Baby socks

Back in April, my older sister had a baby. It is her third girl, so she didn't really need anything but I wanted to get something for the baby anyway. I saw these cute socks at Target and couldn't resist.

                                      

They were plenty cute as it was, but I knew they could be cuter. So I got out some ribbon, jewels, thread and hot glue and here is what I came up with.

The ribbons were both stitched and glued. I just used hot glue but if you were concerned about it the jewels coming off in the wash you could use E-6000 or get some sew on jewels. I've used hot glue before and never had a problem with the wash.

And for fun, a little close up. Please excuse Blogger for rotating my picture.

Ribbon Loop Headband

Last Saturday morning I saw this ribbon loop headband tutorial on Me Sew Crazy and knew that I needed to make it.

photo from Me Sew Crazy
So I go right to it and made one...and later made three more. Here is my favorite of the bunch.

I used 7 pieces of ribbon instead of the 6 that Jessica used and I didn't overlap my ribbon as much as she did. This was a great project for using up ribbon scraps as the longest piece of ribbon I used was 7.5 inches. I love the way it looks (it seems almost feather-ish to me for some reason) and get compliments on it every time I wear it. Not bad for scraps and under 30 minutes of time!
Here it is in action!

Don't mind the super close up cropping...that is to mask my unshowered self...see when I said I got right too it Saturday morning I really meant it!

Gingerbread apron & matching candy jar

This is LONG overdue...here are pictures of the apron and matching candy/cookie jar that I made for my brother and sister-in-law for Christmas. I took some of the left over fabric from the apron and Mod Podged them onto the jar. I thought it was cute that they matched. The apron is similar to the ones I made for my sister and her daughters last summer (post here). Maybe one of these days I'll make a tutorial for how I make the apron out of an old pair of jeans.

Friday Fun Feature - Crochet Headband

How cute is this crochet headband from You Seriously Made That!?


I love me some headbands, even though I don't wear them very often, so I decided to make my own. There was only one problem...I don't crochet. Not even a little (I'm one of those people who doesn't really know the difference between crocheting and knitting). In some of the close up pictures of Cami's headband I noticed that the strands of yarn almost look like braids. I can totally braid! I got out some narrow ribbon and braided away.

Now, Cami lists her measurements in crochet terms, so I did a quick little google search to find out how long 300 chains is (about 5 feet). So I measured three strands of ribbon about 5'6" and three strands about 3 feet long. If I were to do it again I would make my strands a little bit longer, you'll lose quite a bit of length when braiding. Once I had my two braids, which took just over half an hour, I followed Cami's instructions for assembly and I think it looks remarkably similar. I think the biggest difference is that mine is narrower, which I actually like.
So now whether or not you crochet you can make a super cute, easy and fast headband!

Mod Podge Rooster Art

In case any of you missed my post over at Creativity Is..., here it is!

My inspiration came from this project. I contemplated making something very similar for my older brother and his wife for Christmas and asked my sisters what they thought. We decided that it wasn't a good fit for my brother, but Lori said that she liked the idea. I knew that if I was going to make some art for Lori that it needed to be a rooster. This is what I came up with.

I found an image I liked online, then had my hubby take the image and make an outline of each section as a vector image so that I could cut it out with my Silhouette. I can't really give a better description than that because I don't really know what/how he did it (I just sent him the image and asked him to make it work with my machine).
If you don't have a Silhouette (and hubby who is good with computer stuff) here is what you can do:
Print out your image.
Cut out each section. It will be kind of like a puzzle at this point.
Trace each section onto your paper of choice. I prefer to trace onto the backside of my scrapbook paper so that I don't have to worry about any lines showing on the finished product.
Cut out each traced section.
Mod Podge each "puzzle" piece onto a sheet of card stock. Add any wording you want at the bottom. Once it is dry give the whole thing a coat of Mod Podge, then frame it (after it dries).

I was pleased with the results and I think Lori was too!

Tonight - menu boards

I'm hosting a craft night for the ladies at my church tonight. We will be making these dry erase menu boards.

I'm excited and nervous (because people tend to not show up when I host things like this...I try to not take it personally and attribute it to the fact that I'm a terrible salesman). Wish me luck!

