Thumbprint Art - Christmas Lights Picture Tutorial

A while back I thought I started putting together a board on Pinterest devoted to Thumbprint art....there are so many cute ideas out there! I particularly loved this Christmas Lights picture {inspiration here}. I wanted to use the same concept in a different way: picture frame mat.

Can you think of a grandparent on the planet who wouldn't love one of these?!? This would make a great gift for someone special. Oh, and the total cost is about $3-4 for the frame because it's likely you have everything else on hand! Awe.some.

To make this, you need:

• Picture Frame (mine is a 5 x 7 purchased at Target the other day for $3)
• White cardstock cut to 5 x 7 - cheaper than buying a mat for the frame
• Stamp Ink - I used Acid Free Ink in red, green & yellow
• Fine point Sharpie to draw in the cord
• Picture of someone special to be framed! I used a little piece of double stick tape to keep it secure.

I printed out my inspiration picture for reference!

My girl and I just set up shop and started stamping away ... we made four of these. So first, we stamped all the reds, then the greens and finally the yellow. I'll admit she didn't (surprisingly!) love this, so as soon as she made her prints, she went back to playing and I drew in the cord string with a fine point sharpie.

Close-up of a finished Christmas Light Picture Mat.

My plan is to put a Christmas picture in here, but I don't have one printed up yet ;)

Isn't this awesome how the lights from my Christmas tree are reflecting in the frame? Soooo pretty! Will you make one? If so, be sure to leave a comment w/ a link to your blog!  

Pin It

And the Winner of the Christmas Decor Challenge is...

Sara!!

Sara is on quite a winning streak and she takes yet another one with her adorable Christmas pillows.  You can read all about them here.  You can read about Sarah's Beaded Ornament here.

Come back tomorrow to see what we'll be up to next.

Pin It

Comfy Christmas Outfits

Yeah, I don't even know what to say about my littlest in this skirt, except I love it! She looks like a perfect little candy cane with her big ruffles! :) I made this skirt by just doing a basic skirt with three tiers of ruffles. It's all made of jersey or interlock knit, except the white ruffle which is nylon chiffon like I used in these flowers.

Oh and this is one of the ruffly skirts I alluded to when I posted my Blinging Rudolph stocking (hmmm, Jessica if you're reading, I'm still waiting of a picture of my little LC wearing hers!)

And my big girl for a Sweet A Line Dress (pattern by Lil Blue Boo) with matching leggings and sparkly red shoes (her fave). I absolutely love the fabric on this dress - it's a Rudolph print and that SO incredibly soft! I hope this picture does it justice!

A couple more pictures ... I love this hairbow (just below). I made it years ago with a Martha Stewart tutorial. I has red jingle bells on top of white holly leaves & pink ribbon.

And that's a wrap! (I do have another Christmas'y dress but it hasn't made its way into the wearingcycle just yet!

Pin It

Super Random Post - Hair

I am officially obsessed with a blog I found via a good friend whose hair ALWAYS looks great ... The blog is The Small Things and she has lots of great hair tutorials! I'm wearing the Elegant Half Up (without doing the full up part obviously) and I love it. It even stayed up ALL DAY LONG! I've played around with a couple of other styles and they are all totally doable with her instructions. Oh, and who knew that the curvy side of a bobby pin was supposed to be the side touching your head? I had no idea!

Have a great weekend! I have Christmas parties both nights, so I'm thinking that I'm going to attempt the side braid with a bun! ;)

Pin It

Lots 'o Christmas Pillows - Challenge Submission

The challenge here on the blog was offically Christmas Decor; however, my personal challenge was so do this without buying anything new! I'm pleased to report that with some patchwork to stretch the linen-blend fabric a looooong way, it worked!

I present lots ' Christmas pillows. :)

I wanted to paint on the linen fabric, so with the help of Microsoft Clip Art, freezer paper stenciling and the Martha Stewart Pearl & Metallic paints I was able to create exactly what I wanted.

