Tag: Vinyl

Space Saving Spring Decor

Depending on the space you’re looking to decorate for spring and Easter, you might find that you want a little sparkle in a small place. Maybe it’s a window ledge, a office desk corner, a mantel piece, or just a side table. This is something quick that you can put together and adds as much or little color as you like. The best part is that with the exception of glue drying time, you can have this project done in under an hour!

Materials Needed:

  • Clear Glass Salad Plate
  • Clear Glass Cylinder Container (with lid)
  • Glitter (color of choice)
  • Glitter Glue (complementary color)
  • Elmer’s Glue
  • Paint Brush
  • Paper and Wire Decor Eggs
  • Tall Candles (colors of choice)
  • Fairy Lights (optional)
  • Polycyclic or Clear Acrylic Spray Paint (optional)
  • Vinyl Decals/Stickers (optional)
  • Silk Flowers (optional)

Everything you see here I sourced at my local dollar store, with the exception of my Elmer’s glue and polycyclic. Hello mom of young children here! I found that I’m least likely to cry with accidents when I buy things from the dollar store. And accidents happen.

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Let’s Make It

Jar Stand

This one is a multifunctional component. I’m showing you how this holds a decor item, the paper and wire eggs. Instead of the eggs, you can use the plate for treats. Or you can set the plate aside and use the jar as a plate holder for part of your Easter Brunch.

  1. Inside the glass jar paint in your glue in the bottom portion of the jar. I used a yellow glitter glue to complement the green glitter. When using glitter glue, it’s important to pat the glue on your project and not paint it on. This type of glue does not have the holding power that Elmer’s glue has. I chose to stop the glue a little over halfway up the jar and stroke upwards to create a grass like effect. If you want to use Elmer’s glue you’ll have a little better control over the glue and a quicker dry time. Just make sure to add a little secondary color of glitter into your original glitter choice. This will give dimension to your color and keep it from becoming flat looking.
  2. Dump a good portion of glitter into the bottom of your jar and swirl it around on top of the glue. For the sides of the jar, I turned and tilted the glitter from the bottom of the jar down toward the mouth. I also hit the sides as I turned the jar, so that with it came to knock out all the excess glitter, there was very little that came out.
  3. Allow to thoroughly dry.
  4. You may find that you need a dry loose bristle brush to brush out some stray glitter that likes to stick to the clear glass.
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Egg/Treat Plate

In order to keep this plate safe for treats, make sure to apply the glitter to the underside of the plate. This makes the face hand washable.

  1. Apply a thin layer of Elmer’s glue to the area of the plate that you want to add the glitter. For me, I love the silver coloring of my jar’s lid and want that to shine up through the bottom of the plate. So I only applied glue to the lip of the plate.
  2. Sprinkle glitter over the wet glue. The more thorough you are on the shaking off of excess glitter makes the final step easier to apply without lifting the glitter.
  3. Once the Elmer’s glue is dry, seal in the glitter with polyclinic sealant or clear acrylic spray. This is an important step if you want to make sure that you won’t leave glitter trails when handling the plate. If you choose to use polycyclic, you want to tap the sealant on instead of brushing. Brushing actually ends up stripping glitter off of the glass. If you tap it on, the only glitter that comes off is whatever is loose to start with. If you’re like me and want to minimize the amount of glitter loss, clear acrylic spray is perfect. There is no loss. Plus the acrylic spray has the additional bonus of retaining the sparkle of the glitter more.
  4. Allow to thoroughly dry.
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Assemble the Accessories

For my display I chose to go with the multi colored paper and wire eggs and different pastel colors of tall candles. This is where even more personalization can happen. If you have rattan balls, you can use those here and keep with white candles to keep a clean minimalistic look. (In this instance a white frosted paint or white glitter might be your choice of decorating the jar and plate.)

For the candles, if you choose to go the color route, you can mute the colors by frosting the outside of the glass.

