Monday Motivational - Patriotic Mini Accordian Album

Happy Monday, and welcome to our Monday Motivational!  We hope you had a great weekend, and are ready to head into the craft room for some fun projects!  Did you miss us on Friday?  Well .... most of us were together on a crop, and "somebody" got so busy hosting, that she forgot all about getting the post done!   She hopes you will forgive me (er....) her!   Let's get on to June's Mini Album for this week!  It's a great old style revisited!

   July 4th is right around the corner.  Why not document your family barbeque or fireworks fun with a quick and easy mini book?

 June Houck

This is what it looks like when opened:

Now it is ready to just add pictures!

Instructions:

1.  Covers:

Cut 2 @ 4 1/2" squares of chipboard; cover in 5 1/2" squares of decorative paper.

2.  Inner pages:

Cut 3 @ 8 1/2" squares of card stock for inside pages.  Score horizontally, diagonally, and across one diagonal (from bottom left to top right).  Adhere the top left square to the bottom right square of the previous 8 1/2" square.  Repeat.

3.  Assemble book:

Adhere 30" ribbon to the inside of the back cover.  Glue down the bottom right square of your inner pages.  Now glue down the top left square to the inside of your front cover.

4.  Decorate!

Cut 3 3/4" squares of decorative paper, then glue down as photo mats.  Cut some along the diagonal and adhere on triangular spaces.  I like to leave some triangular areas blank for journaling.

I hope you will give this a try.  The HoneyBees will be posting their versions on Wednesday, so be sure to check back for more inspiration :)

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We also wanted to share a bit of BUZZ in the BIZZ that can't wait until Friday...
AC Moore Stores are hosting a very special event for creating cards for our Soldiers and Sailors.
YOU’RE INVITED TO THE “WORLD’S LARGEST” CARD MAKING EVENT FOR U.S. TROOPS
10,000 CARDS IN ONE DAY FOR MILITARY AT 135 A.C. MOORE STORES
East Coast Retailer Serves Up and Delivers Patriotic Sentiments Plus Summer-Long Freebies
WHERE: All 135 A.C. Moore Arts & Crafts, Inc., (NASDAQ: ACMR)
WHEN: Wednesday, June 29th from 3-6 p.m.
HOW: With the goal of creating 10,000 original, hand-crafted cards for our U.S. Troops and families overseas, A.C. is hosting one of the world’s largest patriotic parties and in true democratic style, local customers also get free gifts all summer long.
DETAILS: In support of celebration of military families and the United States’ 235th birthday, the east coast retailer is opening all 135 stores and will provide all the supplies necessary to make original cards that express gratitude to our troops, creating one of the largest simultaneous celebrations in the country.
MORE FREEBIES:
Patriotic momentum continues with massive free giveaways in every store on every hour, “Make and Take” crafts and family-friendly, true blue demonstrations. For those who dress up in a patriotic way, a 10 percent discount will be given toward any purchase. Citizens can also give back by bringing a non-perishable food item and A.C. Moore will deliver to local Mother’s Cupboard.
Contact: Patti Thomas 312.919.0898

See you on Wednesday! 
Happy creating ~

and the HoneyBees

Monday Motivational - Pinwheels

Happy Monday!  Thanks for buzzing by the hive today!  One of the hottest looks everywhere right now seems to be PINWHEELS.  What fun and versatile toys from our youth, and they are making a BIG comeback... They can be made to sit flat, as great embellishments, or with a couple of extra steps, actually catch the breeze, and spin in the summer sun!  Where will you pop a pinwheel this week?
Here is Court with a great tutorial on how to make this perennial favorite!
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June and I picked the challenge this week! I hope you like it! 

PINWHEELS

Never having done one, I had to look it up myself - which I did HERE. 

This is my version. :) 

All You Need is Love

Honeybee Courtney Lee 

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. I cut three 2" squares from the shadow function on the Cake Basics Cartridge (most of you probably have Plantin Schoolbook for this, but it didn't come with my Expression). You can also just hand cut 2x2 squares.

2. Score down the diagonals of the squares in both directions - making triangular quadrants (is that an oxymoron? I'm such a geek, I know.) 

