Fall/Halloween Mantel...a little late

So time slipped away from me again. I've been busy working on a felt quiet book, a Princess Aurora costume (along with Prince Phillip for daddy and Maleficent for myself), and more Christmas gifts. Like promised, here is my fall/Halloween mantel.

How about a few close ups?

The pumpkin is a can painted orange with gold shimmer Mod Podge over the top and a green sparkly pipe cleaner for the vine. The two smaller ones on the other side of the mantel also have a cork for the stem but I ran out so the big pumpkin is stem-less. The mummy is a can painted white with strips of cheese cloth wrapped around and secured in a few places with hot glue. I added some large googly eyes and dabbed a few areas with distress ink (not that you can really see that in this picture, but in real life it looks good). Then there is also a coffee filter pumpkin that I made last year.

One more?

I loved this the second I saw it on Pinterest! I couldn't believe people actually took the time to hot glue on each individual eye. There was no way I was going to do that. So I came up with a better way...Mod Podge! I love Mod Podge (seriously, I own 7 or 8 different kinds). I painted my frame black. Let that dry then painted on a small area of Mod Podge and stuck the eyes on. I worked in 2 inch sections so that it wouldn't dry before I got the eyes on. It went so fast this way. Seriously, less than 30 minutes including painting and waiting for paint to dry! I added a cute ribbon and a picture from Halloween of last year. I love it! 

If you want any more details of how I made any of my decorations, just ask. I'd be happy to share!

Easter Chick

So I'm sure by now you've all seen this adorable idea at Giggles Galore, right? Well as soon as I saw them I knew that I needed them (yes, needed not wanted)! I had one problem...no 2x4 readily available. I would have had to wait several days to get the wood that is laying in my driveway cut and I just couldn't do it. So as I was checking to see that we had all of the ingredients for my husband's birthday dessert, I noticed something. The pudding box was just the right size!!!
Isn't she just adorable!?!

I didn't have yellow feathers, and at the time my hubby didn't have a job (but he does now, YAY) so I was definitely NOT going to buy feathers. I thought about it for a little bit and realized that baby chicks really are more fuzzy than feathery. I filled my pudding box with paper, taped it shut and gave it a coat of acrylic paint (yellow for the chick, white for the sheep which I'll post after I finish the face). Once dry I hot glued some cotton balls on and then took it outside for a coat of spray paint!
Right before the paint job...

and after the paint job. The paint did harden the surface of the cotton balls, but I don't really care about that.

Then I cut a beak and some feet out of felt, painted them the color that I wanted with acrylic paint (because I didn't have the right shade of orange felt) glued them on along with some googly eyes and a pink bow.

Yep, she definitely makes me happy, and you'd never know that under all that fluff is a box of pudding.

Bunny face candy jar

I saw this idea on Inspiring Creations and just knew that I needed one for myself. It's a little bunny pot/candy jar.

For the ears, I sewed fusible fleece in between two layers of white cotton and appliqued the patterned fabric on top. Then snipped around the edges and ran my fingernail over it to help it fray more. I just used hot glue to attach the ears to the pot.
Here he is doing his rightful duty of holding candy.

Doesn't he look so cute next my to egg topiary?!

Egg decor - part 2

You've met the Egg Wreath...now meet her sister, the Egg Topiary!

I LOVE IT!!! I've never seen a topiary quite like this. The eggs are made of styrofoam and were intended to be used as ornaments. I got them at the Dollar Tree *last year* and they don't have them this year, but they have something similar. I think the mini glitter egg picks would work just fine.

source: Dollartree.com

All I did was rip out the piece of ribbon that was the hanger and then cut the eggs in half with a serrated knife. Then I glued them to a foam ball and glued some Easter grass in the gaps and plopped it in a painted pot.

*moment of truth* It actually sat like this for a few weeks and Madie carried it around like it was a princess wand. And the back half of the ball still looks like this (I got sick of working with the grass).

 It's colorful, it's glittery and it goes well with my wreath. Smile.

Egg decor - part 1

I love this egg wreath! I've been wanting one for over a year (I even bought all of the supplies last year but never got around to making it). I recently starting hosting a craft night for the ladies at my church and decided that March seemed like the perfect month for a wreath. I was really hoping to make this wreath, but the majority decided otherwise. So I finally decided to just make it for myself.
There are several tutorials floating around blogland, This is My Life... is the one that I used as a reference.

