I am currently working on birth announcements for Brandi over at Pigtails and Pacifiers. Baby Brooklyn should be here any day now and she needs a cute little card to tell the world she has arrived.
I am really excited to start working on these. As much cussing as I do while I’m in photoshop I really enjoy stuff like this. I’ve even been asked to make Save the Dates for a girl at work. Thankfully her wedding is next year so I have some time before I need to start working on hers. I’ll definitely post pics of all of these when I get done. Maybe one day I can make some money but for now it’s a fun hobby. 🙂
I think this stuff is super cool. I love all the different things I run across on Pinterest. Well baby Brooklyn gave me the perfect opportunity to finally make something. Granted Brooklyn Grace hasn’t made her debut yet but I have a feeling she will be here shortly.
As you know a few weeks ago I went to VA Beach for a baby shower, Brooklyn’s baby shower. One of her gifts was a subway art with her birth stats. Of course I couldn’t put the real information in because she’s not here yet but I told her mom I would fill in all the correct information once she arrives.
It took a good bit of time and a lot of cussing {clearly this is very normal for me} for me to finally get everything just as I wanted. I also managed to lose ALL my hard work one night when my computer decided to restart. Dammit! And wouldn’t you know I hadn’t saved anything. This actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I started over and the whole thing went much quicker. While researching how to make these I saw a few people had used Photoshop. But I found Publisher was actually much easier to maneuver.
I am happy to report my first Pinterest project (for the blog) is complete. There was lots of cussing and I’m pretty sure I used a half a roll of thread but my frog is complete! Actually it looked like the sewing machine threw up on me tonight. I had thread everywhere.
Okay so here’s how it happened. The other night I set up my new sewing machine and cut out my pattern.
Front and back.
I had quite a few issues with my corners and ended up ripping out the seams a few 3ish times. I finally was like what the hell and just kept going. I’m not sure what I did but my seam got better and I continued to the end. I must add that I might be the slowest sewer in the history of the world. For serious I was like putt putt putt around this thing but I did it!
Completed sewing.
Then it was time to turn him right side out. I started with the legs.
Then I worked the rest of the body out. I used a chop stick to help me push out the corners. This was actually pretty tedious and was almost slower then my sewing.
Right side out and empty.
I used about a half a pound bag of rice to fill mine. I added a little bit of cloves to make it smell. (I might have added a tad too much.) You can use any herbs you like. Cloves were not my first choice but it was the best smelling herb I had in the pantry.
Filled but I haven't sewn the bottom closed yet.
I must say my hand stitching it pretty atrocious so there aren’t any pics of that but once you have your frog full you just stitch together the bottom.
And front.Front
He’s a cute little guy and he’s all mine. I think I will add some eyes and take him to work to sit on my computer. 🙂
I got my frog cut out and pinned. And I may have one seam done. Yeeeeaaaaahhhh, I’m having some issues with my corners. I thought I just needed to pick the foot up and turn my fabric but this doesn’t seem to be working. Hmmm. I guess I’m gonna have to go back to the book. So maybe a cute little frog wasn’t quite the best first project but I’m gonna stick with it. I know I can get this. Plus if I can master this stupid little thing other stuff should be a breeze right?
So one thing kind of lead to another. Yesterday while I was blowing up perusing Pinterest I stumbled cross this cute little guy, a frog bean bag. The a little later I saw an idea for homemade heating pads using rice or beans. Hmmm. {You see where this is going right?} Of course I thought I could totally do this. AND I have a sewing machine I’ve been dying to use.
This afternoon on Matt’s way home he stopped by the store. I asked if he would pick up some rice so I can make my cute little frog. After my work out I finally cleaned off “my” desk downstairs to make room for my sewing machine. It took a little while to clear the mess I must admit but now I have a permanent place for it. It only took me about 45 minutes and reading the instructions to get everything set up. Yes, I actually read the directions and let me just say this is not a beginner machine. Or I should say the instructions are definitely not beginner friendly. Thankfully my mom had a sewing machine that I’ve used so I knew most of the basics but I’m still not sure exactly what some of it meant but…..I SEWED!!!!!