Like I said in this post, you can make the Plaid / Martha Stewart paints work on fabric by adding Fabric Medium to the paint. It works!

I got a little carried away with my embellishing ... there are Jolee's heat fix crystals, some ribbon and of course some pom poms on these pillows!

All the pillows have an envelope back closure so I can easily swap them out.

My personal favorite is this one: the reindeers are just too much! It's so hard to see in the picture but each reindeer is sporting at least one clear crystal. The lead reindeer got a collar, the antlers are decorated on the 2nd, and the 3rd one has a little bling on his booty.

I was going to stop with those pillows, but just kept going! The smaller one with the Christmas trees on it, is just an regular old pillowcase - just smaller. That fun fringe on there was purchased at JoAnn's - it's the "chenille" fringe by Simplicity in the holiday section. Ok, I did buy that!

For the big "Joy" pillow, I used the negative pieces of my freezer paper stencil for the first Joy pillow (up top). All that cutting is exhausting, so I wanted to stretch my stencil as far as possible. Oh, and I'm giving most of these away anyway .... so I won't end up with two Joy pillows.

So there they are! I'm pretty excited about these pillows and hope the recipients are too ... now to figure out which ones to keep and which ones to gift :)

Oh, and please do vote on your favorite Christmas Decor Project!

I'm linking up here !

Pin It

Princess Dresses - Special Delivery for Disneyland!

So we started planning / booking our first ever Disneyland trip about a year ago, and last week - we went! And I'm happy to report ... it. was. awesome!

Of course, I needed to make the girls some special dresses for this big event and I went with the princess direction given that they are full on obsessed with the princesses! Favorites are: Sleeping Beauty, "Fapunzel," "A-yall," and Cinda-le-lla.

These dresses are pretty much a shameless copycap of Lil Blue Boo's princess dress from a while back; what can I say? I love her stuff!

I used some of the a-mazing new Martha Stewart paints to make these dresses extra special, and extra sparkly. These "pearl" paints are fantastic. Mix with the "fabric medium" per the product instructions and you have permanent fabric paint! Hooty hoo, the possibilities are endless w/ this stuff!

Warning ... this mixture (paint + fabric medium) seems runnier than other fabric paints I have used, but it dried and set just fine. And by runny, I mean the fabric puckered a bit until it was all dry. Heat pressing the paint to set it, smoothed it out nice and pretty.

Here are a couple pictures of the paint + fabric medium mixture.

To create the crown, I used my cheap-o silk screening method of choice: freezer paper stenciling (more here & here). I found thecrown in Microsoft Clip Art, and simply blew it up on the printer until it was the desired size. I cut with an exacto blade and pressed it to the fabric panel to create a stencil.

By the time I'm getting around to writing this post, I have washed the dresses and am happy to report that they washed up perfectly!

 

Oh, and for some added flair I added Jolee's Heat Fix Crystals (clear & hot pink) to the crown points. They bling - love it! (The crystals washed up fine too).

All in all, our trip to Disney was a huge success and I'm happy to have created a couple special outfits for the the occasion! ;) Needless to say, the girls liked Disney! (see below!)

Pin It

Kid Christmas Craft - Pinecone Christmas Trees

Like so many of us, I get a lot of inspiration from good old Pinterest. Good thing I don't have the bookmark-it button at work, or else I may never get my work done! While rummaging around for Christmas ideas, I came across this cute idea. My kids have a thing for pinecones and our neighborhood park has plenty of them!

All you need to do this is:

• Pinecones
• Glue
• Mini (teeny tiny, super cute) pom poms
• Looking back at the one I pinned, I believe the pom poms I used are smaller than those pictured on pinterest.

One morning while I cooked breakfast, I set the girls up to make Pinecone Christmas Trees. Each girl {obviously} had their own bottle of glue - that's how we have to do things in this house at the moment. I think with a just turned 4 yo, and an about to be 3 yo it's the only choice. Sharing is not anyone's favorite thing.

