Happy Birthday Dad

Crafty Gift for Dad

Forget about socks and jocks! Throw out that cologne you got him for his birthday and put back that stubby holder - what you need is a personalised gift for the man in your life.

Better yet - spend a little time crafting with the kids and come up with something that every Dad will treasure.

Most men have their special place - it might be the shed down the back, a room all their own or just a corner in the back patio. This 'Man Cave' is somewhere they can retreat to and sulk, sorry, enjoy being manly. Now you can make this a special place for them, by creating their own personalised light 'switch plate'.

The best part about this little project is that your kids will want to be involved - big or small, they just love to create things for Dad. This project is easy enough for kids of all ages to help out with - just make sure you supervise them. :)

So let's get started ...

Cut a piece of Inkssentials Metal Foil Tape into a 10cm x 14cm section

 

and place inside a Spellbinders Industrial Die, just below the "frame".

 

Pop it through your Cuttlebug with just the base plate and c plate.

Starting from the top of your foil, line it up and then peel off a small piece, so it will cover the top of your switch plate.  (Most of them simply clip off and on and are really easy to remove.) Once you are happy with the placement, peel off the rest of the foil and cover the plate.

The foil is nice and soft, so just fold the corners over the edge of the plate, like you do when wrapping presents.

Cut 4 little slits with your craft knife to "open up" a hole for the switch. Fold back the foil as shown below.

Now that your light switch plate is covered, it is time to decorate. Even like this it looks way cool - just the pattern alone. 

Since it is for Dad, use variously styled letters (leftovers from several font sets work best) small enough to create the title "Man Cave" or whatever you choose to title your switch project.

NOTE:  Just be careful with what elements you embellish it with, we don't want any sharp edges that may cause Dad an injury!

Let's start embellishing by creating some Gadget Gears.

Cut 3 pieces of scrap card and 3 pieces of foil tape the size of the smallest gadget gear .
Peel off foil and attach to the card, before cutting with gadget gears big shot die.

Next, emboss your Gadget Gears.

Now I want to point out the Spellbinders folder I am using is REVERSIBLE, so you can flip the folder over to create a "different" style of industrial texture. You get so much bang for your buck with these sets - it's two folders for the price of one.

Using the other texture pattern will make the cogs stand out against the textured switch plate.

Now put the 3 gadget gears aside for second ...

Cut a piece of card and foil the size of the middle gadget gear.  Using your fingers, rub over it with Hematite Inka Gold ... when dry, (takes about 30 secs) rub over it again with Cobalt Blue Inka Gold.

Cut the gadget gear out and remove the middle.

While your fingers are looking a lovely blue and grey, rub the 3 smaller gears with both Inka Golds. You don't want a smooth coverage - wipe it here and there and create some funky patterns. You're after a distressed industrial look - not something neat and tidy.

Using a good adhesive, glue your large gear as shown below ...

adding one of your smaller gears on top (or next to) of the first one.

Add your "Cave" words.

I replaced the "A" in "cave" with one of our new light bulb charms - first giving it  a good rub with Hematite Inka Gold.  As the charm doesn't have much width in area, I filled in the gaps with glossy accents.

Next, cut the left-over small cog in half
and apply foil tape as shown - with just a little overlap

so you can adhere it to the sides of the light switch cover.

Now you are finished.

You can't give a cool gift like this without an appropriate card - so now for the matching card.

Grab yourself a Twiddleybitz Black 13x13 card. 

Cut a piece of white cardstock into a slightly smaller square, adhere to the card and give it a few "splats" of Faded Jeans Distress Stains.

Next, place a blue piece of cardstock inside your Spellbinders Industrial Die - just below the "frame".

 Trim and adhere to the top of the white cardstock.

Cut a rosette out of some Inkssentials Metal Foil Tape, peel off one little end bit of foil from the rosette and join the two ends together.

Turn on your hot glue gun.   

While the glue gun is heating up, run a few scrap bits of blue and white cardstock through the  Spellbinders Industrial Die to create your rosette "ribbons".

When the heat gun is hot, attach the 'base' to the BACK of your rosette and drop some glue into the middle to secure the two pieces together.

Apply hot glue to the back of a #1 Dad Bottle Cap and add to centre of the rosette.

 A hot glue gun in my opinion, is better, as it dries just about instantly and you aren't having to hold it while waiting for other glues to dry.

 

Arrange your "ribbons" to your card, glue, then add your rosette over the ribbons.

And ta da ...

