by jcastles | Sep 3, 2013 | Crafts, Uncategorized
In a few hours from now the kids will be going back to school for the 2013-2014 school year! It will be our first full school year in Washington! This time last year I was very very sick so I wasn’t able to do everything I wanted to for my kids teachers but I did what I could and I think they were totally fine with it.
This year I’m not sick and I’m much better using my Silhouette Cameo so of course I had to do as much as possible, lol!! I made each main teacher a bag filled with the extras that they usually ask for and my own special back to school survival kit. Well, I didn’t actually make the bag I bought canvas bags from Michaels and used printable transfer sheets. I used my silhouette to design the bags. I gave them each a hershey’s, skittles, chips, gum, lotion, travel hand sanitizer, bandaids, tylenol, pencils, disinfectant wipes, kleenex, and a personalized cup! I’m so pleased with it all. Since I put the images on canvas the images came out with a real weathered look. I love that!
Here are all the little projects I did for the teachers. Ignore my paneling background please…..I rent my house and my office is in the basement……so ummm, yah, I can’t change much of the walls. 😀
by jcastles | Mar 10, 2013 | Crafts, Uncategorized
I’ve discovered I like making plaques. Here are a few I’ve made lately.
My favorite one is Marissa’s….well I do like them all, lol!! I painted it pink and mod-podged pink zebra scrapbook paper to one side. Once that was dry I added her name in vinyl that I cut using my Silhouette Cameo. I then mixed a little glitter in some mod-podge and applied it all over. Added a sparkly ribbon and voila….she loved it and so do I!!
All of these were painted then I added vinyl. Easy peasy!.
by jcastles | Nov 2, 2012 | Crafts, Family, Holiday Crafts, Uncategorized
They say when one door closes another one opens. Well, when becoming a mother again closed on me this amazing opportunity presented itself….and i’m am ecstatic!!
I had posted some photos of my crafts on my personal facebook page and was contacted by a friend asking if I’d like to be involved in a small business promo for the holidays for an organization she’s involved with (Sponsor Adoptions, Inc). At first I wasn’t sure I could do it. Not because of my time or the thought that I might not sell anything. I was actually afraid that I’d not be able to keep up with orders. So I guess that’s a good outlook, right? Well after a few hours worth of thinking it through I decided that I’d get involved in their Holiday Promo. The funny thing is that morning I was talking to my husband about selling cake balls for extra cash this holiday season. So i’m not doing cake balls, lol! Sorry friends!!
I am extremely excited about this opportunity. I’ve been making wreath’s and crafting on and off for years and have tossed the idea of selling my crafts but to get to actually do it is just wonderful!!
The next awesome thing is in December I’ll be taking my first Wilton Course at Michaels!! I know alot already but I hope this class will fill in the holes and make me better!
Here are a few of my favorite new items! For a better glimpse of my products visit my facebook page!
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by jcastles | Oct 29, 2012 | Crafts, Holiday Crafts, Uncategorized
I have no idea why this has NEVER occurred to me before the other night. So we get all ready to carve our giant pumpkin (biggest we’ve ever bought) and my husband asks for a bowl for the “guts”. I gave him the largest in the kitchen and thought…..I sure do hate cleaning the dried “guts” off the bowl. So it hit me! Use a grocery sack in the bowl. It fit perfectly and wow….all I did was stuck it in the dishwasher for any residue that might be on it. I seriously told my husband that I thought of this all on my own…that I didn’t even use Pinterest or Google, lol!! The other think we do that makes clean up easy is to cut open a trash bag and cover the table with it. Newspaper usually gets wet and cleaning that off a table is not fun!
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by jcastles | Oct 20, 2012 | Crafts
Over the summer I painted one of my two plant stands. The first one I painted a boring black but that’s because it was going in my kitchen and the hubbs said no to teal. 🙁 It’s still pretty though!