Anyway ... they worked away and decorated the *tops* of their "trees" until they lost interest. I really really wanted to finish the trees for them, but managed to just let them be! These cute kid-made trees are currently our table's centerpiece. If I get around to it, I want to do this with the rest of the pinecones!  

Pin It

$0.99 Advent Calendar

This is a post about an cheap old advent calendar that I did NOT make. So this post falls into the "tip" category for the time when just cannot make everything yourself! (This is the category that I fall into) ...

Hit up your local Trader Joe's and pick up 1 or 10 of these adorable advent calendars for only 99 cents each! Each door has a little chocolate candy behind it ... so given that I have 2 kids and am not prepared to battle over an advent calendar, I got 2! Now we'll all be happy :)

And while you're there, you can pick up a kit to make a $4 gingerbread man! I'll post a finale shot when we get this little guy done!

Happy December 1st!

Pin It

Blinging Rudolph Stocking ... a Challenge Submission

For the mantle ... I've always said I want to / should / would make my kids handmade stockings, and now I can say 1 down, 1 to go! This is a killing two birds with one stone kind of project as I'm entering this knit stocking over here in hopes of winning a super fancy serger! :) What a fun and easy contest ... spread the word!

So that's how I came up with a stocking for this challenge - fits the mantle criteria - check, need one in the house - check, can enter in a contest - check!

I have recently amassed an insane amount of knit fabrics (help! someone stop me!) so I didn't have to stop at all for this challenge. I just turned to the closet and looked for Christmas colors + pink! (I think I was inspired by all the yummy peppermint chocolate goody boxes @ Trader Joe's! I'm obsessed w/ the Joe Joe's and that beautiful red, white and pink striped box gets me every time!)

I enjoy applique work so it was a given that I'd use that technique to spruce up this stocking. I couldn't leave Rudolph with a plain old nose, so I spruced him up with 3 hot fix crystals :)

I know we are supposed to be crafting for the mantle, but my Christmas decor is not coming out until after Thanksgiving comes down, so for now, it has to 'hang' with some doll dresses I recently made!

  

Oh and here's a peek at another fun Christmas craft I made ... I saw something similar on Pinterest and couldn't help but re-create it. I used ruffles leftover from this skirt to make the Blinging Rudolph Stocking. I cannot wait to get a picture of a special little one in this skirt! It's pretty tiny in person!

Be sure to vote for your favorite Christmas Mantle Craft!

Pin It

Knitted Sweater

So, I alluded to it in this post ... that years ago I actually knit myself a couple sweaters. I seriously feared that they didn't fit anymore, so haven't tried them on for over FOUR years! After knitting the GAP-tastic Cowl and seriously re-igniting my knitting crush, I tried them on. Hallelujah, they fit! One is a little tight, but it'll do.

This sweater was knit with the Zephyr Style Rusted Root Pattern. I used to really enjoy reading their blog and knitting from their patterns. This is knit from the top down in one consecutive piece - that's really the only way I'll knit clothing. Seriously, who wants to knit a bunch of pieces only to have to sew them together?

That's probably I've always been a big fan of Stefanie Japel's (aka Glampyre) work as well ...

I gotta point out that the design of this is so clever. Across the bust, there are not yarn overs or holes for the obvious reasons ... but as you knit farther down the sweater and need the extra width to accomodate the middle and hips, the pattern expands and you have yarn overs which make for a beautiful leafy pattern.

I wish I could recall what yarn I used, but I have no idea. I guess this was knit sometime in 2005 or 2006 ??? I am just crazy enough to have saved ALL my yarn labels, so I bet I have it somewhere in my bin of yarn goodness, but I'm not brave enough to tackle that project just yet. Resolution?

Anyway, I love knitting again. Made two more cowls since this one, and am planning to crank out some more for Christmas presents - people seem to love them! :)

Happy knitting / crafting!
Pin It