad. I really loved it and its price point ($48). I've been looking for a crossbody bag for months, so I decided to order one for myself. I'm definitely more of a "satchel" person, and I only carry ~~large~~ humongous purses on a daily basis, but I wanted a small comfortable bag that I could use when walking a lot, like when I attend baseball or football games. This bag is perfect because it's small but has enough room for my camera, phone and sunglasses along with a zippered pocket where I can stash my cash and cards. This bag comes in pretty much every color and I had a really hard time choosing. I might need to buy more than one! Plus, check out the amazingly neon pink lining:

New Purse #2: Coach Kristin Op Art Ikat Satchel

Those of you who know Coach will know that this is a Summer 2011 bag, but I just got it for Christmas and I am beyond in love with it. I have been absolutely lusting after this bag since I first saw it in the window of the Coach store last summer. I never ended up purchasing it at full retail ($358) but my mom scored an amazing deal on it at Macy's and gave it to me for Christmas! I love everything about this bag – its texture, the subtle shimmer, the ivory rings on the straps, the ikat pattern. I know that ikat was huge last summer, but I am still digging it and don't even mind that this purse is from last year. I can't wait until the weather warms up so I can use it!

New Purse #3: Kate Spade Sparkler Gia Pouch in Multi Glitter

I bought this purse from the Kate Spade website a few weeks ago to wear to fun holiday events. It was described as a makeup bag, which I found very confusing. As I researched it, lots of sites were showing it as a clutch, which is obviously how I intended to use it! The glitter does "shed" somewhat so I honestly can't imagine using this as a cosmetic bag inside my purse or luggage. It's so sparkly and fabulous, I absolutely adore it and wouldn't hide it in another bag! My latest camera is a bit chunkier than my old camera which I could easily fit into wristlets and tiny clutches. It's a bit tougher for me to find larger clutches now that will hold my essentials (lip gloss, camera, phone, gum, cash, cards) but this one does the trick! Although the multi is no longer available, you can still purchase the black or the gold. Check out this close up of the glitter:

Plus it's a completely perfect match to these Nine West flats that I've had for ages:

New Purse #4: Juicy Couture Star Shine Sequin Daydreamer Clutch

I spotted this bag on Piperlime months ago and have been absolutely dying to own it. It's sparkly, it has a bow, it is fabulous in every way! I waited forever and ever to buy it, because the full price of $178 was a bit steep for me. Last Friday, I received a 20% off coupon code for Endless.com and thought I would see if they had this item. When I found it, I saw that it was marked down to $137.73 and I just couldn't resist any longer. The site offered me free overnight shipping, but I was skeptical that it would arrive that quickly. I purchased it around 4 p.m. on Friday, and it arrived around 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, unbelievable! I hereby pledge my undying love to Endless. Because the bag came so quickly, I was able to take it with me on New Year's Eve. I can't wait until I have a fancy occasion and can use it again!

It's pretty large for a clutch and has several pockets which is really nice. The large pocket (the entire body of the bag) zips closed and has an interior zip pocket. The front of the bag serves as another pocket with a zip closure. The clutch folds over and closes with a magnetic clasp. Here's what it looks like unfolded:

And check out the adorable lining, black and white polka dots (my absolute favorite pattern of all time):

Anyway, I hope you guys like my new purses! I'm so excited about all of them and really looking forward to using them soon.

Sailboat Birthday Card

2012-01-02T11:22:00.003-05:00

I love love love how this birthday card turned out! I started with a light turquoise blue card from my DCWV box of jewel colored cards. I used the Fiskars Boundary Waters border punch to cut the water using a striped paper from the K & Company Sheer Simplicity blue paper pad and a swirly wave printed paper from the K & Company Citronella paper pad. I glued the striped paper to the card then attached the swirly paper with adhesive squares to give it dimension. I used the Fiskars sailboat punch to punch the bottom of the boat from plain white cardstock and the sails from textured cream-colored stock. I attached the sailboat using adhesive squares so it looked like it was floating on the waves. I used the Fiskars cloud punch to cut two clouds from white glitter cardstock from the DCWV glitter matstack. I trimmed one of the clouds with scissors so it wouldn't look exactly like the other one. I glued them directly to the card. On the inside, I used my fanciful swirl alphabet stamps and dark blue ink to write the message. On the inside, I glued more little striped waves along the bottom (the stamper punched these when I created the original wave pattern for the front). Please see my list of craft supplies for details on all the materials used.

Here's a close-up that shows the texture of the boat:

And here's the inside:

New Year's Eve Champagne Glass

2011-12-31T10:09:00.008-05:00

Yay for New Year's Eve! I hope you all have fun plans to celebrate this evening. I think this champagne glass is absolutely perfect for toasting your friends at midnight. To make it, I started with a four-pack of Libbey champagne flutes purchased at Target. I really like the glassware sold at Target and use it for painting very often. I first cleaned the glass with rubbing alcohol. I then painted a series of circles with silver metallic Americana gloss enamel paint. I varied the size and positioned them near each other so they would look like bubbles. I let them dry for a short while, then I filled in the circles with DecoArt Glamour Dust glitter paint in Ice Crystal, an opalescent white. After letting the paint set for 48 hours, I baked the glass for 30 minutes. This was a really simple and easy project and this glass only took me about an hour to complete. I think the end result is really pretty, these might even be great for a wedding! I hope you all have a safe and happy new year. Cheers!

Scrapbooking Haul!

2011-12-30T10:50:00.000-05:00

I went shopping for some new craft supplies yesterday and came home with this huge haul. I love finding stuff on sale! I was specifically looking for some supplies to do a few new versions of the punch pictures (here's the original cupcake picture) and make some new cards. Jo-Ann Fabrics had a sale on paper pads and punches and Michaels had some things on sale as well. I always make sure that I have coupons before going to either place. I use Jo-Ann's mobile coupon site to access coupons directly on my phone, although they also have an iPhone app. I also use the Michaels weekly ad to bring up coupons which they scan directly from my phone. Here's all the stuff I came home with:

Top to bottom, left to right:

Recollections Animal Kingdom Paper Pad 12" by 12" (Michaels)
Martha Stewart Iridiscent Glitter 12-Pack (Michaels)
K & Company Citronella Specialty Paper Pad 12" by 12" (Jo-Ann Fabrics)
K & Company Sheer Simplicity - Blue Paper Pad 12" by 12" (Jo-Ann Fabrics)
DCWV Mango Frost Cardstock Matstack 4.5" by 6.5" (Jo-Ann Fabrics)
DCWV Mango Frost Matstack 4.5" by 6.5" (Jo-Ann Fabrics)
DCWV Animal Crackers Matstack 4.5" by 6.5" (Jo-Ann Fabrics)
DCWV All Dressed Up Matstack 4.5" by 6.5" (Jo-Ann Fabrics)
Fiskars Boundary Waters Border Punch (Michaels)
Martha Stewart Flower Stamp and Punch Set (Michaels)
Fiskars Round 'n Round Large Squeeze Punch (Jo-Ann Fabrics)
Fiskars Sail Away Large Squeeze Punch (Purchased on Overstock.com, arrived recently

As you can probably tell, I'm really addicted to paper! I don't know why I keep buying so much of it. I just love all the variety in the DCWV pads and they are all so adorable. I buy the smaller ones because I mainly use them for punches or card-making. I will only buy a large pad if I really love the patterns in it or if I specifically need it and can't find a smaller version. I'm really looking forward to making some fun cards with these new supplies!

For more details on the supplies I use, please check out my craft supplies list. I have also included links to the items so that you can see them in more detail.

Palm Tree Picture

2011-12-26T11:40:00.002-05:00

Another scrapbook picture variation, check out the original cupcake picture and the sand dollar picture. My mom requested this one for the bathroom in my parents' condo at the beach. Here's what the bathroom looks like:

As you can see, it has a palm tree theme and is decorated with colors of green, blue, red and gold. I decided to use two different shapes for this picture, a palm tree and a beach umbrella. I used the Marvy Uchida Extra Giga Multi Punch in Summer. These punches are huge, and punch several shapes at once. The summer punch punches a palm tree, beach umbrella, sailboat, sun, tropical drink, crab, and starfish. I used a ton of different matstacks for this one: Me & My Big Ideas Blue Watercolor and Sunshine; DCWV All About Girls, Café Mediterranean, Pocket Full of Posies, Sweet Stack, Lemon Flower and Tahiti Beach. Check out my craft supplies list for more details.

Because I didn't need to cut all of those shapes and because I hate wasting paper, I lined up my cardstock so that only the main punch I wanted would be cut out. I did so by looking through the clear bottom to make sure that punch was aligned along the corner of the page which worked really well. I like to punch out my shapes and arrange them as I work, so I can see how they look and how many more I need. Here's what it looked like when I was finished punching:

I decided to punch the palms only in shades of green and the umbrellas in shades of red, gold, and blue. I originally intended to make the umbrellas go in two different directions (above) but decided against it. Once I lined them up, I taped my background paper to the mat. I chose a white frame and a double mat in olive green and white. I used a pale beige background paper to mimic sand. It had texture and sheen to it which added a nice variety to the punches, which were mostly matte. I used dot adhesives to attach the shapes in six rows of five, alternating palm trees and umbrellas. Here's the finished product:

Here's a picture that shows the dimension that the dot adhesives create:

I'm happy with the result, and I think it's going to look really cute with the bathroom decor. I have some fun ideas for a few more variations which I'm looking forward to creating in the next few weeks.

25 Days of Christmas: Day 22

2011-12-22T19:50:00.001-05:00

Wine Gifts

Now that Christmas is only three days away, I thought I would post a quick and simple last-minute gift idea - wine! Wine is a great gift for pretty much anyone (as long as they're a drinker) and you can really spend as much or as little as you want. I'm a big fan of local wines, like from our nearby Boordy Vineyards. This photo is of Boordy Blush, which features the Maryland blue crab and is part of their Icons of Maryland series. I also really love their Just for Fun series, especially Jazzberry and TangoPeach. Yum! For these gifts, I tied a restaurant gift card with ribbon to the wine bottles and popped them in a wine bag. Super easy for a hostess gift or to grab on your way to a party.

