Jakob’s Seeds

A few years ago, my nephew came home from school with a green bean plant he grew from seed planted in a styrofoam cup. My in-laws helped him transplant the tiny seedling into the garden and watched it grow. At the end of the season, they saved some of the seeds to plant again.

Now, each year, we enjoy fresh green beans from that tiny plant — well, most of us do. My husband hates them, but the rest of us eat them.

So, as the garden is coming to an end this year, my husband harvested some of my nephews seeds and asked me to make a little seed packet for them. Here’s what I created …

I used Cricut’s Garden Soup cartridge to make the seed packet and green bean. The seed packet has cutout in it, so I covered that with acetate so we could see the beans inside.

Then, I cut out a layered bean in the same size to mount over part of it.

I used Mowed Lawn and Walnut Stain Distress Inks to keep it “boyish”.

Finally, I cut out letters with a Lifestyle Crafts font to add to the packet.

Now, my nephew’s beans have a special place to live until we plant them again next year.

 

Fun with Stickers

When I was young, I collected stickers. I had an old photo album that I filled with my finds and I looked forward to meeting and trading with other sticker collectors.

Even though I no longer put them in an album, I still enjoy playing with stickers and I love using them on my layouts. Besides reminding me of my youth, they are quick and easy and often provide just the right accent.

I have some friends who disagree. They never use stickers.

But, stickers do not have to be flat and, according to them, boring. With a few simple tricks, you can make your stickers fantastic.

On this page, using products by Basic Grey, I added dimension to the stickers by adding foam squares underneath the stickers.

The process is simple.

1. Take the sticker off its backing and turn it upside down.

2. Place foam squares on the back, but leave the paper covering the top layer of adhesive on.

3. With a small paint brush, or your finger, apply baby powder to the back of the sticker. This will render the adhesive useless, so your sticker will no longer be sticky.

4. Then, remove the backing off your foam adhesive and stick it to the page.

I used this technique on both the title and the owl to add dimension.

Stickers can also be layered, trimmed off the edges and accented with glitter, Stickles, brads and other things.

Or, you could buy already embellished felt stickers, like the butterfly on this page.

My cat, Winnifred, certainly loved this page. She came by when I was trying to photograph the page.

Every time I tried to take the page, she grabbed hold of that butterfly. Silly, kitty!