eCraft Monday Design Team Project

 

Well now that Thanksgiving is over, that means that it is really time for us to kick our crafting butts into gear! LOL!  Today is Cyber Monday and that means….shopping!  If you are like me, then it seems like every Christmas when my husband asks me what I want, I tell him, “Don’t worry honey I got you covered!”  So that means that today, I just may be surfing some of my favorite crafting sites to see what he is going to give me for Christmas this year!

 

Speaking of presents, let’s get on with my project for today!  Last year, I started wrapping all of my presents in kraft paper and then decorating each present using various embellishments as well as my eCraft machine.  I always make my own gift tags, so I thought I would show you an example of one of gift tags today and how I “dress up” my presents. We have two new wonderful sponsors this month, and I am just over the moon about these great companies!  The first sponsor is Peachy Keen Stamps!  If you are not aware of this company, you must go check them out!  Their claim to fame is their fabulous face stamps!  They work directly with die cuts and you can get faces for just about anything that needs a face!  The other company is 3L Scrapbook Adhesives, and they have some of the best adhesive products on the market! I have been using their products for years and just love them!

 

 

On my gift tag, you can see that I have cut out one of the tags that I created in my last eCraftshop Pro video which you can find HERE in case you missed it (you can also download my file from there as well).  I cut the tag out twice, once in a light blue Core’dinations cardstock that I got from Joann’s and the second time in a piece of vellum that I got from Hobby Lobby.  From there, I just hand cut the wave in the vellum tag so that I was left with just the bottom half.  I then used THIS adhesive runner from 3L Scrapbooking Adhesives to adhere the vellum onto the cardstock.  This is the BEST adhesive for vellum.  After you have applied the adhesive, just rub it and the adhesive almost vanishes into the cardstock.  You would probably need a magnifying glass to see it!

 

The next step was to cut out my penguin!  Isn’t she cute?  She is from the Eskimo Kisses set at Lettering Delights.  I cut her out of some more Core’dinations cardstock from Joann as well as a few scraps lying in my scrap drawer.  (That drawer is getting way too full!) All I had to do was eliminate the parts that make the face and then I can use my Peachy Keen stamps.  I stamped the face in black and then just colored in the beak.  This stamp is from the Winter Wonderland Face Assortment set. The final step was a little smudge of pink chalk on the cheeks.  You can get chalks just about anywhere, but I particularly like this set from Inkadinkadoo for the pink cheeks and I got it from Michaels.  I also used some 3D Foam Squares from 3L Scrapbooking Adhesives for some dimension on my penguin.

 

 

The little banner was printed out on my printer using the LD Delightful font and then I just cut the strip on my paper trimmer and used a small square punch on the ends to make the banner tails.  A few little score marks make the banner pop up from the tag.

 

Since all my embellishments are on the front of my tag, I can write the To and From on the back of the tag.  To finish off my present, I placed the gift inside a kraft gift bag from Michaels, filled it with some pink and green tissue paper that I had in stock.  That gorgeous ribbon bow is tied onto the handles and I created that with some ribbon from Michaels.  The colored ball spike thing was also from Michaels and it is just resting inside the bag, so that it can be recycled for another gift down the road.  The final step was to tie my tag onto one of the handles and I used a little Papertrey Ink Raspberry Fizz Swiss Dot ribbon to do that.

 

I’ll be back on Friday with a video tutorial for you and if you happen to see any great online deals…let me know!

eCraft Monday Design Team Project

Calling all eCrafters!  Today I have 3 BIG goodies for you!  The first is my project for this week using the fabulous Pink by Design Stamps!  We have all been challenged this week to create a 3-D object for you using our eCrafts and our Pink by Design Stamp sets.  I have been using the Beary Merry Christmas set and it is just so adorable!!  I decided to try to vintage up this stamp set with my project this week (and of course this is another food gift item as well).

 

I made these cute little triangle boxes!  The ornament on the front is cut out of Tim Holtz Seasonal Paper and then I stamped my reindeer right on the patterned paper with some Walnut Stain Distress Ink and heat embossed it.  I then used some watered down Distress Inks to color in the reindeer (with a few Perfect Pearls mixed in for shimmer).  I love how you can see the patterned paper through the transparent color.  The tag is from the Laina Lamb Office Essentials eCraft Design Card.  I just love that SD card, so many things that can add that extra little touch!

 

I also added some Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls to the ornament toppers.  I used some coordinating ribbons from Papertrey Ink in Pinefeather, Spring Moss, and Scarlet Jewel.  Oh and that sentiment on the tag is also from the Beary Merry Christmas stamp set from Pink by Design Stamps and I heat embossed it in vanilla embossing powder.  Even though it is a small sentiment, it embosses just perfectly!  And I love the font combination too!

