A Quote in a Frame

The thing about craft is that it's a great way to gift something special to someone special. But after a while it starts getting monotonous... You can do cards, or gift boxes, or photo frames or an album or a notebook/ journal... then what? I was faced with exactly this question as I tried to create something for a very special teacher in my son's school. She has been so fabulous with my son, bringing out the very best in him and I wanted to give her something really special but as always, I ran out of ideas. I was going to do a photo frame (again) and then as I was making it, I suddenly thought - what if I slip in a meaningful quote in the frame so that it becomes a keepsake for this wonderful lady. Voila! A new crafty gift idea was formed!!!

As always the fabulous supplies at ItsyBitsy came in handy. I found a wooden easel with a small canvas. I covered this easel with white Gesso and then proceeded to tinge it the Tattered Rose Distress Ink. I have to admit, the ink barely stayed on the Gesso but after much effort, the easel finally got a pink tinge. 

For the frame I took some grey chipboard and again covered it with white Gesso. I inked the edges with the same shade of distress ink and covered it with some paper from the DCWV Luxury Stack. I embellished the frame with some hand made flowers using the Sizzix Sizzlits Flower Layer Die and more paper from the DCWV Luxury stack. The flowers coordinated perfectly with pattern paper since it was from the same stack and fortunately I found ribbon that matched as well!

As a final touch, I took a tiny picture frame Blue Moon charm and slipped in a picture of my son and this extremely special teacher. I love this little addition. I was going to use the same photo for the centre space when it was going to be a photo frame but this way it doesn't dominate the gift. It's a small little accent for the side. 

Finally here's the quote I used

"The art of Teaching is the art of assisting Discovery."

I added a little sentence after that saying "And you Sunita Aunty have perfected the art of assisting discovery".

Supplies Used:

Child made 60th Birthday Card - guest post by ArtsyCraftsyMom

It is my mom's 60th Birthday on 26th this month. Though we couldn't be with her on her birthday, we wanted to send our love and wishes on this amazing milestone. What better way to show our love than to send a cute handmade card.  I also wanted to have a craft project that my daughter could mostly do on her own. 

To make the card, we used the yellow chart paper from itsy bitsy. It is light and can hold its shape at the same time. We love these large sheets and use it for many many craft activities. During the Diwali Sale we had picked up the sheet for just 10 rs each. 

Since it is my mom's 60th Birthday, we wanted a card that could hold 10 candles on each page and wanted the accordion fold to have 6 pages. So total 60 candles on the card.  For this, I cut  the large chart paper across its broad edge. and then glued the edges together to form a long sheet. We then Did an Accordion fold to make a card with 6 pages. 

Lil P was excited to see so many colourful stickers. She picked up every piece from my foam sticker collection. Some numbers, Alphabets, Hearts, Flowers , Butterflies..

First we cut two 12x12 pattern papers into 6 pieces; 3 pieces each. This formed our large cake that ran across all the 6 pages. Then we stuck them onto our card using glue sticks. We found these cute glitter washi tapes at Itsy Bitsy and used 5 colours to make 10 candles on each page. Once our 60 candles were ready, Lil P stuck Foam hearts as flames.

We also had a glitter "Happy Birthday" Banner that we had purchased from the party supplies at Itsy Bitsy. We took each letter apart and stapled it on our card.

We left some spaces  between each letter to stick on some printed photographs of my mom with us.

Some more flowers were placed to beautify the card. My mom loves flowers and has a fabulous garden back home so Lil P loved to paste them everywhere.

We added some butterflies and dragon flies .. all nice and glittery at the top of the card.  Finally the letters 60th was added between Happy & Birthday and our Handmade card was ready. Most of the activities Lil p was able to do independently and this kept her busy for nearly 2 hours.

Happy Birthday Ma! Hope you love the card and wishing you many many many happy returns of the day. 

Shruti Bhat is a Software Quality Analyst by profession who mostly exercises her left brain during the day at work and her right brain takes over at home. She loves crafting with her 7 year old daughter and blogs at ArtsyCraftsyMom.com. She can be reached at @ArtsyCraftsyMom on Twitter, Facebook & Pinterest

Greens and Purples make a Grand Duo!

It's the fag end of the school year and I usually spend this time making little gifts for my son's teachers. Last year I made a batch of cupcakes with some cupcake toppers which you can view here. This year I decided to make something a little more elaborate. He has 2 fantastic teachers and here's the gift set for one of them. 

I decided to  make a card and coordinating notepad and wanted to use some different colours and techniques. I am not much of a stamper but the new stamp sets at ItsyBitsy have really sparked a renewed interest. I used this floral stamp that I recently picked up and within that I chose one of the designs. I stamped it multiple times on a piece of card and then coloured them using my copic markers from Itsy Bitsy. I found myself using purple for the flowers and green for the leaves so that became the colour scheme of this set. 

