DIY Valentine Cards

Valentine's Day will be here before you know it. I'm sure you've seen the aisles at the stores filling up with all the pretty red and pink Valentine's Day decor and goodies for the kiddos to give to their friends. Let me start by saying, I know those little valentines which are sold in all the stores are very inexpensive. Some of you may be thinking you can't be bothered making something when you can get those for about a buck. However, if you are looking for something a bit more creative this year, and with a touch of recycling thrown in, this may be just what you are looking for.

I use old greeting cards regularly for various creative purposes and always end up with a stack leftover, you know the ones with the big cute critter or creature on the front. They are adorable but limited as far as creative purposes go. 

If you do not have little children at home, you may not have many of these cards coming into your house. But if word gets out that you are seeking old greeting cards for creating, you will get plenty passed on to you. You'll want to make sure no one wrote inside the front of the card because that's where your kiddos are going to sign their names. 

In addition to cards like these you will also need,

• this printed PDF of hearts (also available on our freebies page)
• colored paper if you want to make your own hearts
• glue
• lollipops
• scissor (including a pair with a fine tip if you want to cut little areas out) 
• a hand held hole punch if you have one. 

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The first step is to cut out the part of the image which you want to use. Like this:

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Then using an exacto knife or very sharp scissors like fingernail scissors, cut out the part of the image you want to put the heart under. Like this:

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Then glue in place any hearts or other pieces you want to add. You could include little bows, glitter, gems, etc. 

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Carefully cut little slits in the image with your sharp scissors, then slide the lollipop in. If your hand held hole punch will reach to the location where you want the lollipop holes then you can use it for making them. You may have to put a piece of tape over the lollipop stick on the back to keep it from sliding out.

That's it, sign the back and have the kids hand them out. Easy, repurposed, DIY valentine cards for the kiddos. 

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I didn't like how this guys foot was cut off at the edge of the card so I just put the heart over it. 

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DIY Party Favors

I wear many hats and admit that some days, it's a few hats too many. Our family owns a few business and one of the hats I wear is Marketing Director for a homecare agency our family owns (Abundant Blessings Homecare). So you will probably from time to time see things around this blog with tags on them which read "Abundant Blessings Homecare" because my creative juices overflow from one area of my life to another and sometimes the lines get blurred. As long as the overflowing and blurring create pretty colors, I'm good.

I had to come up with a few things for Christmas activities we are involved in and here's one of them:

This is a favor made using coin envelopes. Each one has four Andes Mints in it. Two Ghirardelli Chocolate squares also fit perfectly inside. 

I also made up some of these for other purposes....see I told you things overflow from one area to another. 

These would make great stocking stuffers, or DIY party favors for any party or event. They also make great DIY Marketing or Guerrilla Marketing ideas. In addition, they might be a perfect item to hand out at a trade show or other type of event. Just be forwarned... as with anything, if you have to make hundreds of them, you are probably going to get very sick of doing them, trust me, I know. I am so grateful for office help!

Here's a photo of them with a ruler so you can see the size

Make Your Own Paperwhite Bulb Kit - Win One Too!

There is a give-away at the end of this post to win one of these lovely Paperwhite bulb Kits. There is also a link to a PDF of the tags for these gifts.  Enjoy.

Twice a month a bunch of us ladies (both older and younger) get together. We share from Scripture and have bit of devotional time and then we get down to some serious creating! Last nights projects turned out BEAUTIFUL!!!

With Christmas fast approaching I planned the project to be something which could double as a gift. We made Paperwhite Bulb Kits. 

To make these here's what you will need:

• Plain terra cotta pots (I paid about $1 each for mine at Home Depot)
• Acrylic Paints
• Misc. papers to cut up if you want to use any of the images such as magazines, wrapping paper, etc.(greeting cards may be too thick). 
• Glue (regular old Elmers or school glue)
• Paint Brushes
• Potting Soil and bags to put it in
• Bag of Paperwhite (Narcissus) Bulbs and smaller bags to put them in. The regular price on these was $14.98 for 15 bulbs but they were on 50% off clearance at Home Depot, it's late in the season for bulbs so you might be able to find them discounted at your local store as well).
• Lacquer or other sealer (I used a spray, quick drying lacquer)
• Cellophane to wrap it all up or a gift bag to put it in and, ribbon

First, paint the pots with a coat of acrylic paint. You can either paint the entire pot one color or paint the top rim a second color or even paint stripes, whatever you wish. 

Then when the coat of paint is dry (it dries very quickly) put on a second coat if it is needed. If it isn't needed, you can just start decorating. You can add decoration with other colors of acrylics painting with reckless abandon, or if you are more of a reluctant creative, you can use pictures cut from magazines. Either way they turn out lovely. In the above photo, the flowers on the front pot are from magazines and the black and white scroll type design on the pink pot is from wrapping paper, see how easy this is? Cut your pictures out, trimming very closely. Then on a paper plate put some glue and add water to it to water it down. Using a paint brush, put the watered down glue on the back of the image and put it in place on the pot. Then brush the watered down glue all over the image (decoupage like). Don't worry, it will dry clear. You can also use Mod Podge for this but if you don't have any on hand, don't go spending money you don't have to, the glue works just fine.  For the polka-dots we used pencil erasers or q-tips, either works.

For the words, we used rubber stamps dipped in acrylics or we just painted the words on with a paint brush.

