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I don’t do a ton of brush lettering. Pointed pen is usually more my speed. But sometimes brush lettering is just the way to go. A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to try out MozArt Single Brush Pens for review. I really liked them, and I left reviews in several places at that time. These days I usually carry these in my purse for on the go art, and I pulled them out to play with a couple of days ago. These pens blend really well on the right paper, and I wanted to show you, so I put together a quick YouTube video so you could see them in action. You can check it out below, or keep scrolling for a short written tutorial.

I used Daler Rowney 70lb drawing paper for these pieces, which you can get at Walmart. I’ve also had good luck with Strathmore drawing paper. You’ll need your drawing paper, your brush pens, and a fine tipped water brush. To start, choose a couple of colors that you would like to blend. I decided to write the word love, and I chose a bright pink and a darker purple. You want to write your word with the lighter or less intense color first.

With your darker color, go over the bottom half of your letters.

Now take your water brush (or just a very fine brush dipped in water) and carefully go over your letters. You will use the water brush to pull the color on the bottom of the letters up into the color at the top of the letters.

The more you go over the line of demarcation between the two colors, the smoother your blend will be.

And that’s all there is to it! Here are a few other pieces I did this way. I hope you enjoy!

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Hey, guys! So the last few weeks have been CRAZY busy! We went up to church camp for a week, where my job is to head up the crafts. It’s always a blast, and I can’t believe I get to serve in such a fun way! Today I want to share with you one of the favorites from the week – paracord people key rings.

We do paracord bracelets every single year, because they are requested, over and over! Our kids range from 7 to 18, plus the workers get in on the fun too, so they are a project loved by (and doable by) all ages. Inevitably we end up with lots of paracord scraps that are too short to make into a bracelet, and those are perfect for these key rings. These are also a very fast make, so they’ve made more than one appearance at VBS week at church when I’ve only got 20 minutes per class for craft time. I’ve put together a quick YouTube video below, or you can keep scrolling for the written tutorial and photos.

Your supplies here are easy peasy. You need a split keyring, a lighter or matches to seal the ends of the paracord, a 1 inch wooden bead with a 3/8 inch hole, scissors, and two scraps of paracord, at least 12 inches and 24 inches.

Fold your shorter piece of paracord in half and slide one side of it into the split ring.

Thread both ends through the bead and slide the bead up to the split ring.

Place the longer piece of paracord behind the piece threaded through the bead and ring.

Make sure the shorter cord (here the blue) is centered on the longer cord (here the red). Now tie a knot as though you were starting to tie your shoe. This is also known as a half hitch knot.

Pull this knot tight, then rotate the whole thing so that the bead is at the bottom.

Now we are going to take the ends of the longer (red) paracord and from a loop on either side of the blue cords. The left side will feed behind the blue cords, and the right side will feed in front of the blue cords.

Now you will take the end of the top cord and feed it down through the loop that runs across the back.

Don’t pull it tight quite yet. First we need to then take the end of the bottom cord and feed it up through the loop on the top.

Now pull both sides tight.

Now we’re going to form those side loops again, but this time the cord on the right will feed under the blue cord, and the cord on the left will feed on top of the blue cord.

Once again, feed the top cord down through the bottom loop, and the bottom cord up through the top loop.

Pull tight again.

Now form the side loops again, but this time the right side will loop on top of the blue cord and the left side will loop under the blue cord. Feed the ends through the same way, bottom end through top loop, top end through bottom loop. We’re just switching the sides back and forth from turn to turn. You’re actually keeping the same physical end of the paracord on top every time, but you move it from left to right and back to left with every stitch. This is called a cobra stitch, and it’s also the stitch you will use to make the most common style of paracord bracelets.

Do this process several more times until you’re happy with the length of the body on your person. I did five or six stitches, which left mine a little over an inch long. Some paracord is stiffer than others, so your length per stitches may vary.

When you’re happy with the length, rotate the whole thing around again, and slide the body (the red cord) all the way up flush against the bead.

As you can see, my sides ended up being different lengths. This won’t matter after the next step.

Now tie a knot in each side of the red cord about an inch out from the body.

Now trim the red cord on both sides about 1/4” past the knots and seal with your lighter/matches. You just need to hold the ends in the flame for 2-3 seconds to melt the cord, and this will keep it from fraying.

