Stash Busting

Another round of stash busting. We have our Great Agers program this week at the church. It's a monthly event hosted by our church, which brings together community members for lunch, social time and entertainment. I've been frequently asked to provide treat boxes/items for our guest. It's right up my alley. This year I'm partnering with a friend to plan and assemble the monthly treat items, a big bonus because over time the program has grown to include up to 40 guests.

This month's theme is winter...of course. Even though the temperatures have been fluctuating and have even hit close to 50 degrees we figured you can never go wrong with cookies, hot chocolate mix, and cute snowmen.

 The snowmen were print & cut from my Silhouette library as were the phrases. I only needed to add to the mix as I already had a lot of the items in my stash. Glitter snowflakes I bought from WalMart years ago. Colors for the treat boxes was dictated by what I had on hand...blue, teal, pink, red and green.

Stash Busting

It's a rainy, dreary day in this part of the country so today I'm spending time in the craft room prepping for Halloween. I usually don't create a lot of Halloween items, though it hasn't stopped me from collecting a lot of themed items over the years. A few cards and a few treat bags for the kids is the norm and typically in a mad dash at the end of October.  This year volunteered to provide the treat bags for the Great Agers luncheon so I need to prep 36 treat bags. Good motivation to begin early and to make a hefty dent into my stash.

Here are a few peaks of the tags I'm creating. More to come.

Valentine Treat Bags

A few quick treat bags made with glassine bags and some valentine doodads I've collected over the years. The brads were picked up at Walmart recently and on sale no less.

Giving Thanks

I like to have something festive at each place setting when I host the family for Thanksgiving. Last year I made these treat bags using glassine bags and stamps from Papertry Ink. Not exactly sure what I'm going to put together this year. I've seen lots of great ideas on Pinterest and my brain is still stewing ideas. It had better land on something quick and given the time frame, something easy.

At the Speed of Light

That's how quickly I felt time zip by me this past month. Lately there's always something on the agenda so I'm spending more time in the craft room and very little time online. Not a bad thing.

So what do you do with 12 boxes of left over chocolate Hershey bars from our Christmas crafts? Well if you're my nephew then you try to convince me to hand over a box...or two or three. Believe me I'm not that hard to convince. I don't need the extra sugar and in reality, though he can afford it, neither does he. Lucky for me (us) Mom came to the rescue with a plan to kick off fund raising for the Youth Group. The kids are planning to attend APS (Appalachia Service Project) this summer. They don't get to attend every year as it takes quite a bit of planning, coordination and cash; perfect opportunity for us to help out and at the same time get rid of the mounds of chocolate bars. We connected with the Youth Pastor and then Mom and I spent a weekend crafting for an impromptu Valentine Bazaar. What started with Hershey bars quickly morphed into a "few" additional items when the LD (Lettering Delight) email landed in my inbox. Come on...how was I suppose to resist these?

I did a slight modification for the bazaar. The pinch box is cute but a bit time consuming for mass production on a schedule. Instead I filled a small glassine bags with Hershey Hugs and Kisses and attached the bag to the back with a couple of staples. They were a BIG hit and held up well even with some handling. If I were to make these again, especially for a bazaar, I'd double the card stock on the body pieces to provide extra stability. Don't want to put all this work in and then have an arm or tail tear when they're being handled.

A photo of our puny valentine Hershey bars. And yeah, the monster has a bit of Yoda going on. We used papers from the K&Company valentine stack and mainly designs from my Cricut library.

And since we were on a roll we also made a bunch of sucker flowers. These actually went to a single buyer who bought the entire bucket. When all was said and done we collected a little over $150 for the Youth Group. A small drop in the bucket compared to the amount the youth will need to raise but not a bad start for the fund.

Catch Up

Ummm...has it really been more than a month since my last update?! Seems so. It's been a busy, busy month; traveling, family functions and in between some crafting for our upcoming Church Bazaar. I always try to dedicate my free time in October towards crafting for the holiday bazaar, which means I've been in full holly and ivy mode. A bit strange considering we haven't even hit Halloween. I feel like a local department store with tinsel displayed long before Fall has even arrived. Ha! But I've learned if I don't start early I just add stress to already months packed with birthdays, holidays and events. The hard part is returning my mind set from snow and Santa to more appropriate Fall themed crafts...like Halloween treat bags. Yeah, those were still hanging over my head.

Remember those cute tags I made last month? Well I finally sat myself down and tackled putting together the bags. I think they turned out pretty cute and I count myself lucky a stray snowflake didn't find its way onto the bag. These weren't the only items on my Halloween to do list....

I also had these coffins to complete. I was struggling with embellishing the fronts until spotted some black raffia at Michaels. Some premade embellishments (on SALE!) and problem solved. The coffins are also from Michaels. I discovered a small $10 iTunes card, the ones that come in a 3 pack,  just fits inside; the perfect gift for the older kids in the family who no longer Trick or Treat but still appreciate a little treat.