R is for Riley

Just a baby shower present. Her colors were dark brown, medium green and light blue. I mod-podged the paper on, cut it out with an exacto knife, sanded & distressed the edges, tied some boyish ribbon & hemp on, added riley in puffy brown stickers, added a button on for the "i" part, rubbed on "boy", tied on a button or two with the ribbon and it was done!

Baby Shower Season!

Well, I don't know about you all, but it seems a lot of my friends are having babies. And seeing how I think babies are the cutest things ever and parties are so fun to throw... I've thrown 2 babies showers in 2 weeks. They were a lot of work, but they turned out so fun. Luckily I got some good people to co-throw the showers with! But I totally forgot to take pictures of the actual parties, so here are just the two invitations and one of the games we played.

This first invitation was made almost completely by my Cricut. I love that thing. It makes crafting so easy. Granted it takes out a lot of the originality of it all, but it sure does cut the time in half! I just put the little sign in the trunk of the elephant to hold. I just used my scraps for this too. The green was left over from two years ago X-mas cards and the grey is some scraps I found from another project. I just found bits of blue ribbon and tied them into a knot. So easy,... and well that was nice because I had only a few hours to make them before they needed to be delivered!

This invitation was actually for the first baby shower. As you can see, I just backed paper onto more paper--onto more paper. Added a wrap around piece, tied it with a ribbon and then added a little Martha Stewart picture on the top part. I LOVED those little stickers. As soon as I saw them in Wal-mart, I bought a few packs because I knew I had to do something with them. Well this was it.

This is just a little baby cut-out from the cricut. I added a little blue diaper on and we had ourselves a game. It is, "Pin the baby to the Momma!" You blindfold the shower guests and spin them around and you have them try to tape the baby to the momma. Whoever gets closest to the bellybutton wins! It was pretty fun to play and everyone gets a kick out of it.

This is Evie helping me make the little babies. She is such the little crafter lately. She loves to glue things with glue sticks and color on paper(and her lion). Something makes me think she's got the crafting gene in her!

Get Festive

Since I already have my Halloween decor out, I found some places I wanted to add to, so this is what I created for my kitchen.

The details:

"TRICK"-2"wide 7x9inch squares. spray painted black with sanded edges. I drew all of the letters free hand and mod podged them on.

"or" - used pressure treated wood. 4x4inch block. I used a distress ink pad like it was paper on all of the edges. mod-podged the letters on. (I did not use paint)

"TREAT" I used a 2x4 and cut it 4 3/4" blocks. After painting them orange and green, I distressed them with my distress ink pad and them mod-podged the letters on.

"TRICK" is in different heights because I proped three of the letters up so you can see them better. All of the blocks are the same size.

Decorative Pillows

My friend and I came up with these cuties. We appliqued the brown flowers and the "k" on with a zig-zag stitch. And added the yo-yos to give it some dimention. I love the ball tassel trim! She made this cute matching doll from a pattern found here. The pillows are 20" and 14".

A few decorations

Just attempting to make a few things for the house. Some turned out, some didn't.
The red ones are for the kitchen. The black together is for the family room. And of course the butterflies are for Evie's room in her signature colors. The butterflies are from one of the new Martha Stewart punches. It is so cute. You just fold the little wings and poof! It's 3-D butterflies!

Twins Card

Here is proof that a redo is necessary sometimes. I finished this card, or so I thought, but it just wasn't looking right at all. So I gave it a few minutes and redid a bit and voila! It turned into a different card!

The Lilly Apron

This is my 2nd project since being back home, but the first I didn't take any photos of. It was baby shower I helped throw for a friend. Time consuming, but really-- who wouldn't like throwing a baby shower! It was so much fun to do. This project is a birthday present for one of my sisters. My husband's sister found this pattern and we all had to buy it. I was so excited to make it, I've been perusing fabrics for quite some time now trying to find the right combination. I think this is very cute, almost good enough to eat. (Probably because it looks like a giant watermelon!) It just fits so cute and has this fun tie in the back with those adorable little pockets. It is called the Lilly Apron by Busy Bee. I modified the sizing and the pleating. I also changed the colors up instead of having it just be one solid color. I have heard that people even use this as a maternity shirt... I think I'd have to find the right material--but it could definitely work!

So this is the picture that comes with the Lilly Apron pattern, cute huh?

And this is the apron that I made, pretty cute, huh?

The back


The detail on the front


The detail on the pocket


The matching card of course


The final package. I even made a tag out of left over fabric, used some rub-ons, punched a hole in it and tied it around with ribbon!

a la rustico

The idea with creating this recipes book was to use materials I already had. I've been wanting to make a book with these rings and I thought cardboard would look really natural and rustic. All of the recipes are in page protectors, so when I go to use it I just flip open to that page and then swing it around so it lays flat. I used my stampin' up tab punch and stamps and stamp pad for the word dividers. The cover was printed on velom by a friend and back with some cute paper! I love how simple and functional it turned out! Oh-and it's just 8 1/2 x 11 size.

skirts squared

Here are a couple of skirts I made for myself...and each of them were under $5 to make! I have totally discovered that I like using patterns and it's way easier than I thought it would be. Although I still like to design too! I got the pattern for $3.44 at Walmart (simplicity- pattern # 4188).

Cutest paper on the block{s}

I LOVE these blocks...the young women were doing them in my old ward and my craft buddy and I have been talking about making them for months!

• I bought a 4x4 thing of wood (which isn't a true 4x4...its actually 3 3/4...lame)
• Cut them to be true squares
• Sand all the edges and corners (an electric sander is faster)
• Paint all of them edges and corners brown (or whatever color you prefer)
• Mod-Podge paper with a sponge brush on all sides and there you go! (Less mod-podge is better...then that prevents bubbles on the paper surface
• the letters I traced and cut out and then mod-podged on!