All The Trimmings!

I stopped at Joann's for one thing yesterday and I don't even remember what it was. What I left with was a bag of fabulous trim that was on sale for 50% off! I had wandered by looking for ruffled lace which I wanted to us in a mixed media album and noticed those spools were on sale. I turned around and all that fabulous fancy pom pom, sequined, crocheted, lacy, fluffy, trim by the yard was on sale too. So I filled my basket and bought a yard of each, a huge savings off what can be considerably more if you buy it on a trim card for a scrapbook line.

My first project was to take the white crocheted lace and alter it. I set it and sprayed it with Walnut Ink by Tsukineko in Eucalyptus and then used my heat gun to dry and distress it. I saw this on a Tim Holtz tutorial and loved it for distressing ribbon and trim.

Perfect Pearls and Alternatives

I love lots of bling on my pages and the swirly pearls and rhinestones are my favorite. Of course if you put these on a lot of pages it can start to get expensive.
I had purchased a bottle of perfect pearls and couldn't get rid of the chocolate kiss look it ended up with because of the sharp tip on the end of the "beads." So I was searching the T-Shirt aisle at Joann's and found these Beads In a Bottle by Tulip. I love experimenting so I bought a package, which comes with four tubes, took them home and found they worked great on paper and left a round little bead, no kiss! Soon after I heard Perfect Pearls altered their formula and the do indeed work great now, but finding a wide selection of colors can sometimes be difficult if you don't have a scrapbook store close by.

So I have been purchasing these Beads in a Bottle and love how they work on my pages!

An Alternative To Chocolate

I love advent calendars and usually have multiple ones. This year the kids received a Trader Joe's calendar with chocolate. Hannah opened Day 1, and a few minutes later, Jack opened the rest and ate all the chocolate. So on to plan B!
I made this paper advent calendar using the kit off SVGCuts.com: http://svgcuts.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3&products_id=227
The first one was a little off and Betsy told me she had adjusted the length of some pieces to correct it. So I found this fabulous two sided Christmas paper by K&Co and created the final one, with adjustments, and love how it turned out.
Since the chocolate finds a hard time sticking around, I filled each day with a coupon for the kids. (Thanks for another great idea Betsy!) Day one was for staying up and extra half hour, day two for hot cocoa at Starbucks. So fun and great to spend a little time doing something fun with the kiddos each day!