Apple's Tip Jar

I've been busy with trainings and getting my room and lessons ready for the new school year which begins next Monday. There never seems to be enough time to get it all done, yet every year it all gets taken care of and the new year goes more smoothly than I could have hoped. In all this chaos, I realized I had never posted the photos of the tip jar I made for the restaurant run by my DIL's mother. The restaurant is called Apple's Bar and Grill and has a New York theme. I tried to keep it simple so that parts of it would be replaced fairly easily if necessary. After all, accidents do occasionally happen no matter how hard we try.
I started with a basic apothecary styled jar. I used a couple of precut wooden apple shapes and painted them up with acrylic paints. I added the skyline and simple lettering and attached one to each side. I had to try several different ways of attaching the apples to the glass surface. In the end, the best adhesive turned out to be self-adhesive Velcro squares.
Here are a couple more angles:

Library Check Out

It's my last day of summer break!! Tomorrow it's back to work getting ready for the students to come a week later. It's just not enough time to prepare! One of the things I did to make my classroom organization a little prettier was to make this little book to keep track of the books my students borrow from the classroom library. In the past I have just kept it on a piece of notebook paper in my planning binder.
The library cards were obtained from our wonderful Foundation for Education. They run a store where everything is free for teachers. The supplies and funds come from business and individual contributions from the community. Of course, we have limits on how much we can take each month to ensure there is enough to go around. It doesn't supply all my needs, but it sure helps and I'm am so grateful to have this resource available to me!
I made a little folder just a bit bigger than the cards, then added a little pocket to hold the cards. Each student will have a card for their check outs to be recorded.
Hopefully, I'll get a little creative time in today before I head back to work tomorrow!

Button Trays

A few weeks ago, I saw a post on someone's blog in which a button design patterned paper was used to line the bottom of a tray. When I saw it, I immediately thought of the 30,000 or so buttons I have stashed in my room. I used many of the older buttons that belonged to my grandmother who removed them from every piece of clothing before it finally hit the rag bag. She NEVER through anything away until it had been used to the point of disintegration.
With my project in mind, I started looking for an inexpensive wooden tray in which to adhere my buttons. After attaching the buttons to the bottom of the tray with Diamond Glaze, I allowed them to dry completely. Then I poured a coat of casting resin over the whole thing so that the buttons were completely covered. I actually made two of these trays because I knew that if I liked the result, I would want one too. I will be taking one to my friend and co-worker who has a bit of a button fettish. I told her I was going to bring her some of my button collection on Thursday, she just doesn't know that they are attached to the tray. Here are a couple more shots of the trays.

Dresser Box and Card

I made this dresser box and matching card the other day, but didn't get it posted until now. So many things to do!!! I got the tutorial for the box here.

The card probably didn't need all those buttons as far as the design goes, but there was a need....let's just say it was an embellishment opportunity! I used Baja Breeze card stock and some papers from K and Co. that I've had for years...much loved favorites!  Here are the two together:

Thanks so much for stopping in. I'm looking forward to two days of creating with the girls at the LSS!! I'll take too much stuff and get next to nothing accomplished, but that's okay!

Totally Stampalicious color challenged....yes I am!

The challenge at Totally Stampalicious this week is to use the colors Not Quite Navy, Chocolate Chip, and Creamy Caramel in a project. Colors that I love proved to be quite a challenge when I started putting ink to paper! First I will show you the card I made as my second project because I just wasn't feelin' it for the first one. Then we'll take a peak at the first attempt with these colors. I have a disclaimer on this card, though....I had to throw out the Creamy Caramel and I have totally cheated on this one!! I think I know why SU! is retiring Creamy Caramel. It used to be a go-to color for me, but when I read about the colors that were being retired, I realized that I hadn't used CC in AGES!!!

The dsp I used is from a new stack I picked up while at JoAnn's on Saturday. It's from DCWV and is called linen closet. These papers are in lovely shades of blues, greens, grays, and neutrals....gorgeous!!! And they are loaded with my favorite embellishment....glitter!!! The color I used is closer to Kraft...soon to be known as Crumb Cake....makes me want to buy it already!! Paper pieced the Old Brawd image and added a sentiment from the Farmer Hawg Sentiments set.  The flowers on her hat are another Saturday find from the thrift store for a small local church.....a bag of assorted hair pieces made from ribbon, beads, and silk flowers. They were a little beat up in their finished form, but torn apart for their pieces, they will embellish many cards in the future! Added little pearls to her necklace and some dimensional glaze to the cupcake icing. The pearls at the bottom were white half pearls that I colored with a Copic marker. It all ended up being a project I'm pretty happy with.
Now, my first project was another story. I just wasn't feeling that old flame for the creamy caramel and I think it really shows here, but since I will be carrying my coffee around in it, I guess I may as well show off my failure, too. Helps to keep one humble, too!

I used the Coffee Brawd set to make this. The dsp is from SU! and I think it's called Candy Lane or something close to that. It's from last year's catty, I think. The sentiment says "You haven't had enough coffee until you can thread a sewing machine while it's running!" My philosophy exactly!! Sure helps with the ability to multi-task!!
I never noticed until I actually made something with these little mugs how cloudy the plastic is on the outside. When you take the insert out, it's much brighter...see???

Well, they they are....my projects for this week's challenge. Kinda wishin' I had the wardrobes this "brawd" has with all the cool paper piecing that has ever been done with these sets!! I'm off to work now, in clothes that aren't nearly as cool as this chick's!! Why not play along this week? There's always a cool prize! Head over to Totally Stampalicious' blog and use the Mr. Linky tool to link your project so we can all see it, too!!
And be sure to check back on Thursday evening for our blog hop to celebrate our new release of cute Bugaboo images in acrylic!!! Very cool!!!

Desk top box

While I was at the Friday night crop at Priceless last weekend, I just couldn't seem to do anything right! Everything came out looking awful, I was afraid to even try coloring, and I finally just gave up and decided to play with my flower Nestie dies and some scrap papers. They were the only thing that seemed to be right, so I just kept making flowers. Then I decided to try them with some of the new SEI dsp, but I used the lighter weight solid sheets. They turned out so pretty with a matching brad in the center!! It had been a really long time since I made one of these desk top boxes that were created by Karli, a fellow blogger, teacher, and crafter extroidinaire. I first saw them on her blog, Crafting with Class, last summer and made several of them. I decided to use the same SEI series of papers to make another of these boxes.

I had to adjust the measurements just a bit to accommodate this border/corner punch combo from Martha Stewart. The ribbon is from May Arts and is actually a perfect match for the pink in the papers and super shiny!! I used a Just Right alphabet stamp to make the monogram on the lid. Here is a shot with the box open. It would look better with something in it, but I haven't decided if I am going to use this at home or at school.

Maybe I'll just fill it with chocolate for emergencies!!!

Gator Acrylic Memo Frame

This is just a quick little project I threw together for the teacher in the class next door who has many of the same kids as I do. We are always leaving ourselves little post it notes, so I thought this would be a little more economical for those little reminders we need next to the computer each day. You have probably already seen lots of these on the net, but just in case you haven't, I'll give you the simple deets.
I just bought a 4" x 6" acrylic frame at the dollar store and layed it down with the higher end in the back. I cut my papers to fit and added a mini tear off calendar to the bottom corner. A small piece of velcro closure at the top will hold a dry erase marker to keep it handy. I have also made these using stamped images and leaving off the calendar. Love how convenient these are to use. I can write myself a quick note and then just erase it. Having this near my computer is really saving me a lot of sticky notes!!