Freebie Friday: Personalized Labels

So I was privileged to be a guest poster on Meremade for her back to school month, which is still going on so head on over and get some more great ideas! Here is my contribution:

 I may have a small obsession with labels :) But when it comes to school supplies, can you really have too many labels? I don't think so either, especially fun printed and personalized-for-you labels.


Today that's what I'm sharing--some free printable Personalized Labels. The beauty of these downloadable labels is you only have to type in the name once and it fills out all the labels on the page! So nifty! (Or annoying if you wanted them all to be different . . . alas).  I say some because there are a few color choices for you to choose from. Color is important, right?

Okay, so the options are (click to download):

• RAINBOW with BLACK writing
• GREEN with BLACK writing
• GREY with TEAL writing
• GREY with HOT PINK writing
• MUSTARD with GREY writing

They all have the same font with light grey outlines around them. Those are the cutting guidlines. If you have a paper cutter you will be happy :) If not it won't be too bad!

So my mini tutorial is simple:

What you'll need:


Printer
Printer Paper
Scissors
paper cutter (optional)
Packaging Tape

Stuff to label---lots of it!


1. Download the Labels of your choice. Open them up in adobe reader and click on a yellow box inside one of the labels. Type in the name of your choice. Push enter and watch as all the labels are magically filled in for you! Print out on plain old regular printer paper (don't worry the yellow highlights won't print).

2. Cut out with scissors or a paper cutter. Even if using a paper cutter you may need to cut a little bit with scissors since some of the lines don't go straight through from one edge of the paper to the other.

3.  Pull out the packaging Tape and get taping!  I cut my tape with scissors so it would have smooth edges instead of the jagged ones made by an included cutter.

4. Make sure the packaging tape goes over on all edges. We don't want any water getting underneath because you probably printed on an ink jet printer and they bleed if water touches them (which is a good reason not to print on the letter size sticker paper--kudos for being cheap).

5. The flag labels are the ones with the small writing on both ends. I put them on my scissors.  I used a peice of double stick tape to stick the two flags together as well as the packaging tape on the outside (I didn't bother to do that with the flat ones). It's also a little bit tricky to get the tape through the scissor handle without getting it stuck. But once you do, CAREFULLY fold the pointy tips together first and then stick the rest of the tape down towards the handle. I had to clip the tape at the handle to make it fit a bit better, but it's really up to you.

If you are more into practical stuff  than fun flags, I might just tape a little label onto the side of the scissors . . . if you're boring (have I discouraged you enough yet, hee hee!)

6. For the crayons I didn't want huge pieces of packaging tape on my crayons so I cut a piece of tape the width of my tiny labels and then cut that in thirds and used all three pieces for three different crayons.

Anyway,  you get the idea. Not too tricky. Now all your stuff has pretty personalized labels that were fairly fast, and hopefully super cheap and everything is so organized right? Hah. Good luck finding the time to do it!


Happy labeling!

Sunshine Wreath

I have to credit the little buddy with this creation. It's true. He came upstairs yesterday with a bunch of broken sticks in his hand and said "he need to build somethin'" Immediatley I remembered seeing this wreath on Delia Creates last year. I loved it, but between all the rain we'd been getting and a 1 month old, I wasn't trekking out to gather sticks.

But this year it was fun. We went on a "stick hunt" and found a bunch of sticks, and scraped a lot of dead bark off and then sat on the sun soaked back steps to start making our "sun."

That lovely sun soon turned into an oven and then the buddy lost interest helping, and ran off to play in the yard, and of course I ran out of sticks and had to persuade the buddy to go on another stick hunt. Back at the porch I heard the sweetie crying--awake from her morning nap. Several glue sticks later, I had the sticks all glued on, and the sticks the sweetie had stepped on glued back on. We went inside for lunch.

I finally went and checked Delia's blog to see how she'd done her wreath-obviously mine was a bit different, but I decided I didn't want it to be a Halloween one as much as a festival fall one. So I added rosettes instead of painting it black. I've never been able to master the rosette before. Every attempt (like 2) have always ended in failure. It's true. But my sister had given me the cutest rosette clip for the little sweetie and so I called her and she walked me through it (here is her online tutorial). Being able to ask her my questions rather than trying to follow a tutorial helped this time. Anyway, I clipped off some little orange twiggy things from some garland I have and wala, I'm so excited about how it turned out! The little buddy told me this morning "I really like your sun! What are we going to put in the middle?" I told him we could put his face :) He didn't think that was a good idea.

Moral of story:
1.  Don't sit in the hot early autumn sun to glue your branches on (the glue doesn't really set well).
2.  Do it when the kids are in bed if at all possible (except the stick hunt of course).
3.  Have an awesome sister to walk you through the tutorial.

*UPDATE: After lots of comments and requests on and off the blog, I've decided to sale some already made wreaths. They are fairly simple to make (although the rosettes are a little tricky) but time consuming. From gathering to finished product takes 4-5 hours. So I've priced them accordingly. If you would like to purchase rather than make one, you can find them at my other etsy shop:

55CanaryDrive. 

Thanks for all your kind words!

Freebie Friday: My Bones are Ready for Halloween!

Okay, so I KNOW this is a tad early. But my neighbor had a pumpkin on her porch this morning and I've been thinking about pulling out my Halloween decorations for a week now, and I just can't resist anymore!  (I even bought my son's costume on ebay tonight  . . . eek I'm excited.) I may skip back to fall and harvesting and all that fun stuff eventually, but for now it's a Halloween freebie.

Simply print on cardstock and cut down to 8x10. 


Get the Dem Bones Poster here.

 

enjoy!

Thrift Store Scores

My husband says I'm addicted I'm pretty sure I'm not!  So I've been avoiding the thrift store, trying to save a little you know. But I do have a hard time saying no at the thrift store ;)  But, I have to say these are basically my two scores: a cake stand with that gorgeous scalloped edge ($3) and a square yellow pyrex bowl ($2). Now I need to bake a cake!

Guest posting on Meremade today!

Hey, head on over to Meremade and her awesome Back to School Month. I'm guest posting today!! I have some cool free labels for you!

enjoy!

ABC Giveaway Winner!!

Hey guys, the buddy and I did an old school drawing. (after the sun went down, sorry for the bad lighting)

And we've got some winners!

Jeanine and KevinandJenn congrats! Email me at yellowmum (at) gmail (dot) com and I will email the files to you!

If you didn't get it this time, they are still in my shop. I'm also thinking we're going to have to do giveaway's more often. I've already got one planned for when I finish all the Animal Alphabet posters. 

Thanks for playing!!

First day of Joy School

The Buddy started joy school yesterday. He LOVED it! Couldn't stop talking about it all day. . . "We did singing" . . . "I liked the joy fish!" . . . "I know pokey bear." . . . "I didn't want to stop playing duck duck goose!"  It was so fun to hear him talk about it, especially since we did the first day at our house so I knew what he was talking about. He had a spill of words when his daddy came home and showed him his melted crayon art project. We had so many crayon "crumbs" left over that we did a bunch more after the other kids went home. I thought this one turned out so cool. Don't you think it looks like a bird?

They were really easy to do. We just shaved crayons with a paring knife and then folded a piece of printer paper in half and sprinkled the crayons inside, put a bunch of newsprint on top and melted it with the iron.Then open it up quickly before the crayon dries. It would be fun to do with fall colors in mind as fall decorations. Turn them into garland or place mats or whatever.

Also, quick reminder that Thursday night I will be announcing our giveaway winner! Last chance to enter!