Camping Is In Tents T-Shirt

You know how I just got back from Girls Camp? Well this shirt was my pride and joy of the camping trip. I have been wanting a Camping is In Tents t-shirt for at least a month. Puns are the bestest. Girls Camp seemed like a perfect opportunity to make myself one.

I literally made this shirt up the day before I left. I probably should have vacuumed or cleaned a bathroom (or two). Instead I made this shirt.

Then I dressed it up with my new Camp Pants (as previously seen on Instagram @larissa_anotherday) and I made my husband take pictures of my stellar camping outfit. All of this done before I actually went camping.

I am pretty awesome like that.

Here is the image I made using PicMonkey. I made my shirts image by using geometric overlay tool to make the tent and the trees. The font is High Tide Sans, from my computer. That is the great thing about PicMonkey, you not only have their fonts to choose from, but you can also use the fonts from your own computer.

Image is for personal use only

Right click on image and save to your computer. You can trace the image onto freezer paper, cut out, and paint on to a t-shirt. Or you can save the image and use it in a vinyl cutting machine. Just make sure to reverse the image before cut it out. 

I used vinyl on a simple men's Hanes t-shirt.

This shirt was ultra dreamy. It was also quite the hit at camp.

We have several more camping trips planned for the Summer, and this outfit will most likely appear at every one of them. Sorry husband (he is not that fond of the pants). I just can't seem to help all that style whilst I rough it in the woods. By rough it I mean sleeping in a camper.

Hope you enjoy the shirt as much as I do. Which, if you couldn't tell is a whole lot. A lot, a lot.

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Blow My Mind Bubblegum Valentine

One last classroom Valentine idea before Friday. Whew, I am cutting close here. Can I tell you just how much I love these Blow My Mind bubblegum valentines?

Well I love them like a lot, a lot. I originally found a similar idea years ago on Pinterest. It was just a Flikr link so I took what I saw and recreated my own in Picmonkey. The whole process was pretty simple and Middle thinks his classroom Valentines are the coolest thing ever. So that was a score/score.

Here is what you need:

a picture/card with your kiddos face on it
pink balloons
double bubble
treat baggies
stapler

Let's talk about the card first.

I took Middle outside and snapped a quick photo of him making a "blow a bubble" face.

Then I made the card in Picmonkey.

I am going to do a quick run through of how I made this card. So the method is the same, the kid in the photo might be different. I forgot to save an original of the first photo.

Okay so here we go.

Go to the edit function in Picmonkey and open up the snapshot of your cute kid.

Go to the elements (the sparkly wand) function and change the photo to black and white.

Now the fun part, go to the borders/frames (the frame) function and choose the shape cutout. Drag the circle until your darling child is where you want him in the circle.

Next crop the photo.

After that, you will go into the overlays (butterfly) function and choose the circle from geometric. Each basic shape has an outline and the middle of the shape. When the overlay box pops up (the box on the right side of the screen below) Choose black for color 1 and transparent for color 2. That will give you an outline of a circle.

Enlarge the circle until it perfectly outlines your circle photo.

Now starts the tricky part. The text. I wanted my text to follow the curve of the circle. To my knowledge, Picmonkey does not have a curve text option, so I go in one letter at a time and curve out my saying. This is the only pain in the butt part. To save your self grief you can just type it on straight. If you want to curve it, here is a very brief and unprofessional way to do that.

One letter at a time, type in the letter and move the letter by the top circle to match the curve. Once one letter is done, move on to the next. Twisting and moving until they are aligned up.

The fonts I used were Ostrich Sans Inline and Futura Medium. This whole part was largely trial and error and still didn't come out perfect, but they would have never gotten done if I had tried to make them perfect. Hubby had to actually tell me to stop.

SO there is the basic on how to make this cute card.

To finish off your already adorable valentine hole punch the mouth of the photo, put the end of the balloon through. Then BARELY blow it up and tie it off at the back. You don't want the bubble to cover up the face completely. The one in this picture was my very fullest, so you can't really see his face.

Once the balloon is in place, fill the little treat bag with a few pieces of gum. Fold over the top and then staple the folded bag to the bottom of the valentine.

