When Life Gives You Lemons Make Lemonade -View finder Card! AND WINNER ANNOUNCED

I have a good friend who just found out that her husband is being deployed to Afghanistan. When I spoke to her she was very positive, but I know deep down she is upset and scared. She has two little children ontop of it all. She lives close by me, but her family lives very far away. SO she's going to be alone.  I wanted to send her a little card just to let her know I'm here for her.

I got the inspiration for this card from Melissa at Scrapbook.com. Thank you so much Melissa.  Melissa puts up tutorials from Youtube every week and they are so fun and inspirational. I fell in love with this View Finder card because I knew I could use my new stamps and make an SVG file for this. I'm gifting this to all of you as a thank you for being a follower. Here is the original Youtube tutorial if you want to make one like Dawn (she's the best)with punches. But I knew all you SVG fans would love an easy SVG file! Enjoy! :) I changed some things around like using the scallop circle rather than just a plain circle and I made it a lot larger. Hope you like it! I would love to see what you make and comments are always great. I have been contemplating whether to continue free files or not. Let me know if you like this and like the free files? :)

This file is not to be sold it is for personal use ONLY. It will be available for a limited time.
Enjoy


SugarGem's View Finder SVG File

Because I had extra time today I did the drawing early! Thank you to everyone who played! Welcome to all my new followers!
And what you have ALL been waiting for----

The Winner is #12

Congratulations Joydee. I will email you soon.

XOXO SugarGem

Glitter Explosion Blog Hop Spinner Card

Glitter.... Glitter give me more glitter! If your project just doesn't look right then add glitter! :)

Welcome to SugarGem, I'm Lenae!  If you are here from Gaby Creates you are in the right spot. If you just happened upon SugarGem and would like to join the Glitter Explosion Blog Hop I have the line up below for you to join in. You will want to start with Yolie! We would love for you to play along.

I'm really excited to be a part of this blog hop. Not only is this my first blog hop, but I feel so honored to be included with so many amazing talented crafters.

I decided to make an interactive spinner card for the blog hop after my good crafting friend sent me a youtube tutorial on one. I just fell in love with these!  These are so much fun to make.The sun doesn't just slide across the rainbow it actually spins like a top across the rainbow(you can see my very first Youtube video below showing how it spins)! There are many tutorials on Youtube for spinner cards, but I wanted to make something extra special and unique for you. Every spinner card I have seen is a straight cut, which is SUPER cute, but why not take it to the next level?  I designed an SVG file for this card and 1 lucky random person will win the file. I will draw a name Sunday. Please check back and send me your email.  All you need to do is become a follower and leave a comment! That's it!

My first Youtube video link is down below. It's short and shows how the spinner card works. It's not the best video so I apologize in advance. But you will get the idea.

   YouTube Video HERE 
Thank you for stopping bye...Next on the hop is Xochitl - http://cricutcritter.blogspot.com/

Update: Blogger seems to be having some issues with the "followers". If you can, I would love to have new followers, but it will not be mandatory to win the file due to the issues everyone is having! :) We can use the honor system. once blogger is back up I would love it if you took the time to become a follower!
Here's the line up!

Yolie – www.justyolie.com
Gaby – www.gabycreates.com
Lenae You are HERE  - http://sugargemscrafts.blogspot.com/
Xochitl - http://cricutcritter.blogspot.com/
Angie - http://angie-scrappinmemories.blogspot.com/
Ann -  http://annlenth.blogspot.com/
Mari - http://mariaschulz.blogspot.com/
Debbi - http://www.scrappingmamma.net/
Sherry - http://patternsbysher.blogspot.com/
Tammy - http://tammyjennings.blogspot.com/
Melin - http://papercraftingworld.blogspot.com/
Celeste - http://www.touchedbyabutterfly.blogspot.com/
John - http://meyer-imports.typepad.com/

If I can inspire one person today I have done my job.
XOXO SUGARGEM

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Glitter Explosion Blog Hop starts at 12:01 am Friday Morning!

Hi everyone! I wanted to invite you to my first blog hop. It's the Glitter Explosion blog hop starting at 12:01 am Friday morning May 27.  Hope you will make it. I will be having a new SVG file giveaway! It will be starting at Yolies Blog http://www.justyolie.com/



XOXO SugarGem

Giddy Up Cowgirl

I almost didn't show you this card because I am having problems with my cameras. My decent camera is NOT working so my pictures are terrible. The card is a lot more vibrant in real life.

