Cancer Free Party Decor

April 14, 2019 | theREALkk

5 years ago my mother found out she had cancer. They were confident they had caught it early enough, and after one (rather grueling) surgery, and several weeks of radiation she found herself in remission.

My mom and I a few years back on the Oregon coast,

This year, we were so ecstatic that she was finally able to say she was CANCER FREE that we threw her a fun little celebration. My Sister, Beckie, texted me one evening, and pitched the idea that we make her some fun decorations, that sorta say, Eff you cancer. You suck. I truly feel like even if you aren’t big on cussing… in this situation, the “F” word is appropriate. Fuck cancer, in every form. It’s the worst. I truly do not believe ANYONE deserves to go through any type of cancer.

We got to work immediately. I whipped out my Cricut, and got to work. We decided some Uterine shaped confetti, a sassy tumbler that says “Cancer Chose the Wrong Bitch” and some fun banners would do the trick.

I’ve decided to share some of the things we made with those of you that might have a cricut, but aren’t sure how to create things, or maybe you just don’t have the time. Over the next two posts, I’m going to share the templates to make the OMG you’re cancer free card pictured below, and the tumbler that says “Cancer Chose the Wrong Bitch.”

“F” cancer banner with the “Cancer Free” banner

You’ll need to have a cricut cutting machine. Anything in the cricut family that works with the online Cricut Design Space. I used my Cricut Explore Air 2. An Explore Air, or Maker would work too. You’ll also need your preferred color of permanent Vinyl. I used off white and Navy.

To Make the Cancer Chose the wrong Bitch Tumbler:

Tumbler (I bought this one.)
Permanent vinyl (I chose 2 colors)
Transfer Tape
Cricut cutting machine
This Cricut File

In my next post, I’ll share the rest of the photos from our celebration, and the template to make the card and envelope pictured below!

Weddings, Vacations and more!

August 6, 2018 | theREALkk

You’ll have to forgive my absence! Life got a little crazy there for a hot minute, but things seem to have settled down some so I should be able to blog somewhat more regularly.

Just a quick update, Mitchell and I are getting married, we spent Christmas in Illinois. We’ve moved into the cutest little house, and we’re deep into wedding planning. We went to Colorado for a few days and celebrated Lauren and Gene’s 1 year (and change) anniversary. I’ve been buys working on lesson plans, and wedding stuff.

I expect that posts for the next year or so will likely be heavily focused on wedding planning, and the things we DIY.

So far we haven’d DIY’d much, just some of the gifts asking people to be in our wedding
party, but we haven’t finished asking everyone, so I’ll hold off on posting those.

One of the things we plan to DIY for our wedding, are wooden signs. I found some pre-made signs at our local Michaels Craft store, and finally tonight decided to test it out. If you’re new around here, You’ll wanna know that Harry Potter is pretty important in our lives. So, it only made sense that I’d make something Harry Potter themed to test the
signs out.

I used my trusty (though honestly, I’d recommend you not buy one) Cricut. I don’t suggest them simply because their software requires internet, and is unreliable, and their customer service is just awful. If I could I’d buy a Silhouette instead. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll own both, and will be able to do a truthful and honest review.

Anyway, back to today’s project. I decided to make a cute little sign for our laundry room, because Mitchell is always losing his socks! Always! I didn’t do a good job documenting this project because, well, honestly I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out. But I’ll provide a DIY type post anyway.

What you will need:
Wooden sign
Vinyl (I used this vinyl from Hobby Lobby)
Cricut, or Silhouette cutting machine
Transfer Tape
Hot glue gun and glue sticks
Clothes pins (mine are from Daiso)

First, you’ll want to create your design in design space (or whichever software comes with your cutting machine.
Now, type out what you want the sign to say, in my case “Free Dobby” was what I chose.
Pick your font, and size.
Trim your vinyl to the right size.
Load your vinyl onto your cutting mat, and have your machine cut it.
Once it’s cut, carefully peel off excess vinyl, and lay transfer tape on top. Careful to not leave any air-bubbles.
Make sure vinyl is stuck to the transfer tape and peel it off carefully.
Now place it firmly on your sign.
Once the vinyl is stuck to the sign carefully peel the transfer tape off, careful to not rip any of the vinyl letters.
Once your transfer tape is off, align your clothes pins, glue them into place and let them cool.

