tinkerbell invitations

I have been working on a super fun project for two little girls' birthdays.  They're having a Tinkerbell party and I have been honored with the task of designing the invitation.

I really love these kinds of projects.  I love the challenge of coming up with an idea, and then executing it.

Most of all I love when it turns out better than I expected, like this one did.

Little Tink is caught in a mason jar tied up with baker's twine and a hang tag.

The vellum jar contains a sprinkling of her pixie dust: pink glitter and gold & vellum stars.

The entire invitation was designed using the Silhouette Designer Series software.  I used the software to create cut files from jpegs, and to also draw hair, clothes and shoes for Tinkerbell.

The envelopes are also handmade using the We R Memory Keepers Envelope Punch Board

Thanks so much for stopping by for a visit today!

top dog dies: a few cards

Good Morning!

Today I have a little assortment of cards to share with you created with dies from Top Dog Dies.

First up is a happy little spring-themed card (wishfully thinking for warmer weather already!)

 I used my beloved Photo Mats die to frame a little scene with an Echo Park paper line designed by the awesome Crystal Wilkerson.

This next card is a bit more seasonally appropriate and uses both the Photo Mats die and the Snowflake Trio dies:

And finally, here's a fun birthday card using the Photo Mats die again.  The Polaroid-style frame is perfect for holding lots of layers.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Lego Party!

This past weekend we celebrated our youngest's 6th birthday with a Lego Party!

Here's a break-down of what we did and at the end of the post, I list all the deets:

Invite:

created on Shutterfly

Each child received an activities card:

Lego actvities

and pencil when they arrived.  They guessed how many Legos were in the jar while they munched a quick snack.

colorful cupcake wrappers filled with snack mix and served on a giant lego

Then we headed outside for a Lego Hunt:

the goober birthday boy after he found all 5 colors

We headed back inside and the kiddos grabbed a cool drink

before we got into the much more strenuous games: the Tower Race, the Lego Pick-Up, the Lego Toss and Balloon Pop. (and right about here is where I forgot to take photos).

We wrapped up the day with pizza, cupcakes, 

Lego head clipart found here

a pull-string pinata and goodie bags:

made from mini cereal boxes covered with colored paper and small Lego dots {font here; sheet here}

 I followed Delia's tutorial to make the pinata, just substituting paper towel rolls for tin cans and omitting the crepe paper.  I recommend cutting a good sized door.  Mine was about 4x5" and the candy didn't pour out like I had hoped.

Games:

Lego Guess--fill a jar with Legos (also makes a nice decoration for the table).  Children write their name and guess (always funny to see the little ones' guesses--either really low {21} or sky high {1 million}!) on a slip of paper and put it in a box wrapped to look like a Lego.  To count: children make stacks of 10 blocks, then count by tens.  The birthday child opens the guess box (a little practice run for the gift opening).

Lego Hunt--hide large Duplo blocks around yard.  Children find one of each color.

  
Tower Race--have an assortment of Lego bricks and a board for building.  Children build a tower as tall as they can in 1 minute.  You can set this up as a race between children, or just for fun and measure their finished towers.

Lego Pick-up--have two plates a few feet apart.  Children move the Legos from one plate to the other by sucking on a straw.  This one was hard for the little ones.



Balloon-Pop Lego Build--place a few Legos in balloons and blow-up.  Children pop balloons, get the pieces and work together to assemble a Lego creation (the big kids came in handy with this one).









Lego Toss--hot glue strips of colored paper to foam board to make different sized circles.  Number the circles with points. Children toss 10 Legos into the circles and count their points.

Food:  

The food for this party was all about the color: 

Veggie Rainbow:

 These were originally going to be skewers, but we ran out of steam!

 Fruit Kabobs:

Assorted colored drinks and square cupcakes.

We also had chocolate covered Rice Krispie treats with M&M's buttons to look like Legos.  That was plan C.  I'll let you imagine how Plan A and B went.

 

This guy was a big hit!

Here's what the food table looked like all put together:

All in all it was a very fun and very exhausting party!  I may just have one more of these shindigs left in me...maybe.

Celebrate

My Mom's birthday card:

Glittered flourish handcut from MAMBI patterned paper; Butterfly die cut from SU! sizzix, textured with Cuttlebug, and sanded; SU! sentiment from Warm Words; Circles punched from MAMBI and layered with pop dots.

Monkey Mustache

A quick card for a friend's birthday. I just can't get enough of this cute little monkey. I've always paper pieced him, but pressed for time this morning, I used markers to add a bit of color. After coloring his mouth white, I thought of a frosting mustache. So, a couple of bite marks made with a 1/4" circle punch, and voila--a little monkey who loves to "eat cake!"

Another Kiddie Bday card

Monkeying Around

This is my new favorite set for children's birthday cards. How cute is he! Put this together for Camden's friend's birthday today (with design help from Logan). I love paper piecing the monkey for a more "authentic" sock monkey feel. I stamped the back of some PP to create the paper pieced cupcake. The frosting is sprinkled with glitter, and the candle created from an old rarely-used punch that will be seeing a lot more use now--love that! I tried a new technique to create the frame wth a double scored line and piercing.