Happy shopping!
♥, Christy

25 Days of Christmas: Day 21

2011-12-21T21:54:00.000-05:00

Irish Cream Martinis

So I really wanted to try to create a martini that would taste like a sugar cookie. Although this combination didn't taste much like a sugar cookie, it was really yummy so I decided to share it anyway! I'm calling this an Irish Cream martini because that's the main ingredient (clever right?). As usual, this serves two.

Ingredients:

4 oz. Bailey's Irish Cream
2 oz. vanilla vodka
2 oz. Buttershots butterscotch liqueur
3 oz. eggnog
1 oz. cream
Crystal sugar for the rim
Cookie for garnish (optional)

Rim the glass with frosting or Irish cream. Dip rim in crystal sugar.
Combine irish cream, vodka, Buttershots, eggnog and cream in a shaker with ice. Shake.
Strain into two martini glasses.
Garnish glasses with a sugar cookie.
Enjoy!

You could also make this with just milk, or substitute the eggnog with cream or milk. In order to fit the sugar cookie on the rim, I used a dull knife to make a small slice immediately after pulling them from the oven.

Cheers!
♥, Christy

25 Days of Christmas: Day 20

2011-12-20T23:05:00.001-05:00

Christmas Cookies

Wow, Christmas has really snuck up on me this year. I can't believe it's only five days away! I had so many plans for cookies and treats I wanted to make and didn't hardly get around to making any of them. There's very few cookies in our house so I decided to make some really quick sugar cookies. I like to use Betty Crocker's sugar cookie mix which is much easier than making them from scratch. For cutout cookies, all you have to add to the mix is butter, and egg and a tbsp. of flour. All I did was stir the dough together with a wooden spoon, roll it out, and cut the shapes. I used two sizes of snowflake cookie cutters from a holiday set that I purchased at Michaels. The set included two sizes each of gingerbread men, angels, snowmen, Christmas trees, ornaments, bells, snowflakes, Stars of David, stockings, and candy canes. The set normally costs $9.99 but I used a 50% off coupon and only paid $4.99. This was such a low price for a great variety!

These cookies baked very quickly, in about 8 minutes. I only had to let them cool for about 10 minutes or so before I could frost them. I normally make a sugar cookie glaze, but opted for the simplest method which was to use a can of frosting (like what I would use for cupcakes). I piped a bunch of different designs using a Wilton no. 2 decorating tip. I topped them with sugar pearls and clear crystal sugar or red sugar. For a quick effort, they turned out pretty well!

Happy baking!
♥, Christy

25 Days of Christmas: Day 19

2011-12-19T21:58:00.004-05:00

Personalized Mug

I just finished this mug and since I'm starting to blank on Christmas ideas, I'm counting it as one of my 25 days, hehe. One of my mom's coworkers saw a photo of my flip flop martini glasses and requested that I do a similar design on a mug. She wants to give the mug as a Christmas gift to a friend who loves flip flops. She also requested that I paint the initial "B" on it.

I started with a 16 oz. mug from Crate & Barrel and used Americana Gloss Enamels paints. Knowing that the initial would be the hardest part, I painted it first. I probably wiped it off and repainted it about 20 times before I liked it enough to leave it on there. My trick for cleaning off mistakes is to use rubbing alcohol. I always clean the glass with rubbing alcohol before painting, and then use rubbing alcohol on a paper towel or a Q-tip to clean up mistakes. Once I finished the initial, I painted all the little pairs of flip flops. I decided to paint one pair each in a bunch of different colors: white, light pink, dark pink, red, orange, yellow, lime green, kelly green, sky blue, medium blue, and purple. I let the flip flops dry overnight and then added the contrasting straps. Once the straps were dry, I added tiny polka dots in each of the 11 colors. I really like the variety, I hope you guys like it too!

Happy crafting!
♥, Christy

25 Days of Christmas: Day 18

2011-12-18T20:47:00.000-05:00

Handmade Christmas Cards

There's nothing like waiting until the last minute, huh? I'm really not great about sending out Christmas cards. Depending on the year, I might send out a whole bunch, a few, or none at all. This is one of those "a few" years. Because I waited until the last minute, the card selection at several stores was non-existent. I didn't want to waste money on a box of yucky-looking cards, so I decided to make my own using materials that I already had.

To make the cards, I used green cards from a DCWV box of jewel tones cards. I did two different variations of the cards, one using a sparkly cherry print paper from the All About Girls matstack and one with a matte cherry print paper from the Sweet Stack matstack. I cut a 5.5" by 2" rectangle using a paper cutter and glued it to the bottom of the card. I used the Fiskars cupcake punch to cut cupcakes from the white, silver, red, light pink, and dark pink papers in the Glitter Cardstock matstack. I arranged the cupcakes so that they just slightly overlapped the cherry print paper and attached them using dot adhesives so they "popped." On the inside, I used Hero Arts Fanciful Alphabet clear stamps to stamp the phrase "Have a Cherry Christmas," as a play on words to go with the cherry prints. The cards turned out simple but cute. I'm sure I could have gotten a lot more creative or done something more "Christmas-y," but in the interest of my wallet, I decided to go with a budget-friendly option.

Happy crafting!
♥, Christy

25 Days of Christmas: Day 17

2011-12-17T20:59:00.001-05:00

Gift Wrapping

Just a quick post about gift wrapping since my creative juices are running a little low these days. I'm a big fan of coordinated gift wrap, especially to go with a coordinated tree. This year's color scheme is red and white/silver and my family is pretty great about cooperating with the gift wrap. (Of course I informed them that any gifts not meeting the color requirements will be promptly confiscated by me.) Anyway, I really love using ribbon to wrap gifts as opposed to paper bows. They look so nice when they're all tied up! I used all different kinds of ribbon in coordinating colors. Most of the ribbon was purchased at Michaels but some was from Target.

You can use bows for gift wrapping in a few different ways. You can wrap the bow horizontally and tie in front which is really simple and quick. You can also create a cris-crossing bow by wrapping the ribbon vertically in front, crossing the ribbon around the back, then wrapping horizontally and tying in front.

I also like to make "gift stacks" of coordinating gifts and tie them up with bows. On the left, two books and an iBooks gift card, with alternating wrapping paper and a silver mesh bow. On the right, one book and an iBooks gift card in matching paper with a sparkly silver double bow. To create a double bow, I used a longer length of ribbon and tied one bow, then tied another bow over top and arranged them. I really love wire ribbon because it allows you to shape it and holds on to its shape once you have done so.

I also like to use different patterns, like the gift on the left which is wrapped with thin grosgrain polka dot ribbon in a cris-cross bow. The gift on the right is wrapped with polka dot mesh ribbon that I tied in a cris-cross but left knotted and did not tie a bow. I trimmed the ends and topped it with a silver paper ribbon. You might have noticed that some of this ribbon was used for the Christmas ornaments, either to tie on the ornaments themselves or to wrap the little boxes. Using the ribbon to wrap gifts was a great way to make sure it didn't go to waste.

I couldn't find a big enough bow for this humongous gift, so I used some thick, sparkly polka dot ribbon to create one. I know there are better ways to create multi-loop bows, but I took the easy route for this one. I cut a decent length of ribbon and tied a knot in the center. I then tied a bow, another bow, and a third bow. It's essentially three bows on top of each other arranged to look nice. I trimmed the ends and attached it with tape, easy-peasy! Hope this gives you guys some fun ideas as you wrap your gifts!

Happy wrapping!
♥, Christy

25 Days of Christmas: Day 16

2011-12-16T23:32:00.001-05:00

Naughty Hot Chocolate Martinis

It's Friday, and Friday calls for happy hour beverages! I wanted to try making a cocktail using hot chocolate, and here's what I came up with. Warning: these are strong!

Ingredients:

One packet of white hot chocolate (I used Land O' Lakes Arctic White)
6 oz. milk or water for hot chocolate
2 oz. chocolate vodka
2 oz. whipped vodka
2 oz. Buttershots butterscotch liqueur
Caramel syrup
Rimming sugar
Marshmallows

Use a finger to rim the glass in caramel syrup, then dip rim in sugar crystals.
Prepare hot chocolate according to package using milk or water.
Combine 6 oz. of hot chocolate with both vodkas and the Buttershots.
Shake or stir until combined.
Pour into two glasses and serve warm. Garnish with mini marshmallows if desired.

Variations:

There are tons of ways to vary this recipe. Here's a list of some of the options.

For a less strong drink, use 6 oz. hot chocolate with 1 oz. of each liquor.
For a chilled drink, prepare hot chocolate in advance and cool. Shake with ice.
Substitute marshmallow vodka for the whipped vodka.
Substitute Godiva chocolate or white chocolate liqueur for the chocolate vodka.
Substitute caramel hot chocolate and keep the remaining ingredients the same.
Substitute raspberry hot chocolate and 1 oz. raspberry liqueur (e.g. Chambord) for the Buttershots. Rim the glass with raspberry jam instead of caramel.
Substitute mint hot chocolate and 1 oz. peppermint schnapps for the Buttershots.

Cheers!
♥, Christy

25 Days of Christmas: Day 15

2011-12-15T22:03:00.002-05:00

Snowy Cakepops

I have been wanting to make Oreo cakepops for a while and figured that now would be a great time to try them out. These were a bit easier to make than traditional cakepops but not by a whole lot. The only real difference was not having to bake and cool a cake. That being said, I liked how these turned out, although the taste and texture was surprisingly similar to the devil's food cakepops I made before. I wonder if this is normal or if I over-processed the Oreos in the food processor? Anyway, here's how to make them:

Ingredients:

Three sleeves of Oreos (42 total)
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
Wilton Candy Melts, white; 1 and a half 14 oz. bags along with other colors as desired
Sprinkles or other decorations

Crumble Oreos using a food processor. Add Oreos to a mixing bowl, then stir in cream cheese until combined.
Using a 1 inch scoop, portion mixture. Use your hands to shape the portions into balls. This recipe made 34 pops. Dip lollipop sticks in melted Candy Melts, then press gently into balls. Freeze for about thirty minutes.
* To melt Candy Melts, fill a 1 cup Pyrex dish to the top (which is about 3/4 of a bag). Start by microwaving them for 1 minute on high, then at 30 second intervals on half power. Add shortening by a 1/2 tsp. to the mixture until it is a very smooth consistency. This makes it much easier to dip. *
Dip pops into melted Candy Melts one by one. Place them on wax paper or stick them into a Styrofoam block to harden. (Do not place them back on the cookie sheet like I did. They will stick!) If you want to add sprinkles, add them immediately after dipping. I added crystal sugar and edible glitter to only the pops that would have snowflakes.
Using orange Candy Melts, I piped squiggly carrot noses on to the snowmen. I then used black Candy Melts to pipe dots for eyes and mouths. Using blue Candy Melts, I piped blue snowflake patterns onto the pops with sprinkles, then added sugar pearls. Once they were done, I nestled them into a tall box that I had wrapped with wrapping paper and lined with tinfoil.

