I made this

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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Mini Piñata: A Pinterest Challenge Post

Miniature taco and martini pinatas based on a Pinterest pin from Studio DIY | SuzerSpace

Like many projects I try here on SuzerSpace, this mini piñata project has a bit of a twisty road to its start.

In the mornings, I ride a stationary bike and listen to podcasts. A few weeks back, I was listening to one about a woman who wanted miniature piñatas to give away as wedding favors, but she couldn’t find a vendor. She had her wedding without them, but the idea stuck with her, and eventually she figured out how to make them and she launched an Etsy business that let her quit her day job.

That sounded kind of neat, so I click through the show notes to her Etsy store, and sure enough, they are super cute.

And because of the way the internet works, my Pinterest feed flooded with DIY miniature piñata projects.

I don’t know if you know this, but I really like small things. Tiny cars (this is on my bucket list), tiny craft supplies, tiny crafts. Love them all. (I included a standard shot glass in the photo at the top of this post for scale.)

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Birthday Punch Card

Create a personalized birthday punch card so the fun can last all month! | SuzerSpace.com

At SuzerSpace, we celebrate birthdays for the entire month. That let’s the birthday person feel extra special, and it also allows for real life to set in.

We can work special treats, shopping trips and meals in and around work responsibilities, bad weather or just grumpy moods.

A couple of years ago I added in the craft of creating a special punch card, which makes for a ceremonial start to each day, as we “punch in” for the event.

Pictured up top of this post is the remnant of this year’s – we went a little crazy and punched some extra spots, but you get the general idea.

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Baby Shower Cupcake Toppers

Cute baby shower cupcake toppers come together quickly using a SVG file designed for assembly line production | SuzerSpace

I’ve always been the go-to person wherever I work for personal projects. It always seems like someone needs a birthday invitation, a holiday card, and the occasional baby shower decoration. 

But lately, I’ve been making baby shower items for the children of the people I work with. Which means that somehow they have gone from being the cute little kids who sometimes appeared in the office to adults about to have kids of their own. Which is weird, since I haven’t become one bit older!

In July I showed how to make a cake topper using my Silhouette Cameo. In theory, you could use the same process for baby shower cupcake toppers, but there are two challenges – 1) cupcakes are smaller, so you’ll be working with smaller pieces to align and glue together, and 2) while you normally have just one cake, cupcakes are usually served in dozens, which means more toppers to create.

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Birthday Banner Card: A Pinterest Challenge

Birthday banner card featuring knockout letters in flags | SuzerSpace

The purpose of the Pinterest Challenge is to inspire you to actually create something from all of those pins you’ve carefully curated (hoarded?) on to all your boards.

But this month, the challenge turned out to be trying to actually find the tutorial and it’s template from the pin.

I have seen this pin 

quite a bit, and I eventually decided to pin it to my Birthday board. I am very careful to actually vet my pins by clicking through them to make sure they don’t lead to spam, dead links or just something completely useless before I save them.

This one was super tricky. A lot of the versions of this pin are just the one image, “uploaded by user” that lead exactly nowhere. Some lead to websites that feature round ups of cards, some with and some without attribution to the creator.

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