Farm animals on a stick

My cousin turns 1 on Saturday. I wasn't sure what to get for him but then I remembered this from Make It & Love It and decided to do something similar. I found a cute lift-the-flap book about farm animals in the dollar spot at Target. Instead of making the animals stuffed, I decided to put them on popsicle sticks (because apparently kids LOVE things on sticks!). Here is the line up...

Mr. Sheep

 Mr. Rooster

 Miss Pig

 Mrs. Duck

 Here they all are partying together.

 The sheep is my favorite. Here he is next to the sheep from the book.

Want to know how I got him to look so similar the the drawing? I traced the animals out of the book onto tissue paper and used it as a template for cutting out my felt! If I had tried to free-hand the animals they would have looked like blobs...or aliens...or some sort of giant mess.
Let me know if you are interested in a more in depth tutorial because I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to make more (even though Madie knows these are for baby Jack, I don't think she realizes that that means she no longer gets to play with them come Saturday).

Coffee filter carnations

I was a little hesitant to post this, thinking that maybe these didn't really look like carnations. But then I was at the dollar store this weekend and saw some fake carnations that looked exactly like mine (only white and green), plus a few of you said that you would like a tute...so here goes!

How to make coffee filter carnations.

I don't have pics for each and every step, but I think I have enough to make it pretty clear.

To start, you are going to make an "O" shape with your fingers and thumb.

Then you are going to lay the coffee filter over the top of your "O" shaped hand and press down in the center. This will push the filter down in between your fingers and thumb.

Keep pushing until you have about 2" sticking up out of your hand. Then twist the part that is against your palm until you get something similar to this. Don't worry about it being perfectly circular, once you have a bunch of these together you won't even notice the shape of any one particular flower.

Now it's time to paint! I mixed a little bit of acrylic paint with water. You want it fairly runny so that the filter will absorb the paint, but not quite as thin as water color paint. Play around with it until you get it the way you want it. If I had to guess, I probably used about 2 parts paint to 1 part water. Dab your paint brush along the edges of the flowers, the paint will soak in a little bit. You don't want it super runny, just enough to soak in about 1/4" to 1/2" down from the edge.

Once these dry (which doesn't take very long) adhere them to your ball of choice. You could use a styrofoam ball, you would probably have to cut off most of the "tail" of the flower and then just hot glue them on. I used a ball that looked like this.

I found this at Dollar Tree. It was in the toys section. I think they were calling it a baseball practice ball. I would call it a wiffle ball, though. I thought it was perfect! I stuck the "tails" of the flowers into the holes (one per hole). If you are concerned about the flowers popping out, you could run a line of hot glue around the holes before putting the flowers in. Most of the flowers seemed secure enough to me to not even need gluing. Since I planning on putting my carnation balls into pots, I only covered half of each ball, which took about a dozen flowers.

Here it is all nice and finished.

If there is any part of this that is unclear please let me know! I'm still a bit of a novice at writing tutorials. If you make this, I would LOVE to see it! Either put a link in the comments on this post or send me a pic in an email (at the top of the blog click on Contact Me).

My new addiction

I'm sure you've all seen the epsom salt candles floating around the blog world. I liked the idea, but thought it could use improving. Here is my version...the glitter candle.

I love how sparkly it is! I painted hot pink onto the bottom 3/4 of the candle (2 coats) and when that was dry had my little helper coat the paint in Mod Podge. Then we covered the Podge in glitter! I didn't seal the glitter, because I didn't want to take away any of the awesome sparkle but since it will just be sitting on a shelf I figured it was ok. Now, I don't know about the safety of burning this candle, but with as stinkin' cute as it is why on earth would you want to! Once it was all dry I just tied a ribbon around the top of where the glitter ends.

Here it is next to my coffee filter carnations. If you want me to put together a tutorial on how I made the carnations let me know!