After stamping the flowers and colouring them I used some purple card stock along with my Tattered Floral Garland Die to make some coordinating flowers. I inked each flower with purple ink and added some gold glitter in the centre. I used the same glitter on the center of each stamped flower too. Then I took out one of my favourite ItsyBitsy materials - the jute sheet. I ripped out some threads from the edge  to give it a frayed look and added my stamped image and flowers on top. 

All this was placed on a sheet of pattern paper from the extremely earthy DCWV Habitat stack. It's such a fabulous set of papers, full of greens and purples and browns! Love it to bits. I added a green bow and a purple button and my card was ready. 

I followed the same scheme for the notepad and which I bound at the top using some binding wire from We R memory Keepers. I cut all the papers inside the notepad myself and the cover was made using some ItsyBitsy heavy duty chipboard. 

Isn't it marvellous! I am delighted with the outcome and can't wait to present it! What do you think of the green and purple duo? Would love to hear your views. Do leave a comment!

Supplies Used

Albums for Early School Memories

It's that time of year when schools are wrapping up for the holidays. Some of our kids are going to middle school and others to senior school. My son has 4 friends in his carpool and I have become quite fond of these little ones. All 4 of them will now be entering middle school - going to class 1. My son still has a year to go but for these kids, it's the end of their play school years. I wanted to make something for them sort of as a goodbye present and I thought a school album might be just the right thing.

The album is completely made of ItsyBitsy chipboard - the cover as well as the inside pages. I like the idea of chipboard pages as they won't bend over time with the decorative embellishments inside. There are 3 girls and 1 little boy in this group of kids so I had to make 3 girly ones and 1 not so girly one. Here's a look at the girly one.

I started with papers from the DCWV All About Me Stack and I bound the album together using some pink felt from itsyBitsy. For the title of each year of school I used the Sizzix Alpha Bubbles Die to etch out the letters. It's a fantastic die that provides upper case, lower case and numbers. You can either use the die negative which is circular or use the die cut themselves which are thin alpha-numerals. Along with each title page I added a frame using the Sizzix Swirly Frame Die along with a rim of pearls. A few butterflies at the corners added to my girly album. 

I added a pocket on one page for each child to slip in any small craft work they had preserved over the years. I know I have preserved some of the things my son's teachers sent home so here's hoping they will have a few things to add as well. 

The third page of every section had a 'details section'. I used the Spellbinders Shapeabilities Office Supplies Die to create this note-page die cut and then provided space for the child to add her teachers names, friends names, sections and so on. 

Now on to the album for the little boy. I truly found it quite difficult to avoid girly embellishments but thanks to ItsyBitsy, there were plenty of sporty masculine accents to add to my project. I started with the DCWV Grade School Stack which is full of bold bright neutral colours as the paper scheme for my album. For the title, I used some green craft sticks from ItsyBitsy and created a frame with them. Some soccer ball stickers proved to be great embellishments for the frame. 

I followed the same scheme of titles and sections only this time, there were no swirly frames, pearls, butterflies or bows. Instead the frame was straight edged, the embellishments sporty and the colours bright and neutral. 

For the pocket for craft work I added some dinosaur stickers from the ItsyBitsy stickers range. I tell you with ItsyBitsy, you are certain to find something for literally any theme.

Well that wraps up this post. I have 2 more albums to make and hopefully they will be ready for presentation by Friday when school closes for the year.

Supplies Used:

Winners for the ItsyBitsy Say it With Roses Challenge

It's time to announce the winners of the ItsyBitsy Say It with Roses Challenge. We have to say we were blown away with the quality of the creations this time around! You folks are seriously talented! So without further delay, here are the 3 winners (in no particular order) each of whom will receive a voucher worth Rs. 500 from Itsybitsy.

 Deepti for this pretty and sweet stamped card with beautiful roses as the central feature! Love it!!!

Hussena for this adorable chest of drawers project with pretty floral accents - how pretty is that!

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Sachi for this gorgeous flower center piece card - look at those roses, aren't they outstanding!! 

Congratulations to our 3 winners. Please write to info@itsybitsy.in to claim your vouchers and a badge to display on your blog!!

Now on to the finalists for the contest! We've shortlisted six of our favourites and again here they are in no particular order!

Durga for this pretty stamped creation full of pretty soft colours!

Pratyusha is a regular in our toppers list and this time around she made this beauty filled with roses!

Shilpa made it to the finalist list with this shadow box creation - so original and so very pretty!

Jaya's gorgeous card with such pretty colours won a place in our finalist group - so dramatic and the blues are mesmerising!

Pooja seems to have mastered the shabby chic style with this pretty pink creation. Gorgeous hand made flowers too!!

We've always been a fan of Rajni's work and this gorgeous card is one of our all time favourites!! 

Congratulations to our finalists!! Well done!! Please write in to info@itsybitsy.in to claim your finalist badge!

And thanks once again to all the participants, voters and visitors. We love celebrating craft with all of you and your work continues to inspire and impress us!! Looking forward to seeing your work for our current challenge - the ItsyBitsy Precious Baby Challenge!

