Selman Family Christmas Tree!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Do you find it hard to select "the perfect" gift for your parents or grandparents or even great grandparents (GGs)?

Well, we did too!

After mailing out all of our Christmas Cards, the GGs, indicated how much they loved it and are displaying it for their neighbours to enjoy too.

An idea "POPPED" into my head, of a nixed idea for this year's Christmas Card.

Recognized this pop-up Christmas Tree? Well, mass producing it was nixed, but creating a large one for the GGs, would be perfect!

In lieu of the regular Christmas ornaments, I replaced it with photos of each member of the family. All 4 generations of us, in ornament form. Now they will have all of us around for the holidays, when we can't all be there at once. There's a lot of us now!

Turned out really well. I printed everyone on vellum paper so it would "pop" when a light is shining through.

I also found at the dollar store, these cute mini snowflake LED lights (battery operated). Perfect for the little tree.

Looks great lite up don't you think?

The best things about this Christmas tree is that it collapse flat, perfect for mailing and storing for future use.

The ornaments can be updated and added to as the kids grow and as the family expands more.

2017 Selman Christmas Cards

Happy Holidays! Season's Greetings!

Wishing you and your family a wonderful time together!

A full year with TWO boys! Where will I find the time to make Christmas cards? Let's not even get ahead of ourselves here, where will I find the time to design a new Christmas Card? It's going to be impossible!

Of course, never say never!

I started thinking about Christmas cards during the summer. Never stuck to any one idea till literally last month. Then voila, a firm idea, all thanks to Silhouette America Design Store! I love this site...I visit it weekly for free cut designs and on sale cut design. Last month, I discovered a new contributor to the Design Store, Love Pop Card, and low and behold they had an amazing 3D pop up steam engine for purchase.

Anyways, after purchasing the cut file and sending it through my Cameo, the train turned out amazing. Don't let it's intricate detailed design deceive you, it not fragile and was quite easy to assemble. Logan loved it. Grabbed it...popped it open....ran to his room to display it prominently on his bed's headboard shelf.

I toyed around with mass producing the train. Nixed it within minutes. Too many pieces to deal with in the limited time I had at my disposal.

I toyed around with the idea of a Christmas tree. Made two small ones that Logan loved immediately, so he hijacked to be part of his train display in his room. I, however, nixed this idea too. It was just missing something and I didn't really have time to tweak it to my satisfaction for mass producing. However, stay tune for how I did end up using this Christmas idea.

So back to the drawing board. I know I really wanted to make a pop-up card this year. I know, sticking to the family love, it has to represent hockey in some form or another.

Eureka! After doodling and freehand cutting, I got the prototype done of this year's annual Christmas card! I showed Richard for a quick approval, then showed Logan and he loved it and want one for ALL his friends! Eek!

Mass production commenced...
...three separate sets of design pieces were made...
...three separate cuts were run through the Cameo...

...careful assembly took place...

...decorations were designed, cut and added...

...custom envelopes were made...

...and voila

A hundred cards were made and sent out to a select list of family & friends. I capped myself at a hundred cards or I would never stop making cards!

First batch (with the majority of the cards) were completed and mailed out just before December 1st, just before international delivery deadline! My international recipients started receiving their cards a week after mailing. Woohoo! Talk about good timing!

Book Origami

I have always loved Book Origami! They are the perfect gift for bookworms.

I have looked everywhere, trying to find instructions on how to reproduce one for myself. For a while, all I found where places that sell one for $50-100.

Finally! The wonders of Pinterest! I found instructions on how to recreate one of these gorgeous Book Origami. The first few ones I found, didn't appeal to me. I didn't want to have to sketch my design onto the book edge...my OCD on getting the prefect image transferred to the edge would prevent me from making the first mark since nothing will be perfect. However, if you are a sketcher, check out the instructions here:

Anyways, since it's my cup of tea, I kept searching...and finally, to start of 2017, I found instructions that appealed to me. This one allowed me to combine my love for my computer and my love for my books to create a gorgeous Book Origami. You can check out instructions here:

To summarize, in brief, it's very very easy to prepare, just requires time and tedious focus on details.

