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!

12 Days Of Pinterest: Day 1: Button Tree!

 

DAY 1:

One of the first images I pinned was this amazing button tree...It was created by a married couple in Melbourne, Australia named Kim and Jodi Wiley. Together they are the masterminds behind Art by Wiley and they sell these fantastic button tree creations on their Etsy (It's closed until further notice right now, but I sure hope it opens back up again, because their button art is fabulous!).

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Besides their button trees (which are ALL freakin' fantabulous!) they do some pretty amazing canvas paintings. So go over and leave them some love!

Ok, now on to what I made with their button tree as inspiration!

I didn't have any canvas on hand, and I COULD have waited to go to Michael's to pick one up, but I just didn't feel like it and HAD to make the button tree, like That second! So I took one of my busted picture frames and used the cardboard backing; Boog and Belly "helped" me paint it white.  After they went down for a nap, I lightly penciled my tree shape and then painted it in with brown. When the paint was all dry, I took a can of clear spray paint and gave it a "once over" so it would get a nice glossy look to it. Then raided my button stash for green buttons. 

I wasn't entirely happy with it until I added the brown corduroy ruffles along the edge to frame it. For now it hangs above the couch in our living room, but as soon as I come up with something better to fill that huge space, it'll be moved elsewhere. 

If you haven't visited Pinterest, you really should. It's open to the public to look around, but in order to "pin" anything for yourself, you have to join. Which requires an invitation. Which sometimes takes a few days to get accepted. But it's worth it I promise!

12 Days of Pinterest!

I'm sorry, I have been MIA for the whole month of November, but I have a good excuse!!!

As an ode to one of the most addicting websites I've ever been on since the creation of the Internet, I've decided to do a "12 Days of Pinterest" session where I take one of my "pins" and actually make something like it so I don't end up like this pin:

 

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So here is the logo I came up with for this short 12 day span of complete Copy Cat-ness 

(but hey, copying is just a form of flattery right?)

And don't worry, if I'm using your image and/or project for my 12 Days, I will be linking up your website and giving full credit. Because I'm nice like that :)

I hope you're all having a great December, and that your Thanksgivings were full of food, family and friends!

12 Days of Pinterest starts tomorrow!

You can follow me here!

The Importance of Watermarking Photos

This weekend I was going to try to finish up some projects and update the blog with crafty goodness. BUT I read House of Hepworths blog post from Monday about why she puts her logo on all her photos (read about it here). She is a fantastic blogger and I love reading about what she has been up to and all the insanely creative ideas she has.

Reading that post I have decided that I need to go through my blog and replace ALL the pictures I have with adjusted ones. I just figured out how to do this with my PhotoShop, but it is still taking some time, so bear with me as photos disappear and reappear. With the increasing craze over Pinterest, it's easy for someone to "pin" an image and not give credit to the original source (ie Googling a picture and giving Google as the source for the picture). If you're on Pinterest, and know how it works, please take the time to giving credit where credit is due and linking your pins to the original source.

Other than all this, I hope you have a wonderful weekend. I will be going up to Fresno with my Aunt Chrissy to visit my cousin TC in the hospital. For those of you who don't know me personally, he was in a really bad accident last weekend and was airlifted to two different hospitals (finally ending up in Fresno). I can't really share with you the extents of his injuries though. He has been in-and-out of surgeries, under a medically induced coma to help with pain, and has finally gotten his intubation tube out I believe. He will have to learn to walk again, but all signs point to the fact that he will be fine and with extensive physical therapy will be back to normal. I love my cousin (he's 22), but once he starts feeling better and can get around well, I'm kicking his butt for scaring the crud out of me and being stupid. Just like we were kids.