My kids do karate and are in black belt training which means they have extra equipment with which they train. I wanted their stuff to stand out from all the other kids so I got crafty and made some tags, bags and labels using my crafty supplies and some ingenuity. Read along to hear about what I made.

Here it is....the final challenge of level 2. So far I have taken 20 Altenew Academy classes and made 37 cards. This has been a really great experience to improve my card presentation and to learn different techniques. For this challenge I had to make a home decor project using inspiration from some of the 20 classes I have taken. I decided to make some prints in the spirit of John Audubon’s nature prints. I had been planning on purchasing some Audubon original book plates but these are really expensive. The book plates have really simple images and have just a flower or birds with the species name in typeface. Altenew stamp sets have beautiful detailed images that I thought would work great for this project. Read on for how I put together these home decor pieces. If you have questions on the Altenew Educator Program, please let me know as I would be happy to talk about my experiences so far. I’ve included affiliate links in this post for the items I used to make these pieces. If you use these links to purchase the items, I may get a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for your support.

I love birthdays ... from cake to presents to celebrating with friends and family; birthdays are just a lot of fun. Having two kids means lots of birthday parties which means lots of buying birthday gifts. For birthday gifts, I prefer to give something that is personal and can be used over and over. This cycle of birthdays, I’m making personalized tote bags. I already posted on this, here but I have another example including what I put into the whole gift. For this project, I used my Cricut Explore Air, Cricut Iron On Lite, Cricut Vinyl to make: a personalized tote bag, pencil box and bookmark. I also made two birthday cards to go with these presents. Lots of ideas here so I will break them down as I hope this post will leave you inspired to make some birthday gifts.

Party favors can be difficult to grapple with. How does one provide a great thank you to your guests, but make sure it's not too expensive or cheap or tossed away later on. Each party I throw, I really try to make the party favors connect to the theme and be comprised of items the guests will continue to enjoy even after the party is done. For this year's birthday party theme of pool party, we came up with the idea of pool bags and towels. I wanted to make the bags special and had the thought of personalizing them for each guest. This may seem like a daunting task, but with time and organization and a Cricut, I knew I could get it done.