I think they turned out really cute! I hope my friends at work will enjoy them.

Happy baking!
♥, Christy

25 Days of Christmas: Day 14

2011-12-14T19:20:00.001-05:00

Eggnog Martinis

It's no surprise that the holidays can be stressful at times. Today was one of those days that really called for a some holiday spirits (hehe). To keep it festive, I decided to come up with an eggnog concoction. This recipe serves two.

Ingredients:

5 oz. non-alcoholic eggnog
3 oz. Grey Goose or other vodka
1 oz. Frangelico hazelnut liqueur
1 oz. Buttershots butterscotch liqueur
Caramel syrup
Graham crackers
Nutmeg

Use a (clean) finger to rim the glass with caramel. Dip rim in crushed graham crackers.
Combine eggnog, vodka, Frangelico, and Buttershots with ice in a mixer. Shake.
Strain into two martini glasses.
Garnish with a small amount of nutmeg.
Enjoy!

Cheers!
♥, Christy

25 Days of Christmas: Day 13

2011-12-13T20:56:00.005-05:00

Baked Brie with Raspberry Jam

This is such a yummy warm appetizer to serve before dinner or at a party. It's also really quick and easy to whip up for unexpected company. You can make this with a variety of different jams, so have fun experimenting with different combinations. I have tried it with both raspberry and strawberry. I'm looking forward to trying it with a different filling next time. I usually freeze my brie for about a half an hour before baking, which prevents it from completely liquifying.

Ingredients:

Pillsbury Crescent sheet
8 oz. round of brie, rind on
Jam of your choice
Brown sugar

Grease a nonstick cookie sheet then unroll your Crescent dough.
Place the round of brie in the center. Top the brie with several spoonfuls of jam, then spread to cover.
Fold the dough up in small overlapping sections to cover the brie. Top with brown sugar.
Bake at 350° for 25 to 30 minutes until golden. Serve with crackers.

Happy baking!
♥, Christy

25 Days of Christmas: Day 12

2011-12-12T22:33:00.001-05:00

Scentsy Gifts

I recently learned about Scentsy when a friend of mine hosted a party. Although I wasn't able to make it, I ordered some items online and I really love them! I already own some Yankee Candle tart burners which use tea lights to melt scented wax tarts. The great thing about Scentsy warmers is that they plug in and melt the scented wax with a light bulb. The warmers also have an on/off switch or dial, so you don't have to unplug them each time. This is so much easier than constantly replacing tea lights, which only burn for a few hours. I also like that I don't have to worry about leaving a flame unattended.

Scentsy's make a great gift but are also nice to treat yourself! They have some really adorable holiday warmers that pair really nicely with some of the super yummy seasonal scents. They also have a campus collection that make great gifts for college sports fans. I ordered the cupcake warmer (because I love cupcakes obviously).

I also ordered some Scentsy bars:

I used the Combine and Save promotion, which allowed me to get six bars for the price of five. Here's what scents I chose:

Sticky Cinnamon Bun - smells more like sweet cinnamon than an actual cinnamon bun, but still great.
Sugar Cookie - smells just like super sweet fresh baked sugar cookies.
Havana Cabana - smells both fruity and clean, perfect for summer.
Eskimo Kiss - smells sweet and clean, would be really great for year-round.
Whiteout - a fruity scent mixed with peppermint, so great for winter. I'm using this one now!
Happy Birthday - smells like a sweet yummy birthday cupcake.

Scentsy bars are a large bar of wax that can be broken off into pieces. You only need to warm one to two pieces at a time, depending upon the size of your warmer. I am only using one piece and my entire bedroom is filled with scent when my Scentsy is turned on. If you're interested in ordering, you can try to find a consultant near you or order through Jamie, the consultant that did my friend's party. My online order was delivered super fast, I received it in only a couple days.

Happy shopping!
♥, Christy

December Birchbox

2011-12-11T12:13:00.001-05:00

I just received my second Birchbox yesterday! If you haven't heard of Birchbox, please see my previous post or check out the Birchbox website. So far I am really liking the program. Last month I received some great items and ended up purchasing some full-sizes. I love being able to try things before I buy them and being able to discover some new products that I might not have tried on my own.

Here's my unboxing of December's shipment:

Here's what samples I received:

Harvey Prince Ageless perfume
ShowStoppers Designer Fashion Tape
Jouer Moisturizing Lipgloss in Birchbox Pink
Benefit Cosmetics Porefessional face primer
Orofluido Beauty Elixir hair treatment
EBoost Orange Natural Energy Booster
Coupon for $20 off a $75 purchase

Each month Birchbox includes a note that explains the products they've sent, and this month's note explains that 100% of the profits from full-size sales are being donated to Baby Buggy, a charity that supplies needy families in the United States with essential goods for their children. I always love to see that a company is willing to give back to the community! I'm going to try and find some fun gifts to order from their site knowing that the proceeds are benefiting the less fortunate. So far I haven't really gotten a chance to try the products, except for the Birchbox pink lipgloss which is fabulous! The color is much more wearable on the lip and the formula is really nice and moisturizing. I'm really looking forward to trying the other items!

25 Days of Christmas: Day 11

2011-12-11T11:20:00.000-05:00

Pillow Pet Gift

It's a pillow... It's a pet... It's a pillow pet! Most of you have probably already seen or heard of Pillow Pets and they make great gifts (for kids or adults)! I am posting about Pillow Pets today because my awesome boss actually bought me one of the NFL Pillow Pets for Christmas and gave it to me yesterday. I now own two Pillow Pets, because a friend bought me the cutie penguin for my birthday in January. I really love that these double as both a stuffed animal and a pillow, which makes them perfect for travel. They are obviously intended for little kids, but I love soft, fluffy things, which I'm guessing is the reason people keep giving me Pillow Pets! You can find regular Pillow Pets at places like your local mall, Target, or Bed, Bath & Beyond, and I have recently seen some of the NFL Pillow Pets at Target as well. The NFL Pillow Pets are higher in price, but they are so cute and such a nice find for football fans.

Here's a pic of my two Pillow Pets:

And here's what the Raven looks like when's he's a pillow:

Happy shopping!
♥, Christy

25 Days of Christmas: Day 10

2011-12-10T21:31:00.003-05:00

Baby Basketball Gift

Just a quick post today. Sorry for the crummy phone pic, I'm posting from my iPhone. I picked this up today to give my baby cousin for Christmas. I've purchased this before as a first birthday gift, and it's one of my favorite things to recommend for a one-year-old. It's Baby Basketball made by Earlyears. The package that it comes in converts to a basket with a backboard and it includes six "basketballs" that look like different animals. The animals included are cute little toys themselves, because each has a different squeaker or bell inside. This thing is absolutely adorable! You can buy it at your local Lakeshore Learning store (which is where I bought it) or on Amazon.

Here's the crummy photo I took with my phone. I didn't want to cut open the package because it's a gift.

And here's a better picture from Amazon. You can actually see how cute the little critters are!

Happy shopping!
♥, Christy

25 Days of Christmas: Day 9

2011-12-09T13:16:00.002-05:00

Pandora Charm Bracelets

Because my dad and I are going shopping for my mom later, I thought I would share one of her favorite gifts to receive - Pandora charms! Charm bracelets have really come back into style within the past few years, especially this newer variation which uses beads that slide or screw onto a bracelet, instead of charms that connect by rings to a bracelet with links. Before I show you our bracelets, I will confess that I am the one responsible for starting this addiction in our family (oops). I started my own bracelet one fall a few years ago, then started a bracelet for my mom for Christmas. What I really like about charm bracelets is that they can be a continuous gift, meaning that you can buy different charms for a person for different occasions, which is what my family does.

First, here are my mom's three bracelets:

Top: Her solid gold bracelet with mostly gold and two-tone charms, all gifts from my dad. My favorite on this bracelet are the gold martini and the cutout hearts.

Middle: Her pink bracelet which has girly charms and pink tones. I love the little high-heeled shoe and the pink hearts beads on this one.

Bottom: This is her original bracelet, with teal glass and a variety of other beads. This bracelet has some Chamilia beads on it, but some of my favorite Pandoras are the flip-flop, the seashell, and the mother-of-pearl hearts, all gifts from me or my brother.

Now here are mine:

Top: My Ravens-themed Pandora necklace, with a horseshoe and a four leaf clover for luck.

Middle: My Penn State-themed bracelet. I purchased the Nittany Lion from a store in State College, so it's not a Pandora but I love it! Some of my faves on here are the graduation cap and the snowflake.

Bottom: This is my multi-colored bracelet that I leave on and wear every day because it matches pretty much everything. I really love all the colored glass beads and the cupcake, it's so cute!

All of the bead links go to Rustic Hutch, which is a website that I have ordered many Pandora beads from. Their customer service is excellent! When I buy beads locally, I go to Smyth Jewelers, our local jewelry store, or one of the local Pandora stores, which are operated by Smyth. I wanted to show a close-up of the Ravens bead on my necklace because it's so awesome! Smyth recently started engraving Pandora charms. This one was already done up, but they can apparently engrave glass Pandoras with anything you'd like. How cool is that?

Here's a shot of all of our bracelets together:

You can probably tell that I have safety chains on both of mine, and my mom has a safety chain on one of hers. The Pandora clasps are very reliable, but I almost lost my bracelet once and my safety chain saved it, so I highly recommend them! As you can tell, my mom and I both really love to collect Pandora charms, but there are other similar products available. We have both recently fallen in love with Troll Beads. I have started two Troll bracelets and have one of these awesome Troll necklaces that allows me to easily switch the beads to match what I'm wearing. My mom also has a Troll bracelet and a similar Chamilia necklace. I love the Chamilia beads also, which fit on both the Pandora and Troll bracelets. If you're looking for a less-expensive option, Brighton has a great line of charms as well. They're not real silver but they're much more affordable. My mom and I each have Brighton bracelets as well. I hope you guys have some fun ideas now to start bracelets for yourself or to give as gifts!

