protecting the invites

So I made the cute Seuss invites and then ventured out to find some bigger envelopes for them to fit in. They were a tad bit big for the "invitation" size envelopes at Office Depot so I had to go with the bigger size. I got home only to realize they were super huge. Problem: how was I going to send these in the mail in mega huge envelopes? I knew that they would get bent to hell if I did that. I had to come up with a plan. Luckily, a few weeks ago, Target's dollar aisle, WHICH ROCKS was selling a bunch of Dr. Seuss stuff. I thought I should pick some up in case we were going to do a Seuss-themed baby shower, which we did, and had two packs of Cat in the Hat stickers on hand. SCORE. I made each hat a "folder" and stuck the invite inside to protect it a bit better. I then folded it and stuck a sticker to "hold" the invite inside. I just wrote "Open Me" on the outside of the folder and hopefully it makes sense to open the folder to find the invite inside!!! Some of them had white paper, some had red, some had blue. While it's nothing fancy, it will do the job and hopefully they will think the invites are way cute.


Hopefully this will protect the invites enough as they make their way across country.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Dr. Seuss baby shower coming up in October. I'm part of the hosting and came up with this design working off of a hat Brynn had brought home from daycare last year. I think they are going to turn out super cute. :) I am almost done with all of them and will be putting them in the mail this week sometime. I couldn't find the right size of envelope so they are going to be sent in a bigger envelope, but that is okay I think. When you flip the invite over, it has all the info printed on there. Dj helped me with that part to make sure we used as little paper as possible. I then traced all the hat shapes and cut them out. Then took red cardstock paper and trace the hat again and drew out the "stripes" and cut them out and glued them on the front of the hat. I then used black stickers for the "oh baby" part. I do need to spend a little time trimming some of the edges on some of the hats to ensure perfection or near it before sending them out haha.

The pic you're seeing above is the "sample let's see how this will work invite" and I feel like the real invites are much nicer than this one in appearance.

Sewing...

I purchased a sewing machine on Friday. It's nothing fancy, but enough that will allow me to further my crafting experience. It's a Singer. Let's hope I can figure out how to use it, since it's been years since I've touched one. I'll definitely need to read the directions...but I'm hoping to use it to sew on scrapbook pages and cards, use it for my headbands/bows, and even for some other craft projects I want to try, like Briana's taggie blankies and even some burp clothes and maybe bibs. Ahh the opportunities. Dj made the comment the other day I need an entire crafting room for all my shit. I THINK HE's right! :) haha

Update on the letter boxes

So I found some cute little plastic animals that I thought would fit great into some of the empty boxes, but the darn animals are too big! Still on the hunt, I guess. I need to carry a tin with me when I'm out and about just in case...

I found a way to glue the top clear plastic part of the tin to the top so they don't "pop" out when B or B tries to play with them. Will be working on gluing the rest of them soon.

I am thinking the name "Alphalicious" would be a great name for this little invention. haha Melissa and Doug, are you interested in buying me out? I'd gladly sell. LOL

Letter Boxes

So I am trying to think of a cool name to call this little set of items I recently finished for Brynn and later for Baylen to use. Each tin has a letter of the alphabet and inside the tins are little "items" that start with each letter. This particular set is to teach letter sounds and of course, letters of the alphabet and later, maybe even simple spelling/reading. I used my Cricut to cut out each letter of the alphabet. I purchased the tins in sets of 3 at the dollar store, which I covered with ribbon b/c many of them were rusty-looking or leaving a weird stain on my fingers when I was working with them. I bought round strong hold magnets at Michael's, as well as many of the little wooden "items" I placed inside each tin. I then bought a cookie sheet at Target. I glued a magnet to each tin and that way, they stick (obviously) to the cookie sheet, hopefully preventing any from getting lost. The only downfall to this little project is that the tins are truly cheap. The top "clear" layer of the tin is a very thin, clear plastic and they can be pushed out easily with a finger tip. I will keep my eye out for stronger "tins," but for now, these will do. I also need to fill a few more of the tins with items. If I can't find any around, I'll just print some out from the internet and glue them to the back of cardstock or light cardboard (such as the back of old cereal boxes) and place those in until I can find a more durable replacement. The other thing is that I did not spend a lot of time looking for a great "metal" tray for the boxes, but I thought a cookie sheet would be good for now b/c it has those little "handles" on the sides where Brynn could carry it around and be fine with it.