Or perhaps you have ribbon from other decor you already have up. You can hot glue a band of that ribbon around the candle.

For this set, I’m going to apply vinyl decals onto the glass. Also I’ll apply a decal on the jar.

Coming back to the jar, you might choose to further decorate the inside. Perhaps you want to add battery powered tea or short pillar lights. Maybe you love fairy lights. (For this one I would recommend hot gluing the switch the bottom side of the lid. This allows you to turn on the light just by lifting the lid and not having to fish for the switch on the bottom of the jar.) You could be a flower person. You could arrange your favorite silk flowers inside. Combined with fairy lights could be very dreamy looking. I think I’m going to have to find where I stashed my silk butterflies. The wing span is about 6″ and I could arrange 1 or 2 butterflies on the inside and have a little whimsy on the inside of my jar.

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Put It All Together

Even with all the different ways of personalizing this project, it’s all going to take on a different life depending on how you will set this up. Will you use a colorful table runner? Or maybe you’ll display this set with absolutely no further modification. I can totally see the white frost, rattan balls, white candles set on a reclaimed wood side table.

How will you set this up in your home?

Vinyl Decal designs can be found here:

Easter Candles (Decal)

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Words That Last

I’m coming up on the end of my first season coaching basketball and I couldn’t let this moment pass without sharing some of what I’ve learned. And also share the thoughts that I wished I could have talked with my dad about.

Before I can share what I’ve learned I have to go further back. (And we get there, I’m sharing the photos of the craft that I made for my basketball boys. Directions to make this, or an alternate, are below.)

My dad was my first coach, my most favorite one. But he didn’t become a good coach on his own. He learned from one of the best, Coach Carter. He wasn’t one of the really blessed to play directly under the amazing wisdom of Coach Carter, but he was able to attend some of the basketball clinics that Coach put on for other young men. There were only select memories that my dad shared with me from his youth, but this season of his life he was very proud to pass on.

Even without the stories, I would have seen the fingerprint of Coach Carter on my dad. It wasn’t just playing Basketball in its purest form. More importantly, Coach Carter taught my dad how to value even the weakest and overlooked player on the team. For Coach Carter and my dad, there were no bench warmers. If you were on the team, you had a role to play on the court.

The most profound thing about this way of thinking is to watch over the years about how this shaped young men’s lives.

Once I went into Junior High (Middle School by today’s terminology) my dad was no longer my coach. He tried, but there were no openings. But he was able to get position as a boy’s team coach. Fortunately for me, the boys and girls teams played in different seasons. So even though I didn’t get to play on my dad’s teams, I gave up my free time to help my dad run his practices. Yes there were looks when I tried to help out boys my age during practice. That meant I ended up being a silent assistant.

While I did feel the sting of rejection about not having my knowledge accepted because I was a girl, I pivoted away from that and just learned more from my dad. I kept going to practices. I kept chasing balls and running drills. I wasn’t going to be shut out from something that was a part of me.

It took two seasons before I got to see the difference that a coaching style can make on the health of a team. The varsity coach was good, but he never had with his boys what my dad had with his junior varsity boys. On the varsity team the weakest player saw the least amount of playing time. Often times, those players were unsatisfied and felt rejected even by their own team member because they were the weakest link.

That wasn’t the case with my dad’s team. I watched the more skilled players still groan at the weakest links. But my dad refused to give up on them. He knew that he could make them better. And he did. The whole team had to work as a team, there was no exception. He gave more one on one attention to the weaker players. It was an investment. And it paid off.

There was one young man who wanted to quit the team because he knew he was the weakest link. But dad refused to give him an out. He helped him through his head space and built him up, until he could find self value. And once that young man found his self value, the team also valued him. To be fair, the team saw the potential in him before he saw it in himself.

What made that happen?

A coach who refused to give up on one of his boys. He kept calling out all the positive. Dad could see it deep down in him. After a little time, the rest of the team saw the skills deep down in him as well. They rallied behind him, encouraged, and cheered him on. With all this encouragement from his coach and team mates, the young man saw in himself what others saw in him. And he had a breakthrough that I hope has had lifelong results.

