Spring Wreaths: March Craft Night

This week we had our monthly craft night. Since the warm weather is upon us, we made Spring wreaths to cheer up our front doors.

We used grapevine wreaths purchased from WalMart....they have some great ones by Better Homes and Gardens.

We decorated our wreaths with fabric flowers. Some flowers were rolled into rosettes and others were made by stacking burlap circles and topping with buttons. It was a hot glue gun kind of night!

Here they are all ready to go! They all look similar from a far but up close you can see that each one is unique with our personal fabric choices!

Here is Kaitlin with her wreath...

Sarah with hers...

Here is mine on the front door...

I hope you are all having a great Saturday! It started off rainy but has turned into a beautiful day! I spent my morning in a photography class and I am so excited to put my new skills to good use! Have a great weekend!

Easy Silhouette Art- Freezer Paper on a Canvas

Some good friends of ours had to say goodbye to their sweet dog a couple months ago. We really felt for them, knowing what it is like to lose a dog when it is way too young. For us, after the initial pain was gone, I wanted mementos and reminders of Callie in our home. I thought our friends may soon feel the same way. I decided to try using freezer paper on a canvas to create a silhouette of a dog. The freezer paper did not seal as well as it does on fabric but it still worked!

Check out my finished product...

I started by making a dog silhouette on my computer....you can download a copy here.

Then I traced it onto freezer paper, cut it out, and ironed it onto my canvas. Since the freezer paper was covering up the dog's silhouette, I painted all around it with a gray paint.

Once the paint dried, I pulled off the freezer paper and it was finished!

I am heading off in the morning for a girls weekend with my mom in Asheville! I am so extremely excited!! I can't wait to have some fun time with my wonderful mom! Hope you all have a great weekend!

DIY Embridery Floss Easter Eggs

One of my favorite college buddies, Julie, and I had planned to get together yesterday and craft the night away. Julie lives about 45 minutes away, which isn't too bad but it was still far enough to turn it into a sleepover! We stayed up so late crafting and eating frozen grapes and cookies!

Last week Julie sent me a tutorial for embroidery floss Easter eggs, suggesting that we make them while we were together. I was soo pumped about the idea! We decided to go for it.

We followed Crafty Endeavor's tutorial to learn how to make these fun Easter eggs!

What you need to make the eggs:

• Sta Flo liquid starch....found on most detergent aisles
• Flour
• Embroidery floss (you know the stuff you use to make friendship bracelets with?)--- get a bunch of colors! One skein of floss will cover one balloon
• Balloons (we did not use water balloons as suggested by Crafty Endeavor but I think they would've worked better!)

To start, I would recommend blowing up your balloons...that way you aren't having to wash your hands in between each egg wrapping just to blow up another balloon....we finally caught on to that a few eggs in :)

After you blow up your balloons, make your gluey mixture. You need to mix 1 Cup of liquid starch with 1/2 Cup of flour. Mix it really good and get all the clumps out. We doubled this mixture to start and then ending up making a little more later on after finishing some of the eggs and realizing we needed a little more.

Next you need to get to wrapping those balloons!

These are the steps we took and were most happy with (after trying multiple processes and not liking them as much)...

1. Completely unwind the skein of floss you are going to use so that it doesn't tangle and knot as you are wrapping the balloon.
2. Rub a VERY light coat of the glue onto your balloon to make it sticky.
3. Start wrapping the yarn around the balloon....we did not care about making any patterns...just tried to evenly cover the balloon with the floss.
4. Once the balloon is wrapped, dip the tips of your fingers into the glue mix and spread it onto the floss wrapped balloon. Try to make sure most of the floss is covered so that all of it will harden. It does not need to be thick but use enough to make the floss nice and wet.
5. Lay the balloon onto wax paper to dry...we flipped ours after a few hours but then let them harden over night. 
6. REPEAT with your next balloon and keep on trucking until your heart's content.
7. Once the floss has completely hardened you can pop the balloons. We used toothpicks to pop them and then the balloons collapsed and shriveled up....really cool to watch but hard to describe! Then we pulled the balloons out through the biggest gaps in the floss.
8. You can finish by scraping off excess hardened glue and stick them in a vase or string them together to make an egg garland. 

