Hello September 2019

Looking forward to September 2019 at SuzerSpace

Apparently, I say this just about every year, but August went by in a blur. I know I was busy and happy, but when I try and conjure up the highlights, two things stand out – 1) we hired someone to clean the gutters, and it was glorious; and 2) we bought a new toaster, and it is red.

Neither of those two things really sound amazing, but that’s just #reallife.

September is always big around here because so many things happen – college football (On Wisconsin!), NFL football (Chiefs/Packers/Cowboys divided house here), cooler temperatures, and most of all – it’s Mr. SuzerSpace’s birthday month and we celebrate that all month long.

Right now I don’t have big craft projects planned, but I bet I find something fun to paint/sew/letter/glue together.

How about you? Big plans for the start of the new season?

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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Top 5 Back to School Craft Ideas

Back to school craft ideas | SuzerSpace

Nerd alert: I really liked school.

Well, parts of it 😉 .

One of the best was picking out those school supplies. I’m somewhat convinced that my love for paper and pens led me on a long and windy road that ended up with a career in the prepress department of a commercial printer.

These days, just regular notebooks and pencil holders won’t do. You need to step up your back to school craft game to have the best, and I’ve been reading and pinning some really great ideas.

Here are my top five back to school craft ideas for this year:

Here’s an easy tutorial on covering composition books with a printable and washi tape to make a custom notebook.

How about some really custom pencils? Although I’m still obsessed with hand lettering with my brush pens (and iPad), I’m a pencil devotee – as long as the eraser is a good one.

This crayon design is listed as a teacher gift, but how cute would it be to make a child’s name for their art area?

Another teacher gift project that I think would be super cute (and useful) in a homework area at home. I’d fill it with pencils and scissors, not plants.

I don’t remember teacher gifts being a thing when I went to school. In fact, I’m really hoping they weren’t, because if they were, then I totally didn’t participate and that would be kind of rude/sad. But if you’ve suddenly realized that school starts this week (it does in Kansas City) and you aren’t in the mood to craft up a ton of projects, a printable card might be exactly what you need!

Red Fri Yay! T-Shirt

Learn the freezer paper stencil method of fabric painting to create a Fri yay! t-shirt | SuzerSpace

It’s been a little while since I stenciled a t-shirt. I took a side route and tried out heat transfer vinyl, and while it was fun, and I do have a lot of ideas swirling around in my mind on how to take advantage of that method, it does have a drawback to my beloved freezer paper stencil trick.

The issue is color. If you want to have multiple colors of HTV for your projects, you have to commit to a roll of each, and they are more expensive than a tube of fabric paint.

This project is actually one of my first Fall crafting projects. August starts pre-season football, which means the real start of the season isn’t far off. In Kansas City, the Friday before the first home game is a big deal. They call it Red Friday, and there are pep rallies, charity events and a big celebratory feel about the season that day. Most fans continue to wear red on Fridays throughout the season.

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