Busy.

How To: Birthday Banner

It is the munchkin's 3rd birthday today. I know. It was just yesterday that I hit puberty and now I have a 3-year-old.

But this birthday girl needed something special. My sister has a birthday banner that she puts up every birthday that is totally cute, so I wanted one too. But, since this idea came to me last night after dinner, I couldn't necessarily order one from etsy or something. But, I did have fabric scraps, cardstock, and ribbon!

I printed out the letters to "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" onto my cardstock and then painstakingly cut them out with my craft knife. It wasn't that hard, actually, but my finger hurt in the end :). Cricut owners, you have it made!

Then I traced circles around the letters. I flipped the paper over first so I wouldn't get marker on the front of my letters. My marker smelled like black licorice. Thank you, Crayola scented markers...

I cut the circles out...

and cut out a stack of blank circles to go on the back. Lots of cutting. Again, cricut people, I coveted your merchandise last night.

I gathered my fabric scraps, picking a different print for each letter. This would be great use of a charm pack, because I had to cut my pieces at 5" squares in order to have some fabric overhang.

Then I cut out a 5" circle and folded it in fourths.

I folded my fabric in fourths as well, and used the circle as a template to cut a circle out of my fabric.

Like so.

So then I had a stack of pretty fabric circles. I ended up not using this stripe, coincidentally.

Here is the basic idea of the look I am going for, and the sandwich layering:

After ironing all my circles, I sandwiched my circles so the back circle and the front circle were lined up nicely. Then I stitched around the front directly on the paper. I shall retire this needle immediately. I used colored thread= cute.

Then I stitched around each letter. There was a lot of manual cranking here... that foot pedal was getting lonesome.

For letters that needed an insert, I sewed around the main body first,

And then put the insert in place and stitched it down.

At this point, I really wanted pinking shears. Wouldn't the edges look cute all pinked? And less fraying, might I add...

After finishing all the circles and trimming all my threads, it was time to add string. In my case, ribbon. I cut a loooong piece, long enough to extend probably 18" from each end of each word. I found the middle and made a little crease.

I flipped all my letters over (don't make fun of the stitching- curves are challenging!) and for HAPPY, I put the crease of the ribbon in the middle of the P. Which is the middle letter, of course. I just used Elmer's glue to tack it down.

Then I glued the rest of the letters to the ribbon from that point. For BIRTHDAY, the center of the ribbon was in between T and H.

In the morning, when the glue had dried and the sun tried to poke through grey clouds, this lovely HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner was hung... with packaging tape. Sorry.

The munchkin was soooo excited. She loved it. And when she asked what it was for, I said it was for birthdays. To which she replied, "oh! hey! It's my birthday today!"

Happy 3rd, sweets. Now lets go make cookies.

Linking up to:

Blue Cricket Designs: Show and Tell

Somewhat Simple

Today's Creative Blog

Treasures for Tots

Fireflies and Jellybeans

Vintage Sheets and a project

We went to Goodwill this weekend, since it was 50% off day. I got a sweeeeet hand-knitted baby boy outfit for my sister, which of course I forgot to take a picture of, and a stack of sheets. Well, sheets and some pillowcases. I really am liking the vintage look going around these days. Makes me miss my Mid-century china hutch.


My favorite, of course, was the yellow polka-dot sheet. This one had a JCPenney label on it which started coming around in the early 70's. Thank you, Wiki wisdom. I just love polka dots.

Last night I started butchering these into lots and lots of triangles to make a banner like the ones Sparkle Power's Candace makes. Because I love her banners. And someday, I will have her La La Love You poster up in my house. When I have a house.

I'll work some more on these tonight. I can't wait to hang it up. Remember my lack of decorating in my front room? Here's solution #1.

My baby's legs

The baby is starting to crawl now... it is more of a wormy scoot, really. But if she isn't in pants, her legs get really red and rug burnt. While at the store today I passed a few knee-highs on sale and purchased one pair (PINK!) to make baby leggings to cover her poor knees while she crawls.

They are so easy. Truly. Like, really. There was a flickr tutorial out there that looked way, way too complicated for making a tube. So I did it my own way. These ended up being a little long on her short chubby legs but hey, room to grow, right? Plus, now she can share with her older sister! I think next time I'll grab trouser socks for the baby instead of knee-highs.

Want to make some like I did? Google helped me find a tutorial. Look here.
Don't have a sewing machine and still want to make some? Look here.

I think this child is going to be left-handed. Everything is done with her left hand, and left foot. She'll be the only left-handed, blue-eyed girl in our family. So far, at least!

Gettin' there.

I've been working on my bedroom for a while now, like making drapes and scouring Craigslist for the perfect stuff. Like my beautiful dresser and nightstands that make you feel like you just walked into the 1960's. We found the set on Craigslist for $125! That sweet starburst mirror? Also from Craig's, for $35 though I tried to talk the lady down. Oh well, you can't win them all. I'm still working on a headboard, I have everything I need for an upholstered headboard except for the wood. Kind of important, wouldn't you say?