The ItsyBitsy Precious Baby Challenge

It's time for a brand new challenge here at ItsyBitsy and this month our theme is 'Precious Baby'. You can create anything you like as long as it incorporates a baby theme somewhere in the project. You can do a card, some baby room decor, baby shower projects, the works! And to inspire you along the way I have put together a Baby Record Explosion Box. It's an explosion box that also functions as a Baby Record space. 

For some of us moms, a baby scrapbook or album requires too much work to create and massive effort at keeping it updated. So I figured, how about make it quick and easy and something that can always find a place on a nursery shelf. I started with a pretty 4" by 4" by 4" box with a pretty bow at the top. I used some pattern paper from the DCWV All About Me Stack. I found myself choosing some soothing blues and yellows and greens making it a gift for a little boy. 

The central feature of the box is the 3D baby cot that I created following this template. I adjusted it here and there to suit my needs but that template really worked marvellously for my project. I made a little paper mattress and pillow inside and created a crib hanger with some buttons on the outside. To add some decoration to the top, I punched out 3 hearts on the head and foot of the crib. 

The rest of the panels of the box are devoted to recording various details of the little ones life. For each of the headers I used one of the dies included the Spellbinders Shapeabilities Adress Book set. It was just perfect for the size of my panel. The rest of the rectangles are cut using the ItsyBitsy Rectangle die set. Here are more views of the different panels. 

For the baby hand and foot print I made a little pocket with a a pull out tag so that the new mama can easily get the baby's hand or foot print. It is no easy feat to achieve this imprint - I know I had to do it multiple times for each of my kids and just about got it.

Finally I provided ample space for photographs - photographs of the little bundle of joy, photos of the family and a family tree section for the immediate family members. I used the ItsyBitsy square die to create these spaces. 

Rules of the challenge:

1. Your entry can be anything hand made as long as incorporates a baby related theme in the creation.
2. Entries can be submitted until 10th April 2014.
3. Entries will be open to audience vote from 11th to 14th April 2014
4. Following this, the top 3 and finalists will be selected after combining both audience feedback and judges feedback.
5. In order to submit your entry, click on the inlinkz button provided at the end of this post, add your image and link to your blog post containing the submission. There is a single category for all types of hand made creations.
6. If you do not have a blog, please create an album on any online photo gallery like Facebook, Picasa etc, ensure the settings are public and link it up as detailed in point 5. 
7. Each participant can submit a maximum of 3 entries.
8. Submitting old projects is not permitted. All submissions have to be created after 18th March 2014
9. In your blog post, create a link back to this page - The ItsyBitsy Precious Baby Challenge.
10. Entries are welcome from all over the world however if you are one of the top 3, we can only ship your prize to an Indian address.
11. We will select the top 3 entries all of whom will receive vouchers worth Rs. 500 redeemable online at www.itsybitsy.in.
12. In addition 6 finalists  will be selected all of whom will receive a badge to display on their blog.
13. The top 3 will also be invited to send in guest post for the ItsyBitsy Blog in March/ April 2014.

Right that's it from me! Hope this challenge intrigues as much as it did me and looking forward to seeing your entries!

Submissions for the ItsyBitsy Precious Baby Challenge

A Gift Tag - Easel Style!

Folks thank you so much for your fabulous participation in the Roses Challenge. We will be sharing the results very soon. I had a very bad bout of flu the whole of last week so our next challenge will be a little delayed. Watch this space for something sweet coming very soon. 

Now on to this project. I see a lot of crafters creating these really elaborate tags full of distressing, die cutting, embossing and heavy embellishments and I always find myself thinking - what are they going to do with such an elaborate gift tag? Just stick it on a gift or bag? And where do they write the message to the recipient? Won't it get lost when it's glued to the gift box? I was always quite confused with this particular project.

So when I joined the herd and made an elaborate gift tag, I couldn't leave it alone. I had to provide solutions to all the questions I just asked above. Ultimately I decided to put it on an easel card frame as I thought it would be more functional and attractive if it could stand up on a gift. Plus there is ample space to add a personal message to the recipient. 

The picture on the left shows how the tag looks when it's closed or lying flat. It looks just like a regular gift tag. The picture on the right shows it standing upright. I stamped a little message on the base and used the ribbon knot to keep it upright. 

 To embellish the tag I used some of my favourite ItsyBitsy supplies. Their corrugated papers are just awesome - so many colours and great to create different effects. I used the Sizzix Curly Frame die to outline my stamped image. Then I distressed it with Worn Lipstick Distress Ink. I covered the entire die cut with Ranger Rock Candy Crackly paint which adds this cracked porcelain finish, just beautiful! The stamp is one of ItsyBitsy's Little Darling ones, had it for a while and finally found a project to use it. Then I added some fabulous ItsyBitsy blooms all over the corner. I found crochet flowers too that perfectly complemented the tag and I was happy to add it on. 

Here's a closer look at the sentiment on the bottom. Love how it can go with any occasion because it reads 'Something Special For You.

How do you like my Easel Gift Tag? Would love to know!

Supplies Used