It should look like this:

3. Cut on the score lines only half way down. This is very important for the pinwheel to hold its shape. If you cut all the way down, you won't have room for the brad to hold it... Ask me how I know... ;) 

It should look like this now:

4. Curl edge inward. I chose the ride edge of each section. Either will work I suppose! :) 

It should now look like this:

5. Using Glue Arts Extreme Adhesive Squares, place one in the center of the pinwheel and curl the edges PAST the middle and adhere to the square. This will get you a much neater looking pinwheel than meeting in the center (believe it or not!). 

Close up of the Extreme Adhesive Square middle:

6. Punch a small hole in the middle of the pinwheel using your Crop-a-dile or other apparatus. 

It should now look like this:

7. Put a brad in the center and enjoy! :) 

Finished Product:

This was based on a sketch at the My Mind's Eye blog and I will be using it for their challenge. 

Recipe:

• Cartridge: Cake Basics™
• Cardstock: Paper Trey Ink in Stamper's Select White™
• Patterned Paper: 
• My Mind's Eye: Fine and Dandy: True Blue "Pleasant" Paper™
• My Mind's Eye: Fine and Dandy: True Blue "Shining" Paper™
• Brads: My Mind's Eye: Fine and Dandy: True Blue Decorative Brads™
• ric-rac: My Mind's Eye: Fine and Dandy: True Blue Trims™
• Sentiment: My Pink Stamper: Love-alicious™
• Ink: Momento in Dark Cocoa
• Glue Arts Extreme Adhesive Squares
• Foam dimensionals

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Thanks, Court!  Just a little addendum to her awesome tutorial!  If you want to make a spinning pinwheel, here are the extra steps:

Use a corsage pin, or something similar to go through your pinwheel.  Slide a bead onto the pin to provide a spacer.

Using wire cutters, carefully clip off the extra length of the pin.

I used my hold piercer to start the hole in my dowel, then added a little bit of glue to the hole, and pushed hard to seat the pin into the wooden dowel.  Note the spacing which allows the pinwheel to turn.

And here we have a traditional spinning type of pinwheel on a stick

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Have a wonderful Monday and make sure to play along with us this week at Betty Bee's Buzz! Create a project using a pinwheel! Come back on Wednesday to link it up and see what the other HoneyBees created! 

Monday Motivational Summertime Bag Album

Every Monday at Betty Bee's Buzz one of the Honeybees shares a special project with you on the Monday Motivational.

Judy Ford

This week my project is dedicated to Summer time, and my youngest grandson, Jackson. When I asked him what he had planned for summer vacation he rattled off a whole list of things: Enjoying the sunshine, playing at the lake and riding the innertube behind Grandpa's boat, having adventures at the zoo, making s'mores with Grandpa, lots of ideas. SSSSOOOOOO, I made him a lunchbag album to hold some of the pictures and treasures. I started with 3 white lunch bags. Then I sewed down the bottoms to make pockets, alternated the openings of the bags and sewed down the center to make the album.
I used the Life's a Beach Cricut Cartridge. Several of the title words worked well into Jackson's wish list.

The papers I used were from All About Boys and an old Summer stack.

I used Paper Dolls for Jackson's s'more page. The pockets have removeable inserts from cardstock -here they worked out to be 3 1/2 x 4 1/2- slip a ruler inside your pocket and measure what will fit width and length - we can put a picture or journaling or something on the pages.

Jackson loves fishing in Grandpa's boat. So I put two inserts with fish - 1 coming - 1 going for his pictures of his catches. He's all boy and will be outside as much as possible - if Michigan ever gets a heat wave - we'll have a place for some great pictures.

This is the album open. The pages are about 5x5.

All porpoise pages for journaling or pictures - I cut out two of each pullout - sandwiched them together to make a tab. I used black so it was easy, if you use patterned paper make sure to use your flip button to get the pretty paper on the outside on both sides of the tab. You can put as many inserts into the openings as you need. There is a SU tab punch that could be used and then write on the tab what's on the insert paper.

This came together quickly and could be made thicker with more bags. It could be set for any theme. I was thinking Jackson could take this one with him to his first day of kindergarten in the fall.

Now it's your turn....How are you celebrating summer????  Be ready to share with us on Wednesday here at Betty Bee's Buzz!

Monday Motivational~Guest HoneyBee Amy Sheffer!

Good Morning!  We are very excited to have Amy Sheffer of Pickled Paper Designs as our Guest HoneyBee this week!   

