Fun with Felt

I mentioned in my previous post that I’ve been hard at work making some gifts for my niece’s birthday.  This felt board came together in only a couple of hours, most of which were spent trying to figure out what adorable objects to make with the felt!

Materials Needed:

• peg board—or any board, really. I got mine at Lowe’s for $6. They cut it there for me into 3 pieces, so I can still make two more!
• staple gun
• felt
• scissors
• hot glue

I began by wrapping a large piece of felt around the peg board and stapling it to the backside with the staple gun. Man, the power I feel when I wield a staple gun!

Next step was to cut out the shapes for the board. This is where the glue gun comes in. Some bloggers sewed their pieces together, but I just whipped out my glue gun and glued those bad boys together. Easy peasy!

And it was that easy!

Flower Lights

My niece’s birthday is coming up, and I’ve been hard at work creating some fun gifts for her! Her mom suggested I make something to hang on the wall of her room, and even sent me some inspiration pictures of lights like these to get my creative juices going.

The inspiration for these cupcake lights came from Oh Happy Day. She has a great tutorial that gave me lots of pointers. I actually tried doing my flowers like this first, but found that I couldn’t make them stay on the lights.

Then I searched around and found these at One Charming Party. I love how natural they look. And she taped her flowers onto the lights, which solved my original problem.

So I made a sort of hybrid of the two.  I used many of the flower shapes shown on Oh Happy Day. But I crinkled and taped them to the lights like One Charming Party. The great thing about making these lights, is that they don’t have to be perfect. I love that each flower is a little bit different. Beautifully unique. Just like nature.

The supplies are surprisingly simple: Christmas lights, cute cupcake liners, Scotch tape, scissors, and an Exacto knife.

I attempted to document how I created each of the flowers. Please excuse my pictures—I took them one handed in a poorly lit room!

I love the way that they turned out!

And I love them even more when the lights are plugged in.

And the lights are turned off.

Won’t these be adorable in my niece’s room?!

Gratitude

It seems that the practice of writing thank-you notes is dying. And that makes me kind of sad. Even in a digital age where we are constantly able to communicate with one another via text or email or Facebook, there is still nothing more meaningful than a physical, hand-written card.

I’ll freely admit, I’m not always the quickest at getting thank-you cards written, but I’m pretty good about making sure that they eventually get done.

And now that my boys are old enough, I think that it is important for them to participate in writing their own thank-you cards. It isn’t easy, but fostering grateful hearts, is worth it.

This year Emmett helped create thank-you cards for his birthday with watercolors. I wrote on the cards with white crayon, and Emmett used the watercolors to reveal the secret message. He loved it! And I think that the resulting art looks pretty cool.

Writing thank-you cards is such a simple way to show gratitude. So let’s not let this practice die, make it fun or make it creative or do whatever you need to do to make it happen. I believe it is worth it.

Dressed Up Spoons

These painted spoons are a relatively easy craft that can be accomplished in an afternoon.  A friend and I made these to give as party favors at a friend’s birthday party.

Start with new wooden spoons. I found mine at Fred Meyer. A 3-pack was $0.99.

Using painter’s tape, create your lines. Note: don’t rush this part.  It is important that the tape is tight and that the tapes lines up.  If the tape is loose, the paint will seap.  If it isn’t lined up, you’ll have crooked lines. ;)

Begin painting. We used acrylic craft paint. You can buy this at any craft store like JoAnn Fabrics or Michaels. It ranges in price from $0.69 to a few dollars.

The paint takes several coats. I found that the coats only took minutes to dry, but you could easily do this part of the craft in shifts, which is crucial if you are trying to accomplish this while caring for little ones.

Once the painting is complete, remove the painter’s tape (which I find to be the most exciting part!).

The final step is to seal the paint with a non-toxic shellac.  Spray only the painted handle. We used this:

Zinsser Bull’s Eye Clear Shellac

The shellac gives the paint a glossy finish. Aren’t they cute?  Kind of makes you want to grab all of your wooden cooking utensils and give them a makeover, doesn’t it?  Do it!