I know this tutorial wasn’t my best, but if you do decide to make one, please share your photos! I’d love to see them!

If you haven’t already, feel free to follow our instagram, and pinterest!

DIY – Zojirushi Mug Customization

May 9, 2018 | theREALkk

I’m back! Not only that, but I have a new DIY project to share with you!!

Mitchell’s mom’s birthday was this month, and one of the things she asked for was a pretty Zojirushi mug. So we with the help of his sister (she pitched in and paid half for the gift) we picked out the mug we thought their mom would enjoy the most.

We went with the Champagne Gold. I picked it up from a local store, Uwajimaya.

This craft does require a cricut, so if you don’t have one, you may have to look on pinterest for a different tutorial.

You will need:

2 different colors of vinyl. We chose navy blue and orange
Zojirushi travel mug
Cricut
Cricut cutting mat
Transfer Tape
Mod Podge
Brush

Step 1:

Choose your design. I made ours — and will happily share if people are interested. You can buy one on Etsy, or make your own using cricut design space. Below is a sample of the size of the cut file.

seas-the-day

Step 2:

Send the cut over to your cricut, make sure to turn the knob to vinyl and follow the usual instructions to cut. We cut the blue first, then the orange seastar.

Step 3.

NAVY BLUE:

With your vinyl now cut, peal off the excess vinyl, and weed out the middle of the a, s’s and y. Attach some transfer tape. This part can be time consuming if you aren’t use to using the cricut, so take your time and use your scraper tool. We used the small one, but this one would work too. Once all the writing is attached to the transfer tape, you may now carefully line it up on to your mug and place it. To get the vinyl to stick you’ll need your scraper tool. You’ll know it’s all ready when the lettering is no longer stuck to your transfer tape.

Step 4.

ORANGE

Follow the same instructions as above, but with the seastar.

Step 5.

Once all your vinyl is stuck to your mug and has no air-bubbles… (if you did a good job removing the transfer tape, you should not have any air bubbles.) You’re now ready to seal.

Step 6.

Squirt a small amount of your Mod Podge onto a plate or washable surface. Take your paint brush and paint a LIGHT layer of Mod Podge over the vinyl on your mug. Let it dry for 15-20 minutes and come back for another light coat. I repeated this 3 times. Typically Mod Podge needs to cure for several days before submerging your mug into water so please be careful!

These mugs, are always hand wash only, wash at your own risk 🙂

DIY: Bridal Shower Gift, with card

July 31, 2017 | theREALkk

This September, Mitchell’s older sister is getting married. Today, was her bridal shower, and sadly, I was not able to attend. That did not stop me from creating, what I hoped would be, a very special gift for her!

Overall, between deciding what to do, buying the supplies and actually creating the gift, it took me about a week. Most of that was trying to figure out just exactly what would be the perfect gift.

If you know me offline, you probably know that I love crafting. Anything that I can make on my own, I will. I think it’s something I inherited from my mom (and possibly my dad, what little I know/remember of him, he was always doing everything himself.)

I got it in my head, that I had to make them something they could wear, so I thought and though, different ideas. A few that popped into my head:

Shoes, to wear at the reception, something comfy that says “MR & MRS ____”
Hoodies, we live in the PNW after all. One that said “Husband” and one that said “Wife”
T-Shirts that say “HONEYMOON 2017” on the back and MR ____ on the front or MRS ____ on hers.
T-Shirts that say “WIFE” and “HUSBAND”
Sweats that say their wedding hashtag
and a bunch of others. I thought of making them their very own glasses to drink out of at the wedding, customizing something off their registry…

But I daringly went “rogue” and created something not on their list, and that was customized to their wedding day specifically.

I went out on a hunt for all the supplies, and something unique to wrap the gift in. While out and about, I came up with the idea to use my die-cut and make her a wedding dress card. I don’t know, maybe it was cheesy but I liked the way it turned out.

I tried to make sure everything matched the wedding colors, and headed home to start the project.

