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Archive for hang-ables

Bring on the April Showers [printable calendar]

I’m back in the studio today after a wonderful Easter holiday with my family. The long weekend also ushered in the start of April with some great spring weather! This month promises to be a busy one for us with school activities, a local conference on storytelling I’ll be attending, and fun community events. This weekend, I took a little time to set some priorities for new products I’ll be working on over the next few months, and make plans for refreshing a few of the ways I communicate with customers. Beginning a new month in celebration of the renewal and redemption of Easter has helped my heart embrace the hope and possibility of spring.

I took the old “April showers” adage as my inspiration for this month’s printable calendar, along with a childhood favorite song from Bambi. Rainy days have no end of inspiration when you hear every raindrop as the refrain of a beautiful tune. Click to download the calendar, and I hope you enjoy sharing the cut-away artwork when the month is over. This month, I’ve also included a free download of a larger version of the printable art. Enjoy!

make . Easter Mini Banners [printable]

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Baby Girl and I have been working on a few crafty projects for Easter, and today I’m sharing a printable for a cute little mini banner we made. It’s actually part one of an idea I had as I was thinking through spring post ideas. I’ve always loved making things with paper, especially things to play with! The children love to make little paper cut-out puppets using popsicle sticks to create dramas for their puppet shows. So, my thought was to create a little “Hop Along” theater marquee to use along with some Easter-themed finger puppets. I’ll share the finger puppets tomorrow as a printable too, but for now, I’ve included some photos and tips to make the banner below. It can really be hung in any way, but I used some pencils to make our “theater” columns. In the printable download (shown below), I’ve included banner flags for “Hop Along” as well as “He Is Risen,” which would make a neat reminder of the reason for our Easter celebrations on your tabletop of mantle. Enjoy! And stay tuned tomorrow for photos and download for the finger puppets — styling by the one and only, Baby Girl!

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Tips for making the mini banner:

  1. We printed ours on card stock weight paper so it has a little weight and doesn’t wrinkle when glued.
  2. You can hold a metal ruler or straight edge in place in the white gap at the middle of each diamond, and fold against it to crease the row of flags evenly.
  3. Fold each row first, and then cut out each flag. That way, you don’t have to worry about matching up the angles — and the flags don’t have to be exact. [This also gives you kind of a neat diamond harlequin stencil — bonus!]
  4. Keep your glue away from the crease in each diamond when you’re adding them to the string. That way, you’ll be able to slide the flags along the string when you’re finished to adjust the spacing of the words. You may want to go ahead and slide the flags a minute or so after you glue to be sure no glue dries on the string.
  5. We used short sequin pins with balls to top our banner pencil “poles”. They stick securely into the eraser, but leave enough space to wrap your strings to hold up the banner. They’re also kind of festive!
  6. We put our pencil poles in tiny clay pots with straw to scotch, but small potted plants would be cute or even cupcakes for a party table!

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Happy National Chocolate Chip Day! [printable]

It’s National Chocolate Chip Day! A holiday to celebrate, for sure! What better way to enjoy the day than with a chocolate chip cookie? In the absence of a real cookie, I enjoyed a little illustration of a watercolor one this morning. I’ve included a little download of this illustration as a mini-print you can pass along to your favorite sweet friend and chocolate lover. Enjoy!

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Today I am Thankful For… A Thanksgiving Printable

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Good morning! It’s just a week or so until Thanksgiving Day, and I thought I would post a little printable I shared in the November issue of AQUA, the creative journal I launched this Fall. There is always such a rush toward Christmas this time of year, and sometimes that makes it hard to focus on Thanksgiving.

Several years ago, we started a Thanksgiving tradition at our house — a Thanksgiving Tree. It was a quirky little idea designed to help us all cultivate gratitude during the season. The kids went in search of an interesting branch at our farm, and we braced it with a bunch of rocks in a pot on our dining table. Every day at dinner time during the week or so prior to Thanksgiving, we each shared one thing we were grateful for. The kids were young and couldn’t write, so I recorded their little moments of gratitude on cut pieces of colored paper and hung them on the “tree.” During that year, they were thankful for things like the color red and chicken nuggets and various Disney movies. And Mommy and Daddy. We didn’t end up doing our Thanksgiving Tree tradition last year in all the craziness, but I’m determined we’ll do it this year again.

Although those little slips of paper and metal ring-tags are precious to me, I decided I would make some printable tags this year — ones decorated with Fall leaves, the date and a place to write our grateful praise. The leaves are some I found in my drawing archive from various past projects. I’ve shared them here in case they can make your family’s version of a thanksgiving tradition more special. Just click the image below to download. May your table be bountiful and your hearts be filled with gratitude this Thanksgiving season!

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make . Birthday Circle Banner [printable]

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Last month, we celebrated my Baby Girl’s 5-year-old birthday with her first little “friend party,” held in our backyard with lots of swimming, playing in the sandbox, and eating cupcakes! [Give me a moment, because I can’t believe she’s five already!]

I used some doodles and hand-drawn letters on her party invitations, including a cupcake with plenty of Baby Girl’s signature sprinkles. I thought I would share with you the “Happy Birthday” banner, “Happy” hang-ables and favor tags I made to match. They are a very easy print and cut pattern. I just used scallop scissors to cut them out so it doesn’t matter if you don’t cut a perfect circle. The banner and hang-ables are about 8″ circles, and the favor tags are about 3 1/2″ circles. The downloadable PDFs include one circle per letter for “Happy Birthday,” “Happy,” and cupcake hang-ables, as well as the small cupcake circle tag with an optional “thank you” to print on the flip side. The pieces are in pastel pink (my girl’s fave), green, lavender and blue. Just punch holes and tie or hang for your own celebration. And, really, is there ever a day when we don’t need more “HAPPY” and cupcakes?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BANNER PDF DOWNLOAD

CUPCAKE/HAPPY HANG-ABLE PDF DOWNLOAD

CUPCAKE TAG PDF DOWNLOAD

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And, just to recap… Awww!

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[originally posted at EyeJunkie.com on her 1st birthday :)]

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