To Celebrate

Valentine Craft Roundup

Three great projects for Valentine's Day - faux watercolor, typographic heart garlands and a polka dot gift card holder | SuzerSpace.com

I’ve realized that every year I say I don’t decorate for Valentine’s Day, and then every year some craft comes around that I just have to try, and sure enough, I’ve decorated for the holiday.

This year, three projects made their way into my crafterday afternoons:

Faux watercolor cards. While technically not a Valentine’s Craft, I combined this technique with my favorite thing – a pun – to make a cheery card. This also let me work on my brush lettering and doodling challenges that I’m doing this year.

Faux watercolor and doodling create a punny Valentine's Card! | suzerspace.comThis super cute garland tugged at my tyopography heart strings. The original post features a different technique; I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out the large letter “U” to make my hearts. (It’s Helvetica Neu Bold Condensed if you are keeping score at home). Strung with red and white baker’s twine, it looks happy over my fireplace.

This polka dot technique is more popular as a Sharpie craft on mugs, but I used it to make a gift card holder.

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February 12, 2018 by I made this In the Craft Room Links and Things To Celebrate To Remember Using my Silhouette Cameo

Paper Strip Ornament

Start crafting now to have a Christmas tree full of handmade ornaments in December | suzerspace

For a couple of years now, I’ve had the vision of setting up a second Christmas Tree that would feature all hand made ornaments.

Every year it sounds super great idea. And every holiday season passes and I’ve done nothing about it.

Sound familiar?

This year I’ve decided to tackle this as a solid project. I’m going to make one different type of ornament a month for 12 months. Since most will be made out of paper, it will be easy to make multiples to fill a small tree.

For the record, I’m saying this all out loud, right here, for accountability.

And I’m inviting you to play along. This will be fun, or weird, especially in August when we’re working on ornaments and complaining about the lack of air condtioning.

First up is this super simple ornament.

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January 15, 2018 by Holidays I made this In the Craft Room To Celebrate

Winter White Felt Garland

Create a ruffled holiday felt garland with three simple steps | SuzerSpace.com

There’s a neat phenomenon called frequency illusion that tries to explain how something you suddenly became interested in seems to be appearing all around you.

These days, it’s harder to tell if that’s really at work, or if it’s a website’s algorithm or the cookies on your computer that’s causing the same items to keep appearing around you.

Case in point – for quite some time  I’ve had felt projects on my brain. I made a phone holder, but that wasn’t enough. And then Julie at Sum of their Stories whipped up this cute upcycled felt garland (which technically was inspired by this good one at Pillar Box Blue).

After reading those, of course, my Pinterest feed flooded, mostly with pins pointing back to this Anthropologie garland.

I really liked this tutorial. But then I decided to shelve the entire idea, because I didn’t have any felt, and I really hate to go to the craft store and have fabric cut during the holidays. The ladies behind the counter try to keep up, but the entire experience can be major holiday buzz kill. I try and plan ahead, or just do without.

But a couple of weekends ago, while setting up the holiday decorations, I realized the white material I like to put under my holiday train set is felt. And the new location I wanted to put them on is at least half the size of the old. Which means – ding ding – I have extra felt to craft with!

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January 8, 2018 by I made this In the Craft Room To Celebrate

Happy New Year 2018!

The Yay! Every Day! Tracker is designed to help you keep sight of the bright spot of each day | suzerspace.com

Happy New Year!

Well, that certainly has a deja vu ring to it. Seems like just last year I started a blog with a post that began that very same way.*

It was an interesting year. And I’m ready for the next one.

Over the holidays (near Thanksgiving, I think) gratitude journals started showing up in all my social media feeds. The concept is deceptively simple – to write down things for which you are grateful.

I love the idea of journals but I never follow through on the actual practice of keeping them up. Weird thing – I never want to actually write in one, for fear of messing up the beautiful, pristine paper. Which is silly, because I work in a printing plant. Literally tons of paper at my disposal.

Last year, a blogger I follow offered this neat goal tracker.  And I’ve since seen some beautiful one-page calendars with room for journaling over on Etsy.

As is usually the case, nothing I found was 100% the way I wanted it. As is also usually the case, I made one myself.

I’m calling it my “Yay! Every Day!” tracker because my plan is to record one thing that made me say “Yay!” on each and every day.  When the skies are gray (in real life or in my mind) I’m hoping that reading the lists over will remind me of my decision last year – to choose happy.

The Yay! Every Day! Tracker is designed to help you keep sight of the bright spot of each day | suzerspace.com

The tracker is designed to fit a 8.5 x 11 standard sheet, which I’m putting on a clipboard so I can hang it in my kitchen and stick with the process. It’s perpetual, so you can just print a new one next year and start again.

It’s a PDF download right here. Just print it on whatever paper you like to write on, and fill it up.

*In case you were wondering – we did NOT fix the kitchen ceiling drywall.

This project was featured at the My Busy Beeehives linkup party.

 

January 1, 2018 by Freebies I made this In the Craft Room To Celebrate

Digital Gingerbread Holiday Garland

Silhouette Studio's Print and Cut feature, combined with layer and texture effects in Photoshop "bake" a cute holiday garland | suzerspace.com

As a Photoshop nerd, I believe nothing beats digital “baking” for last minute holiday treats.

And I’m not alone – when I decided I wanted some gingerbread cookie letters for a garland, Google did not disappoint.

Because I’m a do-it-yourself kind of gal, my interest turned mostly to the tutorials. I followed parts of this one which looks like it has a ton of steps, but that’s because they show you how to make the tablecloth and a plate to set them on as well. It’s also a little dated version wise, so if you follow it, be aware that not all the windows will match – the settings are all somewhere, you just have to hunt around a little.

If you aren’t a Photoshop wizard, fear not, because I’m sharing my completed files at the end of this post!

I decided to do a “Happy Holidays” garland made out of gingerbread letters, and the best way to do that is as a Print and Cut in Silhouette Studio.

Keep reading to see how I made this garland

December 18, 2017 by Freebies I made this In the Craft Room To Celebrate Using a Computer or iPad Using my Silhouette Cameo
I'm a Pre-Press Super Hero by Day. A mild-mannered nerd at night. The SuzerSpace is my place to showcase all that I enjoy and want to share.

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