Allred Design Blog

My friends at Oh My Crafts (great online retailer) asked me to join them to teach my first live ustream craft demo for them down at their studio. It was super fun and I was thrilled to find that I could pull the recording for those of you that missed it.

The demo features Imaginisces i-rock tool and the many ways it could be used. It was a fun surprise to have Sandy jump in and join me as well. Oh and we took a little time to teach Sandy how to create Roly Rosies, popular i-bond (cordless glue gun) with Imaginisce's Petal Roller tool as well.



Video streaming by Ustream

Be sure to check out the Imaginisce blog often, they give away i-rock tools and more all the time!! Thanks Imaginisce for sponsoring my first uStream video.

The Official Cricut Blog sponsored by the Cricut Circle www.cricutblog.org
Provo Craft is proud to announce the launch of the Official Cricut Blog sponsored by the Cricut Circle! This all new blog will go live TODAY and we want you to be a part of the celebration! The Official Cricut Blog will introduce artists and crafters to the benefits of the Cricut Circle. It will showcase inspiring projects designed by the Cricut Circle Design Team and provide a central location to receive announcements, promotions and updates on everything Cricut, directly from Provo Craft.
The Official Cricut Blog sponsored by the Cricut Circle will feature the following:
·Inspirational projects using your favorite Cricut machines. The Imagine, Expression, Cricut Cake, Cuttlebug, Yudu and more. ·Hello Thursday Cartridge announcements. ·Educational videos and tutorials directly from Provo Craft. ·Occasional sneak peeks into the exclusive Cricut Circle Community. ·Access to the latest Cricut.com deals. ·And much, m…

The other day I needed a quick and simple gift idea for a friend as a Thank You gift and remembered my notebooks I use to create all the time. In fact, I created this fun covered note pad a couple years ago and shared it on an old blog of mine (that I not longer maintain). And after hunting it down as a reminder, I thought I would repost it for my blog followers. I saw this fun idea to take a small lined notepad and cover it with scrapbook papers. It's quick and easy and the perfect gift when you need something for a friend. Visit this  step-by-step blog post to learn how.

The other thing I couldn't wait to make are these cute fabric flowers. I had so much fun I made a bunch of them. Here's some instructions on how to make these!
Enjoy this revisited project for the this lovely Tuesday!

Creative Ways to Wrap Gifts My super cute friend Alisa Bangerter was featured on Studio 5 last week on creative ways to wrap gifts. She showed a lot of ideas using brown paper and made the the top super cute and creative. This one below she made a bow out of airhead and smarties candies. How cute is that?

If you'd like to watch the segment here's the video:



So this segment made me think of all the yummy ideas I've saved on Pinterest of cute gift wrapping ideas and thought I'd share those as well.

Quick thoughts on being a mom...
this won't be profound by any means, I just felt I should say something about it being that it is Mother's day. 
Some days I love it....    some days I don't. 
I'm forever grateful for being blessed to be a mom, but so often I forget to thank my Heavenly Father for the change to have this special privilege. 
First, my kids are "cooler then your kids" and they just simply ROCK! Yes, there are times that I've question if I was doing it all perfectly. But I'm not, I'm learning as I go and I think we're all doing okay for it. My kids are honest, kind and patient...not sure they got any of those from me, but I am very proud of them. 
My kids will of course KILL me for posting pictures of them on my blog...but hey, it's Mother's day and I get to do goofy things like that. 
Did I mention I had a pretty AWESOME mom myself...she was and is my best friend! I will tell you the best thing my mother ever taught me and I ho…

You know I'm pretty sure my kids do not read my blog and if they do, they never say anything about it. Oh unless I put something up that's super embarrassing for them. But what surprised me recently is that my son has his own blog. He happened to leave the computer logged into it one evening and I found it. He's only posted a a few times, but who would have thought my own son is a closet blogger and I had no idea.

I love that the tagline to his blog is "Take a trip through my mind and thoughts." 

I believe strongly that blogs are a great way to document, share and simply get things down on paper (so to speak). I grew up keeping journals...I loved writing in them and I was pretty faithful, but I haven't been for years.

I do find blogging has sort of replaced that for me..minus my deep dark thoughts that only go in a journal and get burned before you die (and yes I have a few of those).

But as a teenager, I'm sure this was very theraputic for my son. He didn&…

Best part of Monday's is they always end and Tuesday is just around the corner. 
But you know, some Monday's are just like this. No matter how much you think you have it all together, you later find out that you didn't. If fact, the Monday this happened to me I had a meeting with some really cool people that morning and had NO idea my shoes didn't match. They were the same style and felt the same and obviously I don't ever look down. 
It wasn't until a meeting a little later with a friend that she pointed out my mistake. I was beyond embarrassed. She was so nice and told me that it made me seem "more artistic." Whatever!
I just hoped and prayed that the people I met with earlier that day also didn't look down and notice my shoes. And they didn't...yeah. But then they admitted that the receptionist did notice and mentioned something about it. Let's hope she too thought I was being artistic. 
So the moral of the story...first, check your shoes t…

I just realized I never posted the latest videos I did with the fabulous Kristine McKay for Northridge Publishing recently. The first segment was a challenge they like to do called "Make it Your Own". It's where Kristine sends you a project image and the designer (me) is suppose to use it as inspiration for a new project. There no other rules associated with this. So that's how we got from a paper rolled flower on a 12x12 layout to t-shirt scarves. Kristine then asked that I show how Imaginisce's Roly Rosies worked too since those are rolled flowers as well. It's a funny segment...in fact, so funny Kristine's pauses for a moment to call me a "smart alec!"  Make it Your Own Feature for Scrapbook Trends Magazine

d-stress tool Feature for Northridge CreaTv
If you've been looking for a simple tool to help distress and finish the edges off on all those chipboard projects, then you'll want to learn more about Imaginisce's new d-stress tool.



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My husband informed me that I shouldn't blog on Sunday unless it was inspirational. That left me a little perplexed because I didn't have anything spiritual to share (plus I don't necessarily agree with him).

That was until I remembered a brief conversation I had yesterday with a cute young man named Justin. He was one of our hosts for a bloggers meet-up I went to yesterday and also the enthusiasum behind the cutest vintage candy store in Utah County called Blickenstaffs.

Anyway, back the inspirational portion of this post. 

I learned from talking to Justin that he too was a blogger...not must for Blickenstaffs but personally. See, I knew boys blog too!

When I asked what he blogged about, he hesitated for a brief moment and said, "well it's sort of religious." He blog is called Liken365 and it took me the better part of the day to figure out what the name meant. But then I got it!

His blogs primary focus was on trying to find comparisons to his daily life to wh…