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There was one other memory, of my dad’s coaching, that has stuck with me all these years.

One of my dad’s strong players transferred to a new school and he earned a place on the varsity team! We were so excited for him. And even though he didn’t have to do it, daddy rallied the whole team together and we all went to watch this young man play in a varsity game. It meant the world to him. His basketball family was in the audience cheering him on.

The problem was that the coach had a different philosophy in coaching. I won’t go into the details of that game. But afterward, we rallied behind our family and dad spoke one more time into his life. I don’t remember the words that dad said. But I do remember watching a young man buried under the weight of shame and disappointment. When dad was finished he was able to once again smile and hold his head up.

This was my Coach.

This is the type of coach that I want to be.

Back in January I welcomed my first team, 1st and 2nd grade boys.

From my own teaching experience I know that kids always perform better when you aim for the moon and allow them the space to pick up as much skill as they can on their own. For one, there’s always at least one kid who has higher skills than the rest of the team/group. If they’re not challenged, they can cause problems or they give up. The kids with the least skill sometimes feel overwhelmed by everything presented to them, but they don’t know that they can’t learn any of this. With the right teacher, a kid can learn anything because the adult believe that they can.

My first day of coaching, I didn’t know what I wanted to teach because my knowledge is strategizing at the middle school and high school level. So I opted out with teaching basketball terms and positions. None of these things were on the list or rules for this age group. But I didn’t want to coach at this age group. I didn’t want to dummy down this beautiful sport. I wanted the boys to be challenged and love the game that I grew up loving.

What was interesting was watching the parents during that first practice. Normally parents sit on the sidelines and talk or get caught up on work or personal items on their phone. Instead, I had the parent’s attention as well. Afterward, my husband told me that the parents were commenting that they were exciting because their kids were going to actually learn something this year.

This season I exposed them to using both hands, layups, screening, positions and a few other things. The point was never to get them to be proficient. I knew they wouldn’t. My whole goal was to get them to train their bodies in what it feels like to do certain skills. And in several years time, when it’s time for them to join a team that they have to try out for, and it matters, the skills that will be demanded of them at that point will already have a seed planted in them now. I took this year to set them up for success for another coach in the future.

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But what I didn’t think I would have to encounter this early is the whole issue of the boys already picking out who were the skilled players and who should be treated as bench warmers. As a Parks and Rec team, everyone is supposed to have the same amount of play time–which is how I think it should be anyway. But the boys took it in their own hands, during games, to pass to the strong players only.

And this was where I wish my dad were still here to tell me how he got his team to be unified as a team. This isn’t something that all coaches know how to navigate and do it well. But my dad did. My only clues are what I have in my memories, but it doesn’t share light on his thoughts or capitalize on what he tried that went wrong.

If anyone is wondering about the answer to this issue, so far my best results have come from just the simple foundation of having a relationship with the boys. The fact that they feel valued makes it easier for them to see the team weaknesses (we own it all together instead of singling someone out) and problem solve. And giving them the options to problem solve gives them ownership of the team.

I’m sad that I’m losing a few boys next year. But I’m excited to look forward to having the boys request to be on my team again next year.

There’s no guarantee that I’ll get them back next year. All that I have is this moment in time.

So as a parting gift, I’m passing on a tradition from my parents.

Whenever dad coached out teams, my mom always crafted something that everyone got to take home. (I grew up in a generation where trophies were given to celebrate a few players. And only everyone took a trophy home when the team had a winning season.) One year mom made a felt pennant with the team name on it. (I still have it in a memory box.)

For my boys, I made stickers through the season, marking new skills that the boys learned. On the front of the chalkboard wall hang, the boys can keep their stickers like boy scouts badges. On the back I’m leaving a final message for the boys that they can look back on and see that they have had a coach in their corner. My goal is that no matter who coaches the boys in the future, they continually have a voice in their head cheering them on.

