Keep Calm and Love Horses - Free Printable

Do any of you have daughters, sons, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, etc. who love horses? Well, I have a frugal gift for you! This 8x10 printable will cost you around $2 to make; it costs under $1 to print, $1 to frame (if you buy it at the Dollar or Thrift Store). You can't beat a $2 Christmas gift!

As I have mentioned a few times, my sister lives on an old farm built in the 1890's. Ever since she moved there, her daughter has loved horses. After years of horse back riding lessons, she is now begging to get her own horse. I don't think that will be happening any time soon, so I thought I would make her a framed "Keep Calm and Love Horses" piece for Christmas.  I am planning a Homemade Christmas again this year, so I had to start early. Be prepared, I will be making lots of printables, so you might see quite a few of this sort of posts. Don't worry I will offer them all for free, so hopefully you can check off a few people on your list as I am doing the same.
I am not sure which color I like the best, but I think I am drawn to the teal and the Tiffanyish color.

I won't go through details as to how I made this, simple because I really don't think most of you care :) (I will tell you that the font is called Keep Calm and can be found on most free font websites and the horse was a free PNG image I found on the internet. PNG images have transparent backgrounds, so they are perfect for projects like this.)

I will just give you the free download in a selection of colors that will hopefully match your decor.

These can be printed as 8x10s by simply downloading the image and sending it to your favorite print shop.

To download one these images to print:

• Leave me a comment letting me know who you are going to use this for, which color you prefer or if you would like another color, let me know and I can see what I can do for you.
• Right click on the image you want and select open in a new window or tab
• On the full size image, right click again and select 'save as'
• Save it to a place on your computer where you can easily find it
• Send it to your favorite photo developer, find a frame and you can cross another Christmas gift off your list.
• Please only use these for personal use!
• Enjoy!!

 Here are all the colors I have made:

 

 

Is there anyone on your Christmas list you can use this for? Is there any other 'Keep Calm' you would like to me to make and offer as a free download?

Enjoy!

Stephanie

My Oma is...Coasters from Grandkids

I know it is really early for Mother's Day gift ideas, but if I don't share this now I am going to be too busy and not get it posted in time. So at least this way you have plenty of time to use this idea for yourself.

I had these marble tiles laying around from the many other coasters I have made in the past. The first was the half-marathon bib coaster I made for my husband and the second set was the monogrammed coasters I made for a girl friend who was retiring. I purchased these tiles at Habitat for Humanity's ReStore but you can find them for really reasonable at HomeDepot or Lowes.

My mother is lovingly called Oma by her five adoring grandchildren. As with every family, each child has his or her own special relationship with their Oma. So, I thought what better way to express that unique relationship then to ask each of them to describe their Oma with one word and make a set of 6 coasters with those words.

I love how each description was a representation of each child and my mom knew immediately which coaster was from which grandchild. 

Materials

• Marble tiles (unsealed)
• StazOn permanent ink stamp - This permanent stamp can be purchased at Michael's for around $7 (I believe) and if you use a coupon you can get it for 40% less.
• Vinyl or stickers to use as template
• Sponge brush

Method

There are many ways you can do this craft. I designed and cut the templates out of vinyl with my Cricut, but you can use stickers from the dollar store or even stamps to make them.

I started off by cleaning the tiles with a damp cloth. When I purchased them, they seem to have a powder all over them.

Once dry, I stuck the vinyl directly to the tile. I placed the vinyl in different locations and directions on the tiles so they were more whimsical.

Using StazOn permanent stamping ink in black, I brushed the stamping ink over the vinyl with a sponge brush.

I found it worked best to wipe the brush across the template as opposed to dab it. I waited a minute and did a second coat to get a really dark black.

Here is the one tile I dabbed the sponge on; you can see how the ink bled under the vinyl and didn't give a crisp line. It did not look horrible but not as nice as the others.

Here is one where I brushed the ink across the vinyl like I was painting it on. See much crisper.

Once all the tiles are stamped and all the vinyl/stickers have been removed, you need to bake the tiles to make the stamp permanent and fade resistant.

Don't judge the how dirty my toaster over is...I use it for everything!

I baked my tiles in my toaster oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Once the time was up, I turned off the toaster oven and let them cool in there. They retain the heat for a long time so please be careful.

Also, don't venture too far away when they are baking just in case your tiles do not like to be heated. Just be careful and aware!