Have I told you that my grandma is the luckiest person I know? She is always winning something. She won a trip to the town of Winthrop, Washington. If you haven't heard of Winthrop before let me tell you it's the cutest old Western town this side of the Mississippi! It is like walking onto a movie set of an old Western. From the old wood plank walkway to the old saloon even the most metro city girl feels like a cowgirl.
 She surprised us this weekend and gave us the trip for two nights. I cannot wait to go.
 I wanted to make her an extra special thank you card. Just by chance I had stamped this cowgirl and colored her a week ago after feeling inspired by a trip to a stamp show with the crafty girls. (Ironic huh?)  I've had these cute stamps from Sideshowstamps for about 5 years and I haven't EVER used them. Not because I didn't want to, but the perfect project just never came up. They have some super cute pin up stamps and eclectic stamps too that you won't find anywhere else. If you like different, eclectic and fun check them out here.
The inside stamps are another set and I cannot remember who made them for the life of me. Sorry.



Inside





Different lighting

If I can inspire just one person today I have done my job! 
XOXO SugarGem

When a Sympathy Card Turns Into A Birthday Card RSMobley's RM00127

It's all about the color choices.
It's Amazing how just changing the colors on a card can drastically change the look and feel!

I made Sharon's sympathy card for someone using her RSMobley's RM00127.You can find the card here.  If you haven't noticed yet I tend to lean towards bright colors so I had to make this card with some bright colors too. Because the cheery bright colors are not very appropriate for a sympathy card I changed the heading to Happy Birthday! I have a free svg download Happy Birthday file for you here.

If I can inspire just one person today I have done my job.
XOXO SugarGem

And The Winner Of The Picnic Table Bench SVG is.....

BCriminger is the WINNER! Congratulations! Please email me at lovesugargem@gmail.com.

Thank you to everyone who played along and to my new followers!

XOXO SUGARGEM

3D Picnic Bench Small SVG *GIVEAWAY

Having a BBQ this spring or summer? Need a cute table topper?   Getting ready for some fun in the sun with your family and friends? I made this adorable little table topper for you to put goodies in. Wow your friends at your BBQ! My mini picnic table is sized perfectly for salt and pepper shakers. You could also put silverware, napkins, treats or anything else you can think of. The possibilities are endless.

(I have been using mine on my crafting table to hold my glue just because it's so cute)
You can buy the file over there<<<<<<<-------<<<<<<------<<<<<

GIVEAWAY Alert!!!
This is my first GIVEAWAY CONTEST!


I will be giving away this SVG file to 1 lucky person.

What you need to do is 1-become a follower and 2-comment on this post that's it. I wouldn't mind if you shared this with your friends either, but that is not required.  I will be doing a random drawing this Friday and will post the winner here on the blog. Please check back to see if you are a winner and send me your email address. I will email the file to you.

I don't know if you know this, but I am jobless at the moment. I lost my job about 3 years ago due to the economy.  The company I worked for went out of business. Since then I have really gone crazy about crafting, but as you know it is now a cheap or quick process. Normally my SVG's will be free as a gift to you, but some of them I will be charging for to hopefully make up or the time, energy and products I put into making these timely files. I wish that I could afford to give them all to you, but unfortunately I am not independently wealthy and need a way to pay for the time I spend working on these. These files and designs are very time consuming. I hope that you understand. I love designing and making these little extra special gifts for you!

PLEASE NOTE- As of right now this picnic table is ONLY in SVG format. It is sized for a 12"x12" format, but you could probably size it down to cut on a smaller mat it would just be too small to hold the salt and pepper shakers. It would still be super cute for embellishments or treats.
 When I figure out how to export into more file formats I will offer them to you.

This file is for personal use only!

Itty Bitty Tip-I used the wood grain Cuttlebug folder to emboss all the wood pieces to give them a more realistic look!


XOXO SugarGem

Surprised Myself

Very rarely do I make something that I actually like myself, but I have to say I do actually like this one so I wanted to share it with you guys.

I designed this card around the owl. The owl stamp was a gift from my sweet crafting  friend. Isn't he cute? I distressed all the edges, did lots of layering, stitched around the edge, used a border punch, decorated the inside, used a Cuttlebug embossing folder then Nestabilities for the sentiment tag. I just wanted to make something fun. I found this really great paper stack and Tuesday Morning a while back called Cupcakes and Cherries (yup there's those cupcakes again HA!) I just loved how fun the stack was and wanted to make something fun with the paper.

XOXO SugarGem 

Favorites Friday

Todays favorite is more about inexpensive organization. Have you ever had one of these with your thread, twine or floss? They are so pretty when you first buy them but as soon as you take them out of the package it looks like this!

Here is how I store my floss and extra ribbons etc. It's super easy and doesn't take up too much space.

