Valentines Treats and Teacher Appreciation Days

The Wonderkid's school decided to have Teacher Appreciation Days this week instead of at the end of the school year.  I understand the thinking (parents aren't likely to be as busy right now as they will be at the end of the school year) but I can't imagine not doing something for the teachers when school ends.  Any way, it gave me a direction for all of them candy making fun.  In the end, I covered anything in chocolate that didn't move (and the Wonderkid did his best to cover himself in chocolate). 

Here are the chocolate covered strawberries.  I'm still working out how these will get packaged (assuming they make it out of the house at all).

Now are you starting to understand why I wasn't able to take part in any of the challenges this week?  It has been a little crazy around here.

These are some of my favorites.  They are chocolate covered oreo cookies.  Wilton sells these wonderful molds.  I must say, I was a little challenged at first because I hadn't fully followed the instructions.  You get the best results if you pipe the different colors of chocolate into the mold and let it harden just a bit, then pipe in the color that will surround the cookie.  After you push the cookie into all the chocolate-y goodness you put the filled molds into the refrigerator.  Once the chocolate takes on a frosty color they will just drop out of the mold when you turn the mold over.  Then, put the cookies into a cello bag (I buy the Micheal's brand bags with a coupon).  Then, I pull out my Cricut and start making the toppers. 

Here is one with the topper.  Because we are celebrating Teacher Appreciation Days but it is also Valentines, I used a conversation heart and wrote "Thank U" with the same font style as the conversation hearts.  I put the conversation heart onto a black out of the heart and put all of that over a wonderful frame from SVGCuts.  All of that went over a 4 inch x 3 inch scored and folded piece of designer paper.  All of the papers I used came from the K and Company Valentines stacks.  I must say, I loved knowing that everything would coordinate and that the backs would be as beautiful as the fronts. 

Here are a few more of the cookies.  You can see I made a number of different designs and used different DP.

What do you think of the cookies?

Here are the pretzels.

I made them with both chocolate and white chocolate.  Wilton has molds for the pretzels also but I decided not to take the time to mold them.  I also find that the molds use a lot of chocolate so I don't like to do too many of them.  I put together a dozen pretzel rods for each of the Wonderkid's main teachers. 

Here is a huge pile of the pretzels and you can read the stamping I did on these.

I did some that said "Thanks!" and others use a Tim Holtz stamp.  "it's the little things that make life big."  I thought those were fitting and allowed me to use them for some of the neighbors and family friends.

What do you think of all the treats and their pretty packaging?

Tomorrow I'll show you the shirt I made for the Wonderkid to wear to school. 

Kraft Thank You Card with a Florish

One of my favorite things to craft with is Kraft paper.  I know it is brown and doesn't have a lot to it but it has such an organic look to it and I love to use it as a base.  I'm not crazy about white (too easy to get dirty) and cream, vanilla, beige can be tough to match.  I have some "cream" colored cardstock that has way too much yellow in it.  In fact, it probably should be called "butter".  OK, ok, enough about my love of Kraft paper and lets get on with it.

I recently found a blog and company the Kraft Journal and Kraft Outlet.  Oh boy, this could be fun.  They did a challenge this week to make something with a flourish.  At first this doesn't seem to fit together.  Florishes are fancy and elegant, Kraft paper is organic and down-to-earth.  However, I wanted to play along.  I decided to be very literal with the design. Here is my design.  I used my Cricut Expression to cut the file.  Don't blame the Cricut for the edges on the dark brown cardstock.  It actually looks much better in person.  It is funny, some things look better on the blog and others look better in person.  I get very frustrated with dark cardstock with a white core.  This is one of those.

This is a thank you card for a friend of mine.  I don't think she is reading my blog so it should be safe to show before she actually receives it.  The florish is a free file from SVGCuts.  You can find this cut (already laid out as an A2 card) here.  While you are there, I recommend looking at their other cuts. If you have SCAL and a Bug, you will love their work.  It cuts like a dream and really is quite beautiful.

I used it in my SCAL2 program.  It was designed as the top layer (the one on the right) but I wanted to add a shadow to it.  SCAL has a wonderful feature allowing you to make a shadow or a blackout shadow of anything you choose.  You can make just a tiny shadow or a much larger shadow.  Or you can make a blackout of the items.  This function is under "appearance" on the right side when you have the handles highlighted on an object.  If you haven't done anything, it will say "Normal" if you want a shadow, you have seven options on the pull down menu (pointy, rounded and straight shadow, blackout, pointy, rounded and straight shadow blackout).  Then you choose how thick to make your chosen option.

I also used SCAL2 for the lettering.  I hate my handwriting so it is unlikely you will see me printing anything.  Therefore, I love to use my Cricut to do headlines or lettering such as this card.  I have a full set of the Cri-Kits pens with the holder.  I love them.  They work so much better than the ones that come from Provo Craft (mostly because they aren't markers, they are pens) and they work better than my old method of inserting a sharpie or gel pen into a pencil holder and then trying to get the placement "just right" so I could get a nice line.  This font is part of the Lucinda package of fonts and was already loaded into my computer.

As much as I like the organic look of Kraft paper, I decided the card need a little bit of bling.  I used a combination of embellishments from Creative Charms (another favorite of mine) and Recollections, the Michael's brand.  I think they look great together.  If you haven't checked out Creative Charms, I highly recommend them.  They have a Deal of the Month and Kit of the Month.  I love them and this months is great for valentines.

I hope you liked my card. I'll try not to "talk" so much tomorrow.