I think I'm going to have to make one for each holiday because as soon as we were finished Madie said to me "I want to make more" and since she rules this roost I think I'll just have to oblige. :)

Bath toys holder

I had to throw out the holder for Madie's bath toys this week...it had seen better days. I didn't want to spend $15 or $20 on a new one, especially if it is only going to last for about a year like the last one. While at the dollar store this week I came across these mesh laundry bags. They come 2 in a bag and are 12" by 15". They are intended to go through the wash, so I thought they would be the perfect candidate for bath toys.
Perfect! Now all I needed was something to hang the bag up, like these!

Image from dollartree.com


And since getting my Silhouette, I've become a bit obsessed with using it, so the bag got a little paint job. The "O" in "toys" is a little ducky.

Here it is in action!

I love it, Madie loves it (she loves anything with a zipper) and it's hard to beat $2. Plus, there is another bag so when this one bites the dust, I'll already have another one! Oh, and the suctions cups didn't want to suction to the tile in my bathroom, so I hot glued them up.

I love you frame

Looking for the CSN Stores giveaway? Click here.

________________________________________________________________

This is the first thing I made using my Silhouette. We don't do much for Valentine's around our house, but with all of the cute decor out there, I just couldn't resist making a little something.

"Be mine" seemed kind of silly, since we kind of already agreed to do that one, so I just went with "I love you". And you can't really see it from the pictures, but the white background is sparkly. This was fun to make and Madie even helped me.
I printed out the words in the font "Love Letters" from dafont.com, took a piece of white cardstock put a coat of Mod Podge on it, sprinkled glitter on the Mod Podge, put the letters on the cardstock and then painted the frame pink and just tied a little bow around one side of the frame. Pretty fast and pretty easy...my kind of craft.
And here is our whole mantel (my dad built the brick wall and mantel and my mom painted the picture hanging up...I guess crafting is just in my genes). I think it needs something on the other side of the clock next to the taller vase of "carnations"...I'm just not sure what.

Do you like my little "carnations"? I bet you'll never guess what I used to make them (ok, you probably will).

Purse Notebook

After I saw this on Sister's Stuff I knew I had to make one! I made this one for my SIL, who is almost 12, for Christmas. I also made ones for my niece & nephews (but I forgot to take pictures). Hers was a purse similar to this, only pink and the ones for the boys looked like Spider Man & Iron Man. I'll see if I can get my SIL to take pics of the ones I did for the kids and then I'll post them.  

Gourd Windchime

I got this idea from the Michaels website over a year ago, but it is no longer there. As soon as I saw it, I thought of my mom. So I went down to the craft store to get the supplies and was shocked at how much the gourd cost! Well a few weeks later, I happened to be at Michaels and the gourd was on super sale (I think I only paid $2 or $3 for it!) so I got one and put it in the closet until just a few days ago. I made this for my mom for her birthday last week.

It is kind of hard to see from the picture, but the windchime part at the bottom is sticks of bamboo that I painted. After painting the three sticks of bamboo (from an existing windchime) I attached them to the bottom of the gourd using the screw hooks they came with. To get the hooks into the gourd I stuck a push pin in to create a pilot hole.Then I printed out a fancy M on the computer and cut it out with an xacto knife creating a stencil (word of advice: if you are going to do this, paint the initial before you screw in the bamboo!). I traced it with pencil, since my stencil wouldn't lay flush with the gourd, and then painted it, drilled two holes in the top and laced some wire and ribbon through to hand it by. 

Also linked to The Idea Room

Soda Can Picture Frame

I bought a cheapy cheap unfinished wood frame for $1 at Michaels and after seeing this mirror decided my picture frame could do the trick. And in the spirit of Tab-ing, I of course used a can of Tab.I just cut the top and bottom off of a soda can and the cut a slit up the side so that I had a rectangle of aluminum. Then I cut that into *roughly* 3/4 inch squares. I felt no need for perfection in this area of the project. Hot pink acrylic paint & a little (or a lot) of hot glue later and I had a masterpiece.

But it didn't seem right to give an empty picture frame to my cousin who just so happens to be a new dad. So after the suggestion by my little sister, we printed a picture of his son to go in it...

After we photoshopped him snuggling a can of Tab, of course!

Everyone loved it!

Thanks sister for the photo idea. Thanks husband for your awesome photoshop skills!