The perfect thing about this project is that it isn’t something that is just sports related. I know some teachers who give their students and end of the year present. Also, as a parting word to their students as they move on past their class room.

If this is something you would like to make for a child in your life, here is what I did.

What you Need:

  • 6″ x 6″ Square Chalk Board (I found these ones at the Dollar Store)
  • Decorative Duct Tape (I found this holographic red at the Dollar Store in the Automotive aisle)
  • Black Chalk Paint
  • Permanent Vinyl
  • White Acrylic Paint Pen
  • Transfer Tape
  • Scissors
  • Paintbrush
  1. Paint the sides and back of the chalk board black (or any other color of choice).
  2. Apply the Decorative Duct Tape. The width of the tape covers the front, top, and top half of the back boarder. You can apply another strip of tape that I did or paint all the way up the back of the board.
  3. On the front of the chalk board place your decorative elements. (In this instance, I did the team name and season year.)
  4. On the back you can write your encouraging message. ( I also added the boy’s name so that they knew it was a message specific for them and not shared with the rest of the team.)

There are so many ways to make alternates of this.

  • You can mod podge on photographs on the front or back.
  • Have young children make a mother’s day painting.
  • Attach miniature clothes pins.
  • Attach metal strip on the top, bottom, or side to make a partial magnetic feature

If you are privledged to have children under your influence so that you can pour life into them, I hope that you are inspired by this project. A gift with modest materials can be transformed to be uplifting for years to come!

If you are a basket ball coach and are looking for stickers that you can make and pass on to your players, check out these designs!

Horse Winner

Lay-Up

Screen Time

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Bless This Garden

This year I’m working in concert with others in a garden. (I am so excited for this!) If you’re as busy as I am, you can imagine how quickly things slip through the cracks.

After hitting my local dollar store, I found some pieces that are going to make an inexpensive tool that doubles as home decor, all the while keeping tabs on what’s been done.

With these I decided to make a magnetic board where anyone tending the garden can quickly mark what they did.

I know the galvanized finish tends to overtake everything. So with the galvanized frame and banner, everything gets lost real quick. Not to mention that the frame was a really bad fake wood. To dress all this up a bit and minimize the galvanized look, I painted the frame and banner black.

I forgot to take a picture of the banner painted in flat black chalk paint (the same paint as the frame). It looked too minimalistic for my taste, so I took the transfer tape (which I used to apply the vinyl text) and put it straight onto the paint. Some places lifted the paint quite easily. But to get the distressed look, I scratched the tape

The magnets needed a little something extra. There are so many things that could be done. I have children and they’re helping with this garden and they’ll also be marking what we do when we work, so I went into kid zone and painted the magnets with acrylic paint and did all the colors.

If you want to keep minimalistic, pick your favorite color.

Love things that sparkle, glue on gem stones or use glitter.

What about texture? Glue on fuzzy pom poms, baby pine cones, large seeds or nuts… literally whatever catches your imagination. Maybe you have a farm and want to use small farm yard figures and animals. (I wish I had these in my craft room!!!)

Something that is great about using the galvanized banner is that the extra magnets can be kept on the banner so you can add stickers, personalization, more tasks, or a note section in the blank space on the bottom.

And then while typing I decided to go a different direction.

I pulled these out! Last year I made carrots out of my corn cobs. And I brought out the wooden beads from my drawer (which I also got from my local dollar store).

With the beads I removed them all from the string they came on and noted how they tied off the end bead to keep them all on the string. This “knot” that they used was how I spaced the beads further apart on the string.

Once I made those changes, the colorful “polka dots” needed to change. The gold and green glitter styrofoam balls simplified the overwhelming colors.

Even with the new modifications hanging, I’m not satisfied with the final color scheme. And sometimes that happens when you’re creating. You start building from the image you see in your head and make a change here or there and an earlier idea you loved just doesn’t work anymore.

