Beard Oils & Beard Balms

I know this isn't the typical crafting post I use to do. However, both of my brothers have decided to grow beards and they love my essential collection. Over the Fall/Autumn of 2015, I made a few recipes, but here is one I created for them. The oils were mixed with beeswax and jojoba oil to  create the beard balm in the tin.  It's solid while cool, but softens when rubbed between the fingers before applying to the beard.  My brothers seem to like the scent and say heir beards are softer than when not using anything at all.

Have you ever made a beard old or beard balm? Did you make them for a specific person or just in general for sale?

Have a great day, and....

Craft On.

It's been a while....

Forgive me. Life has got the better of me and I've had to put any and all blogging aside. I haven't stopped crafting, but I had to take a hiatus.  We've had a family member fight and lose his battle with cancer. My house has seen many colds, especially between my youngest monkey and myself, we were both sick off and on for almost 4 months straight since October, 2015.  My inlaws have moved to a house within 2 miles from me and I've been over there taking care of several minor and major issues, like plumbing issues and mailbox flying through the air thanks to the winds we get. Hopefully, if life doesn't throw me too many curveballs in a row, I'll get back to posting.

Craft On...

My 1st ATC card

Ingredients

Tim Holtz Distress inks in: Tea Dye, Scattered Straw, Antique Linen, and Old Paper; Hero Arts stamp in "Time to stamp"; Tim Holtz Visual Artistry Collection Stamper Anonymous in "Artful Things" for the angels and the phrase; Hero Arts "Old Letter Writing: wooden stamp; Craftworkcards Candi in Antique Newsprint; Vellum; file folder piece cut down to 2.5"x3.5" for the ATC base.

1) Using Scattered Straw and Antique Lined, ink the base with a blending tool, I use cosmetic wedges.  I also inked the backside. Use your edge distresser to create a tattered edge.Use Tea Dye to ink up the edges.

2) Using Tea Dye, ink and stamp with the clock stamp. Also ink and stamp the wooden stamp along the left side of the base, I didn't go all the way from top to bottom, I stopped about 80% of the way down.

3) Using Old Paper ink, stamp half the angel stamp onto the upper right of the base.

4) Ink up, using all the inks and the blending tool, the Candi piece. adhere using pop dots and/or glue dots. I used both to get the dimension and the grip/hold.

5) Stamp the "learn.." phrase onto a piece of vellum, cut just enough of the vellum to create an even border around the phrase. adhere using glue dots, folding the in half so as not to be to obvious through the vellum.

In all honesty, this took me about 45 minutes to do, because I was pulling things as I went and I didn't know what I was doing. LOL. I'm sure if I wanted to replicate it would take me about 10 minutes to do.

Here is the final product! I liked it So much, I am already working on a second one.

The phrase reads: "Learn to pause... or nothing worthwhile will catch up to you."

Happy Crafting...

Lisa

Valentine's Day Treats

So, Valentine's Day is tomorrow. I personally don't celebrate this holiday, but my children do at their school. With that said, I wanted to share the little projects I worked on to help them celebrate with their friends.

This first picture is the treats my Freshman daughter will give to her close friends and my boys will give to their teachers.  I can't take credit for this project's originality, someone else posted a pic similar on their Fb wall and my DH sent me the link, for all I know it's on Pinterest.  I liked it so much, I felt the need to replicate as best as I could.  For this project I used: red construction paper (cut down to 4.5" x 4"), ATG 714 glue gun, ROLO candies, black card stock cut into strips of 1/8" and tapered at one end, black curling ribbon (I didn't measure the length), Stampin' Up die for the tag (sorry, I forgot the name/number).  I ran glue along the 4" ends as close to the edge as possible and I added 1/2 a strip of glue about 1/2" in from one end to stick the black "fuse" on. Line up the ROLO candy to the edge of the paper and roll, make sure you get the fuse in there before closing the dynamite all the way. For the teachers, I ran the ATG along the side of one ROLO and stuck the 2 sticks together, then I ran the black ribbon through a punched hole on the die cut and wrapped the ribbon around several times.  Knot the ribbon and curl the ends. BAM! Instructions for the singles are similar, minus gluing to the other "stick". Surprisingly, my older kids thought these were really cool. *Yay! A pat on the back for mom!*

Below are tags I made for my 2nd grader's classmate treats. I used vellum paper (cut down to 3.75" x 2 1/8"). However, to make things easier, I used a (discontinued) Stampin' Up rolling stamp with flourishes with silver ink and decorated the vellum BEFORE cutting it down to size. Next, using black Craft Smart dye ink, I stamped the "to/from" over the front of the tag. I let this dry overnight to ensure it wouldn't smear.  Using a heart shaped punch, I cut out as many hearts as I could from pink construction paper and used the ATG to attach to the front of the tag. My son filled in the to/from parts and the tags will be stapled to fruit snacks.

For these treats below, I used the same decorated vellum pieces and pink hearts, but since the Kindergarten kids only need to have the "from" name on the tag, I swapped the stamp out for this "For You" stamp I had on hand. I wrote my little one's name on the pin heart, then ran the ATG across the name and adhered the heart to the back side of the vellum tag, to give it a different look.  I also used Real Red ink pad from Stampin' Up for the stamped image.  These tags were stapled to the front.

I hope you enjoyed this entry. I enjoyed getting back into my craft room, it's been quite a while.

If you happen to celebrate Valentine's Day, I hope it's a great one for you. If you don't, have a great day nonetheless.  

xoxoxoxo
Lisa