Happy shopping!
♥, Christy

25 Days of Christmas: Day 8

2011-12-09T12:07:00.002-05:00

Christmas Playlist

Sorry I didn't get the chance to post anything yesterday, but I have two holly jolly posts for you guys today. First, I wanted to share my favorite Christmas playlist. I love all Christmas music, so this is a mix between some of the classics and some contemporary songs. I didn't include the album names because most of the songs are available on a variety of different albums, and through iTunes of course. I have to listen to Christmas music while I'm baking or wrapping presents, otherwise my mood becomes very Grinch-like, hehe. Hope you guys like it!

"A Marshmallow World" Dean Martin
"Winter Wonderland" Tony Bennett
"(There's No Place Like) Home For The Holidays" Barry Manilow
"Deck The Halls" James Taylor
"Silent Night" Boyz II Men
"I'll Be Home For Christmas (If Only In My Dreams)" Bing Crosby
"Blue Christmas" Elvis Presley
"Happy Christmas" John Lennon & Yoko Ono
"Do They Know It's Christmas?" Band Aid
"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" Frank Sinatra
"Merry Christmas Darling" The Carpenters
"Christmas Through Your Eyes" Gloria Estefan
"This Christmas" Joe
"Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" Brenda Lee
"Run, Rudolph Run" Chuck Berry
"Little Saint Nick" The Beach Boys
"Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow" Jessica Simpson
"All I Want For Christmas Is You" Mariah Carey
"My Only Wish (This Year)" Britney Spears
"Santa Baby" Kylie Minogue
"Step Into Christmas" Elton John
"We Need A Little Christmas (Glee Cast Version)" Glee Cas
"Wonderful Christmastime" Paul McCartney
"Jingle Bells" Jimmy Buffett
"All I Want For Christmas Is A Real Good Tan" Kenny Chesney

Update, December 11, 2011:

My awesome mom just picked up two new Christmas CDs for me - Justin Bieber's Under the Mistletoe and Glee: The Christmas Album Volume 2. My mom is the best! I can't wait to give them a listen, and if you haven't heard Justin Bieber's duet of "All I Want for Christmas is You" with Mariah Carey, you should defiinitely check it out.

Happy listening!
♥, Christy

25 Days of Christmas: Day 7

2011-12-07T12:06:00.000-05:00

Cracker Candy

I had seen a ton of people pinning this on Pinterest and wanted to give it a try. This was such an easy recipe to make and the results are so addictive! I have seen different variations on the cracker candy but I went with this one, from my original pin. I followed her instructions except that I only had salted saltines and salted butter. I was afraid it would turn out too salty but it was actually fine. I do think it would be sweeter if I had only used one salted item, though. I also used semi-sweet chocolate chips, but I would like to try it again with milk chocolate chips. I melted my chocolate chips in the microwave before spreading them on top, then sprinkled the top with red and green nonpareils. This is a great thing to whip up if you want a quick treat or a simple gift. It does take a while to harden, so I stuck mine in the freezer for about 45 minutes to firm up because my brother and I wanted to eat some!

25 Days of Christmas: Day 6

2011-12-06T08:50:00.002-05:00

Deborah Lippmann Stocking Stuffers

For those of you who are not familiar with Deborah Lippmann, she is a celebrity manicurist with a line of amazing nail polishes. She's well known for her fabulous chunky glitter polishes, which make perfect stocking stuffers. She currently has a couple of awesome nail polish sets available that are great for gifts, especially for those glitter-loving gals like me.

Get This Party Started set, $42 and Dance Music holiday trio, $29

Here's a close-up of the colors in Get This Party Started: Candy Shop, Happy Birthday, and Forget You. These all have the same multicolored, multi-sized glitter in different bases. Candy Shop has a bubblegum pink base, Happy Birthday has a clear base, and Forget You has a black base. These are so fun and the glitter really reminds me of confetti. The polishes are all full-sized, 0.50 fl oz.

And here's a shot of the colors in the Dance Music trio: Just Dance, Dancing in the Dark, and Flash Dance. The glitters in all three of these polishes are much smaller than the chunky glitters found in her other polishes. Just Dance has turquoise small and medium glitters in a turquoise base. Dancing in the Dark has a mix of small gray and silver glitters with medium holographic circles in a clear base. Flash Dance has small purple glitter and medium pink circles in a fuchsia base. I love all of these colors, they are so perfect for the holidays and New Year's Eve! These are all mini sizes, 0.30 fl oz.

I really think that these trios are a great bargain considering that most of her polishes retail for around $18 to $20. If you don't want to shell out for the gift set, here are my favorites of her individual polishes for the holidays:

Left to right: Today Was a Fairytale, $20; Across the Universe, $18; Glitter in the Air, $18; Boom Boom Pow, $20; Stairway to Heaven, $18; Bad Romance, $18

Happy shopping!
♥, Christy

25 Days of Christmas: Day 5

2011-12-05T08:26:00.004-05:00

Hand-Painted Christmas Ornaments

I just finished up a big batch of these. They were fun and easy to make for yourself or to give as gifts. I really love to give handmade items because they are so much more personal. To make these ornaments, I bought clear glass balls at Michaels. They come in packs of six for $2.49. Michaels has different shapes to choose from, but I bought standard balls that are completely round. I used Americana Gloss Enamel paints and Americana Glamour Dust with a variety of brushes to create the designs. Once they were finished and had dried for 48 hours, I baked them and added bows to the wire loops. Here's what I came up with:

Snowgirl, Stars, Holly

Presents, Silver and Gold Dots, Christmas Dots, Snowboy, Candy Canes

Here is a detail shot of my favorite, the Snowgirl:

For her, I painted a basic snowman and then added the hat and scarf in pink and green. I painted light pink, hot pink, lime green, and kelly green hearts around the rest of the ball and then added Glamour Dust on top. My mom decided to keep her, so here's how she looks on the tree:

This was a fairly simple project to do, and makes for really cute gifts. I bought boxes at Michaels for $1 each and they fit perfectly inside!

Happy crafting!

♥, Christy

Update, December 16, 2011:

Here's how the boxes look, all cute and tied up and ready to be given to some of my girlfriends. I put the ornaments inside the boxes with tissue paper, then tied ribbon in a knot, placed a lip gloss in the center and tied a bow around the lip gloss to secure it. I really hope my friends like them!

25 Days of Christmas: Day 4

2011-12-04T08:12:00.005-05:00

Christmas Tree Bows

For today's Christmas post I am showing you guys the tree bows I made for our Christmas tree. I'm a big fan of color schemes/themes for Christmas trees because it looks so nice and tied-together when it's all done. Last year's theme was "snow," so we used mainly blue, white and silver colors along with lots of snowflake, snowmen, and icicle ornaments. I also mandated that everyone wrap their gifts in matching paper, hehe. Here's a picture of last year's tree (not a very good pic):

We use a faux, pre-lit tree with white LED lights. Although I am a big fan of real Christmas trees, they're not so great for my allergies. Anyway, this year's theme is "candy canes," meaning a red, white, and silver color scheme. I wanted to try something different this year, so instead of using garland or beads we are going to use bows. In this post I will show you how I made the bows for our tree!

You'll need a ruler, craft scissors, a hot glue gun, clips, and ribbon. I used Bead Landing clips from Michaels and 1.5" wire ribbon, also from Michaels. I worked on the floor in our family room, over newspaper to catch all of the escaped glitter.
Cut an 18" length of ribbon and tie a center knot.
Create your loops by bending the ribbon up from the knot on either side, and then down again in front, with the front of the ribbon showing.
Use the loops to form a bow (over and through). Work the bow to the desired shape and twist the tails to make sure that the fronts of each are showing. Trim the bow tails and snip the ends in the inverted V shape if desired.
Using your glue gun, place a generous dot of glue on the center of the bow. Place the clip on the glue dot with the opening end facing out from the center. Hold the clip in place for a few seconds (carefully, so as not to burn yourself like I did) until the glue sets. To open the clip, you will place pressure on the back of the clip and the front of the knot).
Repeat the steps to create more bows!

Here are my completed bows:

I used three different kinds of ribbon: silver striped, silver sparkle, and silver mesh. Although they are similar, I like the variety. I made 10 bows in each variation for a total of 30. Depending on the size of your tree and how many bows you'd like, you might only need one spool of ribbon. I have lots of ribbon left over which I will use for wrapping gifts. Here's a shot of the finished tree:

Happy decorating!
♥, Christy

25 Days of Christmas: Day 3

2011-12-03T09:24:00.001-05:00

Gifts for the Lilly Lover

I am a huge huge Lilly lover. Unfortunately, my salary (lack thereof) does not afford me the luxury of owning many of Lilly Pulitzer's fabulous items. However, she does make some fun and fantastic accessories that are great for gift-giving!

Top to bottom, left to right: Eco Cup in Hotty Pink Luscious, $14.95; Water Bottle in Beach Club Blue Nice to See You, $14.95; iPad Sleeve in Beach Club Blue Nice to See You, $24.95; 2012 Large Agenda in Beach Club Blue Nice to See You, $24.95

The water bottle and iPad sleeve are gifts that my mom bought for herself last week. She purchased the cup for me (which I love) and the agenda is my own that I purchased when they first came out in July. There are also tons of other great gifts for the Lilly lover in your life! Some of my favorite options are Murfee scarves, tech accessories, and stationery. There is also free shipping and $2 gift wrapping on the Lilly site until Christmas!

Happy shopping!
♥, Christy

25 Days of Christmas: Day 2

2011-12-02T08:17:00.004-05:00

Philosophy Gifts

Philosophy is a brand that I absolutely adore and is one of my very favorite things to give as a gift. Their amazing products and playful packaging make them wonderful to give and receive. I have given Philosophy items to countless friends and family members and they are always well appreciated. I especially love their seasonal scents:

Left to right: Pumpkin Spice Muffin shower gel, $16; Old Fashioned Eggnog shower gel, $16; Candy Cane shower gel, $16; Snowflake shower gel, $16

Pumpkin Spice Muffin is a fabulous fall scent and smells just like sweet, spicy, fresh-baked muffins. Yum! Old Fashioned Eggnog is probably my favorite holiday scent and it smells exactly like eggnog. Candy Cane is basically a straight up peppermint. I am addicted to anything mint-scented or flavored and I will actually save this one to use anytime. Snowflake is described as a "peppermint icing" scent. Haven't tried it yet but if it's minty, I'm sure I'll love it.