Amy Sheffer

 Amy is a very talented crafter, and has served on several design teams, including Verve, Stampers Dream, and A Sketch For You to Try... as well as being a former Dirty Dozen Designer over at Splitcoast Stampers!  Here are some questions we've asked Amy to help us get to know her even better!

       Tell us about yourself:

I live with my husband and three children in Virginia on the far outskirts of Washington, DC. I've been dabbling in anything and everything artsy and crafty pretty much all my life, so when a friend introduced me to scrapbooking in 1997 and then rubber stamping in 2002, I was instantly hooked both times. I spent a few years stamping for classes, workshops, and sales as a Stampin' Up demonstrator, but it wasn't until I started my blog in the Fall of 2007 that I discovered the joy of stamping just for the pure fun of it. Stamping has been a big part of my daily life ever since. At the same time, I discovered that the online stamping community is much more fun to participate in than merely to stalk, and I'm truly grateful for the wonderful friends I've found through stamping. Along the way, I've been honored to serve on several design teams, including my two current teams, Stamper's Dream and Verve. Thank you, Honey Bees, for the opportunity to guest host at Betty Bee's Buzz!

How did you get started in paper crafting?

I got hooked on scrapbooking back in the late '90s when I saw a friend's scrapbook. I'd never seen anything like it and as a crafty type, I was hooked immediately. A few years later, that same friend came running into a Little Gym class that our boys were taking, wildly waving a card she had made the night before at a Stampin' Up party. It was love at first sight. When she had a workshop a few weeks later, I ordered my first of many, many stamping supplies and haven't stopped since {grin}!

Tell us about your crafting space...

I am blessed to have a dedicated craft room tucked into a corner of my basement. Large windows and French doors to the outside let in a lot of light, and the half wall between the craft room and the rest of the basement lets me see the television and keep an eye on my kids while they play. I tend to be a messy crafter and love finding inspiration and odd combinations out of whatever scraps and cast-offs are lying around. That said, every few days, when the clutter becomes stifling, I have to tidy up and start all over again.

Where do you look for inspiration when your mojo is missing?

Surfing papercrafting blogs and thumbing through papercrafting magazines and idea books sometimes helps, as does simply looking through my product stash. But what usually works best for me is to seek out inspiration elsewhere -- clothing, home decor, gardening, even cookbooks. I think it's also good sometimes to walk away altogether for a while, take a break, and do something else I love -- go on a hike, visit an antique store, take in a concert, read a book, play the piano. Anything to fill up on the beauty that surrounds us! I can then return to papercrafting refreshed, energized, and ready to create.

If you could give one or two crafting tips, what would they be? 

1. Try new things.
I think it's important to keep growing as artists/crafters, and one of the best ways is to try new things. Challenges are great for that, as they give you a starting point for something you might not have done on your own. Plus they're just plain fun! Classes at your local craft store could be good, too. I'm a pretty traditional stamper, not a technique stamper at all, so for artistic growth, I took a super fun, Claudine Hellmuth mixed media class a while back and had a blast learning new things and getting messy. To this day, I've yet to use a single technique in my card-making (shame!), but I left class that day feeling like an artist and couldn't wait to get home to create within my own style. Attitude is everything! Feel like an artist-->create like an artist!

2. Don't compare yourself to others and/or judge yourself through the eyes of others. This is such a trouble spot with me, and I know it is with many other papercrafters, too! Comparing your work to someone else's will only end up robbing you of the joy this hobby brings. As long as YOU'RE happy with your work, then "The End." Don't re-evaluate based on how many or few comments your blog post or gallery upload received. Now if I could do as I say! :)

Here is Amy's challenge for this week! 

With the recent Royal Wedding festivities still fresh on my mind and the upcoming "wedding season" approaching, I've come up with a wedding-inspired challenge this week. While you don't necessarily have to make something for a wedding, your card or project does have to include "Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, and Something Blue." For "old," use an older product or trend, make something look old with distressing techniques, refurbish an outdated home decor item, etc. "New" is easy ... a new or trendy product, theme, or technique. For "borrowed," borrow a friend's tool, borrow another papercrafter's design (aka CASE), or borrow something from another craft, i.e., incorporate quilting or jewelry or fabric into your project. Mix a little blue in there somewhere and you're good to go! When you post your project, be sure to let us (and others) know what about your project is old, new, borrowed, and blue (although that last one will probably be a little obvious {grin}).
For my challenge sample, I've used the wedding theme for a non-wedding card. My new ingredient is the balloon paper from My Mind's Eye's new Lime Twist "Out of the Blue" collection. The "something old" is the sentiment stamp, which is from a May 2009 Verve stamp set called Dare to Be You. I normally love to add layers and embellishments, sometimes to the point of excess, so today I've borrowed the clean-and-simple style that I admire so much! And last ... blue skies, baby! This is going to our neighbor's daughter, who somehow just graduated from college, despite the fact that just yesterday she was a mere thirteen years old and earning her Red Cross babysitting certification. Miraculous, I tell ya!

