The Flick Four

A May Day Gift...

I have been in an online crafting group for a few years now. Its basically the same group of women that we started with, plus and minus just a couple. We all do paper crafts/scrapbooking and that was the original basis of the group- except now that we know each other so well, its much more chatting than crafting ;) The ladies live all over the US- and one in Australia! Several of us have gotten together "in real life", and each time it is like we have known each other all our lives. Anyway- on with my purpose of posting ;)

This wonderful group does a gift exchange about twice a year. Generally Christmas Stockings and Easter Baskets. If you choose to participate (and some dont- its not an issue) you get partnered with another woman and you make and buy crafty and/or personal gifts up to some pre-determined amount. Then you mail your gift box to that person by the set date, so everyone gets their goodies boxes around the same time. This year, our Easter basket plans got a bit extended and we turned them into May Day Boxes :)

Now that the boxes have been received and opened, I wanted to share with you the paper projects I did for my partner. She lives in Nebraska and is a HUGE University of Nebraska fan.So for my first project (we did 2) I wanted to do something that pertained to her obsession love of the Huskers and their football team. She has a Husker shrine in her basement- so I thought it would be a perfect thing to add to!

I got this 11x14 frame at Michael's using a 40% off coupon. It was an inexpensive frame to begin with, so with the coupon it was down right affordable! :) The background is a piece of astroturf that I picked up a home depot. Such a small amount is really inexpensive also. (Dang! I'm off to a good start with this project!) I used painters tape to tape off the yard lines, and a sponge brush with white acrylic paint to fill them in. Once that dried and I peeled off the tape, I just dabbed the tip of the sponge brush on the turf for the hash marks between the lines.
The Husker logo was a little bit time consuming, but not too bad. I used my cricut and a computer program called Sure Cuts A Lot (which, I believe, is no longer available for use with the cricut). I downloaded a jpeg of the logo and the computer program broke it down to be able to cut the layers (the large N, the word Huskers, and the white background) in the right colors on my cricut. Then I pieced it back together. I used another cricut cartridge (Birthday Bash) for the banner behind the logo, and the "Go Big Red" across the bottom.

The writing thats around the frame itself, is actually 4 separate quotes that can be found on the Nebraska football stadium. They are carved in to the stadium, one on each corner. (I did my homework!). I printed the quotes on the computer, and just using a plain ol' #2 pencil, colored across the backside of the paper. Once the back was covered in pencil, I lightly taped the quote to the frame so the words were lined up where I wanted them. I traced over the letters with the pencil- and the pressure left a pencil line (from where I colored on the back of the paper) on the frame. I was able to then trace the lines with a fine tip white paint pen. It worked really well. I love that I was able to keep it straight, and know how big to write so each quote would fit on the frame.

The last part was the ribbon. I tied it in a knot, then hot glued it to the frame on the sides. I also hot glued the Banner flag to the turf, so it would stay stuck down. None of my other adhesives seemed to work very well.

Wow- this post got pretty long... Ill save my second project for another day!