Door Mat

I had to share this, I once again got the idea from Pinterest, my new love.

Here's the link for the how to...

DOOR MAT

it's so easy to make, I had to buy all my materials, and it only cost like 6 bucks!

have fun!

Framed Decorations

I'm not exactly sure of the technical term for this framed 3D art that I keep seeing on pinterest, but I thought I would try it out myself.  This is a very inexpensive decoration to create, especially if you have scrap paper lying around.  The first framed decoration I made was for our entryway.

I had the little house paper punch already and I found paper that matched the colors of our living room.  To make the houses 3D, I used double sided foam tape strips you can buy at any craft store.  I recommend getting the frames from DI or the dollar store and paint it the color you want.  I popped out the glass, traced the background paper to be the same size and then created the design I wanted.  I'd say the hardest part of this craft is trying to get all the houses evenly spaced.

I decided to make another decoration similar to this for Valentine's Day...

I used the same method, but this time I used stencils for the different shapes and just cut it out.  As my 3-year-old nephew would say, Easy Peasy.

A felt garland

I am hosting a shower at my place and I wanted to make things look a bit more festive.  In fact, I've always wanted to have something I could pull out for parties and get togethers to make my apartment more festive so I decided to make this.  I bought a stack of a variety of colors of wool felt on Etsy and I have found so many great things to do with it, I LOVE FELT!!!  Anyway, it was super easy and you could do it in any color combination you'd like for any occasion.  You could probably do a number of different shapes as well... anywho, here's how its done...
First off I purchased bakers twine from Amazon, but you can get it on Etsy too and I'm sure a number of other places.  I like Bakers twine because its cuter than normal string...

Next I started to get circles out of my felt... no need for a perfect circle, I just cut them haphazardly and slightly different sizes, I think it looks cuter and more eclectic that way.  I then laid out the colors in the pattern I preferred and then I heated up the ole glue gun and put thin strips of glue down the back of each circle and slapped on the string and TADA... a garland was born.  Super easy, super fun, and super cute... at least I think so...

melting crayons

I love to color, I have the sweetest little girl that would color with me for hours on end. I also have these 3 little boys, that love to break crayons. I don't know what it is about boys and crayons but they can't resist that little snap noise you get from breaking a crayon. And, who wants to color with a half crayon, not me!

So we decided to melt them into big fat crayons! we all sat down and started peeling, 2 minutes later they had left and I was peeling.

Heat your oven to 300. I used mini muffin tins, USE LINERS! unless you want to throw out your tins afterwards.

I cooked them for about 10 minutes, just check on them every few minutes till they look pretty melted. Be careful when you take them out it's like water, and you don't want all the wax on your muffin tins. let cool, peel the liners off and then color again!

We tried to keep like colors together but you could do swirls. I stirred mine up with a toothpick after they cooked to mix the colors a little more.

Happy coloring!

This week I'm going to try...

Finger Knitting!

Click on the above words to see a post from an amazing craft-ess (I love her blog... love it!)... "She blogs she blogs" does a fabulous tutorial on finger knitting and I just bought my yarn today.  The plan is to make a long garland to hang above the window in Norah's room... I can't wait! I'll let you know how it goes! 

Valentines burlap wreath

I LOVE Valentines Day! I went to pull out my V-day wreath and it had sadly seen it's day, SO...

I covered it in burlap and made a super cute new wreath!

Supplies: heart shaped wreath, 1-2 yds burlap, a needle and glue gun

wrap the wreath in burlap strips about 2-3 inches wide.

with more strips twist them till it's like this (above) then wrap it in circles, like making a cinnamon roll. when it's rolled how you want get a string from the burlap, you'll have plenty, and sew it up on the bottom to hold the shape.

Then glue away!

and there you have your Valentines day wreath!

Happy V-day!

TIP: when cutting your burlap cut one string wherever you want to make your cut and pull it out. It will give you a line to cut on preventing fraying. Hopefully that makes sense!

Christmas card display

Sorry for the post Christmas Christmas post... hopefully you can use this idea for next year.  We live in a tiny apartment and knowing where to put all the Christmas cards we get is a challenge, they usually end up in a pile.  But this year my mom (who was visiting for the birth of our baby), started hanging our cards from our garland, and it looked SO cute! We just used mini binder clips and attached the cards to various bows of the garland and it looked great... so go ahead and copy my mom's genius for next year...