Silhouette Adventures-Cocoa Mug Revamp

Do you like my Sweet Hot Cocoa Mug?
Here's the story on my Mug Revamp:

I'm taking a brief hiatus from organizing, to do something a little crafty...I need every now and then to stop and just take a minute to create. It's my outlet...my stress reliever

although massages are good too

First I have to say that I LOVE LOVE LOVE Target (are you with me?)

My daughter has dance class on Wednesday's to which parents are not allowed to stay and watch except for the first class of the month (I never knew dance classes were SO strict), which is not good for me since it's in the next town over and thus too far for me to go home and come back. There is however a Target down the street which is the closest target to me, so yea I don't get to go as often as I would like, which is both good and bad. I naturally put two and two together and decided that Wednesday would from here on out be my Target Day!!! I have had to cut it down to every other Wednesday though because I kept buying things instead of just looking, but in my defense, it's hard not to.
Can I just say that I love looking through the dollar bins...sometimes I don't find much, just little toys for the kids, but every now and then I find the coolest things. Like this cocoa travel mug for example.

Not only does it have this awesome pink band around the center to keep your fingers from getting burned, or the mug from slipping right through your hands, but it's otherwise a completely blank canvas for me to create upon! And so I shall!

I thought this would be the perfect project to kick off my Silhouette Adventures.

The Silhouette Machine is a fairly new tool for me, I just got it this Christmas as a gift. I was a Cricket girl, but lost my Cricket when we were robbed this summer, which is a story for another time. The important thing to note is that I am new to the Silhouette, have not had much practice with it and all that it can do, (which is a lot,) and my "adventures" are just that, adventures into figuring out what the Silhouette can do, and how I get it to do them.

I decided the best route here was to use my Silhouette to cut out some super cute vinyl shapes to prettify my mug! The mug is not dishwasher safe, and can only be hand washed so careful washing is the key here.

One of the reasons that I decided to go with the Silhouette rather than get anther Cricket was the ability of the Silhouette to be free of cartridges. The Silhouette has a vast library of images that you can browse and buy (for a dollar or less usually), but you can also use images that you already have on your computer or that you create yourself. With Cricket cartridges at $80 a pop this was a very appealing factor to me. I hit the Silhouette Store and found some pretty sweet images for my mug, and I got to work cutting them out with black vinyl.

I cut out my vinyl, made sure my mug was dust free and ready to go, and got to it. Here's what my newly prettified mug looks like now

I wanted to carry the design all the way to the top of the mug but with all the edges it started becoming a bit difficult, still it's an improvement I would say. I used a tougher vinyl than the normal just because I knew my mug would get wet, so we'll see how it holds up. For the time being though it looks a lot prettier, it makes me happy and all I need now is some delicious gourmet hot cocoa to warm me up while I work. Where is my favorite place to shop for delicious gourmet hot cocoa you ask? Well of course it's the Ticket Kitchen! If you haven't checked out this shop then you should...it's fantastic and I'm not just saying that because she's my boss...it really is fantastic!


Just a thought you could get any travel mug and do this same thing to it and it would make a pretty cool gift for the coffee lover, or hot cocoa addict in your life. Just a thought!

Happy Crafting!

Playing Hookie- Dancer Bag

This is a LONG over due post, but yea it's totally been one of those kind of weeks, SIGH...I've been meaning to post this since last Tuesday when I finally finished it, but the days got away from me in all the mommy craziness.

So today's Hookie project that I'm featuring goes along with last weeks dancer theme. Do you remember the leg warmers that I made up for my daughter? Okay, so I took Bean to dance two weeks ago and decided that I was tired of lugging all of dance shoes to dance class in a sad little grocery sack, not to mention that all the other adorable little dancers in her class were sporting the cutest dancer bags. (Who knew dancers had so much gear?) I stayed with the dancing theme on this one and decided that I would naturally make Bean a dancer bag in my favorite of favorite mediums...crochet! I searched through my library of patterns and sure enough I found a cute drawstring backpack pattern, with a fun design, and gathered my supplies and got to work.

So here were my supplies:

A skein of Hot Pink, White and Black Sugar' n Cream cotton yarn and a G hook, oh and some matching ribbon.

So, this project was a little more intensive a project, not hard, but just more time consuming. With the constant interruptions and working on it whenever I could find a minute, I got it done I'd say over the span of 3 days. By the next dance class, Bean had her super cute dance bag to show off...

The perfect size to hold all her dancing gear!

Love the ribbon straps!

And here's a picture of both crochet dance projects making their first dance class appearance...so cute I could almost cry she looks like a real little dancer.

So this week later, I'll show you some new Hookie projects that I'm working on! Super cute! Stay tuned and happy Hooking!

Playing Hookie-Dancer Leg Warmers

It has been such a busy week, more than once this week I've thought about starting a new crochet project, but haven't been able do it. Monday all I wanted to do was crochet...it's been a while since I've been able to crochet something new and I'm definitely feeling the itch, but I couldn't get it to happen. Wednesday it hit me and I FINALLY got my inspiration for my new project. I dropped my daughter off at dance and me and the kids hit Hobby Lobby to stock up on supplies. I remembered that on our last visit to the craft store my daughter pointed out a fun new yarn and asked me to make her something fun with it, so naturally I picked it up and a few other fun items.

So what happened that kept me from crocheting on Wednesday? Well, as usual I got lost checking everything out and thinking of new fun things to create; I looked at my watch, realized I was late to pick up my daughter from dance, paid, rushed to the dance studio, (where I got the stink eye from the dance instructor for being 20, yes 20 minutes late), rushed to the car to find a text from my husband wanting to come home on his dinner break from work at 5, (an hour earlier than we normally have dinner , and in an hour from this point), rushed home, threw dinner together just as he walked in the door, fed the babies, washed the babies, did homework with the babies, jammies, brushed teeth, bed time stories, prayer and the whole bed time routine...by 9 when my Hubby finally came home from work...and relieved me from baby Gules who refused to sleep, I crashed early.

Thursday went about the same...don't get me wrong, I LOVE being a Mommy and Wife and most of what goes into that, it's just nice to get a little "Creative Time" in every now and then. It most definitely is a major stress reliever for me!

I was bound and determined that Friday was my day! I neglected all of my chores for the day, let the kids have a movie day and started Hookin!

So here were my supplies for today's Creative Adventure:

Yarn and an H and I hook!

The yarn is a super soft acrylic yarn that is part of the Red Heart Shimmer collection. If you look real close you can see that the yarn is spun with hot pink tinsel so it literally has a shimmer to it, Fun huh?? So with all my supplies ready to go and my daughter's new found love of dance (she just started her very 1st dance class...So adorable) as my inspiration I got to it.

About an hour and a half later, this is where my Creative Adventure took me...

To a true dancer staple...

A Pair of Super Fun ballet Leg Warmers! I'm hoping to get a picture of her at her next dance class, showing off her new shimmery leg warmers, and I still have one idea in mind to hopefully Play Hookie with tomorrow, (fingers crossed), which is also inspired by DANCE...but you'll have to check back to see that one!

All in all I am one happy girl to finally be able to Play a little Hookie and let my creative juices flow!