These are all my shower gels. I am a total Philosophy hoarder. I have noticed that many of my favorite scents are seasonal and somewhat hard to find, so I buy them when I see them and stash them away. The bottles are so big that it takes me forever to use them up! Ever since I started using the Philosophy shower gels in college, I cannot (will not) use any other shower gel. They are super high-foaming and leave your skin so much softer and more moisturized than standard body washes. I also use them as shampoo from time to time and they do a decent job, along with leaving my hair smelling amazing.

If you're considering giving these as gifts, check out QVC or Philosophy.com. They have tons of them available in sets or packaged with gift bags, along with lots of other great gifts!

I picked up these for some of the people on my list:

Left to right: Candy Cane Lane gift set, $22; Much Mistletoeing gift set, $20; Hands of Hope Ornament, $10

Happy shopping!
♥, Christy

Spinach and Bacon Mini Quiches

2011-12-01T20:33:00.000-05:00

I bought the ingredients to make these mini quiches a few weeks ago for a tailgate party but after making cupcakes and monkey bread I was too exhausted to make them that day. I decided to whip them up last night before the ingredients expired. I got this recipe from the booklet that came with my Babycakes Cupcake Maker, which I received as a Christmas gift last year (love it). I wish I could use it more often but it has one drawback - it only cooks eight items at a time. Most of the recipes that it comes with require you to make several batches, and who has time for that?

Anyway, I decided to make these to go with our dinner last night and they are so scrummy! This recipe actually makes eight which is great. The recipe is pretty simple and includes bacon, onion, garlic, egg, half-and-half, swiss cheese, spinach, and a refrigerated pie crust. The cupcake maker comes with a special tool to cut the pie crust into the right-sized circles and another tool to place them in the machine correctly and trim the excess. The whole process is pretty painless. After placing the pie crusts in the machine (cool and turned off), I spooned the mixture in and cooked them for 11 minutes. The benefit of using the cupcake maker is that they cook really consistently all the way through and pop right out. Super easy for a weeknight appetizer!

25 Days of Christmas: Day 1

2011-12-01T08:34:00.012-05:00

I seriously love Christmas! I know it's hard not to like Christmas unless you're basically the Grinch or Ebenezer Scrooge, but I really love it more than most. To celebrate the holiday season, I will be posting some holiday cheer every day until Christmas. I will be sharing all kinds of things like my favorite gifts (to give and receive), decorations, accessories, etc. I really hope you guys enjoy and have a wonderful holiday season.

Starbucks Gift Card

This is a gift idea for the true Starbucks lover. I love to give Starbucks cards to my coffee-addicted friends and brother, but I always feel blah handing over a piece of plastic. A great way to spruce up a regular ol' gift card is to package it in a fun way. For this gift, I decided to add some candy that the recipient (my brother) would enjoy. I wanted to use brown and white candies to give a frappuccino-with-whipped-cream effect. When I purchased the gift card I asked for a clean frappuccino cup with a domed lid (size tall). I placed the straw in the center and filled the cup about halfway with Reese's minis. I then added the gift card in the center and filled the cup to the top with minis. I put the lid on the cup and then added Hershey's Cookies 'N' Creme Drops one by one to fill the lid. I added curling ribbon and topped it with a bow. I love how you can see the gift card peeking out through the candy!

Happy gifting!
♥, Christy

Julep Maven American Beauty

2011-11-28T20:27:00.003-05:00

I am so excited to say that I received my first Julep Maven shipment today! I just recently found out about and signed up for the Julep Maven program. As evidenced by my previous Birchbox post, I am completely addicted to beauty products lately. The Julep Maven program is a similar idea, but mostly concentrated on manicure/pedicure products. You will first take a quick style quiz and then the site will give you your style profile (mine is American Beauty). You then have the option to purchase that subscription or a different style subscription. There are lots of cool benefits that come along with being a Maven as well, but I haven't had a chance to take advantage of any of them yet. Here is what I got in my first shipment today:

First of all, I love the cute red box that it was shipped in! When I opened it up, there was a card explaining what I received and how to use the items, along with a detailed sheet about the program and a welcome letter which was hand-signed by one of the founders (nice touch). The products I received were the "Facial for Hands" Glycolic Hand Scrub, two nail colors, Lindsay and Shania, and a couple of samples. I'm excited to try the facial for hands because my hands and cuticles are so rough and dry as the winter approaches. I absolutely love the Shania nail color, it's a super soft pearly-gray. Lindsay is a very deep burgundy color, which I would probably never purchase for myself but I think it will be a nice color for the holidays and winter. I'm very excited to see what the next month's shipment brings! Please click on my referral link if you'd like to sign up.

Pumpkin Cupcakes

2011-11-17T19:58:00.002-05:00

For our Thanksgiving luncheon at work, I decided to try out a new cupcake recipe. I kept seeing pumpkin cupcakes and cakes and trifles pinned on Pinterest and decided to try them out. I used a golden butter cake mix (shocking!) and added a 15 oz. can of pumpkin puree in place of the water. I also added a 1/2 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice. I decided that the cupcakes needed "a little extra" and bought cream cheese for the centers. I cut an 8 oz. package of cream cheese into 24 small pieces and pressed a piece lightly into each cupcake top. This did not work well at all! I used the same technique with the Strawberry Cream Cheese cupcakes and they turned out perfectly. I think this failed because the pumpkin made the batter very thick and gloopy and the cream cheese did not sink as they baked. The cupcakes also didn't rise very much, but just enough. I piped some of them using a large star tip, holding the tip just above the center of the cupcake and squeezing somewhat hard while pulling up gently. This made the frosting look just like whipped cream! I honestly had no idea it would do that, but I was pleased with the effect. I sprinkled them with orange nonpareils and yellow jimmies and placed a piece of candy corn on the top. My grocery store sells regular candy corn year round (thank goodness). For the pumpkins, I used a plain round tip to pipe the "pumpkins" and then sprinkled them with orange sugar. I used a small round tip to pipe the squiggly vines and a leaf tip to add a couple of leaves. This is a picture of the cupcakes all ready to be eaten at the luncheon!

Monkey Balls

2011-11-12T20:13:00.009-05:00

Okay, so I realize this name sounds gross but it's hilarious so it stays. This past weekend I went up to my beloved Penn State to watch the final game of the season against Nebraska and see some of my wonderful friends. Because this game was at noon, I decided our tailgate needed some breakfast-y goodness. I found this recipe for Monkey Bread Minis on the Pillsbury website. My mom mistakenly asked me when I was going to make the "monkey balls" and I almost died laughing, thus I am calling them monkey balls. I love Pillsbury monkey bread so much, especially because my grocery store carries special monkey bread packages of biscuit dough (four cans). I decided to double this recipe and make two dozen monkey balls, which was really not much extra effort. I prepared and baked them as directed and made sure to only let them cool for about a minute before flipping them over onto wax paper. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT let them sit for too long because the gooey topping will stick to the muffin pans. And OMG were these delicious. They tasted great warm and were still very good when served cold the day of the tailgate. For added ease, I smushed some foil cupcake wrappers and placed the monkey balls on them so they had their own "plates." Everyone loved them and they were completely devoured!

Here's the work in progress:

Finished monkey balls in all their glory!!!

November Birchbox

2011-11-09T22:12:00.002-05:00

Have you guys heard of Birchbox? I love it! It's a beauty site that you can shop from or subscribe to. For $10 a month, they will send you a box of deluxe samples specifically tailored to the beauty profile you provide. If you like the items you receive, you can order them off of the Birchbox site and receive free shipping. You can also earn points for referrring friends and providing feedback on the items you receive. Once you earn 100 points, you can get $10 off a purchase. Here's what my November Birchbox looked like:

I seriously love this idea! It's an affordable way to try things and learn about different products. The Zoya polish is really pretty. I also wanted to try the Kate Spade perfume forever and am so glad that I received it. The lip conditioner is absolutely awesome and I am definitely going to order it.

Update, November 22, 2011:

I have had a chance to try all the products in my box and some were definite hits while others were misses. I really did not like the Supersmile Whitening toothpaste. Although I do use whitening products, I found this one to be very chalky in texture and hated the cinnamon flavor, which was really overpowering. I might have liked the product more if it hadn't been cinnamon flavored. The Zoya nail polish in Noel was really pretty and had a great one-coat formula. I might have purchased a full-size, but it's similar to Butter London Bluey, which I already own, and I wasn't crazy about the other colors in the collection. The Kate Spade perfume smelled great but was more floral than what I usually wear and it didn't last very long on my skin (plus I'm totally hung up on Acqua di Gioia right now). I liked the Alex & Isabelle hair tie, which comes in some really cute colors, but I already own similar hair ties from Sephora in jewel tones.

I ended up purchasing a full-size of the Jouer Lip Enhancer, along with the Alex & Isabelle double headbands and bow hair ties. The lip enhancer is awesome and so moisturizing! I also really love the headbands, which are super comfy. The bow hair ties are perfect for wearing my hair in a side braid (which I do constantly) because they are much prettier than a regular hair tie. Birchbox had e-mailed me a coupon for 20% off (one of the benefits of membership) and I also received free shipping on the whole order because I purchased one of the items from my box. What I love about Birchbox is that there are tons of free ship items available and you don't have to purchase a certain dollar amount in order to receive the free shipping.

Cookie Dough Cupcakes

2011-09-26T19:48:00.004-04:00

Um, one word: YUM. These were absolutely delicious! I saw this idea on Pinterest and couldn't wait to try it. I am not a big fan of making cupcakes completely from scratch (read: lazy). To start off, I made the cookie dough recipe that was originally pinned. You can find it here on Kevin & Amanda's blog. I prepared it as directed, rolled it into balls and froze it overnight. The next day, I used a Pillsbury golden butter cake mix (I've said it before, it's my absolute favorite) like normal. Once I had filled the muffin cups, I dropped the frozen cookie dough on top. It's amazing, but it actually sinks down into the cupcakes as they cook! While they baked, I used white candy melts and piped different designs onto wax paper - hearts, starts, squiggles. I piped the frosting using a large decoarting tip and topped them with the decorations. They were soooo yummy.

