12 Days of Pinterest: Day 12: Series "Wrap" Up!

 

DAY 12:

Series "Wrap" Up!

If you're on Pinterest, then no doubt you've seen all the beautiful ways you can wrap gifts in brown paper. I had pinned the stamped one before by Jen Jafarzadeh L'Italien of The Haystack Needle, and I thought it's be a really great idea and would tie in perfectly with my "Handmade Christmas". However, for some reason I cannot find my "E" or "P" stamps anywhere!!!! Almost everyone in our families has an "E" in their names, so this was really disappointing and frustrating to me.

(source)

I also saw gifts wrapped with brown paper and using snowflakes for a decorative touch. Super cute! This one is done by one of the fabulous blogs I follow, How About Orange by Jessica Jones. (Anyone who knows me, knows I love orange, so this blog is a great fit!) She even includes a great tutorial on how to create these awesome 6-point snowflakes!

So for my wrapping, I used brown paper (bought at the Dollar Tree; it's actually brown postal paper) and used my Cricut to cut out glittery green trees (from "Create A Critter" cartridge). I had tried to cut snowflakes out on the Cricut, but because I was using an old mat and white glittery paper (I didn't want to muck up my new mats with glitter) they kept getting snagged and gnarly, so I had to 86 that idea. Then I punched a couple small holes in the trees to act as ornaments, put a star sticker on the tops, and wrote each child's name in red marker. I think they turned out really cute!

And yes, our carpet is hideous...the joys of renting :)

Well folks, that "Wraps" it up for the 12 Days of Pinterest series! Whew, and all before Christmas! Kinda proud of myself because I had to seriously consider my propensity to procrastinate when starting this and thought it would take me at least until the 26th to get everything up. But I did it!

Happy Holidays everyone! I'm taking a breather for a week or two but I'll be back by the New Year ;)

12 Days of Pinterest: Day 11: Modern Paper Ornaments!

Day 11:

Modern Paper Ornaments

When I first saw this picture on Pinterest, I thought it was really cute and would be a super easy way to decorate the window in the office since it faces the front yard. It was made by Chris, Editor-in-Chief for Curbly (a DIY community) and man-blogger at ManMade. To follow his tutorial go here. 

Aren't they just gorgeous? Simplistic beauty at it's best!

When I did mine, I loved the colors so much, I straight up copied the whole thing. Instead of grommets, I just used eyelets. And his measurements are larger; He used 12", 10", and 8 3/4", whereas I opted for smaller ones at 6", 5", and 4". I used silver stranded white yarn to hang mine up. My picture taking skills are not as good as Chris' are. And excuse the dirty windows :)

I see the light at the end of the tunnel! Only one more day left of the 12 Days of Pinterest! I would love to see what you guys have been making from your pins (if any) as well this month. And if not, there's always room on New Years Resolutions lists :)

12 Days of pinterest: Day 10: Stenciled T-Shirts!

DAY 10:

Stenciled T-Shirts

Wow, I need to get on this! I really was going to try my hardest to make this series 12 consecutive days....but life happens. The original pin for today's post is lost in cyber space. So I had to search Pinterest for something similar. I had seen an image of the word "Stud" and a picture of a muffin below it. I thought it was really cute and had planned on making a stenciled t-shirt for my littlest brother out of it. But lo-and-behold, it disappeared from my pin boards. 

The t-shirt pictured below was done by lindyv321 and uploaded to the site Craftster. She said she got the stencil from Stencilry. It was made for Valentine's Day and looks super cute! Lindy also writes for her blog Crafty Like Lindy, and right now has LOTS of mouth-watering goodies and recipes for all to enjoy!

I chose a black shirt and yellow paint with silver glitter puff-paint for the detailing. And decided to make it for one of our nephews instead. I found the image of a muffin searching through Google, and the font is one of the designs I have on MSWord.

I love it!

Here are a couple other ones I did as well.

This is what I ended up doing for my little brother because he just recently got a new guitar (this style).

I made the fabric flower for this one to finish off the "pearls" for our youngest niece.

7 stenciled shirts down, two more to go! I hope everyone who gets one likes them, because they are so much work!!! :)

12 Days of Pinterest: Day 9: Ruffle Necktie Tee!

DAY 9:

Ruffle Necktie Tee

I am all for clothing with flair, and this shirt is so adorable! I'd totally rock it! McKell from "McKell's Closet"  found a shirt at Forever21 for $1.50(!)  and a thrifted tie to make hers, but you can grab any old shirt from your closet  and raid your hubby's tie stash to make one. Here is her easy to follow tutorial.

McKell's awesome shirt!

      

As soon as I started to pin my tie onto my shirt, I knew I was going to be in for a lot of trouble. The thickness of the tie (and the fact that McKell said her machine might hate her while creating hers) should have been a bigger warning for me. But I forged ahead. I made it to the last part of the sewing when....my needle broke. My last needle.

So I had to finish the rest of the shirt by hand. I'll probably get around to fixing it later, but being the procrastinator I am, I'll wear it around with my bad hand-stitching for months until Mr. C2M asks me why it looks like crap. And then I'll cry and hang my head in shame as I drag out my vintage sewing machine to fix it. 

Ok, ok...Here's the finished product. Definitely not as nice as McKell's, but I'm still proud of myself for powering through this project!

I didn't add as many ruffles as McKell did, because I was afraid. And rightly so. *Insert sad face here* I should probably stitch down the ruffles in the corners too :/

Oh well, with every thing you try to make you're bound to have some failures and difficulties, right?

12 Days of Pinterest: Day 8: Zipper Necklace!

DAY 8:

Zipper Bracelets

It took me some time to find the original source for this super cute bracelet. The one I had pinned was a version of someone else's, so I had to track her down! Rae is one of a ton of crafty people on "Cut Out + Keep", a website that lets its users share their DIY projects and create new virtual friendships. Here is a picture of one of Rae's fabulous zipper bracelets:

   source

Super cute, right?

No way I'm going to top hers!

Since I have this REALLY long green zipper (20"), I decided to make a necklace instead.

I just added ribbon clamps to the ends, used jump rings to connect them to the chain and added beads, a nut, and a mermaid charm.
The thing I like about using the zipper is you can choose where you want the zipper pull. In the middle, near the top left, near the top right....It all depends on how long you want the 2 separated pieces.

Up close of the details:

I like it!
I'll post a full tutorial on this necklace (as well as the tie bracelet from yesterday) when I recover from Christmas!

And can you believe it? Only four more days and I'm done with this series!!!

I had totally meant to do this series in 12 consecutive days, but then I was approached by a client of mine to make some clay necklaces with a Christian theme for her next event this Tuesday, so I've been a busy bee working on those! Now my goal is just to have this series wrapped up before Christmas!

12 Days of Pinterest: Day 7: Necktie Bracelets!

DAY 7:

Necktie Bracelets!

When I pinned the picture below, I thought someone had actually made them. I had to scout out the blog the image was pinned from, and couldn't find it anywhere on her page. *frustration* So I emailed the blog owner about the bracelets and she sent me the correct link to them. They are made by a New England based company called "Kiel James Patrick" . The creator was in college and discovered his knack for designing, sold out of the bracelets he made 2 days in a row at his first craft show, and it was all down hill from there! 

Although I can't find this exact picture on his site, I'll share it anyways, because it's what I pinned :)

They aren't made of ties like I originally thought, but I will go ahead with the idea just the same. And since this series is just about showing my renditions of the amazing things I find on Pinterest, I'll write up a tutorial when the craziness of the Holidays pass.

I used a small cut-off piece of the pink tie from another post I'll share later post for my tie bracelet today. Since my machine is unusable at the moment, I had to hand stitch everything. Including the button hole. But I would have had to do the button hole myself anyways, because I don't have a button presser foot (or even the option for button holes on my machine).

So here it is, in all it's pink silked glory!

I love it. Kinda big, but not weighty. I've been saving that button for something special, and I guess this project was it!

And honestly, I have no idea how all these awesome professional bloggers do it! They post everyday (or almost everyday)....I'm lucky if I get around to posting twice a month! But so far I've managed to do this almost 7 days in a row (I think I may have spotted a few gray hairs in the mirror this morning)!

I really hope you are all enjoying this series, and that you become "Pinspired" too!

12 Days of Pinterest: Day 6: Jeans into Roads

DAY 6:

Jeans into Roads
We're half way to the end of the series!!!

Over at Lil Mop Top, Jen found a really creative way to keep her little car-loving boy entertained by cutting up an old pair of jeans into road pieces!

 Even though the picture is pretty self-explanatory, you can check out her tutorial.

Since I have a huge surplus of old jeans, this is a good way to put at least one of them to use!

These were so easy to make! And really fast, because I was able to do all of it in one nap-time! 

Out of just one leg of a pair of black jeans I made 5 long and 1 straight roads, 3 curvy roads, 2 arcs, 1 four-way intersection, and an "L" road. Then I just took some acrylic yellow paint and added lines.

Not bad! If I get around to it, I'll cut up the other leg and make him more...or make it for someone else.

Boog loves it! He was "vroooom"ing around with his cars for quite a while.

Without Pinterest, I probably would never have found this idea! Thanks for blogging it Jen!

12 Days of Pinterest: Day 5: Sock Snowmen!

DAY 5:

Sock Snowmen

Amy from the blog "Then She Made..." came up with the idea to use socks to make a-freakin'-dorable snowmen when it was simply too cold outside to make a real one. She stuffed socks with rice, then used patterned socks for clothes and.....well, check out her tutorial and see how she made it :)

Anywho, here are her snowmen:

And yes Amy, they are definitely cuter than the real thing! :)

Ok, for my knock-off snowman, I needed it to be lighter since I'm putting mine on my winter wreath, so I stuffed it with polyester fiber fluff and sewed the bottom of the sock closed.  Then I took another sock (patterned) and made it the way Amy did hers. I had this really cute cookie cutter charm in my button stash so I used that for the flair on the hat. I used a small piece of orange felt for the nose, and hot glued the hat around the head. 