 

Now, for the second goodie for you!  This box was designed by yours truly and made specifically for the eCraft!  I have the SVG for the box and also the ornament overlay available to you FREE!  The box SVG even has the draw lines in it so that the eCraft pen can draw in those score lines for you.  Just make sure when you cut it out, that you cut the paper upside down so that the pen lines are hidden inside the box.  I made it so that there are two pieces that overlap in the middle so you have a reinforced bottom.

Just score the two pieces, adhere them together and then tie it up.  Super simple and quick to do when time is at a minimum during the Christmas season.

 

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THESE FREE SVG FILES

 

Now, I have one last goodie for you!  You may have noticed the treats that were packaged up in these little boxes…well, these are a family tradition that goes back many generations.  In fact, we don’t even know for sure how far back it goes.  My Grandma Elsie would make these and always at Christmas.  My mom started to make them especially because we were not always with Grandma Elsie at Christmas time and the recipe became so requested that now they are made on both sides of my family.  My husband’s family always request these at Christmas, so I usually make at least one Double Batch a season.  I give a few to co-workers and neighbors and I always get asked for this recipe.  I have seen other recipes similar to this out there, but they are never quite the same.  Could be because of all of my childhood memories of these, but I don’t think so!  My Grandma Elsie passed away in 1990 and I miss her greatly and whenever I make these, I think of her.  So in honor of her, I am naming this recipe after her, and I hope you enjoy them as much as me and my family do.

 

Grandma Elsie’s Buckeye Balls

1 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter

1/2 cup butter (softened)

16 oz. Powdered Sugar

1 tsp. Vanilla

6 oz. package semi-sweet chocolate chips

2 TB solid vegetable shortening

 

Line a baking sheet with wax paper.  In a bowl, mix peanut butter, butter, powdered sugar and vanilla with hands to form a smooth dough.  Mixture will be very stiff.  Shape dough into 2 tsp. for each ball.  Place on wax paper and refrigerate overnight.  When cool, melt chocolate and shortening together in a small bowl or a glass measuring cup.  Insert wooden toothpick into ball and dip in chocolate to cover half the ball.  Refrigerate on wax paper for 30 min or longer until chocolate is firm.  Store in plastic containers with wax paper between the layers.  Can freeze.

 

These are truly wonderful!  It just so happens that I am snacking on one as I type.   Have a great week everybody and I want to wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving!  Don’t forget to follow me, Debi, Lisa and Raven on the eCraft by Craftwell blog we have a lot of great things in store for you and you won’t want to miss it!

eCraft Video using eCraftshop Pro for November

 

Hope all of you are doing well today!  Today, I have a video on eCraftshop Pro using basic shapes to create some tags.  Hope you all will find this useful!

 

 

Oh, and HERE is the file with the two tags as shown in the video so you can use these for yourself!  Have a great day!

eCraft Monday Design Team Project

 

I am back with some eCrafty goodness today!  This week the Design Team was challenged to make another Christmas project using our wonderful Pink by Design Stamps and incorporate a sky element into the project, such as stars, clouds, sun, moon, planets, etc.  Continuing on with my personal challenge to make every project this month a food gift, I am incorporating one of my favorite ways to give food gifts.  This is so quick and easy to do and really makes a simple food gift special!

For this project, I started with a simple aluminum pan that you can find at any grocery store.  The ones that I got came 3 in a package, so while my Zucchini Bread was baking in 2 of the pans I used the third one to create my wrap.  These pans came with clear lids, so I attached the lid and took some measurements.  I used a flexible sewing tape measure to get my measurements.

All the way around, my measurement came in at 14 1/4” so I knew that I would have to paper piece the wrap.  I then proceeded to take some measurements of the sides and where I would need to score to get a nice clean fit.  Then I started to create the wrap.  I knew that I needed a panel on the top that measured 3 1/2” wide and then added 1/2” so that I would have something to attach to the rest of my wrap on each side.  I decided to use my computer to print my sentiment directly on this panel.  To do this I used Microsoft Publisher and set up a 8 1/2”x11” page document and used the Layout Guides to see the finish area.  This will also be where I want to cut this paper after it is done printing.

I printed my sentiment onto Papertrey Ink Soft Stone cardstock and used Lettering Delights Deck the Halls font for the sentiment.  Once I had it printed out I was ready to add my elements onto it.  The first thing that I did was use my eCraft to cut a large 7” circle out of Papertrey Ink Aqua Mist cardstock and then used my Xacto knife to cut a sliver off of it to create the ground on which my Polar Bears will stand.  These Polar Bears from the Pink by Design stamp set Beary Merry Christmas are just so cute that I had to use them again!