So now that I’m feeling better I’ve spent today painting everything I haven’t been able to for a few months! My garage floor is a rainbow now! Not sure how the hubbs is going to like that when he gets home, woops!
So a little while back I bought a plant for my porch…hoping I could keep it alive. Our brick is an ugly dirty white so I wanted color on the porch. I got a red/orange/yellow/green plant and a yellow pot. I love it! But my 2nd plant stand needed color. So I painted it teal. I’m really loving this teal….like alot!
Isn’t that pretty?!! Now I definitely have color on my porch!
So what I did was I used an old cloth and laquer thinner and wiped the entire stand clean. This removes any debris and gets it ready for paint. Next I just went to town spraying. I love Rustoleum’s spray paint. Goes on quick, clean, and smooth. And usually only needs 1 coat because it’s twice the coverage.
If only the iron table and chairs in my backyard were mine….they’d be teal!!.
by jcastles | Oct 18, 2012 | Crafts, Holiday Crafts
Last year I bought a white pumpkin for Halloween. I’d never seen one and loved it. I just set it on my porch as is and it was so pretty. The best thing about that pumpkin is at Christmas I turned it into a snowman! Then for our actual Jack-O-Lantern we got a mid sized pumpkin and painted it silver. Then we cut an alien face on it and stuck a green glow stick in there….man was that cool and creepy!! Here are our pumpkins from last year. The kids had so much fun just putting stickers on them (which I got at the dollar store!)
We haven’t been to a pumpkin patch yet this year but since Walmart carries pumpkins for $3.88 I had to get one! A few days later a letter came home from my 8 yr olds school saying there was a pumpkin decorating contest. So off to Walmart I went. I found some smallish pumpkins and they were 75 cents a pound…I thought that’s not bad. Well it was. They were $4 and $5 because they were pie pumpkins. WTH!?!?! I didn’t know there was a difference.
So with that I told my son about the contest and asked if he wanted to participate. He said yes. This contest is to decorate the pumpkin not carve so being it was the afternoon before it was due (cause we had a busy weekend, doh!) I told him that we are limited on what we can do. I said we can paint it black and make Darth Vader or green and make Yoda (he loves Star Wars). But I also said unless you can come up with something else that’s easy….he couldn’t. So the hubbs and I discussed materials. I painted it then I ran (well drove) to Michaels for foam and felt. Since it was a late start and Monday’s suck anyways we didn’t get around to putting it together until 8:30 that night. And then it hit us! DUH, we have Darth Vader potato head parts…asked him what he wanted to do and he wanted to use the potato head parts (so now I have foam in Vader colors, lol!). So of course we were having trouble getting the younger one to sleep and guess where the potato head pieces were….yup, his room. That meant once he was asleep we had to sneek that buck out of his room and get the parts. So he had to do it right before school…he barely made it to school on time and he’s usually 15 min early every day. So yah…he won 1st place for best character and 2nd place for overall best! Can you believe that?!! What a great way for us parents to teach our kids to procrastinate on projects till the morning it’s due….cause your gonna ace it!!! Lordy I just know he’s gonna bring this up in high school. Here it is….I think it’s great!
Then since I had gotten my youngest son a pumpkin I thought let’s paint it silver…at this point I had no idea what to do on it so picking my color before was kinda silly. I’d thought about cutting a spider and sticking it to it but then when we were getting the Vader parts I saw it! I’d totally forgotten that we had a Transformer potato head. So there ya go…we pulled it off!
So while I was painting pumpkins I painted my cheap Walmart pumpkin a teal color (Rustoleum’s Lagoon). I was going to put white chevron stripes on it and well since i’m still new and learning my silhouette I totally screwed that up, lol! I thought…what’s fallish that no one does (or that I haven’t seen). Searched fall in the online silhouette store and voila! Up popped acorns. That was it…I had to do that. I added a burlap bow to the stem (which i’m going to redo—I want longer tails) stuck on my acorn vinyl and voila!
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