I did not put a sealant over the tiles they they can absorb the sweat from cold drinks.

After they were cooled, I put rubber stoppers from the dollar store on the back. I have used the soft felt ones before but found they slid off tables really easily. So these work much better!

I had each of the kids write their names and date on the back of the tiles with permanent markers.

My mom loves them and the kids love to use their own coasters when they visit. The kids have even noticed when Oma was using their coaster, so she now has to pay attention to not use one all the time. Share the coaster love amongst all the grand kids :)

So that is it. Simple, easy, cheap but most importantly personal gift idea!

What do you think..do you see the possibilities with this? Mother's day gift, father's day gift, teacher gifts...really you could give these for so many different occasions.

Stephanie

Christmas in October - Capture a Photo of Santa in front of your Tree for FREE

WARNING: If you have little ones looking over your shoulder or in the near vicinity, come back and read this post later. Be sure to come back because this is AMAZING!!! But be warned there is a potential spoiler that I do not want to be responsible for sharing. 



I am going to leave some space here just in case :)




Just in case my little ones somehow manage to read this: Guys... I will admit it is next to impossible to capture a real photo of Santa in front of our tree because, as we talked about, Santa moves so fast you can't see him. How else does he get all over the world in one evening? So this is just something to make little ones out there smile.

Last year I was lured to a blog by the idea of creating a photo of Santa standing in front of our Christmas tree. I thought it would be amazing to set up a camera with the kids before they went to bed on Christmas Eve to see if we can catch a glimpse of Santa. Well, when I got to the site, all they were doing was providing a link to a site that sells those photos (a digital download) for $10.

I knew it was something I could make myself...but I did not have the time last year before Christmas. So, since I have a couple of months until I need this, I thought I would take a crack at getting Santa in front of out tree. Well 5 minutes later, with very little effort, this is what I produced. Might not hold up the scrutiny of my curios kids as a professionally printed 8x10, but when printed as a 4x6 or viewed on a camera and it is amazing!

This is not my tree. I used a free wallpaper download to make this... I was too lazy to try to find the photos on our other computer.

If my kids do not see this, I plan to take the 'final photo' of our tree on Christmas Eve so that everything will be exactly the same (i.e. mess on the floor :) ) and insert Santa. I will then save the image back onto our digital camera so when the kids come down Christmas morning and look at the images on the camera they will find the one of Santa! The would be so excited...I am so excited right now. How amazing will this be? That is why I am sharing this in October because I just had to get the idea out there for all of you as soon as possible.

Here is exactly how to do this! I do recommend practicing this in advance of when you need it so you won't be disappointed!

Go on the internet and find a free PNG image of Santa.  I found a site that offers one image that works perfectly, so here is the link but I can't guarantee it is a virus free site. Nothing came up with my million virus blockers but just be cautious. This is the image I found by searching for 'santa photo png' , you will find other images too that might fit better. When you find the image you like, right click and select 'save image as'.

Source

The PNG image has a transparent background so you can overlay it on top of your tree image. It is hard to tell which images are transparent when looking at them on the internet (they usually have all white around them), but once you save them, you can see that the background is transparent. See how the Santa png 2 file has no white around it below when I save it on my Desktop? That means it is transparent.

Using Publisher, I created a new image 8x10 image but size doesn't really matter. That is what she said... sorry couldn't help myself I love The Office.

Select 'insert' 'Picture'. Find the background image you want i.e. the photo of your Christmas tree.

Enlarge the photo to be the size of the background so you don't see any white.

 Then insert picture again and insert your Santa png. If Santa appears behind your background image, click on the background and select 'Send Backwards'.

 This is how mine looked. Santa looked like he was floating in the air, so I moved him down, cropped off the bottom of his feet and enlarged him a bit to fit the proportions of the background.

 

 The save the image as a JPEG by selecting 'Save As' andthen select 'JPEG' fro the pull down list.

 Be sure to change the resolution to 'High Quality Printing'

Here is the finished image. I prefer the first image where the background is brighter but this is the one I used to make the tutorial and I didn't want to do it all over again.

You can either print this image at any photo printing location (i.e. Walmart, Costce, etc.) or save it back to your digital camera memory and have the kids find it there.

What do you think? Will you be able to use this?

Is anyone else as excited by this as I am?