I grabbed some of the scratch fabric I bought a while back cute a little piece and tried a few stitches. The machine itself really doesn’t seem so hard. It is super easy to change the stitch, you just push a button and BAM! done.
All of this leads to my new goal of a Pinterest post a week. My hope is to post a craft one week and a recipe the next. Since I have a mild obsession with Pinterest I think it’s dumb to not put some of these pins to use. I mean really, what is the point if I’m just going to pin something and never look at it again? This week that all ends. Come Friday I will post pics of my new little buddy. And next week I will choose a recipe and post the results on Friday. Hopefully I can keep this up for a while. 🙂
with a doll head? I mean the dollar store had tons of random doll heads the other day so my coworker suggested we get one and put it on another coworker’s desk. Of course my inner Martha came out and that just wouldn’t do. I mean everyone needs a doll head snow globe right? 😀
I can’t decide if I’m just crafty or a little demented. Maybe it’s my inner Dexter. HA!
already have my Valentine’s day wreath on the door. I know it’s a little early but I am really enjoying wreaths. I made a burlap wreath a few months ago as a gift but ended up keeping it.
I have many many plans for this wreath and I am really excited all my hard work paid off. Burlap is kind of a pain in the ass to work with but I got some helpful pointers from a fellow crafter at Joann’s while I was buying it. I’m glad I took her advice. If you mist it and then clip a single string close to the bottom you can pull it out and it gives you a guideline for cutting. It was still messy and somewhat dusty but much easier to work with.
I found a cute heart and ribbon at Michael’s over the weekend and viola. I have a wreath….on my door.
Thanks to my new Pinterest addiction I found some super cute ornaments I decided to make. I mentioned a few of these last week. Anyway I didn’t mention all the ornaments I made because I not only made one for me, I made one for a friend. She had an At Home Reception on Friday but I wanted to give her hers before I blogged them.
Anyway, I found this great idea on Pinterest of taking a wedding invitation and putting it inside a glass ornament. How brilliant is that? Well it’s great. All you do is cut up a wedding invitation, roll the stripes around a pen and carefully put the stripes in a glass ornament. I was lucky enough to find some glass ornaments at Big Lots a few weeks ago. Next I needed to cut the invitation, curl it and stuff it. {You need to be careful while cutting so you don’t cut any of the wording.} Once I had that done I found a few charms from Michaels. For my friend’s ornament I used a palm tree and for mine I used a star fish. Add some colored ribbon to match and Viola!
I will add that I added the more important wording towards the end. I wanted to make sure that things like names, dates and places were easy to see. You can always use tweezers to help arrange the stripes if you need to. As I’m looking at these pics I noticed I didn’t really get a good pic of mine {the pink one} in regards to wording. But you can see both mine and Matt’s names.
Over the weekend I got the craft bug. A trip to Michael’s and lots of money later I had tons of stuff for various craft projects. One such idea I found on Pinterest was to use old cookie cutters and make them into Christmas ornaments. As luck would have it I HAVE a few old cookie cutters that would be great ornaments. And lets face it I couldn’t (and didn’t) use them. So instead of them continuing to sit in the kitchen taking up space I decided to give them new life.
First I found some cute scrapbook paper. Then I cut the paper to fit inside each cookie cutter. This is not as easy as you might think. After the first one I had the brilliant idea to use some ink on the cookie cutter to help give me a better outline. That was a HUGE help.
The horse was a pain even with the outline.
As you can imagine stamping the outline on the back of the paper helped a lot. Once I got the paper in both cutters I proceeded to slather them in mod podge. At first I just put it on the cutter and put the paper on. It easily came out so I decided to just go for it. Then I added some cute scrap book flowers. It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for but at that point I had been in Michael’s entirely too long.
They don’t look bad. I think the tree looks better with the flower but whatever. I just need to add some ribbon to the back (once I get glue sticks to fit the glue gun I bought) and I think I might paint the outside of the horse. I haven’t decided yet. But as you can see I have a couple of cute ornaments that have meaning and only cost me a few bucks to make.