For some reason I find it extremely difficult to take good pictures of things on this mantel, which is odd to me given how much natural light pours into that room. Anyway, this was a cheap, fast & super easy craft (although the grass makes quite a mess)...and it makes me happy!

St. Patrick's Day - Glitter Style

After making the glitter candle in pink for Valentine's Day I knew that I would be making one for each holiday. Here is the all green version for St. Patrick's Day.

What's that in the background behind the candle? It's this from last year.

Gingerbread apron & matching candy jar

This is LONG overdue...here are pictures of the apron and matching candy/cookie jar that I made for my brother and sister-in-law for Christmas. I took some of the left over fabric from the apron and Mod Podged them onto the jar. I thought it was cute that they matched. The apron is similar to the ones I made for my sister and her daughters last summer (post here). Maybe one of these days I'll make a tutorial for how I make the apron out of an old pair of jeans.

Coffee filter carnations

I was a little hesitant to post this, thinking that maybe these didn't really look like carnations. But then I was at the dollar store this weekend and saw some fake carnations that looked exactly like mine (only white and green), plus a few of you said that you would like a tute...so here goes!

How to make coffee filter carnations.

I don't have pics for each and every step, but I think I have enough to make it pretty clear.

To start, you are going to make an "O" shape with your fingers and thumb.

Then you are going to lay the coffee filter over the top of your "O" shaped hand and press down in the center. This will push the filter down in between your fingers and thumb.

Keep pushing until you have about 2" sticking up out of your hand. Then twist the part that is against your palm until you get something similar to this. Don't worry about it being perfectly circular, once you have a bunch of these together you won't even notice the shape of any one particular flower.

Now it's time to paint! I mixed a little bit of acrylic paint with water. You want it fairly runny so that the filter will absorb the paint, but not quite as thin as water color paint. Play around with it until you get it the way you want it. If I had to guess, I probably used about 2 parts paint to 1 part water. Dab your paint brush along the edges of the flowers, the paint will soak in a little bit. You don't want it super runny, just enough to soak in about 1/4" to 1/2" down from the edge.

Once these dry (which doesn't take very long) adhere them to your ball of choice. You could use a styrofoam ball, you would probably have to cut off most of the "tail" of the flower and then just hot glue them on. I used a ball that looked like this.

I found this at Dollar Tree. It was in the toys section. I think they were calling it a baseball practice ball. I would call it a wiffle ball, though. I thought it was perfect! I stuck the "tails" of the flowers into the holes (one per hole). If you are concerned about the flowers popping out, you could run a line of hot glue around the holes before putting the flowers in. Most of the flowers seemed secure enough to me to not even need gluing. Since I planning on putting my carnation balls into pots, I only covered half of each ball, which took about a dozen flowers.

Here it is all nice and finished.

If there is any part of this that is unclear please let me know! I'm still a bit of a novice at writing tutorials. If you make this, I would LOVE to see it! Either put a link in the comments on this post or send me a pic in an email (at the top of the blog click on Contact Me).

My new addiction

I'm sure you've all seen the epsom salt candles floating around the blog world. I liked the idea, but thought it could use improving. Here is my version...the glitter candle.

I love how sparkly it is! I painted hot pink onto the bottom 3/4 of the candle (2 coats) and when that was dry had my little helper coat the paint in Mod Podge. Then we covered the Podge in glitter! I didn't seal the glitter, because I didn't want to take away any of the awesome sparkle but since it will just be sitting on a shelf I figured it was ok. Now, I don't know about the safety of burning this candle, but with as stinkin' cute as it is why on earth would you want to! Once it was all dry I just tied a ribbon around the top of where the glitter ends.

Here it is next to my coffee filter carnations. If you want me to put together a tutorial on how I made the carnations let me know!

I think I'm going to have to make one for each holiday because as soon as we were finished Madie said to me "I want to make more" and since she rules this roost I think I'll just have to oblige. :)

I love you frame

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This is the first thing I made using my Silhouette. We don't do much for Valentine's around our house, but with all of the cute decor out there, I just couldn't resist making a little something.

