Halloween Block Characters

It's been awhile since I posted on this blog, but I thought I'd share a really easy craft my sister and I made for Halloween.  We got the idea from this blog, but made a few adjustments.  Here's what you need:

• 6" wooden blocks (we cut down 2 x 4's)
• Wooden knobs (found at the craft store)
• Craft paint in sour apple green, orange, gray and white plus paint brushes
• Craft foam sheets in red and black
• Ribbon (for the witch's hat)
• Floral wire (for the witch's hair the pumpkins stem)
• Permanent marker
• Hot glue gun
• An old white t-shirt for the mummy

It's pretty easy to tell what we did just by looking at the pictures, but I'll give the details anyway. We first painted our blocks.  Then as they dried we cut out the foam for the different characters (the witch, vampire and Frankenstein).  Once the paint dried we hot glued the foam on.  We also cut the t-shirt into inch wide strips and wrapped our mummy block.  Next, we drew on the faces of each character with a permanent marker, which we found a lot easier to handle than a paint pen.  Then we added little accessories like Frankenstein's knobs, the pumpkins stem and the witch's hair (which we twisted around a pencil to get it to be curly.)  Also, for the witch's nose, we paint a triangular piece of foam green and hot glued it on. I thought they turned out really cute.  Even though it took a little bit of time, it was a pretty simple craft.

Olympic Ribbons

My family does cowboy camp every summer for our family reunion. Since this summer is the Olympics we're going to have our own little cowboy Olympics! I saw these little ribbons on pinterest (my favorite place)  and I'm going to attach a little treat to them and write what they won! 

They're super easy to make and you could do any colors/patterns.

here's a link for the how to... RIBBON HOW TO

Blinging up your cheap curtains

Okay so blinging might not be the right word for what I did, there are no rhinestones or glitter on my curtains (that would not be cute), but I did take some cheap 10 dollar Target curtains and jazz them up a bit and this is how I did it:
After looking at way more expensive curtain options for my very NON-permanent living space I realized that just some cheapo plain Jane curtains at Target would suffice and be the most practical option for us at this time.  The problem is, I can't ever leave really plain things alone, I always have the desire to jazz them up.  So I decided to buy some fabric that matched my living room and do some jazzing.

1) I cut a strip of fabric wide enough and long enough to cover the bottom of each panel (I think I purchased 3/4 of a yard and that was plenty to cover the bottom of my curtains).

2) I then folded the top end of the fabric under to give it a more finished edge and pinned and then with the other edges I tucked them around the edges of the curtains and pinned.

3) I then sewed about a quarter of an inch around the entire parameter of the fabric to secure it to the curtain and then ironed it to give it a nice finished touch.

4) And then I was done.  Easy as pie I tell you... actually I dare say it was easier than pie!

Felt bows tutorial

 
 I've had a few friends ask about the felt bows Norah wears (the only bows that Norah wears) so I thought I'd put together a little "how to" for whom ever is interested.  I can't take much of the credit for these.  Sure I make most the ones she wears, but my friend Whitney was my Yoda in the process, she taught me everything I know about felt bow making and so I am passing on her knowledge, that I have absorbed, on to you:
1) Purchase your felt.  I got mine on ETSY, I searched "wool felt samples" and there are a few sellers who dye their own felt (its great quality) and you can pick a certain number of sheets in any colors you like.
2) Purchase your elastic, no matter the size of head of your baby or little girl, I prefer the 1/8 inch SOFT elastic, I love how its small and all the attention can go to the bow, thus making it look more like a hair clip than a huge headband.

Lets get started. So the easy way to do this is just to use a glue gun, but you can use a needle and thread for some parts if that makes you more comfortable.

3) First up, determine the size of bow you want (length and width) and cut a strip the desired width and double the desired length of your bow.

4) Next circle the strip around and glue the ends together with a THIN layer of glue (too much glue will make it too bulky and stiff).

no matter what I did with this photo it just
would not post horizontal, so hopefully looking at it
doesn't make you dizzy.

5) Then pinch the middle of the bow together to get the puckering look in the middle and put a small dot of glue inside to hold the pucker.

6) Cut the desired width for your center piece and make it long enough to go around the middle of the puckered part of the bow with some overlap for gluing in the back.

7) wrap the center piece around the center to create the bow look and put a thin strip of glue on that center strip in the back to connect the two ends.

8) You can actually stop here if you want, but I like to put the "ends" on to make it look like a tied ribbon. Cut to shorter rectangles that are the width of your bow and snip a triangle out of one end. And then snip the corners off the square end so that it fits the tapering of your bow.

9) You then glue those pieces on the the back of the bow near the end of the length of the bow... when doing it this way you reduce bulk in the middle of the bow so that it doesn't sit too high off her head.

10) And you are now down with your bow! next just cut your elastic the desired length for your childs head and all you have to do is overlap the ends slighty and glue them together.  Then just glue the bow on the top and you are done! (I like to put a dot in the middle and one on each end to tack the bow on good so it lies nicely).

 You can make one to match any outfit and any size of head...

    And here is my cute model...

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...

(Belated) Christmas Decor

I was putting away my Christmas decorations the other day and among all the holiday craziness I realized I forgot to post the simple holiday crafts I made this year.  I thought they turned out cute and were really inexpensive, especially if you have scraps of scrapbook paper lying around.  I already put tutorials on how to make both the Christmas trees and the presents on my own blog, so for the sake of time I'm just linking to my blog if you are interested in making these for next year.

Paper Christmas Tree Tutorial  (I got the idea for this off of pinterest.com, but I put my own little twist on it.)

Paper Stacked Gifts  (My friend taught me how to fold these boxes, which is pretty easy.  You could really use this as decoration for any holiday depending on the design of paper you use.)