Awana Awards

Yet another year of Awana has ended. I can't believe that it has been 13 years for Eva and 6 for Emily. I still remember when they were Cubbies, but they are not any more.

This year was Eva's first year in Journey. It changes that were wrought by entering high school.

Emily completed her first book in Truth and Training (aka. T&T). In addition to finishing the book, she also earned all the Silver and Gold. She was the only one of any of the kids to do so.

Something New

I have been scrapping for well over a decade and it still amazes me the way that this hobby keeps evolving. I am still learning how to do new and different things. I had read about shaker boxes for years, but until I was challenged to do one, I had never bothered. The challenge had a very nice tutorial that I read over but then typically, I went and figured out how I could do it myself.

By far the hardest part of making this shaker box was to get the "filling" I knew that I wanted the parts of a watch (or something that looked like it) I had an old watch that would fit the bill, but I had to pry the back off and take it apart without watchmakers tools. Holy Cow! Those screws are small!

To make the shaker box I used a Tim Holtz stamp that had a distinctive part in it - that was my base for the box. In this it was the smaller circle within the clock.

I stamped another image of the clock on the same paper and then cut out the circle and its center leaving me with a ring.

Using that ring, I cut a piece of clear acrylic and adhered it to the top of the ring. I adhered the acrylic over the ring.

Once all the pieces were made, I used my hot glue gun to trace the small clock on the stamp. While it was still wet, I put in my cogs and gears. I then gently pressed the ring onto the stamped image. I didn't want to press too hard because of course it was the glue that was making the sides of the box and giving the whole embellishment dimension.

After it dried I put a layer of stickles over the ring and I had my perfect embellished shaker box.

Tie the Knot

I heard this somewhere, but alas, I don't know where. I just love the idea so I want to pass it along here as well.

I have always had a difficult time making knots or bows on my projects. They were too bulky, I didn't have enough ribbon to make a bow, I warped the project getting enough ribbon to tie, the knot or bow was not where I wanted it. In short I tried to avoid using tied ribbon if at all possible. Then, I discovered this and I can now put ribbon on any project and have a perfect bow or knot.

The first step is to adhere the ribbon to the project. I will adhere mine at the ends just in case I want to move something. I will then place another piece of the same ribbon where I want it tied.

After that I tie the knot or make the bow. I make sure that the ribbon I am working with is long enough to make the size bow or knot that I want. The great part about this is that if the placing is not exactly where I want it, I can just slide the knot up or down to where I want it to be.

And here is a sample of the ribbon tied onto a card