Playing Catch Up

And yeah, it's been a while since my last post, but that's not what I'm talking about.


I work retail, which means mandatory 6 day work weeks during the month of December. My new job didn't have extended holiday hours, and for that I'm eternally grateful, but open to close 6 days, laundry, grocery shopping, basketball practices (?? who's dumb idea was that?!) and squeezing in some actual Christmas shopping of my own means not having time for anything that doesn't HAVE to get done. So when everyone else is crafting up a storm, baking and mailing off cards…I'm running on Red Bull and adrenaline and looking forward to things being calmer in the new year.


So then Valentine's Day rolls around and all that residual I-wish-I-were-crafting-and-baking stuff that was left from Christmas time comes bubbling to the surface. So I may have gone a smidge over board.


First I got the idea to do a word search to attach to the kids Valentine treats. It was a fun idea and would have been super easy had I remembered that I had Excel on my computer. But I didn't and created the puzzle in PhotoShop. PhotoShop is a powerful tool, but it's too powerful for some applications. Imagine driving an 18 wheeler to the grocery store. Lots of room for the groceries, but a little hard to park. It took about 4 hours to do the puzzle, but it was worth it just to see how excited Ted and Molly were to give out their treats. Oh, and God love the Silhouette for it's ability to kick out 45 shapes in a couple of minutes. Scalloped circles, the little black tab, the cute little heart – all done in about an hour. Assembling these – another story. Brought all the pieces parts to work on between customers. It was an insanely slow day, but after 9 hours, I still wasn't finished.

Each word search and the word list was "sewn" loosely to the Fun Dip. I think it turned out super cute and very fun. I still get the biggest kick that I put the word "cooties" in there. I funny.


So Friday morning rolled around and off went all my hard work, but I had the day off and still the urge to play. I decided to make Snickerdoodles – time consuming, but well within my skill set and almost always well received. Ran to the grocery store for the cream of tartar and the flour only to come home to realize that we were also out of sugar. Decided that instead of going back to Giant Eagle I'd head to Target. Maybe they'd have some fun Valentine's Day stuff marked down. Found Arcrylic tumblers marked down 25%, very cute, but not really suitable for presenting cookies in. I poked around a bit and found a naked cookie jar that whispered "etch me….etch me…"


So, 5 hours later, cookies were baked and the jar was etched:



It never shows up all that exciting in photos, but I think glass etching is so fun and easy. It takes a whopping 15 minutes, and most of that is just spent waiting. Once I put the cookies in the jar it looked a little naked. Plus, I had more time to kill and was still itching to play. Used one Silhouette design that had three hearts, cut it out once in red and once in black and layered together. So easy. The little gift cardholder is just a tag with a pocket made by wrapping a piece of vellum around the bottom. I might over-use this design, but it's handy and fun. I really dig the little border on there. This is the first time I've used that and I positively can't wait to use it again. The rub on is from Creative Imaginations. Those rub on books are so expensive, but you get a TON of designs, so they last forever. At any rate, I was pleased at how it turned out. Definitely fun and festive!



This is what I ended up doing with the plastic tumblers from Target. The shot on the right is just a detail of the tags. ScrapWorks made a clear acrylic mini album in the shape of postage stamps. Super cute, but at 2x3 they're really too small to do much with. Turns out there were perfect to make name tags for the treat cups.



I'm not wild about this card as a whole. I made the adorable little banner pieces on Friday night, and by the time I got around to making them into a card my get up and go had pretty much got up and left. There was definitely untapped potential with those banners – they're only an inch wide! So cute. Card over all? Eh.



And lastly, I decided to take some cookies for my two coworkers. Initially I threw them into a Ziploc bag, but I couldn't do it. Instead I wrapped them in kitchen parchment paper and tied them with ribbon – I love when Archiver's has the Bazzill ribbon in their Hot Buys! 15 yards for $1.99? Heck yeah! Pulled out the package of ScrapWorks acrylic mini-albums and made some quick tags, again using red and black vinyl from QuicKutz. "DNA" is just my bosses initials, and "heart breaker" is an actual design from the Silhouette online store. Again, quick, easy, and fun.