But what this room was missing, until yesterday, was a throw pillow. A few, really, but let's start with one. We're simple people so one is hard to over-do.
I had some fabric left over from a quilt, and I really, really liked it. It happens to be in the same blue family as my drapery panels, so yesterday while I was trying to find a way to escape playing "horsey" one more time, I decided to cut into the fabric and make a small throw pillow.


I cut out my pieces the way my mother taught me, which Jill knows so go here to find out, and before I sewed the pieces together, I put some little rosettes on the front of one piece. I was working with scraps here, so the rosettes ended up being small. Oh well, I still love it. I figured out how to sew these on the easy way (listen up Ken!): I put the fabric into an embroidery hoop first, and worked it mostly upside-down, unless I was twisting the fabric. WHEW it made it so much easier and tighter. And the stitching was less messy than my other rosettes.

I ran out of scraps for rosettes, but I was planning on doing more. Wouldn't this be cute with little rosettes crawling up the pillow? ADORABLE. Next time, next time. I just stuffed it with a throw pillow I already had, which was hot pink. I anticipated this and lined the pillow with heavy white canvas. And you can't tell it was once hot pink.

In the meantime, it is perfect for supporting massive man-legs. Mike approved, kissed me for it and told me I was so clever (HA have I fooled him or what?) and so this project, in my book, was a success.

I'm linking up here (Blogger isn't taking buttons today for me, sorry!):

Treasures for Tots: Thursday Treasures

Somewhat Simple: Strut your stuff Thursday

The Girl Creative: Just Something I whipped up

Making the world Cuter Mondays

Get your Craft on with Today's Creative Blog

Organizing my ideas

I've spent all morning glueing inspirational magazine pages to cardstock and inserting the pages into plastic protector sheets. I've got big plans- BIG plans- for one day when I have a home to decorate. Last night we rearranged our furniture in our front room, and it has me itching to decorate. But I won't. Because it is a waste of energy to try and decorate around a hodge podge of furniture, all of which I want to get rid of. Maybe I can put stuff on my walls so people will not look at my furniture :). In any case, I've been collecting pictures from magazines for a few years now and they have started to stack up!

Right now I'm trying to find new ways of organizing my design ideas. (There was a short article on Apartment Therapy here on the subject.) I'm a hard-copy kind of girl... I want to be able to take my ideas with me if needed. For pictures I see online, I have a favorites folder labeled "Design Ideas" that everything goes into. This is getting cluttered too! One thing I noticed is my design taste seems to change a little as time goes on. I better hurry up and do something before all my good ideas are totally outdated!

How do you store your design inspiration? Come up with new ideas? Implement them? I'm curious!

Storage box face-lift

For Christmas, my mother-in-law put together a Speed Scrabble game for me (played almost like Bananagrams).

She and I both love word games. In fact, when she came up to visit after I had my first baby, we conquered my first NYT Crossword puzzle- and it was a Wednesday puzzle. I'd still be stuck on Mondays and Tuesdays if not for her :)

The problem with putting together your own game is that it usually doesn't come with uber-cute packaging. The box she supplied is super sturdy, a perfect size, and was calling out to me to be made-over.


I grabbed some fun scrapbook paper from my neglected stash, and my good friend Mr. Mod Podge.


I wanted to make the corners look good, so I drew a "flap" on one side of each corner.


I applied Mod Podge to the box lid and set it down on the paper, centering it all nice :). After smoothing out the bubbles, I started working on the sides.

Because I made flaps, one side folded over, and the other lined up with the edge. This made sure no box showed through the corners.

I wasn't concerned with how the inside looked. Sometimes, I just don't care about the details :). I just made sure the paper folded over to the inside of the lid!

The bottom portion of the box was different, since my piece of paper wasn't big enough to use the same method as the top of the box. I cut two strips of paper that would wrap around the box, over the top lip, and onto the bottom. I overlapped slightly where the pieces met so no box would show through. I tried to match the pattern as best I could with the pieces I had. After I was done with the sides, I cut a piece of paper the same size as the bottom of the box and put it on.

Then, I let the pieces dry for a while! Patience, Melanie, Patience. I did find that the inside of the lid had to be *just so* in the corners, or the lid wouldn't fit. I used a pair of scissors to press the paper into the corner nice and tight. Because the fit was tight to begin with, I knew that if I mod-podged the outside of the paper as well, there would be no chance for it to fit together. So I just left it how it was.

I still need to find some sticker letters to spell "Speed Scrabble" on the box, but for now, it is simply:

cute.

No Boys Allowed

Last night a group of us ladies got together again, this time to make hair accessories for ourselves!
I showed everyone how to make fabric rosettes and we just hot glued them to felt as we went.

We had a fun time chatting it up and had some good laughs

and we all went home with something to show for our night. Lucia and Danielle used two different fabrics with their rosettes and some tulle, and it turned out mega cute.

Kady went with solid grey and seed pearls, and I just went with yellow and tulle. Really cute. I think I'll still add some seed pearls.

Heather used the wired ribbon to make this rose. Easy method: just pull one of the wires to "gather" the ribbon, and start rolling it around to make a rose. Easy. Peasy.

It was lots of fun and I see lots of hair flowers in my future. How about you? Kari, I totally expect to see you with one in your hair the next time I see you :)

Now, don't forget to head over to Today's Creative Blog for their giveaway. Don't you love giveaways???