Tiny Treats: Birthday

Hello, all! First off... I know you're here for Papertrey's Tiny Treats: Birthday post! But since I've been away for a few days, I'd be remiss if I didn't address my previous post first. If you haven't read my last post, well then... now would be the perfect time, wouldn't it? :) Not interested? Just skip this talky part and scroll down to today's project :) It's ok; I'm not offended. Plus, I'll never know, right? Can I just say... you guys are great. Truly. So many of you left comments about our friend, Luke. And they were just so, so sweet. And I got a little teary. I even saw comments from you over on the guestbook at Luke's Caring Bridge site. And I got a even more teary. So... thank you for lifting this sweet boy up. A stranger to you... a friend of a friend... it is beyond encouraging that you would do that and I want you to know my appreciation for you. Luke had brain surgery again Wednesday afternoon to drain some fluid buildup. We're still praying for his complete recovery. His friends... the students that we work with at church... they are making me so, so proud. Organizing things like prayer vigils... encouraging Luke's family and each other with scriptures and prayers. Doing things like laundry, meals, hospital support, etc. for Luke's family. It's funny how such a yucky thing like this can also make you so sweetly proud of people... so happy to see a body bearing each other's burdens... isn't it? And now... on to happier thoughts, ok? How about some new stamps? :) Did you see this over on Nichole's blog?

