Homemade Christmas Cards

Hey there friends!!

Holidays are over, its been so hectic! Sorry we haven't been keeping up with our blog. It is definitely a New Years Resolution of ours to blog more and create more things.  I (baby sister) will focus more on our currently SimpleeNou paper craft line. I have some ideas lined up, I just need to get myself focus and working Etsy/blog time into my current schedule. Big Sister is perfecting her hobby (sewing) and we plan on launching out new SimpleeFabric (the name may change) line. So great things to come in the New Years!!

So, since Christmas just passed, we wanted to share what we passed out to our parent's vendors. They have a small mom & pop business and they have really great vendors. We like to show them how much we appreciate their work for our parents.

Big sister have a great knack for color coordination & combination. She finds really great colors that goes together (traditional or not) and makes really great designs. Here are the Christmas cards that she made this year:

Here is the shot of the front of the card with the matching envelope. She went with a more burnt yellow/ mustard yellow than traditional gold or yellow, burnt orange, and a nice bright blue. 

Here is a close up of the card. A tree figure.

Inside card message.

The back of the card with our signature name.

What I love most about this card was the Christmas tree & the Christmas message without having to use traditional Christmas colors. I feel that so many people are afraid that if they stray from traditional colors then the Christmas spirit is lost. I say: DON'T BE SCARED TO STRAY!! Christmas does not mean color! Don't be scared to be vibrant and to use the color scheme YOU like! Let your imagination run!

Hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas & here's to a great New Years!!

I promise to be much better about blogging and filling you all in our new crafts!

Our card isn't on our Etsy Shop but feel free to browse! We have lot of foundation/ base work items that can make your project perfect!

Donation Box & Display Board

Hey there bloggers!

Recently I (baby sister) had an assignment (that I really put upon myself) to make a donation box & a display board for the organization that I volunteer for: Poly North. We were having an event at Barnes & Noble where we will gift wrap ANYTHING that people purchased that day and all that we ask is a donation. They can choose to donate anything that they wanted, there was no dollar amount that we asked for.

So here is the box (sorry about lighting! I really need to get better lighting)

What I did here was, and I really wished that I didn't, was use green wrapping paper. And I say I wish I didn't use wrapping paper because I find wrapping paper to be very thin & somewhat flimsy, you'll notice that there is some tape on the corners to reinforce it. But all in all, it was fine. Next time, I know i'll use card stock or poster board because it is more heavy duty and more sturdy. Also, with wrapping paper, when you glue, unless you are going to sit there and really try to smooth it out, it has that bubble effect. Which is another reason why I think next time I will go with thicker paper

I kept it really simple by using our skinny alphabet letters to spell out "Poly North Donations." I like to make sure things are simple & clean, and I think I achieved that.

I also made a display board with pictures of the students at camp so that people who and what they are donating for and to:

 

 I used the same skinny alphabet letters to make the board so that it is consistent with the box. I used the colors green & gold because that is the school's color (GO LB POLY! Home of the Jackrabbits!!)  I used a black board because I wanted a neutral color that will allow the colors to POP!

I have more close up pictures of the letters on the board, but I can't find it right now.I promise to post it as soon as I find it! I think it is on my phone, I just need to dig around for it!

If there is anything that you think we can help you with on your next project, visit our Etsy store and we will be glad to help!

Sriracha Bottle Costume

Hey all! As we are winding down from November and all the great Turkey feasting, I realized that I forgot to post about the Halloween costume that I made from last month! With everything going on . . . it slipped my mind! So here it is!

My friend works at a company that takes Halloween pretty seriously, they dress up and have costume contest . . . the whole nine yards . . . and he not being one to really dress up . . . had to look for a costume idea and one that is budget friendly and not overly complicated! After researching and researching we decided to take on the task of the Sriracha Bottle! We both thought that it would be funny and simple to do.

For everyone who doesn't know, Sriracha is a hot sauce that is widely used (mainly) by Asians. I personally use it for my Pho and pan fried noodles.

 To start, we got red fabric that closely resembles the Sriracha color and and Big Sister sewed it into a long poncho/ muu muu dress. From there, it was puffy paint city! I used chalk to mark and center where I wanted things. This was how it all started after the costume was sewn to size.

That was the outcome after I finished all the writing.I regret that "SHAKE WELL" in the corner triangle was too small, I sized it incorrectly. But I didn't want to take the chance of peeling it off because of the white residue that could have been left behind. For the most part, I free hand the letters and Chinese characters. The Chinese characters were FAR easier than the actual English letters, because it was all straight lines basically . . .I put the rooter in the center for size purposes. I didn't do the rooster until the next day because I wanted everything to DRY completely before I start drawing.

Here is the next day when I finished the rooster. The rooster wasn't as hard as it looks. What I did was blow up the rooster to the size I wanted and then cut around it to make an outline. The rooster itself is all lines & strokes . . . no real actual shading or anything complicated. So just following the lines and putting the line placement correctly was simple. The IMPORTANT THING TO REMEMBER is that puffy paint makes thicker strokes, so use your judgment is how many lines you can put. The actual pictures have LOTS more strokes than what I used on the costume, but at the end of the day, it still looked GOOD!

 

Here is what the costume looked like when it was on! What boyfriend did was added a wire ring on the top (its hard to see) and the bottom (I hemmed it and left an opening for him to push a wire around) so that it have more of that round bottle shape and he wore a red tee & sweats underneath.

