Let the Countdown Begin...

So the other night I couldn’t sleep so I parked myself in front of the computer and started perusing my favorite crafting blogs…from which I clicked through to a bunch of other blogs…

BIG MISTAKE

Now I MUST have chalkboard paint – I saw so many cute things that were done using chalkboard paint…from masking a plastic charger so you can have a cute colorful chalkboard for your kitchen…to painting small wooden boards to be used as door hangers. I got this GREAT idea from seeing all the chalkboard items…but I must wait to actually do it :(

Anyway – I have been crafting up a storm…I am finally finished with the holiday craft fairs – I participated in 3 of them this year – I did OK – I hit the goal I set for myself – I was hoping to surpass it but I will take my goal…

I have a few orders of some items to finish up – hoping to complete that this holiday weekend – as for the first time in 5 years we are not traveling – I could stay in my PJ’s the ENTIRE weekend if I wanted to…

I did want to show you a special project I have been working on. I found the best little site on-line for vinyl designs – My Vinyl Designer that I mentioned the other week. They are currently having a great sale on all there designs – 25% off (use the code: holidays) and best yet – immediate download. They also provide a weekly freebie as well.

The site has been running a contest each week – with getting ready for the craft fairs I wasn’t able to set aside the time to participate – but when this past weeks came up I had an idea that went "Ba-Blam" in my brain…

So this past week was to take one of their Advent calendar designs and create something with it…
I took CA007, a metal baking sheet, red, green, yellow and white vinyl, a few fonts, fancy holiday ribbon, a wooden star and a magnet and came up with this….



I managed to snag the baking sheet at a local craft store for under $2 and had TC drill a hole in the top.

When I imported the Advent calendar into my Silhouette Studio software it was a breeze to use…I simply did the layout to get to the size and shape I wanted it to be based on my baking tray – I decided to use the back of the tray so it would sort of sit out a bit from my wall when hung. I was able to split the images so I could cut the numbered balls and wording in red and the top and bottom of the tree in green.

I went a quick step further and cut out the top of the tree in a scrap of light yellow and trimmed it so I had the star shape that I layered over the green.

I used a snowflake dingbat font to cut some snowflakes in white to scatter and made a fancy bow to cover the top lip of the baking tray and used the excess ribbon to form a loop for hanging.

Now the number holder – I found a small already painted yellow star at one of the big box craft stores – slapped a round magnet on the back (didn’t even need to pull out my glue gun – Craft glue dots are the best things ever) and VIOLA…it becomes my day tracker. Before and after X-mas it nicely resides at the top of the tree.


I think it turned out quite nifty if I do say so myself – and my girls LOVE it…I was thinking of bringing it to my workplace but I don’t think my girls will let me do that – they want to hang it in their room.

Now to complete my orders so I can craft for myself some more…