"Be mine" seemed kind of silly, since we kind of already agreed to do that one, so I just went with "I love you". And you can't really see it from the pictures, but the white background is sparkly. This was fun to make and Madie even helped me.
I printed out the words in the font "Love Letters" from dafont.com, took a piece of white cardstock put a coat of Mod Podge on it, sprinkled glitter on the Mod Podge, put the letters on the cardstock and then painted the frame pink and just tied a little bow around one side of the frame. Pretty fast and pretty easy...my kind of craft.
And here is our whole mantel (my dad built the brick wall and mantel and my mom painted the picture hanging up...I guess crafting is just in my genes). I think it needs something on the other side of the clock next to the taller vase of "carnations"...I'm just not sure what.

Do you like my little "carnations"? I bet you'll never guess what I used to make them (ok, you probably will).

Bunny Bags

How cute are these little bags?! I made these to give to the kids in my primary class. I saw something similar in a book that I borrowed from my MIL and decided to give it my own twist. I love how they turned out.

Inside I put a few plastic eggs filled with bunny marshmallows and a little flower pot with a packet of seeds (since our lesson is on being thankful for trees, plants & flowers I thought this would be fun for them to take home).

Clover Candles

I saw these candles on the Martha Stewart website that had blades of grass glued to them. I like the look but came up with an idea that I like even better. I glued clovers to my candles instead of grass...and I love them! They make me smile every time I walk by them. I just used a glue stick (like Martha suggests) to attach the clovers and then put a coat of Mod Podge over them for protection (I have no idea if they are safe to burn, you'd have to ask Amy, but I have no intention of burning them anyway). I also tried using Mod Podge in place of the glue stick, but it wasn't any easier and a little bit messier...so I would stick with the glue stick.

Four Leaf Clover

Remember in this post when I said that I had a project using the glass that was taken out of the frame? Well, here it is!

I love how it turned out! I just took my glass and Mod Podged a piece of paper to the back (make sure you clean your glass first). You have to work fast on this so that the Mod Podge doesn't dry up on you. Once that was good and dry I just hot glued gem stones (like you can find at the dollar store for vase filler) into the shape of a clover and then one in each corner. I did cheat on this a little by printing out a clover image and placing it under my glass as a guide. I also hot glued ribbon to the back to hang it from.

Think of all the possibilities! You could do just about any shape for any holiday. I'll definitely be making more of these in the future!

Framed Hearts

I have these pink plastic things that I think are supposed to be like rocks. There were used as filler in a vase full of sock flowers from my baby shower. They mostly just sit in their little plastic baggy...that is, unless, my little one finds them. She thinks they are super fun to dump all over the floor. I decided to do something with them (I'm trying really hard to use up things that I have so that my craft corner stays just that - a corner!). Here is what I whipped up last night, I think it turned out super cute.

I took a frame from the dollar store & painted it white, cut a piece of scrapbook paper to fit, glued the rocks into hearts shapes and then embellished the side of the frame a little.My hearts aren't perfect but that's because I was too lazy to print out heart shapes and just eyeballed it.

Check back after Valentine's for a fun St. Patrick's Day craft using the glass from out of the frame. I'm super excited for that one!

Christmas Crafts

Here are the crafts that I made as gifts for people this year. To start us off is this framed wreath I made for my sister. I was inspired by this idea from The Happy Homebody. I was originally planning on making a wreath from terra cotta pots and using the little styrofoam apples as accents but the more I worked on it the less I liked it and then I came up with this idea. It matches the decor of her kitchen (red & apples). I loved it and so did she!

Then, for my in-laws I decorated these flameless candles. She loves candles and he blows them out so I thought this would be a good compromise. The images are threaded onto the ribbon so they can slide off the candles if they want to leave them up throughout the year. The nice thing about this idea? It's the gift that I can keep on giving! What am I talking about? I happened to write down the size of the candles so I can make more sleeves for them for other holidays to give as gifts.

Next up...Jewelry! I made three bracelet/necklace sets this year to give to my husband's sisters. I didn't get a picture of the one I made for the littlest sister but it is made of pink paper beads. I'll try to get a pic later. For the other sisters I made these.

I also decorated a journal for one of my brothers-in-law. He is preparing to go on a mission so this is what I came up with. Yep, it is a suit coat, except it had two buttons when I was all finished. My sis-in-law helped me with it. She gathered scriptures and quotes about missionary work and we lined the inside and back covers with them.

And for the last of my siblings-in-law...a goodie package. Pictures of that in a different post.

Halloween Treat Bucket

Kristi showed me this cute treat bucket (found here) and so we decided to do our own version for our girls this year.

After a trip to the dollar store (for the bucket) and the ribbon store and about $5 later, this is what I came up with: