So Happy that you're back!

Preschool classes started on Tuesday for my Baby Girl. For 3 times a week and 2.5 hours each time, she is kept occupied by her classmates and teachers. The rest of the time she will wait for her sisters to come back from school. 

2:30pm every school day might as well be her favorite time of day because that is when I tell her to get her shoes on. It's time to get the twins. Her eyes would light up and she would grab her Pan-Dee and wait by the door. As much as the three bicker with each other, they are really the best of friends and my baby girl really misses her sisters so much when they are not at home to play with her.

Back on June 28, when I mentioned Nancy Kubo in a blog post, I bought the School Buddies graphics sets from Little Dreamer Designs. I never really got around to using it. Until now.

Using Adobe Photoshop, and Make-the-Cut, I arranged and "printed-and-cut" to put together this decorative piece. The school bus is from Lettering Delights' Get A Job graphic set, while the font used for the sentiment is once again LD's Buttercream. I love this font! The polka dot background paper is from LD's Around the World paper pack. The paper originally came in blue but I changed part of the paper to green by using the Paint Bucket tool in photoshop. 

I may have finished putting the picture together but I still need a frame to go with it. Perhaps when my baby next go to preschool, I should just spend that 2.5hours at the craft store picking out a frame. For while they are all at school, no one realizes that I'm all by myself. Nobody knows that my favorite time of day is when I get to bring all of my girls home. After all, I am most happy when my babies are back.

Tutorial: T-shirt stenciling with Lettering Delights

This tutorial is for the benefit of my blog readers who are not familiar with this technique. I did not come up with this method of painting T-shirts with freezer paper stencils but I have enjoyed it many times. A question from a reader of this post prompted me to post this tutorial. I realized that while many of us already know how to do this, there are others who are unaware. If you have never made or heard of the freezer paper t-shirts, this tutorial is for you.

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My kids love to paint. Paper, canvas, walls, they've painted it all but one of their favorite item to paint on is definitely t-shirts. The Jack-o-lantern patterns on Lettering Delights may have been designed for use with carving but why should that they be used only for pumpkins? They are perfect for stenciling on fabric too and today I will show you how my kids used them to spice up a plain t-shirt.

To start, we got an orange t-shirt (from Joann's or Michaels), fabric paint (we're using black color, Tulip brand), freezer paper (grocery store, ziplock bags aisle), and a piece of cardstock. I washed and dried the t-shirt before starting this project.

To make the stencil, I first add the doodlebat font on Make-the-Cut using Ctrl-Shift-H or clicking on the "Add font from ttf file" button that looks like this: 

 

If you have already pre-installed the font on the computer, you can skip this step and just pull down on the list of .ttf files and select the font.

To figure the size that I should cut the stencil at, I took a ruler to the shirt and made an approximation of the width of what I want the final print to be sized at. For this kid-sized tee (size s), I cut the image at a width of 7". I double-click on the pattern that I want and resize it accordingly. I only needed to enter the width as the height (or length) of the pattern is resized automatically since I kept the aspect ratio lock on.

Because I will be cutting on the reverse side of the freezer paper, I do a Ctrl-M to mirror the image. Now the stencil is ready to be cut.

To cut the stencil, I lay the freezer paper shiny side up. I set the machine to a 4 for Speed, Pressure, and Blade.

Next, I ironed the stencil to the shirt but before I do that, I have my kid wear the t-shirt. I hold up the stencil and measured the distance from the collar to the top of the stencil. You can also use a piece of sticky tape to mark the spot where the stencil should be instead of using the ruler.

I fold the shirt lengthwise and crease the front to get a center line. Using that crease line and the measurement that I took earlier (or sticky tape) as a guide, I laid the stencil shiny side down on the shirt. I turned off the steam on the iron and used the lowest setting  to press the stencil onto the shirt. I made sure that the stencil is stuck completely so as to prevent any bleeding of paint later.

Before painting, I slid a piece of cardstock or thick paper (eg. cereal box, paper pad backing) inside the shirt to catch any excess paint that might bleed through to the other side.

Then came my kids' favorite part. It's time to paint!

I probably should have waited to peel off the stencil but we were super excited and I removed it before the paint was dry. Even though I was lucky and did not make any boo-boos in the process, it was rather unnerving and I would recommend waiting for the paint to dry before removing the stencil.

There are a lot of variations of this technique and also many video tutorials on youtube. I like Kay's video the most as it was from hers that I first heard about this technique.