1. Create your black and white design, keep in simple

2. Select a book, note the number of pages in the selected book

3. In Excel, number your columns, using odd numbers, to represent each leaf of the book

4. Embed your image onto the Excel file and stretch the image to cover the span of each column representing each leaf in the page

5. Print your excel file

6. Line up each leaf to the line on the print out and start folding off the white space

The best things about this technique is that:

- You don't need to sketch onto the edge of the page

- Your design can be more intricate

- You won't lose your place in the folding, just line up your leaf to the corresponding line on your print out

To celebrate the new year and to bid my bestfriend a bon voyage back to her home on the other side of the country, I created my very first Book Origami for her and her family.

Happy New Year everyone!

(I also unpacked my embroidery/sewing machine to create a book cover, to cover up the cover of a discarded book that I decided to use for this present, since no book lover would be able to fold up one of their favourites, that will most likely be read again and again!)

Leland's Birthday Train

For parents who have a Silhouette and have kids who love Thomas the Train...this is for you...

This was a fun project for my godbrother and godsister's son's 2nd birthday...though it was a belated birthday present, since I didn't realise that assembly need just a bit more time than I had allocated...lol

Anyways, I purchased 3 designed from the Silhouette Design Store from the artist SnapDragon Snippers...quite affordable at $2.19 each (cheaper if you are a member or during the sale periods) design file that you keep forever. Here are the links to the 3 different design pieces: Engine, Coal Car, and Carriage.

So when you first purchase the 3 designs, it is for a Christmas themed train, looking like this:

So to start off, how do you get the design above to look like the train at the top of this post? It's actually not too hard, since the designs actually label all the different pieces you need to have cut...and with a little trial and error and help from the SnapDragon Snippers blog, I was able to cut what I needed in the colours that I want to assemble everything in to the theme of Thomas the Train.

With a little modification and custom designing this is what I made:

The Engine with the trim showing the year of the birthday boy's year of birth.

The Coal Car with big Ls for Leland.

And finally the Carriage Car with Leland's name on the side and of course more Ls on the front and back.

So with a little time and patience...you can make yourself a 3 car train...to celebrate a special birthday!

Happy belated 2nd Birthday Leland!

Valentine's Day

Richard and I don't really celebrate Valentine's Day...but that doesn't mean others don't celebrate...this year, I decided to design some Valentine's Day cards for my co-workers.

And of course, I had to design a few special ones for my hockey players...

Hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's day for all those who celebrated!

2014 Selman Family Limited Edition Christmas Card

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful winter holiday.

Did any of you write down any New Year's resolution?
My New Year's resolution involves staying in touch more regularly with my BFF in Ottawa and carving out just a bit more time to craft a bit more, especially now that I have a sewing/embroidery machine!

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It's been a while since I last posted, so I'll kick start the year showing off "The Selman Family's 2014 Limited Edition Vancouver Canucks Stocking Skate Waterfall Card"...talk about a mouthful!

I kept this very simple, but with very detailed designs on each panel. Everything you see above was designed using the Silhouette Cameo, except the eyelet at the top for the ribbon.

It might be hard to see, but this year I had SELMAN embedded into the 2014, on the stocking skate.

And of course, there's always a Vancouver Canucks Logo. Go Canucks Go!

How the waterfall card works, is when you pull the ribbon above, the individual pages self flips below.

As you keep pulling, the card flip through the pages, and the greeting panel reveals itself.

I think for next time, I won't make each panel's design so intricate because it was very tedious work adhering it with double-sided tape. (I'm not a fan of glue...I find it too messy and it can damage the nice metallic paper I was using.) That was the reason why I only made a dozen of these cards!

I hope you like this card!
Stay tune for the next post of all the other Christmas Cards I made for 2014.