 

The next thing that I did was create the mat for my Polar Bears.  I actually did a video on how to do this that you can find HERE.  You will need Make the Cut and a scanner to do this.  Once I had my mat cut out, I used my Stamp a Ma Jig to line it up the stamp onto the mat.  Sometimes I skip this step and just eyeball it, but I made a small shadow on this mat and did not want to chance it.

The Stamp a ma jig really makes this easy to do.  To make sure that my mat did not move around on me, I used a little removable adhesive from 3L Adhesives to adhere it to my craft mat.  I then went to coloring in my bears with some Copics.

 

Nothing too fancy here, since I just needed a little color on the scarves and the sign.  The Copic colors that I used are RV34, BG11, BG13, BG18, T1 and T4.

 

Next step was to create my sky element.  Wouldn’t you know that the very day that I was figuring out what to do, eCraftCentral.com came out with THIS star?  It was just perfect for my project, and so I cut it out of American Crafts white glitter paper.  To add a little more pizazz to the star, I used my white Signo gel pen to add some lines to reflect the shining star.  Since my cardstock is a very light gray color, the white shows up very nicely.

I used some Foam Squares from 3L Adhesives to adhere my star and the Polar Bears and then created the rest of my wrap.  I used Papertrey Ink Smokey Shadow for the rest of the wrap and Papertrey Ink Autumn Rose for the side accent pieces which were punched with a Martha Stewart border punch.

I also added some Crafty Power Tape from 3L Adhesives onto the accent pieces and added some Martha Stewart crystal fine glitter to add a little more shimmer.  As you can see in the picture above, my entire wrap was created before my bread was done!  I let my bread cool overnight and the next morning, I simply put the rest of it together.

Oh and in case you are wondering, the Zucchini Bread recipe that I used was from Paula Deen!  Can you tell that I love her recipes?

 

Are you following us on the eCraft by Craftwell blog?  If not, you really should be!!  Debi, Lisa and Raven have some more amazing projects this week and let’s not forget about our Friday video tutorials!  I’ll be back next Monday with another project for you and this is definitely a project you will not want to miss! 

Make the Cut Video for November

Edited to fix link

Hi Everybody!  I am back today with a video on Make the Cut especially for us eCrafters!  If you have been following me for awhile, then you know that I love Lettering Delights! A little while ago they came out with a new product line called Cut Tiles.  These are specially formulated to work with the Texture feature in Make the Cut.  With these tiles, you can use their pattern and re-color them to work for your project.  It is kind of like have thousands of options of digital paper right at your finger tips.  I have been using these for awhile now and I just love them!  My video today is focusing on how to re-color these Cut Tiles and it is easy peasy!

As mentioned in the video, I am using the newest stable version of Make the Cut which is version 4.04 and you can download it HERE.

From one Lettering Delights customer to another, make sure you use a coupon!  Don’t have one?  Just “buy” a freebie and you will be sent an order receipt and a coupon code for 25% off your next order will be on that receipt.  Great way to get these Cut Tiles or any other Lettering Delights files you may want!

eCraft Monday Design Team Project

 

Before I get started with my project today, I have to send a BIG Happy birthday to my son Jared!  Happy Birthday Jared!  I love you and I cannot believe that you are already 7!  Yikes, I just realized that means that in 9 short years he will be driving!  Where does the time go? 

 

This week the eCraft Design was given quite a challenge!  I personally love to use non-traditional Christmas colors, but I usually go with bold darker colors.  We were challenged to use a hot new color combination for Christmas…Baby Pink, Baby Blue and Lime Green!  Well I love a good challenge and this one is definitely out of my comfort zone, but I have to say that I LOVE what I made!

There is such a whimsy to these colors isn’t there?  Since I am also focusing on treat containers this month, I thought it would be fun to take something that all of us have at home, and use it for our treats (which even though they look complicated, are REALLY easy, keep reading and I will explain).

 

The first thing that I did was take a jar of Classico Spaghetti sauce and made spaghetti for dinner so that I could use the jar in my project! I love the details on the jar itself, so it was perfect for this project!  I used Martha Stewart’s line of acrylic paints (found at Michaels) and painted the jar.  These paints work on all sorts of things including glass, so this was easy as can be.  The paint that I used was the satin finish and the color is called Pink Carnation.  Oh and don’t worry about the paint job being perfect because the glitter will conceal a lot!

 

 

I then took some Mod Podge and covered the entire jar and then went a little glitter crazy!  I used Martha Stewart Snow Glitter and Sterling fine glitter.  I used the Sterling sparingly just to add a little touch of silver.