Now just keep repeating until all the classroom valentines are done. These are sure to be a hit in any classroom. They will blow their minds. HAHAHA. I had to.

This Blow My Mind classroom Valentine rounds out the Love You Like a Love Song and the Bag of Chips classroom Valentines and completes classroom valentines 2015.

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Young Women's Monthly Newsletter Template

For me, pretty much like everyone else, the new year incites a desire to be a little more organized. Or at least to be a little more on the ball. I am currently serving in my church with the youth. I love these girls and I love serving with them. I have served in Young Women's the majority of my adult life. You would think with all the time I have spent serving in this capacity I would always be prepared and on the ball.

False.

One of the things I have always been less than stellar at is providing a monthly calendar for the youth and their parents. This time around instead of a calendar I decided it would be more fun for me to make a newsletter each month. I found a really cute newsletter at Hanging the Ribbon on the Moon. I wanted to make a few design tweaks, so I made my own YW Newsletter Template using Picmonkey.

The template is really easy to customize in Picmonkey. Picmonkey is a free online photo editing program. I tend to go on and on about my love for Picmonkey. If I had to list all of the projects I have used Picmonkey for, well the list would go on and this post would be ridiculously long. So basically, just know I use it for everything.

To customize this template for your own ward, first you need to click on the newsletter above. Save the jpeg to your computer.

Go to Picmonkey and go to the Edit option at the top. Open the newsletter jpeg.

This is what it will look like-

Go to the "T" which is for text.

You can pick whatever texts you want to add in the information. I would suggest using the coordinating fonts, Futura Medium, Geo Sans Light, and Thirsty Script Bold.

First, add in the name of your ward above the Young Women title. I used Futura Medium at size 170.

I used Geo Sans Light size 70 for the date/activity. Stretch the text box to fit the calendar space and then type in the information.

 I also put the month at the top of the calendar box (using Thirsty Script Bold, size 100).

I used Geo Sans Light for all of the rest of the information. I used separate text boxes for all of the individual areas. The font sized varied depending on how much information I needed to fit in the spaces.

I know I am not showing your an actual finished newsletter, but since my newsletter has names and information about my girls I didn't want to share that with the whole world.

Once my newsletter was all done I emailed it to all of the parents. I even got a few compliments on the cuteness of this fun newsletter. I hope you find this template useful and that your world just bursts with cute newsletters.

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A Pinteresting Wednesday: Infographic Christmas Letter

I have been wanting to make an Infographic Christmas Letter for a while. I first saw them a couple of years ago. This year when The Hubs and I decided not to do Christmas cards, but to do a letter instead I figured it was the perfect opportunity to make one.

I searched around and finally settled on THIS design that I had pinned to my Christmas Board last year. I recreated the letter using PicMonkey.

It was a little bit of a labor of love. However, it was doable. I primarily used the shape cut out frame, choose own overlay, and geometric overlays to make everything you see.

I used three of my favorite fonts-- Thirsty Script Bold, Ostrich Sans Inline, and Egyptienne Light.

One of my favorite things about this letter is the individual circle pics (circle shape cut out over the photos) and the columns of information.

When I was all done making our Infographic Christmas Letter, I sent it to Staples to have them print them off. The quality is insane and I am so glad I choose to do that over printing them off myself.

Overall, I am happy we decided to do a letter this year. At first I was bummed we weren't going to do Christmas cards, but then when I started my creative juices flowing I really enjoyed making this letter. Now we will have to wait and see what I do next year.

I also should probably get these in the mail now. Ha! Here's to hoping they get where they are going before Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

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Lunch Sack Envelopes

Invitations to special events don't need to be expensive or ordered online. There are ways you can make a homemade invite look special without spending tons of cash. One of those ways to to be creative with how you package the invite. I have used a lot of fun mediums. This Lunch Sack Envelope is one of my favorite envelopes.

They are so easy to make. SO easy.

Most of us have lunch sacks just laying around. You can get traditional brown or white. Heck, they make similar bags that are "gift bags" and you can get those in practically any color. I also grabbed a sharpie pen and some washi tape.

The invites themselves were also affordable. I simply made them myself on PicMonkey. Then I printed them out on white card stock.

