Thank You Cards: Stamped, Glued and Yet to be Delivered

Where does the time go? It's been 2 weeks since the big party and I'm still a bit upset at myself for not taking a single picture except for one shot with the birthday boy as he was cutting his cake. But, at least we have reminders of the special day (the 'seeds of wisdom' or more like 'seeds of sarcastic jokes' jar, the koozies, the sunflower seed favors, everyone else's pictures of the bag pipers, the boylan's rootbeer bottles, holes in the ground from the pitched tent, large mason jar centerpieces, and lots of play sand).

It is now up to D to send out the 30+ thank you cards that I made using leftovers from the invitations and a theme inspired by the 'seeds of wisdom'. Lets see how long it takes for his hands to hurt from the writing.

I was inspired by Twig & Thistle's surprise 30th birthday invitations envelopes. First of all, what a coincidence is it that the posting was for a surprise 30th Birthday? Secondly the timing couldn't have been closer. D's party was August 14th while the date on Twig & Thistle's invitation says July 10th. It must be meant to be (insert smile here).

In any case, I loved the idea so, I used Gimp and Pages to bring the project to life. I also got a little help from the following resources:

- Gimp Arc Text Filter

- Instructions on how to draw a circle in Gimp

Centerpiece: Pin the tail on the candle

A week ago, we rushed my boyfriend out of the house in the early AM so that we could spend the next 6 hours preparing the backyard for his surprise birthday party. After all said and done, I have no photographs of the event itself. Just keepsakes like the candle that topped the large mason jar centerpiece.

This idea spawned from a portion of a sunflower seed label found on Style Me Pretty. We create our own label with the birthday boys name flanking the left of the big '30' and his birthdate (which has been redacted) flanking the right. Five labels were printed on a brown paper bag about 5 inches wide (printed label is 2.5" wide) and 5 inches high. Each label was cut into a strip. Then, each 2.8"x3" candle was wrapped evenly with two strips. Finally, to hold the labels down, instead of using glue or tape, we drove two thin sewing pins through the opposite ends of the labels and into the candles. (use a scissor or hammer to drive the pin in if your fingers begin to hurt). The pins were ingenious!

Retirement Gift Part III: Apothecary Jar and Friends

After a little show-and-tell of the Bananas spice jar, the rest of the gang decided to join in and express themselves using spice jars too.

We included:

- Potty Mouth Soap with a hotel size bar of soap shaved down to fit.

- Salmon Fish Oil Gluten with Swedish fish candies.

- I Spy Hinjew with a mix of milk chocolate & white chocolate covered almonds and a brown jelly bean. (not photographed).

This was our way of saying "goodbye and remember all the good times". Obviously to the outside reader, these sound absolutely ridiculous but then again, that's why it's called an inside joke.

It's amazing what you can do with a printer, label template, the right fonts and scraps of brown paper bags. We'll miss you Dennis.

A hint of vintage: 30th Birthday Surprise

It all started 4 weeks ago. First the invitations. Then the envelope labels. Following that were the favors. And what's a milestone birthday without a keepsake for the birthday boy? With all this, the gift wrapping for the presents have to be spectacular! Finally, to pull it all together, we consulted with owners of vintage goods to see they'd loan some to us as supplemental display items for the night.

The festivities are this weekend but here's a sneak peak which, I've been dying to reveal. It is, after all, the reason I got into this full throttle arts & crafts kick.

Retirement Gift Part II: Project Manager of the United States of America

I've been inspired. It started a few weeks ago when google landed me on 'iDo'-it-yourself. DIY ideas have been spinning in my head since but, none have left a greater impression than Motif: Silhouettes. So many possibilities!

Here's my first complete rendition of silhouettes. Yet another gift for a retiring colleague. Yes, he will be missed.

Printed on vellum paper (can be purchased from Staples). The smudge spot is his redacted signature. Background paper is white which colleagues will write their farewell message around the silhouette. The idea is not to have the messages overpower the print - thus the vellum. Lets see how it works out tomorrow at the office!

P.S. Creating the silhouette is easy as cake! I've read other blogs that used the approach of tracing paper over a printed photo but if you're a digital gal/guy, all you need is a digital camera or camera phone, computer and image editing tool.

1. Take a digital profile picture of your subject. In our case, we recruited one of the jokesters of the office to pretend he was doing a camera phone photoshoot of the project team. What a great candidate because even after 5 snaps, the jokesters activities went completely unnoticed. Tip: try to have as blank of a background as possible. This will help during the editing process.
2. Using a picture / graphics editing tool (I used Gimp on my mac), do your very best to capture the outline of your subject. I did this with a little tinkering of decreasing brightness, increasing contrast, desaturating, erasing noisy backgrounds, etc.
3. Fill the outline with black if you haven't already.
4. Erase the background if you haven't already.
5. Have another go at decreasing brightness and increasing contrast until your silhouette is completely black.

Tada! A silhouette!

Retirement Gift: It's Bananas!

B-A-N-A-N-A-S!

It's apothecary label from Eat. Drink.Chic. meets glass spice bottle from The Container Store to become a gag gift containing M&M's and banana runts from Dylan's Candy Bar. (Inside joke)

Tip from an Interior Design student: Instead of using double sided tape, I used paper cement. For maximum tackiness brush a layer of paper cement on the bottle and a layer of paper cement on the back of the label. Let dry for 45 seconds or until both layers appear matte. Affix the label to the bottle ensuring full contact between both layers of paper cement. Rub off excess.

Label was printed on scraps of brown paper bags. (also an inside joke)