Crafting Abroad

As many of you already know about me, I love a good craft.  So when our service team needed a volunteer to help coordinate a craft for our time in San Jose, I shot my hand right up.

Finding the right craft took time.  It needed to be something that was easily transported on the plane ride down, cost effective, and would be somewhat useful for the people. 

Agros had shared with us the importance of Mother’s Day in Nicaragua.  Celebrated at the end of May, this holiday holds even more importance for Nicaraguan mothers and families than in the states. Since we were traveling to San Jose at the beginning of May, it seemed like a perfect fit to structure a craft around Mother’s Day.

We chose canvas bags that could be decorated and given to the mothers in the village.  Cool, right?  What mother wouldn’t love a bag to carry laundry, groceries, or whatever else. But here’s the best part, the husbands and their kids decorated them.

 

As the men sat down in the school desks awaiting instructions, they looked like deer caught in headlights. Petrified. Nicaragua, like many Central American countries, has very traditional roles for men and women.  Women do the cooking, laundry, home keeping etc. And the men, well, they don’t.  Here we were asking them to step WAY out of their comfort zones and decorate something. They did just that, and it was awesome to watch.

One of the women on our team had the brilliant idea to bring some stencils that she had lying around her house. These were a life saver. Once we showed the men how to use them, they latched onto those stencils like life rafts.

The men stenciled two, sometimes three and four different stencils on their bags, carefully picking different colors for each of them. I was surprised by the detail and effort that each of these husbands put into their bags. They were certainly labors of love, and I dare say that these men might just have enjoyed themselves while they were at it.

Remember Terencio?  He proudly showed me his bag after it was completed, going through each of the decorations that he had chosen for his wife. He was especially proud that he had written her name on it.

We told the men to wait and give their wives the bags as a present for Mother’s Day, but some just couldn’t wait.  Here is one mother who received her gift a little early.

This project was one of the highlights of my trip.  Seeing those men labor over their bags with such love was an unexpected joy for me. And knowing that their wives would be receiving a gift that was evidence of that love made this craft, in my eyes, a success.

Signs of Spring

Well the weather certainly hasn’t gotten the memo that spring is here, but then again, it never really does begin to look like spring in the Northwest until much, much later.  But with Easter so early this year, I decided to springify (probably not a word, but seems to fit) our house.

I’ve changed out my picture frame, which I’ve been trying to do for each new season/holiday. I had a hard time finding an Easter print that I liked, so I decided that I’d go with this one. You can print one for yourself here.

Next up was a simple bunting for my chalkboard. I’ve been having fun decorating this part of my house for the seasons, as well. Remember Valentine’s Day and Christmas?

This was really fun, and easy, to make!  I was at JoAnn Fabrics one day and they had all of this adorable quilting fabric on sale for $2.50 a yard. I bought 1/4 yard of seven different colors for $0.62 each!  Then I used my pinking shears to cut out the pieces, folded each piece at the top and sewed a simple stitch, and strung it up on some old jute that my grandmother gave me a while back. Whole thing was done in an evening, and for under $5.00!

The song lyric written below the bunting is from one of my favorite songs and is such a great reminder for me, especially at the of the day!  You can listen to the song here.

This is now the second time I’ve done this Easter Egg tree. I LOVE it!  The eggs were given to me by Tom’s family, and I love that each is unique. I love how they look hanging on the branches.

And finally, I made a cushion for the bench on our front porch. This has been a project that I’ve been meaning to do ever since we moved into this house 3 years ago.  Better late than never, I suppose! 

I also purchased some black galvanized planters from Ikea for $10 each, and filled them with some plants. 

This project is not quite complete, as I plan to make some colorful pillows for the bench, as well. I haven’t decided on a color yet. Maybe yellow? Orange? Green?

And there you have it, spring has sprung.

Cheers,

    Melissa