Yarn Wreath

I LOVE wreaths! I have been so into yarn wreaths especially lately. They are super easy to make and easy to customize. I loved the color combination on this one, especially the gray and mustard. Perfect for Fall.
The wreath is really easy to make, although it can get tedious. This is a great project to do in front of the TV. I grabbed one of those raffia-type wreaths in plastic and kept the plastic on. I ended up rolling my yarn skeins into balls first to make it easier to wrap the yarn around the wreath. I made sure there was enough yarn covering the area I wanted to do, then pulled it tight and knotted it well. Then I just snipped the ends. You can see the back here.
When I was done wrapping the yarn, I made a variety of flowers out of wool felt (not craft felt) and hot-glued them right on the wreath. Easy!

Flower Brooches

Okay, well I'm a little embarrassed. My sewing machine is in fine working order, with the exception of a broken light bulb. I feel so dumb! Dumb, but grateful my machine isn't broken! Thank you, Tori, for your comment.

While my machine was "broken," I felt a little stir-crazy. I wanted to make something, but I couldn't sew. I had found this tutorial on Make It Do for peony brooches. By the way, I LOVE Make It Do. It's a fabulous blog with lots of great ideas. I have wanted to make some large flower brooches for a while, and this tutorial was perfect! I only needed ribbon, needle, thread, felt, and a pin. I had all the stuff!

Calli made her flowers a little tighter than I did. I didn't gather the ribbon quite as much. I made two of my flowers (teal and coral) using 2 yards of wired ribbon and one flower(pink) using 1.5 yards. They turned out pretty big, just like I wanted, almost 4.5 inches in diameter. The ribbon is gorgeous! I don't know if you can tell, but the pink ribbon has a gold sheen to it. I got the ribbon from Hobby Lobby in the by-the-yard section. There. The perfect accessory!

Sweet Strawberry Valentine

As you can see, I love homemade valentines. This one is easy!

Download the template here if you want, or you can just eyeball this one. Just cut a heart out for the berry and a little leaf out for the top. The template should be sized to about 8.5 x 5. You can probably get about 5 strawberries out of one page.

You will need:
red cardstock
green construction paper (or cardstock)
googly eyes (14 mm)
tacky glue
a Sharpie
gold gel pen or gold glitter paint pen
glue stick
tape
labels

Trace the parts of the strawberry and leaf onto the cardstock and cut out a bunch. Get your kids and start assembling!

Glue the green leaf on with a glue stick. Glue the googly eyes on with tacky glue. Give it a minute to dry or the eyes will slide. Draw on a smile or have your kids do it.

Now take your gel pan and draw little seeds all around the face. If you opt to use the glitter glue or a glitter pen, make sure you let it dry for quite a while- maybe around 4 hours. It can get pretty messy and take a while with the glue. It's a bit more sparkly, but I think the gel pen is cute too.

Make some labels on your computer using you word processor. I used the sentiments "You are a BERRY good friend!" and "You are sweet!" for the labels. Let your kids put the labels on the back and tape a treat on.

And you're done!

Adorable Owl Valentines

Here's a quick tutorial for these cute owl valentines! These are pretty easy, especially if you do a little prep work ahead of time. If you are making these with your kids, I suggest doing a lot of the cutting and punching beforehand. Then you can just help the kids assemble the valentines, which is the fun part anyway!

You will need:

This template (pdf)
tan (or other color) cardstock
construction paper in multiple colors
googly eyes (size 14 mm)
round white stickers
exacto knife
circle punch, 1.25 inches
valentine pencils from the dollar section of Target or Dollar Tree
Tacky glue
glue stick
tape
labels
a treat to go on the back

I know that seems like a lot of supplies, but chances are you have most of it on hand already.

Prep work
Figure out how many valentines you'll be making. You can get four owl bodies on one piece of cardstock, so that will tell you how much cardstock you'll need.

Download a copy of the template. If the image is too big, you might need to resize it to 8.5 by 6 inches. To make sure it's the right size, put the format on landscape before printing it off. It should be about the size of a half-sheet of paper. Trace four of the owl's heads per piece of cardstock. Keep the scraps because you should be able to cut the wings out with them.

Cut out your owl bodies and wings with cardstock and the faces with construction paper. For the faces, I just fold the construction paper in half and only trace half of the heart template and cut. But if you don't want fold lines, just trace the whole heart and cut. Then punch out a bunch of eyes with the circle punch, using cardstock. Use a variety of colors for the faces and eyes if you want.