If you’d like to create this DIY gift, you’ll need the following:

For the Card:
White Cardstock
Glitter cardstock
Decorative paper of your choice for bottom of dress
Color of cardstock of your choice for bow
I bought all of my paper from Michaels.

If you’re free-drawing your dress, you’ll want to do so in pencil. If you’re like me and have a die-cut for everything… then go ahead and use your die-cut for the dress. I cut the dress 3 times, and then cut off the top of the glittery paper, and glued it to the white cardstock, and then cut the bottom off of the fancy paper and glued just a little bit of it, to the bottom, white cardstock.

Then, I cut the bow out, and glued it over the seam where the two meet.

The card is that simple!

Now the gift, I made them custom t-shirts. One that says Mr. and one that says Mrs. Then,on the back they both say the date of their wedding…In this case it’s 09.09.17.

What you’ll need:
I used my die cut letters and numbers for this project. I went and purchased Glittery iron on vinyl and non glittery iron on vinyl.

I simply cut out the letters with my die-cut, and placed them on the t-shirts where I thought they fit best, and laid a towel on top of them, and ironed away. It took probably about 45minutes per shirt to get them to stick properly. Overall I think they came out pretty adorable! I think the future bride and groom enjoyed them too!

As for wrapping, I just found a super cute storage box, some pink ombre’ tissue paper, rose-gold ribbon (one of their wedding colors) and ombre’ ribbon for the bow. I taped the card to the box, and voila!

DIY Wedding Favors!

February 21, 2017 | theREALkk

This weekend, in our part of the state, was “Mid-Winter break” which, essentially is a week (or long weekend in our case) off of school to (hopefully) help rid schools of the endless cycle of colds and the flu.

That meant that I had a 5 day weekend (opposed to my usual 3!) The first day of my break, was spent helping a good friend, who, conveniently enough, shares the same name as me, though she spells it differently.

She and I have been working really hard helping piece together the plans for her wedding this spring. About a week ago, we went out and casually scoped out Hobby Lobby, and a few other stores just to see if there was anything we could get for their wedding. We ended up finding more than we had expected! We found these adorable little bottles for her wedding favors!

While at Hobby Lobby, we also found moss, (two different kinds) and these adorable figurines. This shopping trip inspired her to make little mini “terrariums” as favors for her wedding guests. She got the idea from a couple of places. She had ordered her fiancé a super cute Chewbacca terrarium a while back (Sorta like this one, but a little different..) and from this pin she found on pinterest. (Follow my blog on pinterest, if you haven’t already!)

Here is a photo of the finished product:

Enough with the back story, lets get crafting! to make these terrarium’s you’ll need:

Bottles of some sort, we bought these ones from hobby lobby. (still on sale!)
Moss, we bought this one, and this one.
Sand
Figurines
Twine
Tags
Tweezers
Glue (optional)

Above are photos of our supplies (most of them.)

Step 1:
Remove price tags from bottles (if applicable) – To do this, soak them in warm soapy water. To dry, we used a couple hair dryers, but you could also let them air dry.

Step 2:
Once all the bottles are dry, put them out on your work surface. Then fill one by one with about 1 tablespoon of sand. The container of sand we purchased filled 35 of our bottles.

Step 3:
Cut your Spanish moss into small pieces, and place them inside each bottle. If you’re using the Spanish moss, remember to cut it first, we learned that the hard way.

Step 4:
Tear off a small piece of the other moss, and place inside the bottle on top of the Spanish moss. I made sure you could see the Spanish moss underneath the green moss.

Step 5:
Figurines. We sorted ours first, and planned out how we were going to place them in each bottle. My friend grabbed some tweezers to easily place them in the bottles. We ended up sticking some glue on the bottom of a couple to keep them in place.

Step 6:
Put lids on each bottle, and use some twine to attach a tag.

All the lids, with our scissors and twine.

The finished product, with tags attached. Wedding date blurred because all the invites haven’t been handed out yet 🙂

Bonus Step Tags:
I made the tags for this gift using my trusty cricut. These were custom made, but there are plenty of options out there on the cricut website, and even pinterest. I suggest making something that fits the vibe for the wedding/event, but also goes with the bottles well.