Keep Calm and Drink a Beer

Since I like homemade gifts for Valentine's day, I thought I would make one for my husband.  It's the golden rule right? Do unto others?  So, crafty things for guys doesn't always turn out that awesome or well received, however that I made is awesome and was well received.  I can't really put into words what I made him, so here's the picture:

  I, of course, found the idea on Pinterest.  It was a super simple and relatively inexpensive thing to make.  I got a 11x14 inch shadow box from on clearance at Michael's for $10, cut a slot in the top big enough for the bottle caps to go in, and put on the vinyl quote I cut out using my Silhouette Cameo. This can also easily be done without a machine by using stickers. (In full disclosure....I accidentally put the vinyl on upside down so the slot is on the bottom of the frame now, but eh, it still looks cool and it functions.)

If you aren't as frugal as I am, they do sell shadow box frame at Michael's for $40 that have a sliding top just for the purpose of dropping things into the top. The display picture is of wine corks.

So to tie the gift together, I bought my husband some beer. I went to Hy-Vee and the Wine and Spirits manager could pick up at my blank stare at the wall of beer that I needed assistance.  He happily helped me pick some beer that "have the same taste pallet as Spotted Cow", which is one of my husband's favorite beers.  I don't know if I should take it as a compliment or not that the manager then didn't card me.... 

After my craft efforts and the subtle hints of the Valentine's advent calendar I made for my husband (discussed in a previous post), I was pretty positive I was going to get something nice on Valentine's day.  Yeah....you what they say about assuming...you make an ass out of u and me.  That's what I did. My husband didn't even have a card for me.  He did make me an omelet for breakfast and put a candy bar in my car when he started my car to warm it up for me. (The warming up the car thing is a daily thing per our agreement that allows his beloved sports car take up my spot in the garage.)  So I know I really shouldn't complain because I won't allow him to spend much money, but really? He couldn't even take a crayon like he did last year and scribble out a card?  I thought for sure when I got home from work in the evening that there would be a little surprise for me, or at least a hand written note since I had given him 14 plus nice handmade valentine's card.

Yeah... I need to keep calm and have a beer.  Probably shouldn't take one of the special ones that I bought him, though, huh?

And now I know why there is adhesive card stock!

I saw a really cool grandparent's printable on Pinterest that someone was selling on Etsy, so I thought I would try my hand at something similar.  This is the pin that I saw from JackandJillyDesigns on Etsy:

My mother in-law has four grandkids and I think that there are no more coming, so I thought this would be a cute thing to try.  I found a quote on a similar designed stating "My greatest blessings call me Grandma."  I know my mother in-law laments never finding anything with "Grammie" on it, so personalizing this is something she would really appreciate. I used my Silhouette Cameo to design and cut out something like this and use the middle square as a picture frame.  I wanted to add more pops of color so I added scraps of paper behind the cut out area.  I thought this would be pretty simple, however, finding the fonts that worked well together and the sizes and all that was a little harder than I thought.  Then, I stupidly cut it out on card stock. I had to hand glue all the little insides of the letters.  Wow, I learned something on that one: Adhesive card stock is worth it!  Also, maybe a printable isn't so bad!  It would probably have looked nicer since on the really thing cursive font, it kind of gummed up the paper, particularly on the "s" and "g".

This is my product, with out the picture in it or having it in a frame yet, but you get the idea.

Chocolate is the answer!

I started a new job this month.  I have a rather large office all to myself.  It's really quite nice, but being that I haven't really had an office to my own or at least one that I got to decorate to my choosing, I have very few decorations or personal touches.  My mission tonight was to change that.
The job I have is somewhat stressful, and what's the best thing to handle stress?? CHOCOLATE!  So, I saw a cute little image on pinterest.  It said "Chocolate is the answer. Who cares what the question is."  I thought it would be perfect for a little jar of chocolate candies on my desk.  I went out and got a nice little glass jar at a consignment shop for $1.99 and went to my computer to create something my Silhouette Cameo could cut out and slap onto the jar.  (I got a little extra motivation since I discovered the weekly challenge on the silhouette blog and I thought I would go for it!) 
Creating it wasn't an issue at all, but I overshot how big my jar was. It's a small 3.5 inch square space that I had to work with.  That means the Silhouette had to cut VERY small letters.  It didn't have much issue with that at all, it's just that I'm a cheapskate and I used black contact paper. (I want to save my vinyl for when I'm confident with using my machine.  This is only the third project that I have used it for.)  Transferring contact paper can prove to be difficult as it's not as sticky as vinyl.  I lost a letter the first time I did it, then two the second time.  Black paper on a black desk top with black clothes on makes for finding little pieces of black contact paper nearly impossible!! As I was about to give up and just eat the chocolate that was going to put in the jar, I decided that it really didn't need to be perfect so I mixed and matched letters and skipped the embellishment all together since that was WAY to intricate and kept ripping on me.  I think it ended up nice despite my struggles and the uneven lettering.  My favorite font in this project was Birmingham, which is what I used for the word "Chocolate."  I also used Arial Bold.  I can't remember what other ones I used, but they were standard ones that my computer already had on file as well.