What you will need:
1. Paper. (I prefer Kraft paper because it is heavy and looks cute.)
2. Scissors
3. Corner rounder
4. Paper trimmer

How to make them:

1. Trim your paper to 4.25"x 2.75"
2. Round corners with your punch.
3. Cut slots on opposite sides and ends of each other like photo below.
4. Wrap ribbon, twine, thread, floss etc. That's it.
You could if you want decorate your cards by labeling, embossing, or stamping pretty and cute designs. I prefer to just keep them simple! See below for an example of decorating your cards.

For this card I ran it through my Cuttlebug then ran some Paper White Fresh Ink over the top. Easy Peasy!

If you are like me right now in this economy on a super tight budget this is the least expensive route to take for organization. If you have some extra funds you can also buy super cute wooden spools at Joanns in packs of 6 plus for a few dollars that are so darling!  Hope this helps you! :)

Have a beautiful weekend everyone!


If I can inspire just one person today I have done my job.

XOXO SugarGem

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Just Because She's a Great Friend

Do you have a special friend? If you do you are very lucky! Not too many people have friends like that.

I have a friend, that believe it or not, we've never even met in person.  We've only known each other less than a year, but she is VERY special to me. I feel like I've known her for ever. She has encouraged me to do so many things that I normally would have never done and I am so thankful to have a such a special friend like her.

She found out recently that she will be a grandma for the 2nd AND 3rd time this year. She is having a baby shower for one of the moms in two weeks and asked me if I would send her my cupcake stand.  Of course I was TOTALLY honored that she would want to use my cupcake stand for something so special. Did I mention she has not been feeling well at all? Even though I know she hasn't told me this, I'm sure she is a little stressed that she's having the shower and not feeling well. So instead of just making the stand I decided to make the stand and cupcake wrappers and matching toppers. I put all the links below for you of course!

I really had fun making these. I ended up designing the cupcake wrapper with SVGCuts.com Baby Elements onesie. I wanted it to be extra special and one of kind!  This was my first cupcake wrapper.
It was definitely a challenge, but I always love a challenge. The hardest part was matching up the top elements to the bottom element. I also made the the white scallop wrapper to go underneath.

Itty Bitty Tip  The white wrapper under the design wrapper helps the design stand out more.
 I've been doing this with my cupcake wrappers lately and it makes them look extra special.


 In addition to the wrappers I made 6 different toppers so they wouldn't all be too matchy matchy, but complementary. I used both the Baby Elements collection and the Little Sweet Peas collection for the toppers. Shown below.

Itty Bitty Tips- When making the toppers remember you need to make 2 elements for each topper. You will need an element for the front and the back. You can highlight your element and use the flip tool to reverse the image so they line up when you glue them together. 
Also I used my glue gun to glue the elements to my sticks. The glue gun works the best by far. The sticks I used were Skewers that I cut down. I DO NOT recommend using skewers. I used them because she is going to buy cupcakes and the ones in the store are larger so they needed to be a bit longer then toothpicks. The grocery store usually has the hors d'œuvre toothpick sticks which work PERFECT because they are a bit longer than tooth picks, but I couldn't find them at any grocery store. If you find them buy them while they have them!
Please if you would keep her in your prayers I would really appreciate it! Every prayer counts. She needs to feel better for her grand babies that are on the way! :)

Baby Elements

1. Onesie
2. Bottle
3. Pacifier

Little Sweet Peas

1. Booties
2. Airplane
3. ABC block
4. Rocking horse

In case you are wondering I used the Linen stack by DCWV. I used this stack for my baby buggy. It's an awesome stack for baby boys. I highly recommend.

If I can inspire just one person today I have done my job!
XOXO SugarGem

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SugarGem's Square Cupcake Pedestal Topper

I don't think I could ever get tired of cupcakes, how about you? What is it about them? I think it's because there's so many different things that we can do with them and they are so darn cute!

My Mother's Day gift to you is my square version of the cupcake pedestal toppers. This one is a lot easier then the round topper. It's all one piece. Just download the file, unzip and cut! Easy Peasy! Score each side at the fold approx 1 1/8"(not exactly), glue the little tabs then thread with ribbon.

 I attached my SVG file for my followers so you can make one too for yourself or someone special. This is my gift to you. I am not charging for my template. All I ask from you is that you do not sell the design and if you use my design please give credit where credit is due. I ask that you link to my blog and let everyone know where you got the idea! That's it! Thank you for checking my creation out! Have fun and enjoy. 

Link has expired.

If I can inspire one person today I have done my job!
XOXO SugarGem

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Mini boxes RSMobley's Creative Team Project RM00144 and RM00143

I made this cute little box for RSMobley's Creative Team Border Project! She wanted us to use her borders in a project and this is what I came up with! I made the first one with rich colors. I wanted it to be elegant, but when I showed it to my fiancee he said it looked Christmasy(ya I made that word up) so of course I HAD to make another one! I used Borders RM00144 you can find the collection in this months May grab bag .  I also used Sharon's awesome new Flower Blossom's Collection for the cute little flowers.  I think this is one of my favorite collections for sure! I love every single flower in this collection!
 Here is a free download for my mini box. I cut 2- 12" borders to wrap the box. If you know how to make the 2nd border only 2" then that's really all you need to wrap around the whole box.

