My 4th Handmade Gift Exchange

So far, I've done 4 gift exchanges with Craftaholics Anonymous.  For the last three, I actually made a gift with my own two hands and usually some tools.  But this time I did things a little differently.  I made a computer graphic for my craft buddy.

The background is applied so you can see the colors better.  I printed out the graphic on beige card stock paper and mailed it to PA!

Here's how I did it.

1. I downloaded a Christmas dingbats font called RA Holiday, from here.
2. I opened Photoshop and wrote out the alphabet, numbers, and other characters in the RA Holiday font.
3. I saved that as a PNG file.
4. I opened up that PNG file, and opened a new file in the size of a 4x6 photo.
5. I typed Cummings (my recipient's last name), and colored it red.
6. I went back over to the PNG file and started selecting the different dingbats I wanted to use.
7. I pasted them on top of Cummings, and moved them where I wanted them.
8. I colored them however I saw fit; they were all "hollow" to start.
9. Once I was happy with how everything looked, I printed it out and sent some holiday cheer to my craft buddy. :)

What do you think?  I thought it came out really cute, and my mom is already asking for one for her name!  Nothing like being able to give someone happiness for such little time/cost!

Halloween Mantle Mood Board

Over at Young House Love, Sherry and John make what they call Mood Boards.  It's where they take all the stuff they'd like to add to a room or area, or just a collection of stuff they like, and put all the items on a white background in Photoshop.

I'm still on my Halloween kick, and I've started looking at different mantle-scapes and what I could decorate my own little makeshift mantle with.  So, I made my own little mood board.

1. Halloween Monsters Garland, from here.
2. Pumpkins sitting on candle holders, from here.
3. Eat, Drink and Be Scary print from here.
4. White vases with wispy tree limbs in them, from here.
5. Candy Corn Garland, from here.
6. Candy Corn Vases with Candles, from here.
Just a starting point.  I'm sure I'll make a few more mood boards before Halloween gets here. :)

This blog got an update.

For the last several months, this blog has been pink.

Real pink.

Last night, I tweaked it a little, and now I like it much better.

Old header:

New header:

I like it! :)

I made a bow!

I actually made the bow quite some time ago...

The pictures seen here are dated April 25 of this year, so I'm sorry I'm so late getting them up on the blog!  Other than the little pillow I (very quickly) made, this was the first thing I used my sewing machine to make.

I thought it came out really cute, but the tutorial I used (from Pinterest, of course) makes a very small bow because it's a baby bow tutorial!  It also calls for lace, but I didn't use any.  Still cute, though! :)  I just attached the new little bow to an old headband I had on hand by hand-sewing it on there.

I took these right after I cut my hair the previous weekend.  Don't you just love short hair with headbands?  I know, I have a problem.  Sue me. ;)

My Third Handmade Gift Exchange!

As of yesterday, I have officially completed my third Handmade Gift Exchange from Craftaholics Anonymous!  This year, things went a little differently.  In the past, Linda appointed two people to each other.  This made a direct connection between two people, almost like partners.  Those two people emailed back and forth until they each sent their respective gifts to the other.  This year, we used Elfster to turn the exchange into more of a Secret Santa feel.  You make a gift for someone, and the person you made the gift for also makes a gift for someone else.  There is no direct connection this time; I have no idea who made my gift or where it's coming from.  I haven't decided which version of the exchange I like better yet, but I'm sure Linda is grateful for the decline in work (as in, pairing people up!) this time around.

And now, onto my gift!

The girl I drew, Jennifer, is obsessed with owls and is a self-proclaimed fabric hoarder.  I think I combined her two loves rather well with this adorable tile.  And then I personalized it with her and her husband's names.

The actual crafting portion wasn't hard at all.  I just drew and owl shape and a wing shape on paper, cut it out, used it as a pattern for the material, and Mod Podged it onto the tile.  After the glue dried, I wrote on the tile with a Sharpie marker.

I loved it, but I ran into a small problem.

Since I decoupaged the owls first and then wrote on the tile with Sharpie, I baked the tile to make the marker permanent, which resulted in the dry glue on my tile turning yellow!

You can't tell much in the above photo, but it was yellow!!

You can see here, the ugly yellow lines and how the girl owl was also yellowed.  It was awful, I almost cried. 

Don't worry, though, the story has a happy ending!

I thought perhaps I could leave it out in the sun to naturally bleach.  And thankfully, this hunch was correct! And so, all hope was restored in the kingdom and the two little love owls lived happily ever after. :)

Just mailed it yesterday (I had planned to mail it Thursday, the same day as the baking incident), so I hope she likes it!

Linky Party!

Playing Catch-Up

Man, do I have a lot to get this blog caught up on!

This could get lengthy.  I'm not sorry.