The black isn’t working anymore. I loved the idea to begin with because it was a nice basic color that goes with where I was going to hang this. But it’s just not working anymore.

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First thing first, I need to lighten up the banner. So I’ll be distressing it heavily so that the majority of the galvanized metal will show through. With the addition of the carrots, which obviously take the spotlight, I can bring out a lot more of that metal and the metal is not going to overtake and make everything else hide.

But before I do that, I need to decide what I’m going to do with the frame and that’s going to take a few days of looking at it to see where I want to go. At the moment, I’m leaning toward the idea of painting on white striped and creating a plaid hand painted design on it. If I go that route, I might keep the banner predominately black still and incorporate that same design element into parts of the banner.

Stay tuned to see what I finally decide!

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And I’m going to leave you here in this moment just because sometimes the right thing is to take a step away from a project and let it tumble around in your brain. You don’t always have to have the answer right away. And you don’t always have to have things done in an hour.

Perhaps it’s convenient to have an idea presented to you in a finished state.

But I’m going to leave you here with your own thoughts. Because I know someone has that inner voice screaming, “You need to ____!”

Go ahead and leave that comment below.

Or better yet, use that idea to make your own magnetic board for your daily tasks, your children’s chore board, a classroom helper sign, your regular “Honey Do” list, or that board that I didn’t mention but you just got the idea for.

And when you’re finished, send me a picture so that I can see what you came up with.

Happy Crafting!

Want to have the cut file for Bless This Garden, click here.

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Comfort In a Jar

Hello Fall. Hello Soup Season.

I won’t even say what else comes with this season. Let’s just say that as a mom of three young children, I’m fully aware of what the change of season means. And this past week, that came and knocked the energy out of me. Shoot I didn’t know I had any more energy to be knocked out! I thought my kiddos drained it from me to fuel their never ending supply of energy.

And yet, I was so grateful to have this soup already canned up and ready to go in my pantry. The chicken stock I make, I add antiviral herbs to it. Let me just say that Lemon Balm is my new favorite antiviral herb to cook with! (In a few weeks I’ll share more with you everything I put into my Chicken Stock. You’re going to love it!)

I want to share with you this recipe for Chicken Soup that is perfect for those days where you need healing chicken soup but don’t have the time or energy to make it from scratch. You will absolutely love this because it takes only 5 minutes to warm up–the same amount of time it takes to make condensed soup from the grocery store. BUT it has less ingredients and more immune boosting goodness. And even if your sick days are few and far between, this soup is quicker to heat up than going through a fast food drive through. Plus as the added bonus of being that IT item to use up some leftovers you have sitting in your fridge on the day you crack open this jar of soup.

Yields: 7 Quarts of canned soup

  1. Clean your jars and lids.
  2. Prep your ingredients.
  3. Cold pack your chicken, split evenly between all 7 jars.
  4. For each of your ingredients, split evenly between all 7 jars. Start with the larger cut ingredients and end with the smaller peas and lentils.

(It’s easier to shake the smaller ingredients down into the cracks of larger ingredients than to shove the larger ones in on the smaller.)

  • Fill each of the Quart size jars with about 2 cups of chicken stock.
  • If you have Kosher or Sea Salt, you can season your soup now. Otherwise, do not put in your table salt or iodized salt. You will season your soup when you open you jar before serving.
  • Clean the rims of your jars with vinegar and then place lids and rings, finger tight.
  • Prepare your pressure canner.

Follow your canner’s directions for the correct process of canning with your canner.

For example, I am Sea Level – 1,000 foot elevation so I can the Chicken Soup with 10 lbs of pressure for 90 minutes in my weighted canner.

  • Once time is complete, turn off the heat and let your canner naturally release pressure.
  • When you can remove your lid, let the cans sit for an additional 10 minutes before removing them from the canner.
  • Allow your jars to sit 12-24 hours to seal. Then remove the rings and clean your jars before storing.