Please let me know what you think! I would really love to hear what you think about this.
Stephanie at Full of Great Ideas

Christmas in September - Corn starch and Baking Soda Ornaments

I have tried salt dough with my kids in the past and although they loved it, I never loved the end result. It seemed to take forever for the dough to dry in the oven, microwave and/or on the counter and I found the color was never really nice. 

I have longed for a pure white ornament that could be used as gift tags. So when I found this recipe online (I got the final version I used on cooks.com) I was really excited. 

I was excited that I had all the ingredients on hand (who doesn't have corn starch and baking soda in their pantry?) and I love that this recipe produced a beautiful pure white dough that seems to have a shimmer. I am not sure which ingredient does it, but when the uncooked dough is in the light it sparkles. I will try this recipe again and add some white glitter to see how it works..I will let you know how that goes.

I tested out two different ways of hardening this recipe, air dry overnight and baking. I have to say I far preferred the results of the air dry. I liked the the kids could have the ornaments within 30 minutes with the baking, but the final result was a a little yellow and the shimmer was lost. So I highly recommend being prepared for an overnight dry time if you want amazing results.

The candy cane was air dried and the bell was baked. It is hard to see, but the candy cane is much whiter.  A funny thing is, I didn't notice until now that we put the hole on the wrong side of the candy cane..so when I went to hang it on the tree to photograph it was a 'J'.

Full batch recipe:

• 2 cups baking soda
• 1 cup cornstarch
• 1 1/4 cups cool water

I only did 1/4 of this recipe as a test to see how it worked. I had intended to make another batch with fancy ornaments and gift tags to post it here on Full of Great Ideas, but I absolutely loved this craft and wanted to share it with you right away. You never know, some of you might be bored on a Sunday afternoon and wanted to do something with your kids.

Method:

Mix cornstarch and baking soda in a pot.

Add water to the powder mixture. It will seem like the water sits on top, but after a little stirring in mixes all together into a runny mix.

Place the pot on a stove over medium heat. 

Be sure to stir the mixture constantly.

Once it thickens (you will know when it is done..it becomes a ball), turn into a bowl.

Cover with a damp paper towel and let cool. 

This is an important step. Don't be impatient like me and try to kneed it with your hands when it is piping hot! I try to teach my children to wait and be patient, but I can't seem to follow my own advice. If you are like me and decide to burn your hands, add one extra step...run hands under cold water and try to refrain from cursing because your children are watching and waiting to the dough to be done. :)

Knead the cooled mixture until smooth. It is amazing at how nice and smooth the dough becomes. I have never used the Magic Dough from Crayola (too cheap) but this is what I envision it to be like.

Roll out the dough to approximately 1/4 inch thick on a flat surface. If you find the mixture to be a little sticky, add a little cornstarch either on the counter on kneed it into the mixture.

Cut out desired shape with cookie cutters.

I had a few cookie press from when I was younger that the kids wanted to try and to be honest with you they are my favorites!

We used a drinking straw to make the hole a the top of each of the ornaments.

My son decided he was going to decorate a snowman with a straw and a butter knife. It is cute and he is quite proud of his work.

When I left the ornaments out to air dry, they dried nicely overnight. I did flip them over before I went to bed to ensure both sides dried evenly. This produced the nicest ornaments! They remained pure white and still have the shimmer to them.

 

But if you want to bake them, be prepared, they will slightly brown a bit in the process (especially the back). If you plan to paint the ornament, this is a great option for you. I was hoping to make pure white ornaments, so the air dry method was my favorite.

To bake them, preheat oven to 325 degrees. Place ornaments on parchment lined baking sheet and bake for approximately 30 minutes.  Be sure to watch closely for the last 10-15 minutes to prevent over browning. 

Here is the back of one of the ornaments I baked. See how the back of the ornament is a light brown?

You can seal any unused dough in plastic bag and keep it in the refrigerator until needed. I am not sure how long it will last, so I recommend only making enough for you to use within a few days.

The possibilities are endless for this craft! My kids have always loved making things out of dough, but we have never found a reasonably priced dough that air dries. You can add food coloring along with the water to color the dough and like I said, I think some glitter for Christmas ornaments would be amazing!

My kids have always made ornaments for family members but this year I think the ornaments will double as the labels. Have any of you ever make reusable Christmas gift labels? This will be my first year, but I am excited especially for family members who are just starting out and don't have many ornaments.

Have any of you used this recipe before? What have your results been? 

Anyone else getting ready for Christmas already? What are you working on?

Have a great Sunday!

Stephanie