Hi friends! Hope you're enjoying your Independence Day! My day took an unexpected turn when I woke up this morning to a fried computer. :( It just wouldn't turn on, so I guess after 6 years it went kaput. Luckily Chris had off today, so we went down to our nearest Apple store and I finally switched over to a Mac.. an iMac to be exact. I couldn't get over how huge the screen was and how tiny the computer was overall.. no more tower, hooray! I'm still getting used to the differences between this and my old PC, but I think it was a good change. Chris is going to work on getting all of my old files back (tons of pictures and music, in addition to college papers and such) so hopefully I won't lose everything.
Speaking of, I thought I would have to postpone or forget completely my post on these jelly bean tubes, but luckily the pictures hadn't been deleted from my camera card yet, so I'm able to share them with you now! I picked up the clear tubes at a scrapbook convention a couple of months ago with the intention of using them for my Fourth of July treats. I like to give my co-workers a little something on each holiday, so I bought the tubes and figured I'd find something to fill them with eventually. We have a local grocery store that's more like a farmer's market and they usually have festive candy treats every holiday, but all they had was hard candy in the shape of stars and Tootsie Rolls with flags on the wrappers. I didn't really feel excited about giving hard candies and the Tootsie Rolls probably wouldn't have fit well in the tubes. I was about to give up my search when I saw their display of Jelly Bellys---- ding! ding! Of course the answer was to pick out only red, white, and blue colors, so I narrowed down my choices and settled on french vanilla, strawberry, and blueberry (neutral flavors, I hope).
After filling up my tubes I set to work decorating some plain white tags. I embossed a scrap of navy cardstock with polka dots and added some stars- the red one is a Hobby Lobby stamp that I cut out and the blue one was punched out with a Fiskars punch. I layered them with different thicknesses of foam tape for added interest. To tie them to the tubes, I used a bit of craft floss which was dyed with different shades of blue.
To finish off the tubes, I stamped a Studio G image on a white circle and layered it onto a navy blue scalloped circle and adhered it to the top of the tube. I stuck some patterned ribbon around the edge of the top to jazz it up, but in hindsight it looks a little busy to me, like it's competing with the jelly beans and it's not the same exact colors as the jelly beans either. Ah, well, there's always room for improvement, right? :)
Here's another "group shot" of the tubes.. my co-workers were really impressed, though this project didn't take me very long at all to complete, nor was it hard to do. It was a lot of fun to put together though, so if I see more tubes at another scrapbook show, I'll probably pick them up for Halloween!!
It was hot and humid here in NY today, so Chris and I decided to stay in rather than get eaten alive by mosquitos during the fireworks show. :) I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! Thanks for stopping by!
-Suzanne :O )
