I have a confession: I always say I’m not a scrapbooker, but I made a layout yesterday.  I remembered why I don’t scrapbook as much.  Because this one layout took me about 4 hours.  I loved detailed layouts with hidden journaling, lots of teeny tiny embellishments, and just the right papers!  I think I might actually frame it in a shadow box because I LOVE how it turned out!  (The little awning is my favorite, it lifts up for hidden journaling!)

This layout would not have been possible without some amazing adhesive!  I used up about two full sheets of foam squares (the entire shoppe is lifted up from the background with 2 layers of squares) and the tiny layered details of the sweets on the counter were EASY to adhere with the transfer tape from 3L.  (I did tell you I was on the DT for Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L, right?!?)

Well, I got to see some new adhesives they’ll be releasing at CHA, and let me tell you they are amazing, but that’s all I can tell you for now!  Want to find out about their new adhesive before everyone else at CHA?  If you do, be sure you’ve signed up at www.theshapetocome.com.  If you register your email address there before July 25th, you’ll get a special pre-show announcement!  (You’ll also be entered to win $50 worth of Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L products (winner announced on their blog August 2nd.!)

**How about this?  Let’s do a giveaway here too!  Leave a comment here on my blog and I’ll draw a winner for $25 of Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L products on July 25th!**

Erin

Download the PDF here.  It includes the Strawberry boxes in a light and dark pink, 2 different cards, and the blank template if you want to use your own patterned paper to make the boxes!  (Have a Cricut and the SCAL software?  You can download the box template here and the leaf template here to let the Cricut cut it out for you!)

Instructions:

Print the entire PDF out onto white cardstock.  There are 2 cards on the page, cut in half so you’ve got two pieces that are 8 1/2″ x 5 1/2″.

Score at 4 1/4″, and fold.  Your cards are done!

To fold the box see the video below.  (It was going to be a little tricky to show you in pictures so I made a quick video instead!)

See, it is pretty easy!

If you are using your Cricut and SCAL, or the blank template to use your own patterned paper, just cut the base out of a strawberry colored paper, and the leaves out of a leaf colored paper.

Layer and glue the leaves onto the base.

Fold according to the instructions in the video above.

Let me know if you enjoyed this and Happy Crafting!

Erin

P.S.  Have you registered for CraftyCon yet?  It’s going to be awesome!  There’s even a special code right now for an additional $50 off of registration!

Be sure to check out the speakers too!  There’s lots of great crafty business minded people and we’re adding more almost daily!  Hope to see you there!

This project actually has two separate parts to it.  First off we’re going to make a shrinky dink ruler.  Trust me, this will make ALL your shrinky dink projects easier from here on out!  This is how you’re going to know for sure how much your plastic will shrink!  It always says 1/3 …but who wants to do the exact math on that?!?  Not me!

Tools for the first part of the project:

1 sheet Shrinky Dinks-Frosted Rough and Ready

1 ruler

Embossing Heat Tool

various colored pencils

Cut a piece of shrinky dink out that’s 10″ long and 1/2″ wide.  Next you’ll want to line it up next to your regular ruler and transfer all the measurements onto your piece of shrink dink.  I used blue for all the 1″ lines, green for all the 1/2″ lines and black for the 1/4″ lines.  Using a colored pencil works well, the sharper you have it, the finer your line and the more accurate your “ruler” will be.  If you think it will be easier for you, don’t be afraid to write in the numbers below the marks too!

After that, just shrink it!  I use my Embossing Heat Tool for the shrinking process instead of the oven.  Faster results, and you don’t have to heat up your entire oven for a few little plastic pieces!  Here’s what it will look like finished:

See how all the different colors make it easy to spot each 1″, 1/2″, and 1/4″ measurements?  Now we’ll use this to determine how big our piece needs to be cut so that it shrinks to the right size for our project.

For the earrings you’ll need:

Shrinky Dinks-Frosted

Pigment Stamp Ink

Silver stickers

Basic jewelry making supplies (wire, pliers, coordinating bead, earring hooks)

For our earrings I wanted something that shrunk to be 5/8″ x 1 3/4″.  I drew a box on some scratch paper that was actually 5/8″ x 1 3/4″ then “measured” is with my shrinky dink scale.

You can see that the 5/8″ piece actually measures 1 1/2″ according to the shrinky scale.  (Remember the blue is 1″ and the green is 1/2″.)