To make the Lunch Sack Envelopes, I measured the size of the invite and then sewed across the bottom of the sack with a 3.5 stitch just above the bottom of the bag fold.

Next I cut off all the bottoms.

Right there I had an envelope. To fancy it up a bit, I simple tore off a piece of washi tape and smacked it right on the bag. Then using a sharpie I wrote the recipients name above the tape.

Now all I had to do was slip in the invitation. 

I delivered them just like this to our lives-by-us friends and family. I slipped the whole thing in a larger envelope for those friends and family who we mailed one to.

See, invites don't have to break the bank. I am pretty sure I only spent money on the postage to mail some of them out. Huzzah! That is what I like.

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Clipboard Love Note and Temple Silhouette Art

Clipboards are one of my favorite decorating secret weapons. Clipboards are easy to find and they are really cheap. You can paint them. You can add a simple photograph. They can hang on the wall. They can sit on a shelf.

Seriously, clipboards are the best. They aren't just for taking notes anymore.

They are for leaving notes too. Love notes to be exact.

Love notes quoting the ever-dreamy Mr. Darcy to be more exact.

Just the best love note ever. This love note is simply clipped onto the clipboard. The great thing about this love note is that it is actually a photograph.

I made this love note photograph using PicMonkey. I scanned a piece of regular notebook paper into my computer. Then I opened it up in PicMonkey and used one of my favorite handwriting fonts to "write" up one of my favorite romantic lines ever. Then I just printed if off at a photo center as an 8x10.

right click on the image and save to your computer

The smaller sized clipboards are so cute. I just had to create something with one of them too.

The Hubs and I got married in the Salt Lake City Temple. I thought it would be nice to add a silhouette image of the the Salt Lake City Temple to a clipboard.

I cut out a stencil of the silhouette of the Salt Lake City Temple using my Silhouette machine. I stuck the vinyl stencil on to the clipboard. Then I used painters tape to cover all the parts of the clipboard I didn't want painted. I left a small boarder around the edge.

Then I spray-painted until the coverage was how I wanted. The last thing you need to do is let it dry for a bit and then slowly remove the painters tape and vinyl stencil.

With my clipboard art in hand, I can start decorating with it.

So much love and cuteness in the air I can barely stand it.

These clipboards would also look super cute in a wall collage...which just might be where they end up...hint, hint. Coming soon.

Now off I go to watch Pride and Prejudice for the 1,000th time.

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How to Make Photo Recipe Card with PicMonkey

I hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful.

I am now officially in Christmas mode. Okay, so I was kind of in part Christmas mode working on Christmas gifts, but now I am in 100% Christmas music, tree trimming, present wrapping, cocoa sipping Christmas mode.

I am so happy about it. 

One of the gifts I am putting together is a Cookie Photo Recipe Card Book. I used photos I had taken of all my favorite cookie/bar recipes to make recipe cards. Once they are all created and printed off, they will go on a ring for easy access.

Making Photo Recipe cards is really easy to make using PicMonkey.

1. Open up your photo.

2. Change the size to 2100x1500

3. Add a geometric overlay. A rectangle.

4. Change the hex code, to make the rectangle white. True white is ffffff.

5. Click and drag the rectangle and make it larger.  Large enough to create a text box for your recipe, but not so large that it will cover you lovely photo.

6. Fade the text box to be about 25%. This way more of your photo will show more.

7. Start with the title. I used the font Geo Sans Light. Stretch it to fit across the top.

8. To make the line underneath, use a geometric overlay. Stretch the rectangle until it is a line.

9. Using the same font, start the first column of ingredients. The font size will be smaller than in the title. 

10. Split the ingredients up, by making a second column. Once all the ingredients are listed, line up the columns.

11. Start a column beneath the ingredient list. Stretch the text box to go almost the entire width of the text box. Write the instructions in this text box. Move or stretch the box to fit in the white box.

12. Save.

Now that you made one recipe card, you can make a few more.

These are just a few more recipe cards for me to make up. I can't wait to show you the finished Cookie Photo Recipe Card Book.

I also think it would be fun to give one of these Photo Recipe Cards along with a plate of the goodies from the recipe.

Go to PicMonkey, play around and make your own photo recipe cards.