With new lids preserving your canned goods for up to 18 months, you have plenty of shelf life for this soup.

There are many options you have for this Chicken Soup.

  • You can season it and eat as is.
  • If you have left over rice or noodles in your fridge you can add those ingredients and still have rice and chicken or chicken noodle soup that is ready to eat with a 5 minute warm up on your stove.
  • With adding a thickening agent (slurry or corn starch) you can turn this into chicken and dumplings or a pot pie filling.
  • Maybe you have other small amounts of leftover meat, like Italian Sausage. You can use this meat to bulk up the soup, add some kale and parmesan and have a Tuscan style soup.
  • Or maybe you’re looking for something Latin in flavor. Grab some tortilla strips, grated jack cheese and add in Latin American seasonings and you can have Tortilla soup.

These ideas are a far cry from being authentic cultural cuisines. However I want to give you a few ideas on how you can turn one of your canned soups into a blank slate for some variety.

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I know a lot of us really do not have time to prep meals for our families. In fact “meal prep” might have a double four letter word effect in your ears. And that’s okay. For roughly the same time it would take me to cook a soup from scratch for my family, I can make 7 meals that I can crack open and serve dinner in less time than it is for me to go through a drive through. And it’s healthier for us.

To heat up this dinner in 5 minutes, this is all I do:

  1. Grab my jar from the pantry.
  2. Grab my soup pot. And turn my burner on high.
  3. Open the jar and pour the soup into the pot.
  4. Fill the jar with Water and pour into the pot.
  5. Put the jar in the dishwasher and set the table.
  6. Taste the soup to make sure it’s seasoned the way I want it. (Add salt, because I usually only have table salt readily available, so it got canned without salt.)
  7. And it’s dinner time.

If you have a college student who’s coming up on Mid Terms or Finals, this is perfect for them! Often times they’re up late and find themselves hungry after the cafeteria is already closed. This is something they can cook from their dorm room with a microwave or hot plate and have the brain food that they need. Or maybe they’ve caught a cold and need a little mama’s love in the form of soup. This is super convenient and perfect for a care package.

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Looking for a gift idea for this Holiday Season?

This is soup is perfect for the new mother getting use to having baby at home, an elderly family member who retired their pots and pans, someone who is an avid camper or loves cooking by camp fire, or anyone else who can benefit from a quick home cooked meal without all the fuss.

Maybe you’re the type of person who loves gifting food to a neighbor, friend, or family when they become ill. Here is a quick way of gifting all that healthy goodness without your schedule batting an eye.

I highly recommend this recipe for everyone!

Do you need another gift idea?

This one is personal and doesn’t require you to have a master’s degree in art to make!

Here are some supplies that you will need:

  • Canvas
  • Paint
  • Paintbrush
  • Clear Acrylic Spray
  • Chalk pen/crayon, Paint pen, Pastel, or like craft item you can write with
  • (Optional) Sponge, Paper towel, Napkin, or Tissue
  • (Optional) Embellishments such as pre-cut vinyl design

Paint a design on your canvas. You can do whatever design you would like. Here are some examples of canvases that I already have on hand. There are the canvases that my boys made 3 years ago.

And these are the ones that I have in the prepped stage for various projects that I have in the works. You can use coordinating colors, monochromatic colors, are shades for an abstract scene.

Let your canvas dry.

Spray your canvas with Clear Acrylic Spray and let dry. This step is important, because accidents happen and sometimes you want to “erase” a mistake. I’m a phonetic speller and sometimes I just get a word wrong. No worries. By having the acrylic spray dried before you start writing with your crafting pen of choice, you have the option of wiping away the mistake with a wet cloth. The only writing medium that gets to be a bit tricky is acrylic pens. That one you may not find having an “erasing” quality. Chalk pens and most pastels will generally work for excessive editing.