Super cute, super easy, super fast project! 

Here it is on the wreath that will adorn my front door until February (because I'm too lazy to make a wreath for January).

And here's the whole wreath; I kinda love it :)

 

P.S.~ Wreath is from the Dollar Tree and spray painted with Rust-oleum's Harbor Blue. "Snow Flowers" is from one sheet of felt ($0.20 at Wal-Mart) and glitter glued around the edges. 

The whole project cost maybe $5-$6 because I had most everything else on hand. 

Have you made a wreath for Winter yet? I'd love to see yours!

12 Days of Pinterest: Day 4: Pleated Headbands!

DAY 4:

Pleated Headbands!

Thank goodness none of my family is on here, because I'm revealing more handmade Christmas gifts today! 

The headbands were created by Jess of the Uber creative blog, Craftiness is not Optional. You can find her tutorial here. She has tons and I mean TONS of super cute and easy to follow tutorials on her blog. There's no shortage of awesomeness on her site folks!

Ok, so here are her headbands....are they not incredibly adorable?!?!

As soon as I saw these beauties, I knew I HAD to make some for the little girls in our lives! So off to Beverly's I went, and I picked out a couple different fabrics that I thought would be really cute.
For Christmas I made a total of 14; 10 of them with the patterned fabrics, 4 with denim cut from jeans.

I didn't follow Jess' exact tutorial though. I nixed the interfacing, and used two pieces of fabric instead. One longer, one shorter. I ironed a hem on all four sides on the longer piece first, then made the pleats and ironed those. Once the first piece was done, I ironed the hems on the smaller fabric piece to the size of the longer one. Then I took elastic and sandwiched it between the two fabric pieces and sewed along the edges.
Some of the headbands I sewed a middle seam, most I didn't. Then hand sewed on cute buttons from my stash.
Oh, and mine are shorter than Jess' are; she made hers long enough to circle most of the head. Mine are only about 3-4inches long.

I just took a picture of a few of them.

Are you all ready for Christmas? 12 more days!!!!

12 Days Of Pinterest: Day 3: Super Capes!

 DAY 3:
Super Hero Capes

For a while now, Boog has been "flying" around the house claiming he is a Super Hero. And what good is a super hero without a cape? One of the most genius ideas I'd come across on Pinterest was one to make a cape out of an old t-shirt! 

Jenny from The Southern Institute came up with this idea and I knew as soon as I saw it I had to try to make it. Her tutorial looked "super" easy and even I couldn't possibly mess it up!

She just cuts out the back of an old t-shirt, keeping the collar intact! Genius I tell you!

When I started on the kids' capes, I used an old green shirt of Mr.Chasing2Monkeys and an old pink shirt of mine. After I cut them out, I used my sewing machine to hem the sides of the capes. For Belly's cape, I wanted hers to have a girlish flair so I used material from the front part of the shirt to add ruffles to the bottom. 

I searched on Google for "Super" letters so I could freezer paper stencil them onto the capes (I'm kind of getting obsessed with freezer paper stenciling, is there a support group for it?) I cut out the design, ironed it on, and then painted it in with black. After it all dried and I ripped the paper off the capes, I took some glittery silver puff paint to add definition.

Don't know what Freezer Paper stenciling is? Visit MADE for Dana's great tutorial on what it is and how to do it!

Happy Monday to you all!

12 Days Of Pinterest: Day 2: Mug Cozy!

DAY 2:
Mug Cozy

Sorry for not having this posted earlier! One of the fuses in our house blew and I just got the internet back up and running!

Since I'm going for a handmade Christmas this year, I saw this adorable mug cozy on Pinterest and thought that it would be perfect for my big sister, April because she always has a cup of hot tea in her hand. 

The mug cozy pictured above was made by Jill McNamara and sold in her Etsy Shop, FabulousFabulous. She's on vacation from her Etsy shop right now, but be sure to check back with her later :)

My original intentions was to make my cozy two sided, but it would have been too chunky and lumpy, so I made two different ones. 

The first one is a gray felt piece with a hot pink "A" (with white embroidery floss stitching) and a bunting made of felt triangles and light blue ric-rac. 

The second is a blue felt piece with yellow, pink and purple flowers, edged with embroidery floss and rhinestones hot glued for the centers. Then I just added some embroidery floss swirls for more "pizazz". 

They are both supposed to grab onto the mug by stretching the elastic bands over the buttons.

I love how mine turned out! However, I think Jill's is about 500 million times cuter! But she's a professional and has probably made them about a hundred times.

I would love to see how you all are putting your Pinterest "pins" to use!