Exhibit A: Some New Crafts.

A "timeline" of my mom's life.  I made this for her back in February.

I cut this off the bottom of a set of photo albums and framed it.  So cute and free!

 

Exhibit B: Easter was fun.

This year, my mom and I decided to make Easter deviled eggs!  We boiled the eggs, dyed them in homemade dye, and then deviled them!  They were cute and a real hit at Easter lunch!

My hair on Easter morning.  It won't ever look like that again, nor did it before.

The gang on Easter.  L-R: Dolly, Luke being sneaky, Elyse, Robbie, Mother, Justin, Me, Papa.

Exhibit C: I look just like my mom with short hair.

People have said that I look like her my whole life, but there have only been one or two occurrences where I thought so, too, and Easter weekend was one of them!  Mother was showing me some pictures of my grandparents' 25th wedding anniversary, and she had short hair at the time.  Justin lost his mind when he saw these, because we just look so much alike!  It's almost scary.

I had to photoshop these a little bit, because they were so dark.  But I'm assuming that's lipstick from Mama all over Poppy's face. :)

My adorable grandparents.  Poppy looks like a sailor to me.

Exhibit D: Speaking of which, I have short hair now!

Last May, I cut my hair really short for the first time in my life.  My entire family had a fit, but ultimately decided that they all liked it at different lengths.

As the year went, my hair got a little longer every month.

 

June.

July.

August.

It grew constantly until last weekend, when I cut it again.

It went from this...

To this!

I really love my hair being so short.  It feels good, it's cooler, and it literally takes seconds to dry from the shower.  I also love the growing-out period, where I can pin it or part it over with bangs.  It's really cute.  Dee, my stepmom, cut it a little shorter and choppier than she did last year, which I really wanted her to do.  I'm quite pleased with it.

I see so much resemblance here.  Wasn't my mom so pretty when she was my age? :)

Fun update!  One more big post soon, and then hopefully back to our regularly scheduled programming!

Sunshiney Shoes

Last weekend, when Justin and I went shopping, I got an Easter dress.  It's a pretty yellow number from Belk, with a pink belt and sweater.

That sweater is a little darker in person than it is in the photo, like the belt on the left.  I loved the dress (it even has pockets!), but after we bought it and brought it home, I realized that I didn't have any shoes that would match the pink or the yellow.

I did, however, have shoes that I wore in college and not much since.  They were little pink ballet flats that don't really match anything I own, and I decided I would paint them to match the dress.

I first considered using spray paint, but I don't have a well-ventilated area to work with it.  It's also been raining a lot here and I didn't want to attract bugs or have the shoes get wet or anything else.  So then I thought of fabric paint.  I went to Michaels and bought some Scribbles fabric paint that would dry flexibly for $1 and change.

I lined the bottom of the shoes with painter's tape.  (Did you know they sell painter's tape at the dollar store?  Happy day!)

After three coats yesterday and letting them cure over night,  here is the end result!

I did experience some minor parts of the shoe, near the bottom where the tape was, that didn't get any paint.  But these parts are minor and not seen well when the shoes are worn, so I'm not too worried about that.

I like my new sunshiney shoes! :)

I was hoping for the color in the bottle, but because I didn't paint the shoes white first, the color came out a bit darker.

Even then, the color will still be cute for Spring!

One more time:

Before

 After

What do you think?

Love Notes craft

For our one-year wedding anniversary, Justin and I got to use the wedding jar Justin's friends gave us for our wedding.  The idea of the jar is you write each other little notes throughout the first year of marriage and stick them in the jar.  On the day of your anniversary, you read the notes!  On the outside of the jar, your last name is on one side, and your wedding date is on the other.  You display your last name throughout the year and the date on your anniversary to commemorate it.  Such a neat little idea.  I loved his little love notes so much, I wanted to display them so I could read them all year!

I figured out how I would like them laid out in a frame.  Justin used sticky notes for his love notes, folded them in half, and wrote "I heart" on the top fold, then wrote why he loved me on the bottom fold.  So, I figured I could put one top fold as "I love you because of these following reasons" at the top of the frame, then follow with the others as bottom folds.

I laid the notes out on our kitchen table to get a color scheme worked out.

Then I measured them across and vertically to get an idea of what size frame I needed.  I had a 50% off coupon to Michaels, so I knew where I was headed!

 

They measured 6 by 6 inches.  So I bought a 6 by 8 frame.  I thought I may want something as a background, so I found a pretty piece of scrapbook paper on clearance for a quarter.

Here's what I ended up with.

Here it is on the bathroom wall.

Cute, right?

Sorry about the pictures in the bathroom, there is NO light in there!  But now I get to look at it all the time and be reminded of Justin's love for me all year long. :)