Our thanks to Amy for sharing her challenge, and some about her life, with us!  We are so excited to have her here in the hive!  We look forward to seeing your projects later in the week!  On Wednesday you will see what the rest of the HoneyBees have created with Amy's challenge....

 Until then, Happy Creating!



 

Monday Motivational - Three-tiered slider card for Mom

Good morning, and welcome to Monday Motivational in the hive!  HoneyBee Judy has a very inventive project for us this week!  She was inspired to create a moving card for Mom, and we hope you'll be moved to join right in!
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For my Monday Motivational Challenge I want to show you how to do a three tiered slider card. My inspiration was a design from Splitcoast Stampers by Heather Summers. The one I'm making has different paper measurements, and will be for Mother's Day.

Gather together:

4 different patterned papers
(Base piece 12 x 4 1/2; Middle piece - 11 x 3 1/2in; Top piece 9 1/2 x 3in;
 4th color for matting and embellishments)

2 pieces of cardstock, 1/2 x 3in for slider tabs

Matted pieces 1 x 2 3/4 for top image; 1 3/4 x 3 inch for middle image; 2 x 3 1/2 bottom image

Paper cutter or craft knife, Ribbon or tab for top pull

Adhesive

Stamps and Ink, Cricut Cuts, Punches or Embellishments as needed

Here are the instructions for putting the card together:

Starting with the base piece - (12x 4 1/2) . Fold in thirds. (When folded it will measure approx. 4 x 4 1/2). Crease folds. (Open back up - face down) On the right third you are going to make two slots with your papercutter.TIP: On the edge of the orange cutter slider is a pointer - that's where the blade will cut.  Other cutters also have a marker to let you be precise.

One cut will be 1 inch from the fold line on the left and one cut will be 1 inch from the right edge - starting 1/2 inch from the top and stopping 1/2 inch from the bottom. (the slots will be about 3 1/2 inches long).

Now with the middle piece 11x 3 1/2:  Fold in thirds. Cut two more slots with your papercutter as you did on the base piece.  These cuts are also 1 inch from the fold line on the left and 1 inch from the right edge - this time 1/4 inch from the top and bottom. (the slots will be about 3 inches long).  You can see the slider pieces threaded into the slots in the photographs.

Now the top tier:  Fold in thirds. Place adhesive on far left edge to secure closed. Make a bee-utiful bow with your "I Love You, Mom" bow maker, or Bow Easy Bow Maker,  and attach to the top edge, or you could use a tab pull if it is more approprite for your design. Take the middle piece and place face down on your work surface with the slots to your right. Weave the cardstock slider piece thru the slots. Fold the patterned paper over and gently fold the ends around it. Move slider to the top of the slots. This creates the sliding mechanism for this tier.

Center the top piece in the center third with the right sides face down. The bottom edge should be inline with the slider bar. Apply adhesive to the slider bar. Fold over and attach to the bottom edge of the top tier. Apply adhesive to the far left edge and close this third making sure not to adher the slider mechanism. Now pull on the ribbon gently and see how the tier slides!!!

Repeat the steps to attach the middle tier to the base piece.

Add your matted pieces and embellishments.

Your card is now finished! Here is the card opened and embellished for my mom!!! I used my Martha Stewart corner punch and lots of bling embellishments. My Mom loves pink and bling!  When you're 99 years young you should get lots of things you love!!!!

A few tips: it's only paper - don't be afraid to give it a try!

Use patterned paper for this card as the thinner paper is easier to slide.

Don't do too many layers on the top and middle tiers, if it's too thick it will be hard to slide.

You can place a gift card in the top tier slot if you'd like another surprise for your mom!!

Thanks for looking! Give it a try! It is MUCH easier to do than it is to explain!!

Slider cards are in your future! Have FUN!!!

Judy Ford