 

 

While I let the jar fully dry, I went to work on my tag. I used THIS ornament from eCraftCentral.com but also found on the Jen Allyson Celebrates SD Design card. I skewed it in eCraftshop Pro to form a more oval ornament and one that was big enough for my stamps.  I cut it out of Core’dinations cardstock using a veggie mat, pressure of 5.5, no tabs and blade cover on.  I then went to stamping.  My Pink by Design stamp set Beary Merry Christmas was perfect for this whimsical project.  I actually only stamped the bears heads on the tag along with the sentiment.  I then used some Picket Fence Distress Stain to color in the bears.  I love how it gives a chalky look to it!  To do this, I just put some of the Distress Stain directly on my non-stick craft mat and then used a paint brush to paint in the bears.  I did two coats of this.  I messed up in a couple of places and just went over the black stamp lines where the Distress Stain ran over them with a black marker.  I also used the same method with Shabby Shutters Distress Stain for the scarf and the little bit of the sign that is showing.  I then used Perfect Pearls and painted that onto the ornament hanger.

 

 

I added a scalloped oval behind the whole ornament and also if you look closely you will see that there is a small amount of glitter along the edges of the blue ornament to add a little more shimmer. I then set about creating the bow around the top of the jar.  I used some Christmas ribbon from my stash and then layered it with a bow out of handmade Crinkle ribbon and topped it off with the pink button.  The ornament is actually the same thread that is threaded through the button.  I used some amazing Crafty Power Tape adhesive from 3L Adhesives to adhere this bow onto the jar, and let me tell you….it is not going anywhere!

 

 

I added some floral foam inside the jar and started to add my “Cheater Cake Pops” (more on this in a bit, I promise) into the jar and decided that I wanted one more element in there, so I created this super simple decoration using the bird cuts and the snowflake cut from the Jen Allyson Celebrates SD Design card. The snowflake can also be found on eCraftCentral.com right HERE.  For the snowflake, I again doused it with the Martha Stewart snow glitter.  After I added this into the jar, I filled it up with some decorative filler.

Now it is time to talk about the “Cheater Cake Pops”.  I got this idea from the Frugal Crafter who did this for a birthday party and I decided that I absolutely had to do this.  You see, I have been seeing recipes for the cake pops for a while now, and they look wonderful.  The problem is that, I would rather spend my time eCrafting than in the kitchen.  Who can blame me right?  That is why I never made them, they always seemed like they would take more time to do than I was willing to give to it.  So here is my recipe and it seriously took me maybe 10 minutes to do, and they were good too!

CHEATER CAKE POPS

12-16 Donut Holes (I got mine from Dunkin Donuts, you want the cake donut holes)

1 (16 oz.) package of Candi-Quick (found at any major grocery store)

Sprinkles or any other type of edible decorations

Lollipop sticks and something to stand them up in (I think floral foam would work beautifully)

 

Put your donut holes in the freezer for a few hours or overnight.  After they are frozen, insert your lollipop sticks in using a twisting motion.  Follow the directions to melt the Candi-Quick and then dip each donut hole into the Candi-Quick and let the excess drip off.  Then place in your floral foam and add your sprinkles.  Let the Candi Quick set.  That’s it, you’re done! Oh and I should mention too, that I recommend that you wrap your cake pops in a small cellophane baggie.  They sell some in the major craft stores in the candy making aisle if you plan on giving this to someone.  That way they will be protected from all the glitter!  I didn’t do that on my project because I think I am going to use this for a small centerpiece on my table.

 

 

Have a great day everybody, and be sure to come back every day this week to see what the other ladies have in store for you with this hot new Christmas color combination!

eCraft Design Team Video

 

Hi everybody, I am back today with another eCraft Design Team video.  In today’s video, I show you how to use die cuts from your eCraft to emboss paper!  This adds a whole new element to the possibilities of what we can do with our eCraft.  Oh, and have you heard about the eBosser?  I cannot wait to get this machine!  Craftwell is going to be releasing this machine this winter!  The eBosser is a machine that is fully electric (no more turning a crank) and will take a full 8 1/2x 11 piece of paper!  Just awesome!  You can cut with it using your metal dies too!  For more information about the eBosser, make sure to check it out HERE!

 

Today’s project is a quick and easy treat bag!  This is a great technique to do and great for mass producing since you only need to cut one image.

The cookies are a recipe from Paula Deen and they are called Chocolate Gooey Butter Cookies!  So easy to make and really yummy too!

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial!  Next week, the Design Team has a whole new challenge using the wonderful Pink by Design Stamps!

SCAL 3 Video for eCraft users–November

Hi everybody!  I know I am very late on posting this video.  I have been dealing with a computer issue for the past few days…AARGGHH!  Hate it when that happens LOL!

 

Today’s video is one that I have been wanting to bring to all of you for awhile now and I finally took the time to figure it all out for you.  Today we are going to be using Sure Cuts A Lot 3 to do a Print & Cut with the eCraft.

 

If you have not seen my previous video on this where I used Make the Cut, make sure to watch that HERE because in that video I demonstrate how to set up the eCraft for this. 

 

Enjoy the video and I hope that this helps some of you!