If you are doing this for the first time, a simple design is a good place to start. This is also a fun and easy craft for the kids to do. It's always a great feeling to see them wear their art with such pride and even though we have a ton of store-bought printed t-shirts, their favorites are always the ones that they have painted themselves.

Oh, Joy!

Did you glue yourself to the HSN channel last night as they launch the Cricut Imagine? I didn't :P BUT I did turn on my laptop to show my husband and children this video:

My friend, Joy, over at joyslife.com put up this video to demonstrate the basic workings behind my cut-and-print technique. I am still experimenting and I will be posting an update to the method soon but in the meantime, do take a peek at Joy's blog. Her videos are fun and packed full of information. I'm sure you will enjoy her quirky style as much as I do.

Thank you, Joy, for putting into action, what my mere words weren't able to show.

Always Fly with Open Eyes

"Look where you're going!" is a phrase that I use often with my kids. I often worry that they will walk into a pole or trip over a step when we are outside. I have lost count of the number of times that they have walked right into a wall simply because they weren't looking at where they were headed.

When I saw this bird from LD's Inch by Inch graphic set, I had to laugh because my kids walk the same way as the bird flies. 

I will not go into details, the steps of making this card as I applied the same "formula" that I used for the other "faux-magine" cards. However, I will show you that the Photoshop and Make-the-Cut screenshots of the card look just like that:

In PS:

In MTC:

The frame image is from LD's Inch by Inch Frames while the font used for the sentiment is LD Little Piggy.

By the way, what happens to the bird that flies with closed eyes?

It might face a nasty surprise, of course! :-o

I hope you all enjoyed this card. Have a great week ahead, everyone!

Birthday Cupcake

So I lied when I said yesterday that I wasn't going to make another one of these "Pretend-Imagine" cards this week. Hubby brought the kids out for a little bit this morning and instead of cleaning house I whipped this one up quickly.

Using LD's You Take the Cupcake and Cupcake Celebration graphic sets, I laid out the frame and cupcake in Adobe Photoshop and typed in the sentiment in the LD Buttercream font. Note that there is a flaw with the frame image. If you click on the screenshot of my card above, look to the right of the pink scallop and you will see this blue dot that shouldn't be there. 

You can easily clean that up with the healing brush tool or just cover it up with a ribbon like I did.

Once again, I used MTC to cut out the shadow and the cherry. I stickled the cherry and cupcake and layered them all with foam tape for dimension. A little tape from my ATG gun later and the card is done. 

I think my favorite part of this card is that I was able to print out the sentiment right on the cardstock. I can't begin to count how many times I have ruined a perfectly good card with a badly stamped greeting. By typing it out on screen before printing, I was able to say exactly what I wanted to say, in the font that I want, in the exact size that I need. Don't get me wrong, I do like to stamp but sometimes when I can't find the right size/font greeting, printing it out on the card isn't that bad of an idea. Especially when no one had to hear me scream "+!#@ dry inkpad ruined my card!" 

So did you get to create anything today? If not, I guess there's always tomorrow! ;-) 

Enjoy your weekend, everyone!

Lettering Delights Freebie: 911 Honor Frames

I just saw these free frames from Lettering Delights. Just add them to your cart and checkout. You might also receive a 25% coupon in your confirmation email that is good for a future purchase (expires in 30 days). 

Click here or the picture above to claim the freebie.

Baby Boy

So Sis-in-law is having a baby this month and it will be so out-of-character for me to not make her a card. I'm still toying with my pretend-Cricut Imagine method and for this card, I used LD's Welcome Baby Boy and Baby Animal Squares paper pack in Adobe Photoshop to get this:

Adding dimension to the card with the letters "b,o,y" is tricky because the letters are small and skinny so that the foam tape that is used to adhere them to the card will show. I decided to give dimension to the card using the box outline of the letters instead. This is what I traced in MTC:

After the same-old sticking and reprinting, the card is done. Making these kind of printed-and-layered card gets easier the more I make them. The hardest part for me is still choosing the graphics. Even without venturing outside of the Lettering Delights store, I still found it difficult to make my choice. There are just so many images and papers to choose from! 

I layered the printout from a leftover piece of My Mind's Eye cardstock to complete the cardfront. A strip of ribbon and several buttons later and the card is finished. All that is left to do is to send this to SIL with a gift for the baby. 

I hope that you have enjoyed the three cards that I've made with my pretend-Imagine method. Even though I found that printing out images instead of cutting and layering felt a little bit like I was cheating, it was still kind of fun. Next week, I'll be going back to using my store bought paper stacks for my projects because I like using that a lot more.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend, everyone!