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.

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.

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!

(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.) 

Pumpkins with Vines

I should have posted this awhile ago, since it is now the week of Halloween.  This is a really easy craft to do for Halloween.  I'm not a huge fan of the guts and gore decorations for Halloween.  I thought this was a little bit classier decor.  What you need is small decorative pumpkins, black dimensional paint and black craft paint.

This is an example of dimensional paint.

Now you just paint vines with the black dimensional paint directly onto the pumpkin.  The dimensional paint I used came out gray at first, which freaked me out a little bit, but luckily it dried black.  Also, if you mess up, the dimensional paint wipes right off the pumpkin and you can try again.  It's pretty much fool proof.  Let the pumpkins dry over night.  Once the dimensional paint is dry, paint the stalks of the pumpkin with normal black acrylic craft paint.  Here are how my pumpkins turned out.

Side View

Top View

painting fabric

I've had these chairs for a while now and just was never happy with them. I covered them in a solid fabric that ended looking the same color as the paint on our walls, blah. It looked totally different at the fabric store. So I painted numbers on them! a cute friend suggested this and I've been seeing it a lot in Pottery Barn and stores like that.

Fabric paint is really easy and cheep, and I just made the stencils by printing numbers on card stock and cutting them out with a razor blade.

(and check out the beginning of our Halloween decor, the bats hanging from the chandler)

Rag Wreaths

My sisters and I got together to make rag wreaths for the 4th of July.  They are really simple to do.  I would suggest this as a group activity and have everyone bring different patterns of fabric to share.  Plus, that way you have someone to chat with while you are tying all those knots!

First cut strips of fabric in the different colors you would like in strips of 1"x7".
We chose patterns of red, white and blue for the 4th of July.

Next, bend a wire hanger in to a circle.

Then you tie the strips of fabric around the hanger, as my sister Noelle is doing.
(And she is so excited about it as well.)

Ta da!  The final product!

Decoupage Eggs

I'm posting about a craft I actually haven't done yet, but I plan on doing for Easter.  I figured if I posted about this after Easter, it wouldn't be very useful.  I think these little decoupage eggs would be so cute in Easter baskets or by each plate at Easter dinner.  The instructions are found here.  Since I haven't made them yet, I don't really have any tips, but it doesn't look too complicated.

(Here's the follow up, I did make the decoupage eggs and posted on my blog how they turned out.  I thought they were really cute, but too much work to just have them broken open again!  Ha, oh well.)

Birthday letters

This is yet another idea that I can't claim, my sister-in-law made it, but I had to share it. All it is is felt circles with letters glued on, attached with a thin piece of ribbon. She included the letters for all my kids names so that on each of their birthdays this can be hung up. Love it!

Valentine's Wreath

For this project all you need is a grapevine wreath ($4), a yard of felt ($3), a glue gun, and about 5 hours. Ha! This took me FOREVER. You can find the tutorial here. Even though it took a long time, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. But if I could redo it, I probably would have bought a smaller wreath and still used the same amount of flowers, so the flowers covered the sides too. This wreath looks a little big on my door. To attach it to the door, I took some old ribbon I had, wrapped it around the top, then thumb tacked it to the top of my door (so you can't see the tacks, but can still shut the door). Enjoy!


I will definitely be using these felt flowers in some upcoming projects. I seriously cannot get enough of fabric flowers!

Painted block presents

This is a very easy and inexpensive decoration for the holidays. And a very cute one, too : ) For this project all you'll need is some wood, paint, fabric and twine. You can cut up some wood you have lying around or go to Home Depot and buy some. Then paint them green and red (you can probably figure out what you need to do just by looking at the picture, but I guess I'll write them out anyway). After the paint dries, scratch the edges with some sandpaper. I also painted some small pieces of wood with a hole drilled through them to be the tags. Cut out long strips of material and use them as ribbon for the presents. Then attach the tags with some twine. Set on a piano, table, dresser, mantle, or under your tree. This could also be a fun project for kids... let them paint the blocks, then wrap with fabric ribbon and put them in their own bedrooms or under the tree. Enjoy!

Super easy Christmas tree skirt

I decided to try my hand at making my very own Christmas tree skirt, and it only cost 12 bucks to buy everything including the sewing thread... and it worked out rather nicely... All it took was a yard and a half of green felt, two packages of each color of rickrack and a sewing machine.  My crafty friend Dani Frisby helped me you can see her very crafty craft blog HERE ... anyway... the instructions sound way more complicated than it actually was to do... just look at the picture and  I'm sure you can figure it out better than with my babblings... but here they are anyway....
1. she and I just drew a circle by folding the material in half and then one of us pinned the end of a measuring tape in the middle of the folded end and then let out the measuring tape approximately 28 in. (or smaller if you want it smaller) from the center point and then the other person moved the measure tape in a half circle drawing a white dotted line at the 28 inch line of the tape measurer on the felt... uh... does that make sense?  Its the only way we cold figure out how to make a perfect circle. 
2. Than I pinned the yellow (more specifically the package said "golden rod") rickrack around the entire parameter of the circle and then sewed down the middle of the rickrack... when I almost arrived at the meeting point to make a full circle I stopped a bit shy and left about 2 inches unsewn so I could cut a straight line to the center of the circle so that you can actually fit it around the tree... and so that you can sew the rickrack underneath to make a nice edge.
3. Then I did the same with the red rickrack (choose what ever colors or color you want).
4. Then I cut a strait shot to the middle of the circle and then  folded and sewed the loose ends of rick rack underneath the treeskirt so it looked nice and trim... and thats it!  Since I used felt there is no need to hem... I'm such a beginner sewer so this was at the perfect level for me :)

Thanksgiving Pillows

I've always wanted interchangeable holiday pillows, but I hate to spend money so I decided to use things I already had to make some Thanksgiving pillows.
Tip: When you're making a pillow cover, make it about 1" smaller than the actual pillow (ie. for a 17"x17" pillow, make your cover 16"x16"). This ensures it won't look flat or under-stuffed.

Turkey PillowI cut out all the pieces, then used iron-on transfer adhesive to stick the pieces to the pillow. Then, I sewed around everything so that it wouldn't peel away at all. After that, I used embroidery thread to add the eyes, mouth and feet. Then, I sewed the pillow together.

Thanks PillowI used my Cricut to cut out the letters, but you could easily cut them out by hand or find a font on your computer to trace. I used the same iron-on transfer adhesive and then sewed around the letters.

Striped PillowI wanted to pull all the fabrics together with this pillow, so I just used different widths of each fabric and sewed them together.

For all the pillows, I used buttons and button-holes on the back so that I can easily take the covers off when the holiday is over and replace them with new covers. Plus, buttons are way easier than a zipper in my opinion.