Tags, Tags, and MORE TAGS!

As though I had plenty of extra space in my craft closet, I decided to pick up another hobby after Christmas.  Did you guess it yet? . . . TAGS!

 

 

So here are a few I have been working on with Valentine's in mind.

 

I've already had two orders for the "Made with Love" Tags and have been trying out a few box folding methods to deliver them in.  I'm really pleased with the newest one in the upper left picture.  My sister gave me the idea to put a sticker of my logo on the front.  Thanks Donna!

 

Let me know what you think or if you have any ideas of where I could take this! 

Tags can be purchased here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/SimpleLittleThingss?ref=si_shop  Thanks!

Warning: Toddler Driver

Dustin is obsessed with cars, so for his learning notebook I added a page just for that.  It keeps his interest, helps his fine motor skills, and uses his imagination.

 

All you need is construction paper, foam paper, a laminator (or page protector), and little Nano cars.

 

 

 

To make this, I cut small yellow rectangles and glued them onto black construction paper, creating dotted lines.  This will become the road.  Then I laminated the paper.

 

The final step was to take green foam paper, cut it, and glue it around the roads to create grass.  The easiest way I found to do this was to take tracing paper and place it over the black laminated paper.  I then traced the yellow dotted lines.  Then I drew out about how wide I wanted the roads on my tracing paper.  When I was done, I laid the tracing paper on top of the green foam paper and cut out all the negative space (the space around the roads) and then used spray glue to stick it onto the black paper.

 

I didn't have big sheets of foam paper, so I had to do it in sections.

 



Dustin really enjoys it!   

Drive safe!

Business Cards

 

I finally made my own business cards!  I wanted something simple and crafty.

 

For the front I drew on a white piece of paper a yarn ball using pencil.  I scanned it into the computer and adjusted the values.  Then I used a blank template from Microsoft word to input all my information and printed it out on card stock paper.

 

 

For the back of the card, I drew four basic objects that I use daily.  I scanned those into the computer and adjusted the value on Photoshop.  Then, I scaled the size down of each object and arranged them vertically.  I continued to copy and paste these images until I covered 8.5" X 11".

 

Once that was finished, I uploaded the background on Microsoft word and printed it out on the back of my business cards.

 

Last step was to round the corners off . . . for safety purposes :)  I'm pretty happy with the end result!

 

 

Family Picture using Photoshop

Saw this idea on Pinterest and I have been wanting to do it for a long time now.  My mother-in law's birthday is coming up, so we thought this would be a great gift idea for her.

 



 

This was actually really simple to do if you have Adobe Photoshop.  I'm sure you could do it with other programs easily too.  This is what I did:

1. First, we had an empty picture frame and took a snap shot of each one of us holding it.  We tried holding the frame close to our face, that way we could crop away the excess parts of the picture around us.  Our sons picture was the hardest to direct, but we finally got one that worked before he threw the picture.  (Might want to take the glass out of the frame so the kids don't break it!)
2. I uploaded all the pictures into photoshop.
3. I started with the smallest picture of our cat.  I cropped close around his body and tried to keep the dimensions of the image about the same ratio as the frame (which is 11x14").  Then, I copied and pasted the image into the picture with my son.  Photoshop is great, because not only can you shrink the image and rotate it to fit into the frame, but you can skew the image too.  That way, if the frame is tilted back in one corner, you can adjust the picture to do that too. 
4. After I got our cat's picture in the frame, I cropped around my son's picture (making sure to include his entire head and the frame he was holding).  Don't forget to keep the dimensions at about the same ration as the frame you are using.
5. I then repeated the same steps noted in #3.

• If you notice, my husband's fingers went past the frame and is touching the picture of me.  It's easiest if you instruct the person holding the frame to keep their fingers off the picture part, but if they accidentally go past the frame you can just use the erase tool in photoshop.  My picture covered his fingers, so I just carefully erased that area until I could see his fingers again.  Easy fix! 
• After I was done with our pictures, I flattened all the layers on photoshop, turned it into a black and white photo, and adjusted the contrast.
• If you don't have a computer to do all this, you could probably take a picture of the person in the smallest frame, get it developed, and then take a picture of the next person holding it, but this would take a lot more time and money.  We did this in probably an hour and a half, with taking the pictures and photoshopping it.

I'll try to get step-by-step images of how I did this later in case it sounds confusing!  This was a really fun family activity to do that even our cat could get involved in :)