With your writing medium of choice write your message, series of quotes, words of encouragement, or whatever you’re inspired to say. When I made these gifts for nieces and nephews, it took about 7 quotes that I pulled from online to fill the 8×10 canvas with medium small print from top to bottom. You can write as large or small as you would like. Just be aware that the writing medium you choose to use will help you decide how small you are able to write. I used a chalk crayon that had a relatively large nib, so I wrote as small as I could and the words were as tall as the width of my pinky.

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Decide if you would like to leave your writing clear and readable or if you would like to smudge the words to make an added texture on top of the painted design that you made. This choice is perfect for the people who believe that their handwriting isn’t pretty. By smudging your writing, you remove the uneven, shaky, or other characteristics of your handwriting that you may be self conscious of. If you choose to smudge, I recommend printing out a copy of your message that you can give with your gift, so the recipient has the opportunity to read the love that you wrote for them. For direction of smudging, that is completely up to your eye. I personally like smudging my work from left to right because I love using horizontal strokes when I paint. I do have some pieces that the strokes are vertical and so my esthetic is to smudge vertical with those, so the “text” doesn’t compete with the flow. But you could choose to smudge diagonally, circular, zigzag… each direction you go will give a different feel to your piece.

Once you are done writing and/or smudging spray your canvas with the Clear Acrylic Spray again. This is going to be a critical step for you. If you chose to smudge your “text”, the spray will prevent further smudging. If you want to add vinyl or HTV on top of your art, this spray is going to anchor your vinyl down. I’ve tried applying vinyl and HTV straight on a painted canvas and both have peeled off, taking paint with it. But every time that I’ve used the Acrylic Spray, vinyl and HTV both stay on the canvas perfectly.

Embellish your gift. Your options are endless at this point. You can choose to make something and personal with just adding your recipient’s name. You can add scrapbooking embellishments with hot glue to add some glam or character. You could pray a frame with a metallic paint and make a modern framed art. Or perhaps you want to do four panels and keep them frameless. And then there’s always the option making a 3D piece using other crafting techniques, such as this.

If you find that you are on a budget this Holiday season, this is a perfect gift option for you. We are in a time in history where people need to hear how much they are loved and valued. So when you can poor into another person and share with them a hope of a future with them, it can hold profound meaning in their life right now. I have never before seen so many people facing suicide and thoughts of hopelessness like I’ve seen in the last few years. Sharing with someone how much they mean to you is something that you will never regret. And you never know that it might be the one thing that offers them hope in a time where it seems like everything is so wrong.

What is inspiring you right now? Do you have ideas sparking in your mind?

Right now I’m inspired with many of the changes that come with fall. This is the season that always has inspired me. In fact, my boys found a whole acorn that I so want to use as a piece of 3D art. I’m hoping I can find some more and have more than a single nut to work with!

Please comment below with what you want to make and even send me some pictures. I would love to see what creativity jumps to life in you!

Files used today

Spring Triple Panel comes with all you see here. Or you can select individual elements.

Jelly Fish element from my Jelly Fish Collection

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Making Decorations You Can’t Buy


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Sometimes I love being a mom. And there’s days where I can be found saying, “You want what?!”

Okay, so maybe that’s a bit of an over exaggeration. But only a little bit. Because when I asked my son what he wanted for his birthday theme, he told me he wanted a ghost eating, pellet chomping birthday. To my credit I didn’t flinch or bat an eye. But there was an onslaught on thoughts that ran through my head. Are you kidding me? No one has those decorations! How am I going to pull this one off???

The short story is that I put on my big girl crafty panties and I got to work.

The problems with trademarked images are endless. Anyone who is reputable will not make the trademarked characters for you. And those who can have gone through the trouble of getting the licensing rights to do so, which means you’re paying an arm and a leg for another person to make it for you.

In the area of cakes, the easy go around is to decorate the cake with toys and action figures that you can buy on any store toy aisle. But how do you decorate for a theme where nothing is for sale???

