Under Construction

I'm feeling that the look of my blog should be updated.  Please bear with me while I make some changes and sort things out.  Now back to work!!

Wine Cork Christmas Tree

I'm sometimes amazed at the price people will pay for home decor.  Now I understand that not everyone has been bitten by the crafting bug, but there are some seriously overpriced goods out there!  I was flipping through our latest issue of Wine Enthusiast (we have received one each week for the last three weeks - even though we've never purchased anything from it!) and I saw a Christmas tree made out of wine corks.  I thought it looked easy to do and would be cute in our dining room which has a wine theme decor.  My husband was all for it since it would use up some of the many, many corks we have collected over the years.  I was already set to make one when I got some time but was shocked when I saw the price - $39.99!!  What?!?!

Using 39 corks, ribbon, and a hot glue gun I was able to complete my tree in 20 minutes.  The resulting product is only about 6 inches wine by 7 inches high and went together very fast.

I made mine by selecting similar sized corks and making sure any red (wine dyed) ends were not in front - although that might look kinda cool since red is a holiday color.  Then I glued together the rows and finaly stacked the rows upon eachother while gluing them.  The construction of this tree began with a base row of 5 corks and then 6, 7,5, 4, 3, 2, 1.  I found a scrap of ribbon for the top.

Next you can really embellish it however you choose.  I think misting sprays would be fun or some glitter or even making a tiny paper garland or banner to adorn your tree.  I found some old pearlized powder I had and dusted some on the end of the corks to make it a shimmery green.  I think this small, quick project turned out pretty cute.  I may even try making a bigger companion tree.  So have fun.  Give it a try.  After all if you mess up, you just get to drink more wine before trying again!

Gift money holder

Let's face it.  We've become slaves to the almighty gift card!  Not sure what to get someone, you grab a gift card.  Not sure what you want, you say a gift card to your favorite store.  For some reason it just takes all the thoughtfulness out of the gift for me, even thought I do love to both give and receive them.  In order to feel like I've put more thought into a gift of money, I like to dress it up a bit.  This year, I thought a fun little project in Photoshop would work well.  I currently only plan to give one gift of money (whoo hoo!) and it's for my brother.  In a few months he has a ski trip planned and I know he would appreciate some money to purchase a lift ticket.  So here it goes:

To Start: I made a pretty simple template in Photoshop.  I then clipped some Christmas-y paper to it and decorated it with my message.

 Step 1:After printing my design, I folded it in half.

 Step 2: I scored the edges that I will fold inside and glue together.  The scoring just gives me a nice, clean fold.

 Step 3: I punched a hole through the top and fitted each side with an eyelet to dress it up a bit.  Regular holes are just fine too - you simply need a place to put the ribbon.

 Step 4: Put a little glue down on those edges and fold the two sides together.

 Step 5: Insert cash or gift card and close with ribbon.  Ta Da! (as my toddler likes to say at the completion of anything!)

Just remember that if you want to label the back with To/From information, that you will need to rotate your text both vertically and horizontally so that it appears proper after folding.  If you would like to download a PDF version of the template that you can print, cut, and trace on any paper you have, you can do that here.   Or you can download the Photoshop template file here.

A simple little banner

With a new baby in tow, it's been hard to juggle getting any projects done let alone all the day to day upkeep of a home!  So as we neared our new son's baptism day I felt a little sad that I had not made anything to decorate our home with for this special day.  Enter last minute crafting.  I decided I needed to do something large since I'd only have time to sneak in one project so I choose to do a banner to hang from our fire place.  I wanted to spell out "God Bless" thinking I could also use it for Easter by choosing some soft tones.

To keep it simple I opened up Photoshop and made a big circle and cut it in half.  My banner will be made out of half circles.  Then I choose some light blue and tan papers to clip to them, selected my font, and went about typing the letters and positioning them.  Once printed and cut, I decided to embellish them a bit by using cut pieces of text paper.  I took an old book (bye, bye International Tax Law!) and cut out one inch wide sections of text paper.  You can really use any size you like but I wouldn't do smaller than one inch wide as it would be hard to work with. I folded the paper accordion style with no real perfection to it and crumbled them in my hand a bit.  Then I glued them around the back edge of each banner and scrunched them as I went to make a ruffle look.

 Next, I wanted to spruce them up a bit so I used some Tattered Angles Glimmer Mist (Trunk Bay) to add some colored shine to the text.  Again, no perfection just a mist on the edges here and there.  Then I used some Tattered Angels Glimmer Glam (Chandelier) to add even more sparkle and to stiffen the text book paper so it would hold up better.

 And here is a shot of the banner hanging by the fireplace.  I punched two holes in each half circle and threaded some simple ribbon through to hang it.  It really added a nice touch to the day and was a great place to take pictures in front of. 

Last Day at NDISB

It's the last day that NDISB and my store there will be open so stop on by to grab any of my kits at 50% before they are gone.  While I'm sad to see my store close, I think it is time for me to move on and find a new venture.  I'm not entirely sure of what that is yet but I know that I'm not ready to give up on Little Birdie Digital Designs.
As this closing approached, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I would take my next steps and I learned a few things.  First, and it seems simple, but I need to design for me.  I often spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the marketplace or the visitors to my site wanted from me.  That led to me making a lot of fun kits, but not many that I LOVED and wanted to really use all the time.  So I've been working on kits that are for ME first. And some made it into my store but others are still in progress.  I hope to find a place to sell them in the future.

Second, once I design for me, I find that my pages are better and better display my work.  I hope that will make others more excited about using my designs as well.

And finally, I've learned how to expand my digital skills in new ways - like decor and invitations - and this has helped me to think about how to design digital kits that not only help scrap important memories, but are useful for fun projects as well.  Why not get the most out of what you purchase?

Well, I'll still be on the blog doing new projects and hope to inspire others in that regard.  The holidays are upon us and there is a-plenty to get creative with!!