Cookie dough balls plopped on top:

Magical disappearing cookie dough!

Check out that yummy cookie dough all nestled inside:

Blue and White Cakepops

2011-09-17T18:13:00.025-04:00

My first ever attempt at cakepops! I made these to take to a tailgate for the Penn State game at Temple. I think cake pops are awesome for tailgates because they are bite-sized and easy to grab. I used a basic cakepop recipe which can be found online pretty much anywhere. I made a devil's food cake as directed in a 9 x 13 pan. I did not let it cool completely, although I really should have. I think that if I had let the cake dry a bit overnight, the pops would have turned out better. I scooped the cake out and crumbled it with my hands. Again, I think this would have turned out better in the food processor. I used almost an entire container of vanilla frosting to make the cake stick together and rolled them into balls. The cake mixture was super sticky and made a huge mess on my hands. I ended up rolling them into a "ball-ish" shape, washing my hands, and then re-rolling them into neater balls. This worked pretty well. I dipped the lollipop sticks into the melting candy and then froze the pops for about an hour. I then re-melted the candy and dipped the pops. I initially had wanted to roll the pops in sprinkles to coat them evenly and completely, but this ending up mushing the candy coating and the pop shapes. I ended up dipping them and placing them on wax paper, then sprinkling them with nonpareils or sugar. They tasted good and were very popular at the tailgate, but I think the overall texture was mushy. These were pretty simple to make and I'm looking forward to experimenting with this recipe in the future!

Creamy Shells with Peas and Prosciutto

2011-09-13T21:45:00.038-04:00

YUM! This recipe is from the America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. I have the revised (second) edition of this cookbook, but they are currently selling the third edition. This cookbook is seriously awesome. Every recipe is detailed and easy to follow, but what I really love is that the authors have included tons of additional features including cooking basics, specific tips, and recommendations on brands/products. This is a great gift for someone just learning to cook or someone wanting to expand their knowledge in the kitchen. I have made a lot of the recipes in the book and they always turn out very well.

This recipe comes from the pasta section and was relatively simple. The recipe says it serves four, but it actually yields about six servings (yay leftovers!). The sauce is composed of ricotta cheese, Parmesan cheese, butter, salt, pepper, garlic, onion, and lemon juice. An interesting technique that I learned was to reserve some of the pasta water to whisk in with the sauce, which gave the ricotta a creamier texture. The peas were added to the boiling pasta water for the last minute and the prosciutto was crisped with olive oil in a skillet. This was such a delicious and quick recipe!

Hearts Picture

2011-09-08T17:34:00.107-04:00

Here's another variation of the cupcake picture from a few days ago. When I set out to make the first picture, I bought two of the same 10" by 13" frames and two of the black and white double mats from Michaels. I had hoped to make complementary pictures that I could display next to each other. I didn't love how the cupcakes looked with the sand dollar picture and the background color of the sand dollars was too close to my wall color. My friend Mandie saw a photo of the sand dollar picture that I had posted on Facebook and loved it. She requested that I make one for her, so I set aside the original for her and made a new one for myself. I pulled that picture out of the frame so that she could use her own frame, and used the original frame and mat for a new picture.

For this version, I used the Fiskars That's Amoré medium squeeze punch. I punched a ton of hearts from different stacks, mainly: Me & My Big Ideas Blue Watercolor; and DCWV All About Girls, Citrus, Pocket Full of Posies, and Sweet Stack. Check out my list of craft supplies for more details. I used a textured aqua-seafoam-blue-ish scrapbook paper from Michaels for the background. I followed the same process as the previous pictures, first taping the background paper inside the mat and then lining up and attaching the shapes with dot adhesives. I used a landscape orientation for this picture so that it would look nice sitting next to the cupcake picture. Because I used a medium punch this time, I was able to fit seven shapes across and seven down. I wanted to put them in color order again, but in a more subtle way, so I decided to arrange them diagonally. As always, I laid out the shapes in the order I wanted before sticking them down.

I started with dark purple from the top left corner to the lower right corner. To the right of the dark purple, I arranged pink, red/coral, orange, yellow, lime and turquoise diagonally. To the left, starting in the bottom corner, I arranged orange, yellow, lime, turquoise, blue, and medium purple. I really love this one!|

Caramel Apple Cupcakes

2011-09-05T20:12:00.001-04:00

With the beginning of September and fall approaching, I really wanted to make some fun fall cupcakes and I decided on caramel apple. I used a golden butter cake mix and added chopped Granny Smith apples. Once I spooned the mixture (it was pretty chunky) into the muffin cups, I pressed a chewy caramel into each one. This was not a good technique and I really don't recommend it! I hoped that the caramels would melt and become gooey, but they actually become hard again when the cupcakes cooled. They also seemed to cause the somewhat mushy cupcakes to fall apart. I made homemade caramel frosting for them and topped them with caramel candy corn. Not a great decorating job but the frosting was difficult to work with. Even though these cupcakes were super messy and fell apart, my friends at work really seemed to love them!

Autumn Card

2011-09-04T12:59:00.005-04:00

To make this fall card, I used an orange card from a DCWV box of jewel tone cards. I cut two branches from a brown scrapbook paper with a wood-grain pattern and glued them to the card. I used the Martha Stewart Maple Leaf Punch to cut leaves from a large variety of patterned papers in gold, yellow, orange, and red. I trimmed the stems off of each punch and glued them around the branches. I used wooden alphabet stamps and red ink to stamp the letters to spell "fall" on a very pale dotted paper. I cut out around the letters and attached them to the card using dot adhesives. I left the inside of the card blank.

Envelope stamping using stamps from the Fanciful Swirl set with red, orange, yellow and brown inks:

Check my list of craft supplies for more details on the materials I used.

Cupcakes Card

2011-09-03T16:49:00.003-04:00

To make this birthday card, I used a pink card from a DCWV box of jewel tone cards. I started by cutting a piece of paper from the Sweet Stack matstack to fit the front of the card. I trimmed around the top of the pattern to create a scalloped edge. I then used the Fiskars cupcake punch to cut the cupcake bottoms in blue, white, light pink, and purple papers from the Glitter Cardstock matstack. I cut the cupcake tops from patterned papers in the Sweet Stack matstack. I arranged the cupcakes in a row above the border and attached them using dot adhesives. For the inside, I used another paper from the Sweet Stack trimmed to fit inside and stamped with the tiny dot wooden alphabet stamps and a purple stamp pad. Please see my list of craft supplies for more details on the materials.

Owls Card

2011-09-02T17:39:00.038-04:00

To make this fun owl card, I used a green card from a DCWV box of jewel tone cards. I did not have a punch to use for this card, so I cut all of the pieces by hand. I started by cutting the branch out of brown scrapbook paper that had a wood-grain texture. I cut the leaves out of two different light green patterned papers from the Sweet Stack matstack. I then cut out the shapes for the owl bodies and wings out of brown scrapbook paper with a different texture. I cut the feet and beaks out of yellow-gold cardstock and the bellies out of a very faintly dotted paper. Once all the shapes were cut, I started gluing. I assembled the owls individually by gluing the wings and feet to their backs and the stomachs and beaks to their fronts and used self-adhesive googly eyes. I then glued the branch to the card and arranged and glued the leaves. I glued the owls to the paper so that one was sitting upright and one was hanging upside down. For the inside, I trimmed a piece of paper from the same matstack to fit the card, glued it down and stamped the phrase inside using the tiny dot alphabet stamps and a green stamp pad.

Envelope stamping using Fanciful Swirl stamps with green and brown ink:

Please see my list of craft supplies for more details.

Palm Martinis

2011-09-02T17:25:00.023-04:00

I painted these martini glasses for my parents' condo in Myrtle Beach. Their entire condo is decorated with palm trees, so this was an obvious choice. I painted them using Americana gloss enamels paint. For the leaves I used dark green, two medium greens and a lime green. I then painted the trunks and coconuts in dark brown and added details with black and light brown. I used a fan brush with cream and pale peach paints on the underneath of the bottom of the glass. I then painted sea shell details on the top of the bottom of the glass. Each glass has a different seashell so that people can tell which glass is theirs. Overall I was very happy with these!

Flower Mug

2011-09-01T21:14:00.003-04:00

This is a mug that I painted for my mom to keep at work. The mug has sunflowers, crocuses, daffodils, and tulips along with little butterflies and a ladybug. I used a large variety of colors in a lot of layers on this one. The mug itself was purchased at Crate and Barrel and all the paints that I used were Americana gloss enamels.This one took me several days to finish but I liked the end result and my mom has gotten a lot of compliments on it!

Sand Dollar Picture

2011-08-31T21:13:00.001-04:00

I loved the cupcake picture that I made yesterday so much that I decided to make another variation of it. This time I used the Martha Stewart sand dollar and starfish double punch. I mainly used the Citrus, Pocket Full of Posies, and Tahiti Beach matstacks. See my list of craft supplies for details on the materials used. Unfortunately the Martha Stewart punch was not nearly as easy to use as the Fiskars punch. You can't see what you are punching and the papers get stuck inside the punch. I had to shake the punch to release the shapes. This punch also requires more force than the Fiskars, which are very easy to squeeze. I also used a 10" by 13" frame with an 8" by 10" double mat for this one. For the background paper I used a textured turquoise blue scrapbook paper. I followed the same process to complete this one, first taping the background paper inside the mat and then lining up and attaching the shapes with dot adhesives. I decided to use a landscape orientation and this shape fit five down and seven across. I decided to organize the shapes by colors again, but this time with the colors going downwards. This allowed me to incorporate a seventh color, so I chose to use tan/sand colored papers to mimic an actual sand dollar. It's cute, but I definitely love the cupcakes more (of course)!