I'm not even kidding you when I say that this project totally came to me *the minute* saw this set. Does that ever happen to you? I mean... it's a hot air balloon. How could I not make an actual hot air balloon? Well... I guess it's not an actual hot air balloon. Because, trust me... I've been in one and they are *huge.* HUGE. And this one is only huge compared to the Tiny Treats image. And The Littles. {Any other children of the 80's remember The Littles?} But I digress. So, the key to this project is your old elementary school favorite... paper mache. And let me tell you... It hasn't changed much :) First you make the base of your balloon using... um... a balloon. How appropriate. I blew mine up to about the size of a grapefruit. And then I added this... a little strip of clear cardstock taped together to make a ring. If you don't have any of Papertrey's clear cardstock but you have saved the little plastic rectangles that your stamps come packaged on, that would probably work, too. {And I know you all wish you could have dry fingers and broken fingernails like me, but then you would need to be washing lots of dirty dishes and picking up after the 3 munchkins who make the said dishes and I think I'd like to keep the munchkins, so I'll keep the fingernails, too.} I taped the clear ring to the balloon. There was no rocket science here... I was just going for a tapered off shape like at the bottom of a hot air balloon. It was not perfect by any means :) Next... the always fun and messy paper mache. No pics of that party because it's kind of difficult to be all gluey and hold a camera at the same time. Here was my method: take the lid off a bottle of white school glue and squeeze a few good globs into a bowl of some sort. Add some water. How much? Ummm... enough so that when you mix the glue and water together, it's sort of a gluey water :) No, really. About a one to one ratio will work. There's really no messing this up, though, I swear. I picked up some basic tissue paper in a Rasperry Fizz-ish color at the local craft store. In total I used between 1 and 2 sheets. I cut the sheet in half and tore off narrow strips. The shorter/more narrow the strips, the less wrinkles you'll have. I wasn't super concerned about that, so I just went with stips that were several inches long and about an inch wide. Just dunk the strips, run your fingers down them, and lay the strips over the balloon. Super simple. I was trying to go for coverage with 2 layers. The more layers you put on, the stronger your project will be. For my party favor purposes, 2 layers was just fine. As the balloon got to be more covered, I just ripped some of the strips down to the right size to recover some spots and called it good. I left my little balloon overnight to dry and it was ready to go in the morning. I just needed to pop the balloon inside. Because I wanted to add a sweet treat to the inside of the balloon, I used my tiny scissors to trim the balloon end away from the plasic ring. You can't just pull the balloon out because it's taped to the ring at the bottom, so I just snipped the end out and that part ended up being all good, too :) Next up was the little bitty basket. I embossed a strip of cardstock with both the Canvas and Picnic Plaid impression plates to give it a little basket-y texture and then scored a line close to the edge of one side. I folded along the line, snipped the short edges, and used a little ScorTape on the other edge to make a little basket shape. I just folded the little edges down and glued a kraft circle onto the bottom of the basket. I added one to the inside of the basket, too, just for a little added stability. Super simple. To finish it up I trimmed any overhanging tissue paper edges from the balloon end, then used lollipop sticks to attach the basket and the balloon together. They're adhered in the balloon with ScorTape and to the basket with a quick drying liquid glue. I wanted to sentiment to look a bit like a little flag curled it a bit with my fingers before using a piece of score tape to stick it behind the bow. Sweet, right? {I almost used another little senitiment here... "loads of wishes"... wouldn't that be so sweet with this little balloon, too?} Last little detail... the candy! Since it's sort of a take on a pinata, I added some jelly beans and used a cotton ball to plug up the end of the balloon and keep the beans in! You can see in the picture below that there's a little button hanging down from the balloon... I used a needle to pull a bit of button twine up through the cotton ball and down out again, then tied it to a button. That way the kiddos can just pull down and when the cotton ball comes out, the jelly beans fall out and around the basket! It actually works. I kid you not. Let me tell you... this project is *kid approved,* people. My 6 year old has been begging me to make more with him :) I wanted to incorporate the balloon image onto the placecard to really tie the party theme together. I am totally digging how it turned out! That little balloon... sheesh... how I love coloring those little images. I'm such a basic color-er, though. I just use some simple markers, scribble them on a piece of plastic (usually stamp block because it's always handy), and pick up some ink with an aquapainter. I try to stay a little darker on one side for some basic light shadowing and that's it. I did the orange details with the writing end of a marker. I trimmed it out and added a bit of Chamomile ink to the edges of the clouds for some depth. I layered that little guy over a piece of little vintage cream felt cloud cut with the small cloud die. And that went on top of the two Tiny Treats: Birthday label images. I die cut the Tiny Treats label with the new coordinating Mat Stack 5 die and stamped it in Summer Sunrise, then punched the middle out with a 1 3/4" punch. I stamped the inside label on Raspberry Fizz and added it in the middle. And look... here's how I made the label card stand up straight. Just fold your cardstock base and lay it over the die with the folded edge sitting inside the die. Then trim the bottom of the backside of the card so that it sits flat. That will make the front of place card sit right on the point of the label and not wobble from side to side. Can't you just picture a table full of these... one at each seat... ready and waiting for a little one to be just amazed by it? I'm thinking this might be a good theme two of my littles. My 6 year old and 1 year old share a birthday... 1 boy, 1 girl. And man... the thought of having to make the boy/girl parties work together is a little daunting. But I'm thinking I could totally make it work if I used green/orange for the boys and pink/orange for the girls. Maybe the let boys smash the balloons insead of daintily pulling the jelly beans out. That would probably be a winner. :) Speaking of winners... there's a super cute project just waiting for you at each of the other PTI designers' blogs... Betsy Veldman Erin Lincoln Maile Belles Nichole Heady Lisa Johnson Dawn McVey Debbie Olson Heather Nichols Melissa Phillilps Michelle Wooderson Niki Estes Thanks for visiting, friends! More for your viewing pleasure tomorrow.

{it's party time} balloon treat & placecard CS - White, Kraft, Raspberry Fizz, Clear Cardstock Stamps - Tiny Treats: Birthday (to be released 1/15/11) Ink - Dark Chocolate, Summer Sunrise Ribbon - Summer Sunrise Topnotch Twill; Button Twine Felt - Vintage Cream Die - Mat Stack 5 (to be released 1/15/11); Cloud 2 Impression Plates - Picnic Plaid & Linen Other - balloon, pink tissue paper, white school glue, lollipop stitcks