Now tie knots in the blue cord at your preferred length to make the person’s feet.

Trim and seal just like you did for the arms, and you’re all done! Isn’t it cute?

You can of course decorate the head with stickers or markers if you’d like. One year I used my Cameo to cut out a tiny pair of glasses so my son’s would look like him.

Happy paracording!

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Have you ever shopped at Aldi? If there’s one in your area and you haven’t been, you need to go stat! Aldi has amazing prices, and a wonderful selection of store branded products, as well as a limited supply of names brand items. I’ve never had anything from Aldi that wasn’t delicious, and I can generally take care of most of my grocery list in one trip there.

Part of what allows Aldi to keep their prices so low is the fact that they don’t employee people to bag groceries or clear the lot of carts. Instead, they provide a long counter for you to bag your own groceries (bring your own disposable or reusable bags, or you can buy paper bags for a few cents each or reusable plastic bags for a little more). To keep the lot clear, they give you some motivation to bring back your own cart – you “rent” a cart for a quarter at the start of your trip. Just place your quarter into the slot of the little box chaining the front cart to the one behind it, and the chain will pop free and release your cart. When you’re done with the cart, wheel it back to the line of carts and plug the chain on the next cart into the back of the lock box on yours, and your quarter will pop back out.

I try to always have a quarter in my wallet when I go, but I’ve forgotten more than once. Aldi is actually happy to let you borrow a quarter from one of the cashiers if you forget yours, but then you have to go through all the hassle of going in first to ask, then returning it to the cashier after you retrieve it from the cart at the end. So I decided to make myself a little keyring specifically to hold my Aldi quarter, and I created a free cut file for my newsletter subscribers so you can make one too! AND you can feel free to use this cut file for commercial purposes!

When we had our church’s Ladies Tea last year, I cut Dollar Tree vinyl placemats into big circles to use as chargers for my place settings. 

Because I hate to waste anything, I saved the parts of the placemats I cut away, and they were the perfect material to make my quarter holder! I haven’t tried other placemats, but these cut like a dream on my Silhouette Cameo.

I used the Coverstock setting in Silhouette Studio, but changed the passes to 4 instead of 2. I saved this as a custom cut setting, which is why it says Dollar Tree Placemat instead of Coverstock, but you can see that the Blade is 7, Speed is 1, Force is 33 and Passes is 4.

The width on this should be 4 inches, so make sure you have it sized appropriately before you cut! To get the files, just sign up for my newsletter right here, or you can do it over on the right where it says Get the Sawyer Ford Home Newsletter and Free Cut Files. You will get 3 files – a .png, a .jpg and a .svg. Because I am offering this for commercial use, I cannot include a .studio3 file, but both the .jpg and the .png should be easily traceable with basic Silhouette Studio, or you can open SVGs with Design Edition or higher, or with Cricut DesignStudio.

After you’ve cut out your placemat piece, fold it in half, wrong sides together. Slooooooowly stitch around the outside of the circle using a zigzag stitch on your sewing machine. I tried super hard to sew these using a straight stitch, but it always came out super wonky. The zigzag stitch worked perfectly though. Just make sure that the “outside” stitch goes just off the edge of the vinyl and it should look very neat. When you are done, you can use a little bit of stitch fix or even super glue to keep the ends of your thread from unraveling. Thread the strap loop onto a split key ring, and you’re ready to load up your quarter and add it to your keys! I made one for my mom, and she and all the ladies sitting near her at church had a fit over it!

These would make a fantastic craft booth item, which is why I wanted to offer the cut files for commercial use. You should be able to get about 20 pieces from the Dollar Tree placemats, which are 11.25×17, so for cost of $5 worth of placemats and a 100 pack of split key rings (Amazon has them currently very cheap, linked below), you can make 100 awesome items that you can price at $1 each and still make a good profit on them.

Alternately, they make awesome little gifts for your mom or your sister or your kid’s teacher, or your secret sister. And come Christmas, they make great stocking stuffers for the grocery shoppers in your life.

There are at least a couple of different placemat designs currently at Dollar Tree, and I’m going to pick up one of each to make more of these. Please do sign up for my newsletter and get the free cut file as well as a few other free personal use cut files!

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