Make a Nautical Inspired Baby Card

I had the privilege of attending a baby shower this week, for a sweet mama who is expecting her second baby boy.

The night before the shower, I realized I didn't have a card, so I pulled out my box of "card kits" to find a suitable envelope.

Make These Impossible Paper Spheres {FREE Printable}!

While doing some random internet research, a few weeks ago, I found some gorgeous paper spheres at the lovely blog Hattifant.  The editor of Hattifant also found the form while searching the internet, and suspects it is of Scandinavian origin. I was immediately intrigued by the form, and decided to play around with some paper and figure out how to draft my own templates.

After some trial and error, I figured out the math to make these little paper spheres, first making them from vintage book pages. I shared them on my Instagram account, at the time, but I couldn't get the concept out of my mind. I decided to transfer the measurements into CAD, so that I could print out very accurate templates, and experiment with coloring designs.

Make a Sweet Fairy Cutaway Card

My sweet granddaughter will be getting a new baby brother pretty soon, and I wanted to make her a card to remind her how special she is to us. She is still at the age where she adores anything with pink or with flowers or with ribbon.

She also loves the Rainbow Magic Fairy books. They are sweet little books at just the right reading level.

2015 Word of the Year

Is it really 2015, already?  Every year, it seems the days fly by more quickly than the year before. 2014, for me was a year of much reflection. I had been thinking of it as a "lost year," in terms of career and personal growth, but as I look back on it I realize it was a time when I was advancing by leaps and bounds.

In 2014, my Word of the Year was Acceptance (not to be confused with complacence). Things got off to a rough start, when a dear aunt passed away. I did not want to accept that. I was really hoping to get through an entire year without anyone dying, but maybe that's not realistic in this life. Every single person we know will eventually move on.

Easy Party Decorations

Most of you saw the re-purposed bulletin board tray, we made for my daughter's baby shower last week.  We also made a few decorations for the party. 

We made about a million giant tissue paper flowers, including a rose for this sweet gentle dog; and we had fun re-using some decorations from last summer's beach wedding.  I can share about making the tissue paper flowers in a later post, if you'd like.  For now, I will share how we re-made these paper lanterns.

We had quite a few of these simple paper lanterns saved from the wedding reception.

For the wedding reception, we dressed them up a bit to go with some of the other decor.

Remember the flower pompoms we made from leis and Wiffle balls?

Well, most of the leis came with elasticized ankle and wrist bands, as well.  These were the perfect size to slip over the bottom of these colorful paper lanterns to dress them up!

These were lovely decorating the wedding reception, and  my daughter requested that we re-use them for the baby shower.   We wanted the lanterns to feel more "showerish", though, so we pulled off all the flowers.

Then we gave them all brand new skirts, using pink tissue paper fringe.

To make the fringe, we simply cut strips about three and a half inches wide from a stack of folded tissue paper.  Then we snipped a fringe into the sides of the strips.

Next we just glued the fringe to the bottom edge of the lanterns, gathering it as we went.

 I used a tacky glue, as I've not yet recovered from that last hot glue episode.

The finished product turned out pretty cute, and it was fun to re-invent decorations from another special day!

This post is being linked to the following lovely places: 

Yesterday on Tuesday

A Marvelous Mess

Dittle Dattle

Sumo's Sweet Stuff

DIY Show Off

The Girl Creative

Mad in Crafts  

Between Naps on the Porch

Grade AA Crafting

Here is a glimpse of a Grade AA ornament idea that bounced around in my brain every morning at breakfast time for nearly twenty years -- that's a lot of brain bouncing!

Today I will share a little before and after, and save the tutorial for a later post.

For years, every time I opened up an eighteen count carton of eggs, the inside top of the carton would make me happy.  Of course, the beautiful texture of the cardboard  was part of the reason, but there was something else....

I would say to people "that looks just like four little old-fashioned cars"....

... and they would look at me like I was crazy.

So, one day I decided to show every one that there really were four little cars in every egg carton!

These little ornaments make great hostess gifts, teacher gifts, or baby gift tie-ons,  and can be adapted to suit any holiday.  I've even made several "just married" versions of the little car as wedding gift tie-ons!

It didn't take long to realize there were little planes hiding in the cartons, too.

And sailboats, and canoes, and even a few kayaks, but we'll save those for another post!

I'm linking this post to Strut Your Stuff Thursday at Somewhat Simple.  Click here to see lots of great ideas and projects!
It is also linked to Alphabe-Thursday at Jenny Matlock's blog, and Thrifty Decor Chick's Before and After Party.
I'm joining Kara's Look What I Made party and Just Something I Whipped Up, at the Girl Creative.
This post is also linked to It's So Very Thrifty, at It's So Very Cheri.