I made this

Personalized Mug Cozy

I’m a sucker for a good Venn Diagram, especially when they are humorous or snarky. And sometimes they occur in my craft world, as in this project, where my love for lettering, felt and easy embroidery completely and totally overlap to create a personalized mug cozy.

I’ve seen lots of versions of these mug cozies in varying degrees of complicated – some were crocheted/knitted, some were sewn and embroidered. While my mind was wandering last week (I think of some of my best work and craft ideas while either unloading the dishwasher or riding the stationary bike) it occurred to me that I could make a personalized mug cozy by back stitching my lettering.

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Happy Bats for Halloween

Cut Happy Bats out of contact paper to temporarily decorate for Halloween | SuzerSpace.com

This year, as I was cutting a new monster for my front window, I remembered that I had pinned another project that I wanted to do for Halloween.

But when I thought about it, making all those pieces and crawling around on my stairs didn’t sound like that much fun. Plus, I’d need to clean the stairs of all the dust and cobwebs. And then I saw this post on Instagram, and realized that a) I did not need to clean, and b) I could just put happy bats all over my stairs and it would be just as cute and my knees would thank me for it.

Bats have made several appearances at SuzerSpace, so I don’t think you’ll be surprised to find they are back for this year’s Halloween.

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Create a Temporary Halloween T-Shirt

Create a temporary Halloween T-shirt using removable vinyl | suzerspace.com

I don’t think it is any big secret that I like to decorate T-shirts. I’ve posted about my favorite freezer-paper stencil technique enough times that I probably should start a category for it. And I’ve dabbled a little in Heat Transfer vinyl, although I need a lot more practice to be comfortable with it.

But sometimes, you just need a decorated shirt for a one-off event. Say, Halloween. Sure, I’ve hand painted a Halloween T-shirt before, but this year I wanted something different. Mostly, I wanted it to be temporary – so that the shirt could return to normal duty after the holiday.

This turned out to be ridiculously easy. I just used removable vinyl!

Purchase this hand-lettered cut file at suzerspace.etsy.com

I don’t go all out for the holiday; just a work appropriate Halloween T-shirt so I’m showing some spirit (pun intended 🙂 ) To capture that completely, I hand-lettered a “This is my costume” layout and then used my Silhouette Cameo to cut the words from two different colors of regular, removable vinyl.

If you’d like to make the same shirt, I have the cut file in my Etsy Shop. And if you hurry, there’s a Halloween sale going on.

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5 Minute Congratulations Cubicle Banner

Create a 5 minute congratulations cubicle banner using a template and some basic office supplies | suzerspace.com

A few posts back I wrote about my frustration with the Martha Stewart website. The short version is I found a pin on Pinterest that I wanted to craft, and the pin led me to a video, but the promised template was nowhere to be found.

I created my own card, and it was super fun, but the idea of that little triangle template kind of haunted me, and recently I suddenly needed to make a congratulatory banner for a coworker.

Because I like to make things harder than they need to be 🙂 I decided to make that little template myself, and then see if I could make a Congratulations cubicle banner in less than five minutes using very ordinary materials.

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Watercolor Mask from Shelf Liner

Contact paper cut with a Silhouette Cameo makes a great watercolor mask | SuzerSpace

Fall is my very favorite season. I haven’t hidden the fact that I really don’t care for summer. I like Spring, too, but it tends to bring really severe weather to the Midwest, and it also means Summer is coming, so it isn’t as much fun for me as September, October and November.

I’ve been watercoloring again, and I really like to make abstract backgrounds – you never know what you are going to get, and they never really are duds. I saw several tutorials on using masking fluid to preserve the white space for more artwork (lettering, usually) and that sounded like something I’d like to try.

And it was, right up to the point where the masking fluid was $12 for a bottle about the size of nail polish. That’s out of my budget for a one-off craft tool, so I shelved the idea.

And then it occurred to me that I could just create a watercolor mask by basically cutting an inside out stencil on my Silhouette and accomplish the same effect.

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