My First Date with Mason Jars

I've been wanting to post these for a while, but never got around to taking pictures. This was one of my first kitchen projects and also the beginning of my relationship with Mason jars. I had been searching for several weeks for food canisters to place on my kitchen counter. This is something I had always wanted but I didn't like the price of them and also didn't like that each canister in a set was a different size. One day as I was strolling through the kitchen aisle of Canadian Tire I saw a box of large Mason jars for a fraction of the cost of the canister sets. This got the gears rolling and set my plan into motion. I picked up a box of 6 large Mason jars, a box of 8 medium ones and also a package of plastic lids that fit on small Mason jars (who knew these existed?).

That afternoon, I set to work cleaning out my cupboards and replaced all of the miscellaneous bags and packages of dried food with Mason jars. The large Mason jars I filled with my most commonly used baking goods such as flour and sugar and lined them up in a row on the back of my counter. They fit perfectly and looked beautiful but they still needed a little something extra...like labels!

Initially I scoured through all 500 of the fonts I have on my computer (yes, I realize I have an addiction!) until I found one that fit. I printed these off and used a circle punch to cut them all out. I then grabbed a handful of paper clips and using my hot glue gun, adorned them each with a little red button.  Each paper clip was then threaded through a string of black raffia which I tied around the neck of the Mason jars.  Lastly, I slipped my label into the paper clip, and voila, it was done! They looked pretty cute, however after a couple of weeks using my jars I fell quickly out of love. I was constantly having to make new labels whenever I filled the jar with something different.  The process of printing and punching new labels was tedious and I soon found that my new jars were sitting there plain and labelless. That's when inspiration hit!

I recall my sister-in-law raving about chalkboard paper that you could buy at the dollar store. She sent me a sample of it to try and it was fabulous! It came in a roll and the one side was chalkboard and the other was covered in adhesive so you could stick it to anything you pleased! I decided to adhere it to some red cardstock and then using my circle punch I cut out a stack of chalkboard circles. Now I could change these labels with a simple wipe! My ingenius husband came up with the best part...rather than using chalk, he gave me a piece of soapstone from his work that they use for writing on metal. Turns out it writes perfectly on the chalkboard paper without the muss and fuss of chalk! Here is the final product!

 

P.S. Speaking of Mason jars, have you seen American Craft's new line of Dear Lizzy paper? This one is my favourite! I couldn't resist buying it although I have no clue what I'm going to do with it yet. I'm sure you will see a layout soon featuring one of these adorable Mason jars!

The Paper Mixing Bowl: Challenge #3

This month's recipe was for Mom's Apple Pie. The recipe was as follows:

I was very excited about this month's challenge. I love the colour of Kraft paper and I immediately had an idea in mind. I have had two pictures sitting and just waiting to be scrapped for some time now. One is a favourite of mine, my mother holding me when I was little and I am looking up adoringly into her eyes, and the second is of me kissing Arabella when she was about 3 months old. Then I had the idea of adding a third picture (since the recipe had a frame with three pictures) of my Grandma holding my mom when she was a baby. My Grandma recently passed away so this had even more sentimental meaning to me. Once I decided to add the photo of my Grandma, I knew that my journaling element would be a poem that my mom had put on a photoboard at her funeral. It is a poem that was on a card my sister gave to my Mom years ago, that resurfaced at my Oma's funeral 5 years ago, and just recently at my Grandmother's funeral. It became the inspiration for the rest of the page with it's comparison of a mother's love to a garden. I loved the idea of using the muted Kraft for everything (the soil in the garden), but then adding a burst of life and colour with handmade flowers cascading down the page (the flowers in the garden). This is what I came up with...it is one my favourites that I plan on framing. The ingredients from the recipe that I used can be seen in CAPITALS throughout this post. I was able to incorporate every ingredient except for the paint/mist.

The Inspiration:

My Layout:
I loved the idea of incorporating different materials and shades of the colour KRAFT. For this layout, my background is actually a piece of brown parcel paper that I cut to a 12x12 size and then handstamped the edges with brown ink using a STAMP from the Pollen Dust collection by Fancy Pants. The title and poem are printed onto a scrap of Bazzil cardstock that I had leftover from a previous project. For the FRAME, I originally planned on using a scalloped edge frame that my sister-in-law had cut out for me using her Silhouette. However, before I picked it up from her I tried cutting out a simple frame using burlap since it matched the colour theme and loved how it turned out. It also incorporated the WEAVING utensil from the recipe. To add a little more depth to it, I handstamped it with brown ink and the same swirly stamp as my background. You can't really make out the shape of the stamp but I loved the texture it added.