Cut out a bunch of beaks and feet using orange construction paper. For the beaks, cut a bunch of small triangles down one side of the sheet. Then when you are done, cut a straight line down the sheet again and you'll have double the amount. Easy.For the feet, cut a bunch of slits in one side of the paper. Then cut little w's in the bottom of them. These don't have to be perfect- they are just valentines! Cut a straight line down the paper to cut all the feet off. Now you should have a nice little pile of bodies, wings, faces, eyes, beaks, and feet!

How to assemble

1. Glue the heart onto the body with a glue stick.2. Glue two circles punched out with your circle punch on for the eyes. Then center some white circle stickers on them. 3. Glue the eyes on with Tacky glue. Make sure they are centered and let them dry for a few minutes so they don't move. By the way, this glob I put on was too much! Use a little less than this so the glue doesn't blob out the sides.
4. Attach the wings to either side of the body. You can use a glue stick, but I like to tape them on. Just place the wings behind the body and tape on the back side. Add a beak with a glue stick.

5. Using your exacto knife, cut two slits near the bottom. Be careful not to cut all the way through the bottom- leave a good space so it can hold the pencil in well. If it is too small for the pencil, cut a little more towards the top. Glue on two little feet and put the pencil through.

6. Make some labels on your computer using your word processor. I wrote "Owl always be your friend!" but you can write whatever owl pun you can think of. Maybe "You're a hoot!" would be cute too! Stick the labels on the back and tape a little treat on.
And you're done! I'll be posting another cute valentine idea tomorrow.

Temple Blocks

When I saw this idea on Lil' Luna through Cookie Nut Creations, I just had to make these for my Mia Maids. It was such an easy and cheap project too, it didn't stress me out too much! Go to this post on Lil' Luna's blog and download an antiqued picture of your favorite temple, resize and print it. I bought a 2 x 8 at Lowes for $4 and had them cut it for me (for free) into 5.5 inch sections. Then I sanded and painted the blocks, Mod Podged the pictures on (no coat on top) and decorated with embellishments. I have to thank my adviser for her help there- she is a master when it comes to embellishing! We had so much fun making these and I'm glad my Mia Maids will have their own picture of the temple for their rooms. Sorry about the blurry pictures!

Easy-Peasy Personalized Pillowcases Tutorial

I made these for my kids for Christmas and they loved them! These would also make cute personalized birthday presents. They are so simple and fun to make, you might get addicted like I have!

You should already have most of the stuff. Here's what you will need for one standard size pillowcase:
1/4 yard white fabric- I prefer 65 poly/35 cotton blend. It's really cheap and holds up well.
up to 1 and 1/4 yard patterned fabric- So far I have chosen licensed prints for my kids, but anything will do. Read my note* before buying your fabric.
small piece of freezer paper- you can buy a roll at Wal-mart in the foil and baggie section.fabric paint- I like Tulip brand. It goes on nice and thick and I rarely need more than one coat.
X-acto knife
piece of leftover cardboard
paintbrush
cutting mat and rotary cutter
sewing machine
thread
iron/ironing board

your computer and printer

*A note about buying fabric

One thing to note is that you want the pattern on the fabric to appear horizontal after the pillowcase is sewn. The last thing you want is your Care Bears looking sideways. How much fabric you will need will depend on how the pattern comes off the bolt. For example, if the pattern comes this way, you will need 1 and 1/4 of a yard.You will need 3/4 of a yard if the fabric comes off the bolt like this...
The reason for this is that we are going to cut one large piece that will be folded at the top. Once folded, we will have the horizontal patterned piece of the pillowcase. We want it to look like this:

NOT THIS:

So keep that in mind while buying and cutting your fabric. If the fabric you have chosen can face either way or doesn't have a distinct horizontal pattern to it, you can just buy 3/4 of a yard.

That's it! Let's start. Set up your ironing board and plug in your iron. We will be using a 1/4 inch seam allowance for the whole project.

Cut a 26.5 x 38.5 piece from your patterned fabric. Set that aside.
Cut an 8.5 x 38.5 piece from your white fabric.

Fold the white piece in half longways and press; then fold it in half the other way and press. Now you know where the center is.