SugarGem's mini box svg file.

Thanks for looking!
XOXO SugarGem

I DID IT!!! I DID IT!!!!

Yes I am proud of myself! lol Actually I'm really excited because I finally figured out how to make an SVG file and ACTUALLY SHARE it with you! Wahoo!
I have to send out a HUGE thank you to Craig at Craft Edge he pretty much did it all! THANK YOU SOOOO much Craig!

Here is my first download for you. It is a tabbed border with 2 circles to make the topper for the cupcake stand I posted earlier.

 What's so cool about this you may ask? It's cool because you can use ANY border you have in your collection to make this cute little pedestal stand with this border strip.

 It's not PERFECT guys, it's my first one, but it will make a super cute cupcake pedestal I promise.

This is my personal cut file that I am gifting to you for being a follower. Please remember to give credit where credit is due. This is not to be sold this is for personal use only. I work hard on these and hope that you will pay it forward!

TADA!!!!
Here is the download it is zipped so don't forget to unzip it-

Link has expired.


The file is a tiny bit smaller then my photo. In my photo I made it 4.5inches and the file I made for you you is only 3.5". I did this for a cool reason though. With the 3.5" version the border is sized to fit perfectly around the circle so you don't HAVE to use 2, but if you want to resize it larger please feel free to do so you will just need to cut 2 borders.

You will also need:
Rosie's Ribbon's here or your choice of border strip.
Sharon at RSMobley Designs has brand new border strips in this months MAY grab bag too that would be amazing. here
Glue
Paper
I also like the light weight chipboard you can get at Joann's in the 3 pack. I used the white light weight chipboard for Heather's stand base to make it more solid.

 HOW TO PUT IT ALL TOGETHER:

1. After you download the file and unzip it you will need to find a border strip that you want to use. I used Rosie's Ribbon's from SVGCut's.com to make my pedestal pictured. Take your chosen border and size it to the same length as the my border strip with the tabs.

2. Line up the flat side of my tabbed strip to your flat side of your chosen border. Make sure they are touching evenly.

3. Highlight both together.
4. Select Path > Union

This should make it into 1 single border. If it is not lined up perfectly you can "undo" and try over until you get the strips lined up perfectly. The first time I did this it took me a few tries so don't get discouraged if it's your first time! :)

5. Once everything is looking right you can go ahead and CUT the shapes on your favorite paper choice.

6. I like to use my score board and score a line all the way along the edge of the tabs. This makes it a lot easier to glue the circle evenly to the border. If you don't have a way to score the border just go ahead and carefully bend each tab over.

7. Glue the tabs to the top of one circle. going all the way around the circle. Gluing to the top of the circle makes it easier to get the border even. I prefer to use liquid glue so that I can line everything up, but if you feel comfortable using tape go right ahead.

8. Glue the 2nd circle to the top of 1st circle. This will cover up the tabs and make everything look clean and pretty.


And if you missed today's earlier post the adorable tulip cupcake wrapper is from SVGCuts.com.
-Spring Cupcake Wrappers Collection Here.
If I can inspire just one person today I have done my job!
XOXO SugarGem

Birthday Cupcake Pedestal

Wow we had a CRAZY busy weekend here at SugarGem's house.  I made this adorable cupcake pedestal stand for my future mother in law's birthday on Saturday. (I have always wanted one of the ceramic cake platters like this, but still haven't bought one so I MADE A MINI.)  

 I love how this it turned out.  Here are a few links
-The stand itself is a free file from Heather M's Blog.  Thank you Heather SOOOO much!The stand is adorable by itself just the way she made it or you can do what I did.

-The Ribbon/Border from Rosie's Ribbons at SVGCuts.com. You can find the collection Here.
- The cupcake wrapper is from SVGCuts.com Spring Cupcake Wrappers Collection Here. I welded and made the pedestal myself from Heather's file and Rosie's Ribbon's collection along with some customization. If I could figure out how to make a down loadable link for you guys I would give you a free link of my tabs border I made. Then you could make your own if you have the Rosie's Ribbons. But I don't know how to make a down loadable link yet. *Help*  I'm working on it though. Maybe someone reading this would be willing to help????

I have another stand I made for all of you with an adorable square base that you can weave ribbons through (like the ceramic platters) and that one will be free once I figure out how to make it down loadable for you! :) But I'm not going to show you until I have it in a down loadable link for you.


If I can inspire just one person today I have done my job!
XOXO SugarGem

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