SOURCES:  Cardstock: Bazzil Basics Paper, Bo Bunny – Kiwi Double Dot.  Paper:  Brown Parcel Paper, Burlap. Stamp: Fancy Pants – Pollen Dust. Ink: Memento – Rich Cocoa. Font: jailbIrD JenNA, Hawaii Killer. Flowers: Handmade Using Miscellaneous Paper & Embellishments

The Title:
The journalling part of the recipe suggested using the inspirational words Mother, Heritage or Family. Sticking to the theme of these words, I chose a phrase from the poem and entitled my page "The Legacy." I added a thin curly bracket border to the title which I designed in photoshop using the font Hawaii Killer. I love this font because it is a script font but it has a handstamped vibe to it. To add a pop of colour, I printed the title out in blue ink onto a scrap of Kraft cardstock and then cut it out using scissors. I also cut a larger frame for it and handstamped it as well for a backdrop to the title. A little ink around the edges and my title was complete!

The Flowers:
Each flower on this page was handmade using a large variety of tools including scalloped scissors, flower shaped punches, flower die cuts for the Cuttlebug and a plethora of embellishments such as BUTTONS, rhinestones, Stickles and sequins. To add some dimension, I curled many of the petals using a pencil or used two-sided foam tape for added height. The last step was to add some pops of colour or texture with handcut green or burlap leaves that I inked the edges with in brown.

Journalling:
As stated above, for the journalling portion of the recipe, I used a POEM which I printed in blue ink onto cardstock using the font jailbIrD JenNA with the words "heart" and "legacy" accentuated in the font Hawaii Killer.

Thanks for stopping by!

For the love of Burlap...and my Grandma

Today I thought I'd post one of my favourite layouts so far. It was a shared effort between my sister Angela and I, and is a memorial for my Grandma who passed away at the end of February. Perhaps that's why I feel so strongly about it.  My Grandma's burial is this week and unfortunately neither my sister, brother nor I can make it. But we still wanted to be there in spirit, and thus we created a layout to place with her casket.  I believe it was very cathartic for my sister and I as we created it, and I think it will help bring support to my Mom and Dad in our absense at the burial....and somewhere up in heaven, I know it will mean so much to my Grandma.

My sister came up with the idea to send a poem to my Mom so that the minister could read it on behalf of the grandchildren and then it could be buried with my Grandma. I took this a step farther and suggested we do a small, framed 8x8 layout. I showed my sister a layout I had recently done for May's Paper Mixing Bowl challenge (stay tuned for the big reveal tomorrow). Angela loved it and we decided that the burlap would be our jumping off point. The next step was to find an appropriate poem. We spent the next 2 hours scouring various websites for poems, quotes and even song lyrics looking for just the right one that would capture our feelings in words. We finally found one that brought tears to our eyes and knew that it was the perfect poem. We then spent the evening watching Season 2 of Grey's Anatomy and creating handmade flowers for the layout. The next day I printed off the poem and we put it all together in a frame.


SOURCES:  Cardstock: Bazzil Basics Paper, Bo Bunny –Double Dot.  Paper:  Brown Parcel Paper, Burlap. Stamp: Fancy Pants – Pollen Dust. Ink: Memento – Rich Cocoa. Font: My Organization, CK Ali’s Hand. Flowers: Handmade Using Miscellaneous Paper & Embellishments

 

I love the rustic feel the burlap brings to the layout and I think my Grandma would really love it. So this one's for you Grandma, we love and miss you very much!
xo

Superman!

This past weekend it was my cousin's 40th birthday party, and the big theme of the party was superheros. I knew that he loved Superman, so I decided I would make him up an 8x8 page that he could later put a photo in to remember the big surprise event. This was a little out of me league, but I tried to have fun with it and with the help of my husband and a little luck, this is what I came up with.

The only thing I used for it was cardstock and photoshop. The Superman logo and title I found on the internet, cropped and printed them off, then cut them out with scissors. My husband came up with the subtitle "Faster than a speeding bullet" and I thought it was cute to add the "40 years" to it. This was all done using the Tahoma font.  As for the background, my hubby insisted I had to have a red telephone booth somewhere on the page but there wasn't a whole lot of space to work with. After trying a few things, I decided I would just cut out the pattern of the glass door from the telephone booth onto red cardstock and lay a photo overtop. Once I put the page together however, I noticed that the photo would completely cover the phone booth detail...but as luck would have it a 4x6 photo would fit PERFECTLY if I slid it between the phonebooth and my black backdrop. Not only was the fit perfect, but you could also use a photo with either a landscape or a portrait orientation as they both fit in "snug as a bug in a rug!"

Thanks for checking in!