Get on your computer and find a cute font to print out your kid's name with. If you don't have any fonts you like on your computer, go to Kevin and Amanda's free fonts site and you're sure to find something cute. Open up a word document and enlarge your name so that it's no taller than 4 inches. That includes tall letters like lower-case d, h and l. Go to format in the menu bar and then choose character and chose the outline feature. That way when you print out the name, you won't use up your whole ink cartridge; it will just print a nice outline for you. Like so:
Trace the name onto a piece of freezer paper with the shiny side down. Using your X-acto knife and cutting mat, cut out the letters on the paper. Try not to make any extra slices because the fabric paint will end up seeping out of the stencil. Don't forget to keep any inside pieces like the loops in the letters e, p and d. You will need them! For really great and thorough instructions for freezer paper stenciling, check out Dana's tutorial at Made.
Center the stencil onto one side of the white fabric and then iron it on. Note: If you want the name to appear on a certain side of the finished pillowcase (right or left) you will need to put the small fold up and the long fold at the bottom of the name. For example, for the name to be on the left side of the pillowcase, you will place the name here:
The fold of the fabric should always be underneath the name. There will be no seam allowance on the fold, so you can place your name as close to the fold as you like. I like to keep in about 1/4 of an inch or more from the fold. If you want it centered from top to bottom, just remember that there will be 1/4-inch seam allowance on the top.

Place the cardboard under the fabric so that paint won't seep onto the rest of the fabric. Paint on a nice layer of fabric paint and let it dry for 3-4 hours. If you think it needs another layer of paint, go ahead and do that and let it dry again.

When the paint is dry, peel off the freezer paper. Doesn't it look pretty? Cover it with scrap fabric and press for a few minutes. Make sure to fold the white fabric lengthwise again if you unfolded it during the painting process. Now put the white and patterned pieces together (the matching 38.5 length sides), right sides together, (raw side of the white) and pin well. The name will be hidden as you sew. Sew the 38.5 inch length (remember all seam allowances will be 1/4 inch). Zig zag over the seam allowance. Now iron that seam up towards the colored fabric.
We're going to topstitch on the colored fabric just above the seam line, a little less than 1/4 inch so as to catch seam allowance underneath that we just ironed up. Not perfect, but it's okay!
Almost done! Can you believe how easy these are? Now fold the pillowcase in half, right sides together, pin it well and sew it closed. I start sewing where the white fabric is to keep it even. Zig zag your seam allowance. Inside it out and press. And you're done!

Hairclip Holder/Message Board

I actually made this during that month-long hiatus from blogging a while back, when my sister was in town visiting me. This is the easiest project ever. I got a canvas from Michael's (using my 40% off coupon) and basically stapled fabric onto it with a staple gun. Then I stapled the ribbon on in the criss-cross pattern. To secure it at the intersections, I sewed buttons right onto the fabric-covered canvas. Done! Now with all of my daughter's hair bows and flowers attached, you can barely see the board!

Birthday or Dress-Up Crown

I made this crown for my daughter's birthday party. There are lots of cute ideas out there for crown color themes and design, but I went with the strawberry theme simply because I didn't have any other colors!

All I did was measure my daughter's head, and cut a crown shape out of white wool felt. This is not to be confused with the craft sheets of felt. Wool felt is purchased on the bolt at JoAnn's or any fabric store.

I made a stencil for the monogram using my word processor. I just picked a font I liked and printed out a stencil. I cut out the strawberries and butterflies and then sewed them onto the white piece by hand. If you are good with a machine, you can do it that way too, but I didn't trust myself at the time! I added the yellow french knots on the strawberries and the buttons on the butterflies.

When the white piece was done, I attached it to the red by sewing the rickrack on. I made a casing for a piece of elastic for the back, then attached it by zig zagging it onto both sides of the back, and I was done!

It was a very fun project and I highly recommend it! It was fun and fast and I am very happy with the result!

Mod Podge Memory Game

I stumbled upon this cute idea a while ago and have wanted to make it ever since. Robert's was sold out of the squares, so I decided to just do the rectangles instead. Sorry for the horrible pictures. I think the game turned out well. I do need to spray it with some acrylic sealer because the pieces are still a little sticky from the Mod Podge.

Also, if you don't want to go out and buy chipboard pieces, you could use cut up cereal boxes instead. Same cute result, but a little cheaper!

Simple Monogram

I have seen these huge monograms in lots of people's houses. Some people Mod Podge them with scrapbook paper or attach flowers and embellishments. But my friend has one in her kitchen that she just painted plain black and hung on the wall. It is really eye-catching and looks so simple yet so cute. So I decided to do what I do best- copy her idea!
These big letters are almost 2 feet tall and are found at Joann's. I bought one a while ago, and for the longest time, just had it hung on my wall as is. I was trying to get a feel for having a huge S on my wall. In fact, I didn't think I liked it, until I painted it black and added just a few ribbons. I really like the finished result! It'll look even better when my walls get painted...