After you have your pot looking like you want it to, put on a coat of some sort of sealer. If you only used acrylics on your pot, you may not need to do this step, but if you used any paper embellishments, definitely put on a coat of sealer. This is what we used:

While the sealer is drying you can bag up your potting soil. We used 1 Gallon Zip Lock Bags. Scoop in enough to just about fill the pot and seal the bag. 

Then put your bulbs in a bag and print the tags. I made a PDF for you to print the tags which we used. The first two pages are the header tags for the bags of bulbs. There are two versions because I had small zip lock type bags on hand and they measure 4" wide by 7" tall (header card for these is on page 1 of PDF). Because most of you probably don't have those bags on hand, I made a header card which fits on a quart size zipper bag (pg.2 of PDF). The other two pages of the PDF are the planting instructions for you to include in the pot and the tag for you to tie on the outside of the gift. Print everything on cardstock if you have it.  Paperwhite Bulb Kit PDF here.

After the pot is completely dry you can put everything together. Put the potting soil bag in the pot, set the bag of bulbs on top of that,  and put the card with the instructions in the pot. If you have cellophane on hand cut a long strip about twice as wide as the pot and long enough to tie together above it. Tie on a bow and the tag and then tape the edges. That's it, you have a lovely handmade gift.

If you have never grown paperwhites, you should give it a try this winter. It is just lovely to have beautiful blooms filling up the house in the dead of winter, they take 4-6 weeks to bloom so get them started now, come January you'll be so glad you did.

Now for the give-away...I made this lovely one so one of you lucky folks can enjoy your very own paperwhites come January.

The pot is a lovely bright red painted with glittery snowflakes. It comes complete with potting soil, bulbs, and instructions. It's all wrapped up in cellophane with a bow ready for you to enjoy yourself or give as a gift. 

There are two ways to enter the giveaway, first, you can leave a comment below stating if you plan to grow these yourself or give the kit as a gift if you win. The second way to enter is to "like" the new Because Liada facebook page at www.facebook.com/becauseliada.  All commenters and facebook "likes" will be entered into a hat and one winner will be drawn on December 10th, 2013.  I will pay shipping for the Paperwhite Kit to anywhere within the continental United States. I will ship it elsewhere but the winner will have to pay shipping (via paypal) for locations outside the continental United States. Winner will be drawn on December 10th, 2013.

UPDATE:  We drew a winner late last night and the winner has been notified. Once, they respond, we will announce the winner. Comments are being left on for this post in case anyone wants to comment on the tutorial, however, no additional comments will be entered in a drawing for the set. Thank you to all who entered. 

This giveaway was listed at the following locations:

Check out what else you can win.

Sweepstakes

Birthday Party Fun

Today we celebrated my daughters birthday. She wanted to have some friends over for tea and to have fun and play some games.

We made a tea cup shaped cake for her. I started by baking a chocolate cake (it was actually a recipe and a half) in a pie plate and in a stainless steel bowl which were well greased and floured. This is what it looked like just as I was beginning to frost the two pieces.

If you've never done a shaped cake before, it's very simple, it's more about the illusion than for the cake to look exactly like the item.  I know my cake has a hollow in the center in the top where the cake settled a bit, but we have a plan for that.

You'll need to put on at least two coats of frosting. The first coat is a crumb coat and seals in any crumbs so don't worry if it doesn't look great after the first coat. After you put on the second coat, you need to let the cake sit awhile so the frosting firms up so you can smooth it out. Here's the cake after the first coat of frosting. (If you usually use canned frosting, I do not know if that will firm up like it should to smooth it out. I use homemade frosting for this.)

After you get the second coat on, take a piece of wax paper gently rub the frosting with your finger through the wax paper to smooth the frosting. If the frosting sticks to the wax paper, you have not let the cake sit long enough. Smooth the frosting out to as smooth a texture as you desire. 

For my frosting, I use paste food colorings, they give great color and last forever. It is very convenient to store them in an egg carton. 

Here's the finished cake.  My daughter had asked me if we could make it look like it had hot chocolate in it so I figured the marshmallows was a perfect solution to the hollow in the center. I made the handle out of card stock. It actually could have used another coat of frosting to cover some areas a bit more but I figured the flowers would hide or at least distract from that.

Then it was time for some dress up fun.  My girls had hauled down a mountain of their dress up stuff. The girls had a blast, they were all so cute. 

Then it was time for some games.   Now what you are about to see is quite possibly the most ridiculous game known to man and there is not anyone who plays it who can escape looking stupid...so just get over it and have fun.

This is a game my mother use to have us play at my birthday parties when I was a child, and we loved it. I have used this game with both children and adults and I have used at a townwide harvest event and it was well received. So if you are looking for something new and silly, give this a try. First, you tie some curling ribbon or twine around the victims, I mean the participants, waist. Then you tie a piece hanging down in the back kind of like a tail. At the end of the piece of twine, tie on a carrot. Have each player squat over a jar, I used wide mouth canning jars but smaller mouth jars are more challenging. Each player must squat down and try to be the first to get their carrot in the jar....pure silliness, guaranteed laughs. If you want to add more challenge to this: give the carrot a good swing just as you say "go". The higher up you tie the carrot, the more challenging, but don't tie it up so high that they can't see it if they look through their legs or twist to the side. Like I said, you can't escape looking silly playing this game. 

Then a game outside...the kids played an apple relay race where they had to carry an apple under their chins and when they passed the apple, they could not use their hands.   

My daughter and her friends had a wonderful time on this perfect fall day. Thank you Lord for good friends and good times.