Kristin Victoria Creates

This care package is all about puns and good fun; which is, my opinion, the perfect kind of care package.  It brought me tons of joy to create and put together, and tons of joy to hubby to receive and open. I took liberties of altering a title craw, and personalizing it for this care package... Have I mentioned I got heavily back into creative writing while hubby was gone?  For the box flap décor, I took two 12" x 12" sheets of black paper with stars on them and block lettered the words "In a desert far, far away" with a gold paint pen. I also added on foam gold stickers as I couldn't help myself at that point. For some of the contents, I took it upon myself to cheekily change some of the labels out for more pun-tastic and fun ones.  To make the labels I made them by hand, as little tags and then wrapped everything in blue or yellow tissue paper. You can also do these on the computer too and have them printed. That...

Deployment Mini Quilt I initially wanted to make a small wall hanging during hubby's deployment for both of us for when he gets back.  I saw a similar design, I want to say on Pinterest.  What caught my eye with the design was the stars that were blended into the layout.  I changed this for my design to have 9 stars, one for each month of deployment.  I also wanted to work on this when hubby was gone. Similar to my first red, white, and blue quilt, I wanted to make a patriotic therapy quilt. I like to segment different sections of the quilting process into different days. For the first day of actually working with the fabric, I cut all the squares out.  They measure 2.5 inches by 2.5 inches.  Though, if I were to do this again, I would make the squares 2 inches by 2 inches. (Or possibly remind myself to increase the seam allowance, like I initially meant to do.) After piecing the top together, which I did in sections over ...

Books that Helped me Through Deployment While I've had to go through various types of separations and TDYs with my husband, deployment was something else completely.  Below is a list of books that helped me. They helped me before, during, and beyond the period of my life that was over shadowed with deployment.  I hope in this list that you too can find something here to help you through whatever is shadowing your mind. So in no particular order, here we go: The Little Prince  by Antoine de Saint-Exupery Bossypants by Tina Fey Dracula by Bram Stoker The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night by Jen Campbell On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King Ragnarok: The End of the Gods by A. S. Byatt The Gospel of Loki by Joanne M. Harris Geronimo's Story of His Life by Geronimo The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare Voodoo Planet by Andre Norton Slouching Toward Nirvana by Charles Bukowski Various Short Sto...

Card Making: 4th of July Cards For these festive red, white, and blue cards, I found some wonderful patterned papers that gave me great inspiration.  For two of these cards, I simply cut down the patterned paper and let it shine; one on white card stock, and the other on red card stock.  For the two more unique cards, I cut up the patterned papers into strips and allowed those words to shine for themselves.  I also added a blue card stock to add to the diagonal quality of the lay out.  Happy creating, and happy card making! For business inquires, contact me at: KristinVictoriaArt@gmail.com To view prints on various items, visit: society6.com/KristinVictoria To view more photos from the studio and my life on flickr, visit: tinyurl.com/kvartflickr Follow me on Twitter, at: @KristinV_Art Find me on Instagram at: instagram.com/kvjaenicke17 Find me on Goodreads at: tinyurl.com/kj-read...

Patriotic Table Runner I've been keeping a small stash of red, white, and blue fabrics for some time and I thought it was finally time to make a cute table runner out of some of them. After picking a design, I layed out the fabrics in the order I wanted to sew them. For the center square, I cut a 4 inch by 4 inch piece.  For all the strips surrounding it, I cut 4 two inch strips of each fabric.  I did have some left over, but that didn't bother me. I'd always rather cut a little too much than a little too little when working on a project. The back. I think it just looks so gorgeous! I used scrap red, cream, and blue fabric for the backing. I've used this same fabric for the back of this red, white, and blue project. I decided to machine quilt this with a variegated red, white, and blue machine quilting thread. Look at that texture! I stitched in the ditch and then echoed that by using the width of the sewing foot to keep...

My Top Ten Favorite Books It's that time of year again, it's my birthday this week and I want to talk about books. Again. I'm addicted and I love it. In no particular order, here are my top ten favorite books.  It took a while to narrow it down to just ten, so there's a few runners up at the end.  I could talk all day long about books I've love and why I love them. But for everyone's sanity sake, I've slimmed it down and here we go:  Mission to Paris by Alan Furst I first came across this book in a charity shop and everything about it just screamed "buy me!" The cover design and colors, the general plot, Paris, WWII; so I figured I'd give it a try. Then I fell in love and that's how I got hooked on Alan Furst. The quote, "He would be polite, distant and impossible to approach, and that was that." was just one of the many reasons why I LOVE this book.  To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee ...

Care Package Addition: Themed Week of Puns Pun-tastic Cards! Hubby loves puns. Sometimes it's bad, sometimes it's hilarious. So, I thought an excellent addition to a care package would be a themed week of puns! I decided to channel this into seven pun cards, one for him to open a day for a week. This is similar to a surprise a day for a week and other such ideas. When I realized I should show you all this idea, I had already sealed off the 7 cards for this idea.  Luckily, I had already started working on a second week, to send later.  So here's a little bit of both themed weeks. To wrap the 7 cards into one bundle I had a little fun.  I took 11 inch by 14 inch paper and drew an addition pun on it to make wrapping paper for the little bundle. For the first bundle, I chose "Olive you" as in "I love you." The puns for cards in this mini package include: - you da man (ta ray). - (with a manta ray) - I be-leaf i...