The cap was just green paper that I folded accordion-style for the base and because the cap does have ridges, and the made a cone for the spout and taped it all together! And for good  & authentic measure, I ripped a piece of cloth and taped it near the spout because a lot of the bottles that I have seen have a crusted sriracha sauce because no one bothered to wipe it clean. 

And that is how you make your Sriracha Bottle Costume! Keep it in mind for Halloween 2012!!

We don't sell this costume on our Etsy Store . . . But visit! And maybe there is something else on there that you can use to help your next costume or project!

Cupcake Toppers

Hey All!!

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!! After seeing everything that happened the morning of Black Friday, We hope that everyone have an extra uber safe shopping extravaganza or (if you are like Baby Sister) you slept early instead of stood in line.

Anyhow, it was recently a friend's birthday and she have quite a sweet tooth. Baby sister couldn't stay long but didn't want to go empty handed, so what she did was get cupcakes and made cupcake toppers for them. Here's what they looked like:

She used a cupcake letter die cut to make the "g" since her friend's name is Gina and and make it match the strawberry cheesecake cupcake and then used a flower die cut with a "happy birthday" embellishment on the oreo chocolate cupcake.

Visit our Etsy Store for more ideas to use on your next cupcake toppers and any other projects!!

Candy Buckets!

Hey all!

This is a belated post! This was something that Big Sister did for her tutoring kids for Halloween. Instead of just making traditional candy bags or just giving her students candy, she remembered that we had cupcake holders and she decided to make some and fill it with candy!

Here is what it looked like:

They were a hit with her students!

Don't forget to visit our Etsy Store to see how else we can help you create your next project!

Saluting our Vets

Hey all. So recently we had the honor of creating a welcome poster for the Veterans Affairs at CSU-Los Angeles.

We agreed to this project back in September and I (baby sister) have to say that it was not an easy task. I told them that it would take a while because I wanted to honor the veterans for all that they have done for our country and now that they are going back to school, I wanted to incorporate CSU-Los Angeles to the poster also because they are now a Golden Eagle (school mascot).

Here is the outcome:

What I did was use our skinny alphabet letters to create the middle portion and CSULA is in a freehand block letter that I drew, cut, and outlined.  I used charm letters to create "WELCOME." What I did was cut off the hook and made it into a square and backed it with yellow so that it stands out.

Black and yellow is the school's color, so therefore all the letters were in black & yellow. To be patriotic i did a tile-style American Flag, and the "stars" are circular cutouts of the mascot: Golden Eagles.

Meal Cards for Camp

Hi Everyone!

Its been awhile since we posted, October was such a hectic month for us. We had family visiting and Halloween to prepare for and Big Sister best friend had a beautiful daughter that was born in October . . . so we were swamped. But we are back on track now!! Lots of things to post and share! So there might be quite a bit to post in November, We just need to remember to take pictures of things that we do!

So first up for November I (Baby Sister) wanted to share with all of you are some meal cards that I made for 2 friends of mine. I volunteer at a camp call Poly North which is a human relations camp that promotes diversity and team building for 38 years Long Beach Poly High campus. With what they learn at camp we hope that they take it back to school and grow as adults and take those lessons with them when they graduate and become strong leaders in the community that they live in.

Back to the meal cards . . . what we do during mealtime at camp is pass them out to various students so that during meal time they can meet 7 new students at camp, the students will ask for a meal card if they would like to sit at our table & in return they give us their name tags so that when everyone is seated everyone can learn each others name. All of us staff like to have our own unique cards that shows off our personality, and because we have 2-3 camps every fall. So we make sure we laminate so that we can reuse for camp.

Here are a few of the ones I made this year for P.North staff Alex & Janae:

Alex is part Hawaiian and I wanted to incorporate her Hawaiian side to her cards because I know that it is a big part of her, she embraces it a lot. So I went with a beach theme and asked her to pick various quotes that she likes and follows and i added that to her cards. Here is the front of one of her cards.

Here is one with a mermaid on the front

Here is a jist of what the back of her cards look like. Alex use to wear flowers in her hair, so I added flowers and used our Tiki Alphabet Letters to make her name to keep in the beach theme

With Janae's card, I went off on various different tangents . . . there was no one set theme because she has a HUGE personality. So I did a bunch of different things.  I used the tag "Follow Janae" because that is her Twitter handle and she tweets all the time. So i added that on all her cards. 

On the top card I used skinny letters and printed an N.E.R.D logo because the front of the card has a design that goes with one of their lyrics all the girls standing in the line for the bathroom . . .

The  bottom I went with a more cute design of cupcakes, because who doesn't love cupcakes? I used cupcake embellishments with regular block letters and used our cupcake letters for her name.

On the top here I used Village Alphabet for her name on a city backdrop and I used our Big Petal Flower to back her name.

On the bottom I weaved 2 tones of yellow card stock and interchanged Follow Janae with our skinny alphabet letters to create a somewhat confusing design.

 

--Poly North Insert--

Poly North use to be funded by LBUSD, but because of educational budget cuts, all of the staff hold various fundraisers & look for people to donate to this wonderful organization.

At Poly North we stress communication, teamwork, and understanding above else. With all that has been happening in the community and the things that we hear on campus about bullying and all the violence that occurs on campus, we want our youth to know that there are other way to go around handling various situations that occurs. We want them to know that they are not alone and there are many resources on campus if they need help, and in the community. The last thing we want is for studnets to feel isolated and different because others are telling them that they are.

If you visit our Facebook Fan Page there is information about how you can donate, or if you are in the area, you can come to our various fundraising events.

You can also follow Poly North on Twitter @LBPolyNorth

Thanks!