Ode to Cupcakes

2011-08-30T22:39:00.003-04:00

By now, most of you probably know that I'm obsessed with cupcakes. I got this idea to do a cute framed piece from a few different pins on Pinterest. This was such an easy and fun thing to create and is a great way to use up scraps of scrapbook paper. Unfortunately, I didn't have any scrapbook scraps so I went out and bought a variety of printed matstacks. For this project, I used a piece of black and white polka dot scrapbook paper along with papers mainly from the Sweet Stack and Citrus matstacks. Please see my list of craft supplies for details.

I started by using the Fiskars cupcake punch to cut out the shapes. This punch actually cuts two separate shapes to make a cupcake. I first cut thin strips of the black and white dot paper for the cupcake bottoms, which were all the same. I did this in order to cut only the bottom shape and to avoid punching a ton of whole cupcakes in the dot paper. I then punched the cupcake tops by lining up the punch to only cut the tops out of the colored papers. The Fiskars punches are great because you can see through them, so you know exactly what you are punching and can line it up to the part of the paper you want.

Once I had enough cupcakes punched out, I decided how I would line them up in order to fit. I decided to use a 10" by 13" frame with a double 8" by 10" mat (which is truly closer to 7.5" x 9.5"). I cut and taped a piece of pink textured scrapbook paper to the mat. I lined up the shapes and worked out that I was able to fit them six across and six down. Because I wanted to have them in some sort of "order," I decided to arrange them by colors, starting with red and going down to purple. I attached them carefully using dot adhesives to give the picture some dimension. I popped them into the frame once they were all cozy and attached.

Here's the work in progress:

Here's the finished product:

I love the result! I hope you guys like it too!

Flip Flop Martini Glasses

2011-08-17T21:29:00.000-04:00

This was my first attempt at painted glassware, so I tried a simple design. I used Americana Gloss Enamels paints in pink, orange, yellow, kelly green, turquoise and purple. I painted little pairs of flip flops and then added dots around the glasses. I painted the bottoms of the glasses in stripey pattern in different colors. This was a quick and easy project, which only took about an hour to complete two glasses. After letting the glasses cure for two days, I baked them for 30 minutes. Sorry this is a crummy phone pic, but you get the idea!

Sporty Cupcakes

2011-07-01T20:50:00.003-04:00

I made these cupcakes for a friend who requested some for her husband's birthday. This design was simple while still being "boy-ish" enough. I started out with yellow cupcakes and vanilla frosting. I covered all the cupcakes in a layer of vanilla frosting except for the six that would become footballs. For the baseballs, I dipped each cupcake in white nonpareils and used frosting tinted red to pipe the stitching. For the basketballs, I dipped the cupcakes in orange sugar and piped black frosting for the basketball lines. For the tennis balls, I dipped the cupcakes in yellow sugar and used a larger round tip to pipe the white line. For the footballs, I very carefully covered only the football shape in white frosting, leaving the sides around it without frosting. I dipped the cupcakes in chocolate jimmies and piped white laces onto each. I then used green frosting with a grass tip to fill in the surrounding surface. I really liked how these looked, except that the red frosting and black frosting bled somewhat overnight.

Pinkalicious Strawberry Cream Cheese Cupcakes

2011-06-27T17:35:00.003-04:00

These cupcakes came out fabulously. I adapted a recipe from Betty Crocker Just Cupcakes for Strawberry Cream Cheese Cupcakes. The cupcakes were made with white cake mix with sour cream added. Before baking, I added a piece of cream cheese and a small amount of strawberry preserves to each cup. For the frosting, I used a can of strawberry frosting (untinted) and a can of cream cheese frosting tinted a darker pink than the strawberry. I frosted some with just cream cheese, some with just strawberry, and some with a swirl of the strawberry and the cream cheese frostings. I decorated some of them with pink nonpareils and added black fondant hearts, stars and flowers. As you can see, the cupcake liners I used had a pink leopard print (purchased at Michael's). These cupcakes weren't for any special occasion, so I took a few them with me when meeting some friends for dinner. I used a cupcake box (also purchased at Michael's, set of three), which transported them perfectly and looked adorable!

Cookie Fun

2011-06-15T16:01:00.017-04:00

I've never tried making fancy cookies before, and usually leave the cookie making for Christmas-time, but my mom requested that I make some cookies for the neighbors who watched our house while we were away on vacation. Cookies are a great option for the warm summer months, because they keep better and are easier to store. I used Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix, which worked perfectly for cut out cookies, and Wilton cookie cutters in different shapes. The cookies were frosted with a simple frosting made of milk, cream cheese and lots and lots of confectioner's sugar.

The daisies were made by spreading a layer of white frosting over the entire surface of the cookie. After that layer hardened, I piped the outline of the petals and sprinkled the white sugar crystals and added yellow sugar pearls for the center. The tulips started with a layer of pink frosting on the flower. The green was added after that had hardened, and then another layer of pink for the petal outlines coated with pink sugar.

The flip flops were made by frosting the entire cookie with a layer of one color which was allowed to harden, then added a different color for the straps. I then used different sprinkles to decorate the straps of the flip flops. The sunglasses were first outlined in purple and decorated with white sugar pearls. Once the purple hardened, I added black frosting for the lenses.

Honeybee Cupcakes

2011-06-13T22:24:00.006-04:00

I got the idea for these cupcakes from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes. Because these were birthday cupcakes for a friend who loves lemon, they are not actually honey cupcakes as the recipe calls for, but instead are lemon cupcakes with lemon filling and lemon frosting (lemon overload!). The flowers are piped using a #81 tip (instead of #59) and topped with honeybees. The bees are made of yellow and black fondant with almond sliver wings and nonpareil eyes.

Cinco de Mayo Cupcakes

2011-05-05T15:37:00.003-04:00

These are the same margarita-inspired cupcakes featured in this previous post, but with a little Cinco de Mayo twist. Instead of using various colors of candy fruit slices, I only used green and red to represent the colors of the Mexican flag. I also made little decorative flags on the computer, using card stock and toothpicks. Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Easter Cupcakes

2011-04-24T19:22:00.009-04:00

Some fun cupcakes for Easter dinner. I used Funfetti baking mix and creamy vanilla frosting. For the Easter baskets, I spread a normal layer of frosting and edged the rims with pastel nonpareil. I then added the basket handles, which were made using Wilton Candy Melts piped onto wax paper. I then added two different kinds of egg-shaped candies to give some variety. I have made these before, as seen in this post.

For the basket-weave cupcakes, I first tinted the frosting a pale green and spread a thin layer onto each cupcake. I then piped the basket-weave pattern and added some cut-out fondant flowers. The flower centers are yellow Wilton sugar pearls.

We Are Penn State Cupcakes!

2010-11-19T22:00:00.001-05:00

My third attempt at homemade cupcakes. In honor of the upcoming Penn State vs. Indiana game, I decided to make some spirited ones! These are buttermilk cupcakes with a very simple frosting made primarily of confectioner's sugar and butter. I did not care for the frosting which was cloyingly sweet, but others seemed to like it. The recipe yielded 96 (ugh!) mini cupcakes that I decorated really quickly with Wilton blue decorator's icing.

Peppermint Pattycakes

2010-11-14T15:38:00.004-05:00

These are some really yummy brownie cupcakes that I made from scratch, using Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate and Hershey's cocoa powder. Each cupcake has a York Peppermint Patty center. To add the centers, I spooned about a tablespoon of batter into each paper, gently pressed a patty into each, then topped off with additional batter. The batter, because it was more of a brownie consistency, was extremely thick, so I ended up filling each to the top as opposed to the normal 2/3 full for other cupcakes. When finished and cooled, I topped each cupcake with a Bailey's Irish cream glaze. They turned out deliciously, with a nice crispy outside but warm and moist on the inside.

Ravens Cupcakes

2010-09-27T22:09:00.013-04:00

Decided to make some festive cupcakes for Sunday's Ravens game. Started out with Funfetti cupcakes (chosen by a friend for his birthday) in gold foil baking cups. I sprinkled black crystal sugar on top of the cupcakes before baking to make the tops look black. The cupcakes were iced with vanilla frosting in either white or purple. I used the Wilton gel color and was able to achieve a much darker shade of purple than I expected. The football was made out of fondant tinted brown, with icing laces. The ravens were made out of black fondant with red nonpareil eyes. To create the numbers and letters, I first printed out the Ravens logo and player numbers. I placed the printouts under wax paper and then traced them with modeling chocolate in a decorating bag. I used the Wilton candy melts in purple and black and sprinkled them with crystal sugars in the same color to give them a bit of sparkle. Overall I was really happy with how they turned out!

Dad's 55th Cake

2010-07-22T15:33:00.007-04:00

The 55th hole... This is a cake I made for my dad's birthday. The cake itself is a two-layer carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. I tinted the frosting a lighter shade of green and frosted the entire outside of the cake with it. I coated the sides with leftover chopped walnuts from the cake. I then used blue frosting to create the "water hazard" and brown sugar for the "sand trap." I used a darker green frosting with a grass tip to create the grass around the cake. The gator, golf bag, ball and flag are all made of fondant, with a toothpick holding the flag up. I used the Wilton food markers to draw the eyes, nostrils and numbers. Everything on the cake is edible except for the toothpick. Pretty pleased with this effort!

Old Nightstand Revamp

2010-07-16T23:42:00.001-04:00

I recently got new bedroom furniture, meaning I was able to get rid of my wretched old furniture that I've had since I was born, and which belonged to my mom when she was younger. It's nice furniture and well made, but its white finish has turned to a nasty yellow color over the years, and many of the drawer pulls had broken or fallen off. I'm a big fan of white furniture (it's so beachy!), so I went with some pieces from this Cape Cod set in white. My walls are now painted to Sherwin Williams in Calypso, which is a really bright bold turquoise. The white furniture is a great contrast. Love it!