Fathers Day Card Ideas, an Album & a Christmas Card

Fahers day card ideas 
by Lisa

Fathers Day is not that far away - and as a challenge Tracy gave me some sheets of the Kaiser Sears and Son “Moustache”paper.

So I am going to give you some quick and easy ideas to make some Fathers Day cards or at least masculine cards!!!!

Now I am never going to claim to be a great card maker. I am a scrapbooker who uses her scraps to create cards when she needs them for Birthdays, Christmas, Mothers day and Fathers Day etc!!!

With four kids my kids have an endless stream of birthday invites so I always have a quick and easy supply of cards ready to go!!

Here is the first card – I have used the front and the back of the paper to create the background and I used a diecut that I got from one of Tracys boy embellishments kits and then I made my own banner withtwine and cardstock. I inked the edges and added the Jenny Bowlin stickers.

The next card I used the currently popular large banner to create some interest on the card and added some JennyBowlin stickers and some brown brads. You may notice I have also added the strip across the front of the card using the cut off strip from the bottom of the paper.

For the final card I have again created a smaller banner and doubled it up with a kraft background and then the cool moustache paper and then added the square of Kraft with the DAD stickers!!

Yay – I now have cards for my Dad, my father in law and my husband!!!! I’d love to see your Fathers day creations – so place them in the my2angels gallery!!!!

Lisa

Geli here,

I making a whole 10 page album with one collection and a bunch of embellishments from my2angels and I've almost made it. This is page 9:

Okay, so the photo isn't the greatest, but I didn't store the negatives right and it's my fault the colours have gone funny. Don't tell me you don't have photos like these! Nevertheless, these are my Russian friends and they deserve to be scrapped! 

I wanted to add a fair bit of journalling about our awesome party season at Christmas time, since we used to celebrate Christmas and New Year twice every year (the old Gregorian calendar was 2 weeks behind and each holiday has a "new" and an "old" date. It's really just an excuse to party on...)

To find space for all this writing I cut out 4 of the journalling cards (3x4" each) and a 8x8" photo mat:

Okay, so I changed some of them later, but you get the idea. 

An inked edge helps them stand out from the background.

Next I wanted to use some cute felt ribbon, but the colour was just a bit too pink. What to do?

Peel off the backing to expose the sticky side...

 ...and pour clear glitter over it. A bit of hairspray to help the glitter stick and done. It tones down the pink a bit and adds some sparkle (always great for party layouts). 

Now I glued that on, like this:

I punched a mat with my Martha Steward "around the edge" punch (instructions are on the leaflet that comes with the punch) and glued the mat and photo down, with a blue velvet ribbon over the edge (light blue or green can help neutralise the brown tone of discoloured photos).

The title is framed with a felt star and 2 holly charms (I painted the berries red with Shimmerz)

While puttering around and making a fine mess on my craft table, I saw the new white shabby embossing powder and I was wondering how it would look on a white paper flower. Well, it looks awesome. The embossing powder kind of sinks into the paper and leaves a gorgeous sprinkling of glitter:

I was on a roll, so I tried it on some red felt stars, this time with aged copper. The one on the left was inked with clear ink and embossed on the patterned side. The one on the right was sealed with multi medium on the smooth side first, then inked and embossed. Nice, huh? 

Both of them ended up on a different project, but I wanted to share the idea with you.

A couple of present pins complete the page.

If you have missed the other 8, here are the links:

part 1

part 2

part 3

part 4

part 5

part 6

part 7

part 8

Cheers, Geli

  

Tracy here 

with yet another (OMG) Christmas Card!

I too, am like Lisa who is not a card maker however the new mica Fragments are just calling out to me to make Christmas cards ... must be the gorgeous colours and texture of the fragments who knows but I am glad, cause I now have 2 Christmas Cards completed and it is only August!

So like my card last week, I ran a twiddleybitz kraft card through my cuttlebug embossing with Funky Christmas Collection embossing folder.

Then using the new bare chipboard sheets and my Tim Holtz House Scene die, I inked the houses with Old Paper Distress Ink, Walnut Stain Distress Ink and Barn Door Distress Ink.

  

 

I raised the front row of houses by taping scrap chipboard behind them.

The Christmas Tree is hand drawn and cut (obvious ah?) and inked with Peeled Paint Distress Ink with additional inking from Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

 And finally, to finish the card off, I sprinkled Bronze Stampendous Mica Fragments over the card.

And finally, YIPEE after my flower order sitting in WA for over a week it is being delivered sometime today ... new flowers and restocks will be up on the website sometime today ...