I used the Hot Air Balloon Card kit from Queen & Co., plus Celebrating Freedom papers (discontinued) from BoBunny to create this shaped shaker card for the Queen & Co. Red, White, & Blue Facebook Challenge. I decorated the inside with the Patriotic kit from Queen & Co., and combined a sentiment phrase from each kit to create the inside sentiment.
We had gone to Uncle Julio's for my birthday, and part of the celebration was to get their chocolate piñata. It was so much fun to break, that I was obsessed with learning how to make one myself. I haven't done any paper crafting since the card class, because I was busy learning to make a chocolate piñata. I found a fun Mouse head mold on Amazon, which turned out to be a bit more challenging than I expected. It was of silicone, so the two halves didn't quite match.
Next time I want to make a chocolate piñata, I will use the mold available at Michaels. It's just round, but it is a lot easier to use than this one was, and should be symmetrical, not slightly off. However, we are Disney fans, so I really had to try to make the Mouse head. I filled it with Star Wars shaped chocolates that I had made. Chocolate is heavy, so with everything inside and the two halved sealed together, it was extremely heavy. Surprisingly, it hung just fine without additional support (I had, however, given it some inside support at the top).
I gave my large fondant rolling pin to my husband to use to break the piñata for our Father's Day celebration. Just a note: we had been waiting for part of our family to arrive from out of town, and it had gotten late, so I didn't scrape the excess/edges off (from sealing the two halves together) before hanging it. It was a rush job at the end, so it doesn't look as nice as I had planned, but everyone enjoyed it thoroughly. If you ever want to make a chocolate piñata, I recommend using Ghiradelli dark chocolate melting wafers. They worked better than the dark chocolate wafers from the cake supply store, and the Ghiradelli tasted better, too. I had used the Ghiradelli for making the piñata, but I used the wafers from the cake supply store to make a chocolate bowl for each person. I had found the bowl molds at Hobby Lobby. Everyone had plenty of chocolate! We have video of my husband breaking it, but no photos other than this one, before he broke it.
I used to teach at the LSS, back in Virginia, when I lived near one. I also taught classes in my new home here in Texas in 2019, for a little over a year, but COVID brought that to an end. It's a lot of work to design the cards, make the kits, etc., but I enjoyed it for the most part, even when I didn't get paid for it. I've done all my crafting alone for the last few years, and it's been good therapy with everything that has happened with COVID shutdowns, DH's back surgery/recovery, then his heart attack and recovery, but all through that, I was crafting alone. I've missed scrapbooking and card making with others, but a recent Facebook request to borrow a Cricut machine led to my teaching a card class at my church's women's monthly meeting on Thursday.
There were 3 different craft groups that night, all in the same room and vicinity, so it was a bit noisy, but those who did the card making enjoyed it. Two of my neighbors who were interested in card making came with me, and one of the gals at church turned out to be another near neighbor that I hadn't met yet.
I chose to do two cards that I had designed and posted here previously, and one new one, which is the top photo below. The new one was probably the easiest to prepare, since I used Silhouette print and cut images, and just created a mat for one of them, given texture with an embossing folder. The banner was cut from American Crafts paper of long ago, using a die from Queen & Co. I barely had enough of the right colors of card stock.
I haven't scrapbooked for the last two and a half years. I've missed it, but somewhere along the way, I lost steam. Card making was quicker and easier, and it let me still craft while being a caregiver. I've wanted to get back to scrapbooking for a long time, but I just couldn't seem to get going. This morning, I decided that today would be a scrapbook morning no matter what, and no excuses. I had photos that I had already chosen possible papers for making a layout. They have been waiting a very long time. I'm not even sure how long. That seemed the simplest thing to start with, since I'd already chosen papers. I've always been a slow scrapbooker, but this layout came together quickly. I got it done in only about a couple of hours (for me, that is warp speed).
I think the papers are from an older BoBunny collection. I used Queen & Co. dies to make the banner, pumpkins, and leaves. Simple. Quick (for me). And it felt so good to scrapbook and actually get a layout made from start to finish. I know it isn't trendy by today's scrapbooking standards, but it's my style, and I'm happy with the layout, so no one else's opinion matters.
Little Yellow Bicycle was one of my favorite paper companies. I was very sad when they went out of business. I used their Vintage Summer papers and some Foundation dies from Queen & Co. for this simple card. I needed to make multiple cards, and this was an easy one.
I really enjoyed Karen Burniston's Live video on the Card Making Summit, where she showed how to create a Bam Box card. I ordered the die sets that she used as a result. I loved the concept of the instant pop up, since it used a similar technique to the 3D Instant Pop Up House that I posted recently.
After watching the recent Card Making Summit Live Video with Karen Burniston, I decided to get out my Karen Burniston dies and make a pop up birthday card. I'm behind on birthday cards for family members.
I used the Heartfelt Creations papers from their Sugarspun collection. I used the Karen Burniston Spinner Square dies to make the mechanism.