Yes, I actually questioned my rational as a mother for introducing my boys to retro arcade games. But I did conquer the boss round on this problem!

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Buy what you can

Pac Man may not be the decorating be on the shelves, but plenty of ideas were.

Thanks to 8-bit style games like Mine Craft still kind of popular, there are the plates and napkins. Yes, the Game On is the wrong font and style. And the game controller is definitely the wrong millennium. Fortunately for me, this was a five year old’s birthday party. I wasn’t going to be given the fifth degree on accuracy of my decor.

Thank God!

The one score that I was most excited for, and got me in the proper mind set for actually pulling this party off, was the stack of round yellow sticky notes that I found at the dollar store. The moment I saw them in the office supply aisle I had to severely restrain myself from doing my happy dance and squealing like an excited 5 year old!

For as much work as I was going to do in creating my own designs, I wasn’t going to have enough time to make a birthday banner. So you better believe I had zero issues with giving the round yellow sticky notes to my kids and telling them to put them all over the walls, windows, and on top of the black plastic table cloths. For under $10 I had the skeleton that made a Pac Man birthday happen!

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Make What You Need

Fortunately for me, Pac Man was made in an era where things were basic in design and easy to create in my design program. And with this font, I was able to make things that my son was excited for and proud to talk about!

I was very excited when I found the round stick it notes, because this idea came right to me. The yellow M&M’s are perfect power pellets and the other colors are along just for the ride. But with the primary colors being predominant, it fits with the whole theme.

These are super easy to make to! All you have to do is put a scoop of M&M’s in a cellophane bag, fold it over to keep everything in, and staple a label over the top of the bag.

Tip: if you use a permanent pen to color the staples you can make the staples “disappear” and make a clean presentation.

The gift bags I also got from the dollar store, all I needed was a solid colored paper bag. I wanted blue or yellow, but green was all that was in stock. Not a problem, it’s a primary color that was present in the 80’s video games.

I used vinyl here just because it was quicker to make up all the bags this way, not worry about gluing a million pieces, and I could pack the bags right away!

And for my boys, no birthday is complete without a birthday shirt.

I think my favorite part is “Toss me a Quarter” because my husband and I recently took my boys to a retro arcade and I lost count of how many times we were asked for more quarters. This design just brings back so many memories. And the best part is that you can remove this central figure (which is not included in the design for copy right reasons) and put any other character in. This is definitely a blank slate for your 8-bit digital art. Fortunately this character is simple enough to do on your own. In your cutting program take a circle and cut a slice of pie out of the circle with a triangle. If you’re cutting program is able to modify a circle, you can use that feature.

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Solve A Problem

Sometimes the ideas that you need to decorate on otherwise obscure theme, is to solve a problem.

One problem that I’m forever facing at birthday parties and other get togethers where lots of people are around is the abandoned beverage can or bottle. I was able to incorporate my character in one more place by laminating my yellow buddy and attaching elastic to make a Can Label.

There are a few benefits of making these for a character party.

One, all you need is a wet erase pen and names stay legible. And after the party you erase names and you’re ready to go to reuse these beverage labels again in the future.

All you have to do is hot glue your hair elastic on (preferably where the seam is, to prevent elastic breakage). With a silicone finger cot, you can flatten your hot glue without burning your fingers.

Two, and possibly the best benefit of all, is if you ever find yourself in a situation where you forgot a hair elastic or yours breaks, this guy is easy to spot in a purse or car floor and your hair needs are over!

This idea will work with any kind of party or event. Bridal shower, cut out a diamond. Baby shower, cut out a bottle.

I know all this information was quick to get through and exciting. I have two more ideas to share with you next week, in addition on tips on how to order a trade mark cake from a bakery who doesn’t make trade mark cakes. So be sure to come back next week for those and a funny story about how this was a birthday party that my boys will NEVER forget!

Can these designs save you time for your next party that you can’t buy decorations for? Get Gift Bag, Level Up, and Arcade Labels here.

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