My original nightstand was still in good condition so I decided to try to refinish it. This ended up being tougher than I thought, but it was worth the effort. The furniture had a lacquer finish, so I had to use a chemical stripper to remove it. I had absolutely no experience doing this, but it worked well. In the garage (a ventilated area), I applied the stripper to the surface and then let it sit a good while. After the stripper worked its magic to dissolve the lacquer, I used a paint scraper to pull all the old paint off. I had to make sure to work over a covered surface because the paint was essentially re-liquified and would have made a huge mess. Here's what the nightstand looked like in the process of being stripped:

Once I had removed the majority of the lacquer, I used a small sander to really smooth down the surface. Once sanded and cleaned, it was finally ready for painting! I chose a similar color to my wall color, Underwater Wonders, which is part of the Behr Disney collection. I used a semigloss paint, and chose to use Behr because I did not have to prime the furniture before painting with it. When this color is next to my wall color, they are nearly identical. I painted the entire piece in Underwater Wonders, with the exception of the top. The top had some kind of special coating that I was not able to remove whatsoever, even with several attempts at stripping and sanding. I tried painting over it, but the paint would not adhere to the surface, so it stayed white. Once the turquoise paint had dried over several days, I painted the detailing on the drawer fronts in with white paint. To finish, I pulled black and white polka dot ribbon through the holes for the drawer pulls and tied bows in front. The end result is pretty darn cute:

Hope you guys like it!

Flowery Easter Cupcakes

2010-04-04T22:44:00.006-04:00

These were some yummy piña colada flavored cupcakes that I made for Easter. I decided to make them more of a spring theme, so I tinted the icing and the coconut green. I used a darker shade of green for the leaves and used purple and blue icing to create flowers. I used yellow dot candies for the centers and used small flower-shaped sprinkles as an additional decoration.

Verry Merry Christmas Cupcakes

2009-12-26T22:55:00.003-05:00

A friend's mom requested that I make some cupcakes for her annual Christmas party and these are the two varieties that I came up with. The first are golden butter cupcakes with buttercream frosting. The holly leaves were made of dark-green frosting. I used a leaf tip and sort of squiggled it a bit while varying the pressure to create the appearance of the leaves. I used red M&Ms as the holly berries and sprinkled the leaves with edible glitter to give the appearance of snow. The second were devil's food cupcakes with peppermint flavoring and peppermint icing. I used crushed peppermints on top and decorated them with simple hearts piped from red candy melts.

Glazed Streusel Cupcakes

2009-08-02T22:44:00.007-04:00

Pretty basic but my first attempt at making cupcakes entirely from scratch. I followed a recipe from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes book. The batter was much thicker than a typical cake mix batter, almost the consistency of cookie dough. I also had some problems with the streusel being too dry. The glaze was super easy to make and only consisted of milk and confectioner's sugar. The cupcakes overall did not turn out so great because they were really dry, but I'm excited to try some of the other recipes in this book.

Sunflower Cupcakes

2009-07-31T23:53:00.010-04:00

Summery cupcakes that I made for concert tailgating last weekend. I started out with a dozen yellow cupcakes in paper liners and added chocolate fudge frosting as a base. I tinted vanilla frosting both green and yellow to create the flowers. The sunflower centers were made of chocolate jimmies. I piped swirls and leaves out of green and then added the flower petals. Tasted yummy and my friends really loved them!!

Carrot Cake

2009-07-22T20:43:00.011-04:00

Fifty-"Fore"th birthday cake for my dad. I made two layers of carrot cake with homemade cream-cheese frosting. I used vanilla icing tinted green to make the grass and the carrot tops. The carrots themselves were made out of fondant. The golf ball and golf club were also made out of different colors of fondant. I used brown-sugar to create the "sand trap" and used a grass decorating tip to create the "course." Turned out pretty well but I think I will stick to cupcakes from now on.

Piña Colada Paradise Cupcakes

2009-07-09T16:41:00.013-04:00

These cupcakes took a lot of work but I was so happy with the way they turned out! I made these to surprise my aunt and uncle who were visiting from Colorado. I tarted out with yellow cake mix and added crushed pineapple and rum extract. I used vanilla frosting with coconut and rum extracts to and topped the cupcakes with shredded coconut. Most of the design elements were created the day before out of either Candy Melts or fondant. Some cupcakes were topped with "sand" which was made of graham cracker crumbs. The waves were created from white, medium blue, and dark blue frosting piped from one decorating bag. Grass was created from light, medium and dark green piped from the same decorating bag with a grass tip.

Flip-flops and beach towels made of fondant

Fondant crab, sand dollar, and starfish

Fondant and candy sailboat and a fondant shark fin

Fondant pineapple with frosting leaves and a frosting flower

Fourth of July Cupcakes

2009-07-03T19:29:00.004-04:00

Two dozen cupcakes decorated to resemble a flag. The cupcakes were basically white and devil's food mixes. Twelve were decorated with blue colored vanilla frosting and the remainder were decorated with red. I had a really difficulty time achieving a true red color, as you can probably see in the photo. I used an entire container of red gel food coloring and another of liquid food coloring. The stars were made of white fondant using Wilton fondant cutters. Stripes were added to cupcakes individually out of thinly rolled fondant. I tried to make it look as if the flag was "waving", but I wasn't thrilled with the overall effect. Happy Fourth of July all!

Turquoise Girly Cupcakes

2009-06-28T12:15:00.002-04:00

This was a fun little one-dozen batch I made for a Girls Night Out. The cupcakes were devil's food with pink-tinted vanilla frosting inside. Each cupcake had a swirl of turquoise-tinted vanilla frosting on top. Next I added leaves from green-tinted vanilla frosting. Flowers were made of swirled purple and pink frosting swirled together. Flower centers, squiggles and dots were added with plain vanilla.

Rainbow Birthday Cupcakes

2009-06-10T23:07:00.003-04:00

Cupcakes I made for my friend Greg's birthday. I made them look extra-girly and childish as a joke. There were two dozen lemon cupcakes with lemon filling and lemon frosting. I was afraid that it might be too much lemon flavor but they were actually very refreshing. They were especially good when they came from the refrigerator. The lemon cupcakes were decorated with the individual letters spelling out the message and small flowers. The remaining six were decorated with rainbows created from different colors of frosting and white frosting clouds. I also made a one dozen batch of confetti cupcakes. These were decorated with vanilla frosting and jimmies and small frosting flowers to hold the birthday candles.

Mother's Day Cupcakes

2009-05-10T20:52:00.003-04:00

Cupcakes I made for Mother's Day. I found these great little Duncan Hines baking cake mixes that only make 12 cupcakes, which is perfect if you don't want or need a full batch. I used the Duncan Hines yellow cake mix for these cupcakes. They were filled with vanilla cream and topped with vanilla frosting tinted a pretty shade of purple. I used a small amount of the vanilla frosting to create the white flowers and tinted the rest pink to make the pink flowers. The white centers were made of jelly beans and the pink centers were candy dots. Half of the cupcakes were rimmed in pastel nonpareils and the other half got a light sprinkling of nonpareils on top. I used white Wilton candy melts to make the hearts for the tops of the cupcakes and used the extra hearts to decorate the plate. Tasted so good!

Springtime Ladybug Cupcakes

2009-04-27T18:35:00.003-04:00

Some fun little spring cupcakes. I started with lemon cupcakes for the base and frosted them with lemon icing tinted green. The leaves were made with regular white frosting tinted a darker shade of green. I tinted a small amount of the white frosting yellow for the yellow flowers and then used the remaining white frosting to create the flowers. I used yellow and orange M&Ms for the flower centers. The ladybugs were made of red M&Ms decorated with melted Ghirardelli chocolate. I really liked how these cupcakes turned out, and they tasted really yummy. I think I need a lot more practice making leaves and petals, but this was a good start.

Hoppy Easter Cupcakes!

2009-04-10T01:13:00.011-04:00

Cupcakes for Easter! All of the cupcakes are golden butter yellow cake, which has definitely become my favorite flavor of cake batter. I frosted the Easter baskets with plain white vanilla frosting and rimmed the edges with pastel-colored nonpareils. The handles were made out of white Wilton candy melts. For the "eggs" inside the baskets I used M&M speckled eggs, Whopper robin's eggs, and Hershey's candy coated eggs. To make the Easter bunnies, I tinted half of the vanilla icing pink and frosted a dozen cupcakes. I piped a blob of plain creamy white frosting onto each cupcake to make the bunny head. I used marshmallows and pink sprinkles for ears, different colored confetti sprinkles for the eyes, jelly beans for the noses, and chocolate jimmies for the whiskers. I was especially happy with how the Easter baskets turned out!

Boston Creamcakes

2009-04-01T23:02:00.003-04:00

These cupcakes were made of golden butter recipe cake batter (my favorite). The inside of the cupcakes were filled with vanilla pudding. I think the pudding, without using heavy cream or powdered sugar, was too liquidy and seemed to cause the cupcakes to disintegrate when people tried to eat them. They were iced with creamy chocolate icing (heated in the microwave for a thinner consistency). The squiggles were drawn with Wilton white decorating icing. Overall these tasted pretty good. They did not take long at all to make and I spent a lot less time decorating them than I usually do, which is why they are kind of ugly.

Mom's Birthday Cupcakes

2009-03-04T21:41:00.005-05:00

I baked these cupcakes for my mom's 54th birthday (clearly). The cupcakes themselves were strawberry cake mix frosted with creamy chocolate frosting. Each cupcake was topped with a quartered strawberry striped in Ghirardelli milk and white chocolate. I used pink Wilton decorating icing to spell out "Happy Birthday Mom!" on most of the cupcakes. The remaining cupcakes had hearts drawn on them, and one was used to write out "54th." I topped the cupcakes with white nonpareils and used pink candles as a final touch. The cupcakes looked nice but I wasn't crazy about the taste of the strawberry cake batter. I tried to make it "lower calorie" by substituting applesauce for oil and using Egg-beaters instead of eggs. The strawberries were also a bit too juicy and tended to slide off of the frosting. Probably won't try to make these again.

Peanut Butter Lover's Cupcakes

2009-03-01T20:05:00.005-05:00

Yum! These started with golden butter cake batter mixed with 3/4 cup peanut butter. The cupcakes were iced with a mixture of creamy chocolate frosting and 1/4 cup peanut butter. I placed a small amount of peanut butter in a plastic bag and microwaved it for a short time until it was a liquid consistency. I cut a very small hole in the corner of the bag to pipe various designs onto each cupcake. I refrigerated Reese's peanut butter cups for several hours and then cut them into small pieces. I melted white Wilton candy melts in a plastic bag and piped squiggles on top of each peanut butter cup. I also used the white candy melts to create the small hearts. I refrigerated the peanut butter cups and hearts until they had hardened and then placed a few on top of each cupcake. These were really good but tasted very strongly of peanut butter. Next time, I might ice them with chocolate alone instead of mixing the frosting and peanut butter.