Here they are hardening...

Notes and Warnings:

• We tried coating the floss in the glue first and then wrapping around the balloon but found it to be more difficult but the eggs all turned out the same no matter which method we used.
• I also wrapped up a plastic cup with some floss using the same method...it turned into a cool little floss cup :)
• Use NEW balloons....we used some old ones and some of them deflated as they were drying, which caused the eggs to collapse! Not cool! See the pictures below to see what I mean...'

Here is a shot of mine on display on my kitchen island!

This was a very messy but very fun project! I put a fitted sheet down to wrap around my table to protect it from the glue. We then put wax paper down to put the eggs on so that the sheet wouldn't stick to the eggs. Be prepared to have a mess but a lot of fun if you try this out!

Music Notes on Canvas

As some of you may remember, my birthday was last month and for my birthday, my wonderful sister in law, Blair, made me a beautiful piece of art. She put the music notes from our first dance on  a canvas. I love the constant reminder of our wedding night and our beautiful first dance. I have asked Blair to give us some insider info on how she made it...take it away Blair!

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Thankfully someone created Pinterest, which means for people who are crafty, you’ll never run out of ideas of things to create. I can’t tell you how many times I run across something that I say to myself, “I can make that!” So for Katie’s birthday I decided to make something I found from Pinterest that I had been wanting to make. The blog this pin originated from is Scout & Nimble and let me just say this woman is awesome! She has a lot of “do-able” projects.

The song I chose is Katie and Gabe’s first dance song. You can find most popular sheet music at musicnotes.com. The blog had such good instructions, I followed it exactly. This is such a fun, quick activity (I hate waiting to put stuff together) that it can be put together in a day with all the materials handy.

Here are the materials you will need:

• A Canvas
• An open wood frame fitting the size of your canvas. 
• Mod Podge
• foam brush
• old phone book or newspaper, torn into long strips
• tea bag steeped in a little water

Please check out Scout and Nimble's tutorial for instructions on making your own!

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Thanks Blair! I am thinking this would be a great post-wedding gift idea or an anniversary present. I know that our mother in law is already reminding Blair of their wedding song :) Thank you Blair for such a thoughtful birthday gift and for leading us to a great tutorial!

Here it is in our home...

Happy Monday!!!

New Wreath with Felt Flower Tutorial

I have had a straw wreath form sitting in my craft room for weeks now and I finally found inspiration for it today on pinterest. I saw this beautiful wooden board painted with lyrics from one of my favorite songs, How He Loves by David Crowder. I immediately wanted to create something with that same quote. What a beautiful reminder to have in our home!!

I started by wrapping my straw wreath with a long strip of dropcloth. Next, I used my Silhouette to cut out the design below...

Once it was cut out, I attached it to another piece of paper and then put it in a mat I had from an old frame.

I put a dab of hot glue on each corner of the mat and set it inside the wreath, holding it until the glue dried.

Lastly, I got to work on my felt flowers...

To make these felt flowers you need a few sheets of felt, a glue gun, glue sticks, and scissors.

Start by cutting your felt into strips that are 3 inches wide and about a foot long. The typical felt sheets are already a foot long and are 9 inches wide. Using these measurements, each felt sheet will make 3 flowers.

Once you have the felt strips cut, fold one in half (making the 3 inch width go to 1.5 inches) hot dog style. Place a thin line of glue on the edge to hold the fold in place.

Next, take your scissors and cut the foot long bubble into strips without cutting through the glue you just laid down.

Once your strips are finished, you are ready to roll it into a flower. Make sure you glue as you go so that it cannot unravel later.

 That's all you need to do! Just glue them into place now!

 It is now hanging on our backdoor that leads to the backyard...

I also updated the pictures of our living room and master bedroom in the "Our House" tab above! Check them out! Happy Sunday!!!

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