And the longer 1 3/4″ side actually measures 4″ with the shrinky scale.

Now we’ve got our measurements for the shrinky dink piece: 1 1/2″ x 4″!  Go ahead and cut out two pieces to this measurement:

Now stamp away!  Use your permanent pigment ink and stamp a pattern onto your shrinky dink pieces.  I used one shape from the Outside The Box stamp set and one shape from the Build A Border set.

Don’t worry about the colors not being too bright, when they shrink they will be more saturated and noticeable!  (Tip: Punch your holes to attach these to your earring hooks now, before you shrink them!  I didn’t do that and it made it a little harder to punch the holes…my Crop-A-Dile had to come to the rescue for that one!  Punch your holes in the middle near the top!)

Now shrink!  It’s really easy!  I even did a little video so you can see how fast it works with your embossing gun!  It can get a little out of control and sometimes it won’t flatten as soon as it’s done, so you’ll see in the video I used an empty acrylic mounting block to flatten it as soon as I turned off the heat gun.  (There’s no sound…I muted out all the embossing gun noise!)

Here’s a shrunken one and a non-shrunken one.  See how the color is more saturated?

Shrink your other one and punch the holes if you forgot to do that before your shrunk it.

Now add your little silver stickers:

We’re almost done!  Just a little bit of wire work and we’ll be all done!  Make a small loop in your bendable wire like so:

Then add your coordinating bead and loop the other end.

Loop one end around the earring hook and the other around a small jump ring that’s attached to the whole in the top of your shrinky dink piece.  You’re all done!

Happy Crafting!

So here’s the first one!  Hexagon-A-Thon!  I love hexagons and their ability to be used separately or fit nicely together to make a pattern.  This set comes with 10 hexagon images that can be interchanged!  The three larger borders fit nicely around the smaller ones and are easily stamped on top because they are clear!

Outside the box is a great stamp set too!  This set has 4 blocks, and the fillers, so if you just want to stamp the design great, but if you want to fill it in, just stamp the coordinating image on top.  The boxes along the bottom will fit easily around the blocks too if you want a little bit of a border!

Build A Border!  This set is great for making backgrounds, borders, and many other things to add to your card and scrapbook layouts!  I even designed the border stamps so that they are super easy to manipulate and you can even bend the borders to make circles and ovals very easily!  I love what you can do with clear stamps!!

Furnishing Fun.  I love Interior Design, but there’s not too many sets out there that include it.  This has a cute little shelf with two vases.  (The middle of the vases are different stamps so it’s easy to make it a different color (or emboss) just the middle!  There’s a few different flowers for the vases as well as a few cute pears.  The shelf can actually be made into a picture frame too!  (I’ll do a card showing you that soon!)  And of course the chair!  Love the chair!  Looks cute with a little pear sitting on top of it!

There you have it!  My brand new releases!  And until October 1st-all stamp sets will be on sale for $12.50!!!  Even the previous releases!  And FREE shipping on all pre-tax orders of over $40 STILL applies!  Now is the time to stock up!  Visit the website here or if it’s easier to purchase from Etsy you now can!  I opened up an Etsy shop to make it easier on those who already have an Etsy account.  Purchasing through either site will still give you the sale price, as well as FREE shipping on all orders over $40!!

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Giveaway-  Ok, now that you’ve stuck with me-ready for the details?  I’ll be giving away to 1 lucky reader 1 each of the above 4 stamp sets!  You’ll get ALL the new sets!  How cool is that?!?  Here’s what you have to do (and how to get extra entries!):

1. Leave a Comment at the end of THIS post and let me know which one is your favorite.  Easy, right?

2. Extra Entry: Share this post on Facebook.  It’s easy with the little Facebook button on the bottom of this post. Leave a comment letting me know you shared it on Facebook.

3. Extra Entry: Share my new releases on Twitter.  Again, use the button at the end of the post to easily share it!  (Be sure to include @eschlosser in the tweet so I can see and leave another comment on this post.)

4. Extra Entry: Blog about your favorite new stamp set and include a link back here.  Let me know that you blogged about it here in the comments.

5. Extra Entry: Sign-up for my blog feed in the sidebar there.  (If you’re already signed up, you’re already entered!)

6. Extra Entry: Be a fan of Schlosser Designs on Facebook!  Either click on the link on the right sidebar, or click here to go directly there!  (If you’re already a fan, awesome!  Just leave me a comment letting me know that!)

So go ahead and enter up to 6 times with the entry ideas above.  Good luck!  The giveaway ends October 1st and I’ll announce the grand winner October 2nd!

I’ve had this idea bookmarked for a while and have been mulling over the best thing to do with it.  I figured that since it’s back to school time there are lots of lunches being made.  One of my favorite things growing up was that my dad hid little notes in our lunches for us to find.  Based off this memory, I made some cute little joke cards for you to sneak in your child’s lunch!

So gather up your supplies and let’s get going:

1 Free Joke Card PDF printed on white cardstock (click the link to download)

Foam Paint Brush

Acrylic Paint in coordinating colors (I used Pumpkin and Paradise)

Coordinating Glitter (I used Martha Stewarts Goldyn Beryl and some red glitter I got from Jenny On The Spot at BlogHer)

1 Transparency Sheet

Some dishwashing liquid-not pictured (like Dawn, any color works fine, I used green and it doesn’t affect the color of your paint at all!)

1. On your transparency, put a puddle of paint and a smaller puddle of dishwashing liquid.  Mix it up with your foam brush.

2. Spread out the mixed up paint/soap mixture into a even layer.  It may have lots of bubbles in it and it’s ok if it does, they will slowly work their way out on their own.

3. Sprinkle wet paint with glitter and let dry.  While you’re waiting for the paint to dry, trim your cards out on the gray dashed lines.

4. When your painted transparency is completely dry, carefully cut out some rectangles that are 2″ x 1 1/4″.  The easiest way to cut these without scratching off the surface is to use scissors, a paper trimmer may scratch off the paint. 5. Put clear tape inside the box on the card.

6. Stick your scratch off piece on top of the tape.

7. Scratch it off!  Yea!

I hope you enjoyed this project!

Erin

The larger flower was made from some 1 1/2″ wide satin ribbon.  I LOVE how it turned out!  I added a fancy brad in the middle for a little accented touch.  What do you think?  I’m thinking they would also make great hair clips, brooches, or embellishments on a little handbag!

This package and a card are available for download over at Christy’s site!

So until next week, here’s a printable calendar for you! Here’s the preview below.
You can download the PDF by clicking here. Just print it on cardstock without scaling or fitting to page. If you trim the page in half you’ll have two calendars. One to keep and one to give to a friend. You could also print it onto fabric like this and border it in a coordinating fabric and have a nice hanging calendar for the year. I did a girly color scheme and a little more manly color scheme. (I got my fabric for my printer at Hobby Lobby. Most any craft store should have some!) If there are some other color schemes you’d like, let me know and I can recolor a few!

Happy New Year!!!

1 sheet of colored/patterned cardstock for the outside
5 sheets of cardstock, or more if you use plain printer paper (just remember your stapler will have to go through them!)
coordinating ribbon

Cut the following:
(2) 4″ x 8″ pieces for the outside of the notebook
(10) 3 7/8″ x 7 7/8″ for the inside

Now, just stack everything together and staple on the left-hand side. I then covered the staples with a piece of ribbon.
You can embellish the cover however you want. Try a monogram, embossed stamp, felt stickers, or anything else you’d like.
For mine, I used two strips of 8″ long paper, one is 1″ wide and the patterned paper is 3/4″ wide.

Yep, really easy! Hope you like it!

(Also, I’m just about finished with an awesome autumn themed tutorial. So, dust off your sewing machines and prepare for some cute fall home decor items!)

I hope you like it! I put together a book for you!

It’s the Project Recipe Book!

I would have loved to have this book when I was first starting out with card making. It can be really hard to come up with different layouts for your cards. It’s all black and white layouts which make it easier to add colors to your projects.

Lots of times I’ll look at a card and decide I don’t like it. Being the designer I am, I then ask myself why I didn’t like it. It’s usually that the colors they used are not my favorite. When I look at it again I like the layout, just not the paper they used. So, this is why this book is very simple to use. Just find the layout you like and add your own colors. This book has 40 different layouts that are easy to do. It will also tell you whether the layout will work for a scrapbook, card, or both. Here’s a sample image from the book, with my notes to explain. Click on it to make it larger to read.
It’s a nice handy size of 5 1/2″ x 4 1/4″. And it’s spiral bound so it will actually stay open when you’re working on your projects. It’s in the store now and it’s $10.