little fingerprints

we made fingerprint gifts for Nana's birthday.  the boys just love painting, so I didn't need to twist their arms or bribe them to help me make these.  they do have their limit on how long they'll let me paint their fingers and press them onto things before they try to take over, though!

we painted a cute ceramic mug I found at Target with Martha Stewart opaque glass paint and then baked it in the oven.  I bought extra mugs just in case, and I'm glad I did!  I thought a grey mug with mostly white prints and some color here and there would be cute, but for some reason the white did not work well at all :\  so I went with just the color paints on the white mug and they worked great.

while we had momentum going we did a picture frame with regular acrylic paints.  I'm hoping to get a good picture of the boys at my sister-in-law's wedding this weekend to put in the frame!

I was going to have the boys make a card, but decided to decorate a plain white bag that doubles as a birthday card instead.  this was a two day project...

but I really love the balloons :)

diy paper matboard

our anniversary is coming up, and Matt's been mentioning old maps lately - not like antique maps, just outdated ones.. dunno why. anyway, so I found an old National Geographic map from the 70's on Etsy, a large 33x44 frame on Craigslist... and then was stuck with wondering how to mat it without spending more than the frame and map themselves.I decided to use layers of paper! just used the back of some old wrapping paper and cut it into 2" strips or so and layered them around the edges of the map, then did the top layer in brown craft paper. it still looks great in the frame and didn't cost me an arm and a leg :)

Thrift Store

I went after work, and this is what I found:

Anchor Hocking glass containers - $5 for all 3 two had this label inside with drawn examples of what can be stored in them. looks to me like (left to right) almonds, gum drops, corn kernels, colored cotton balls and cigarettes?the drawings look 70's to me. I can't imagine holding on to craft supplies for 30 years and then just giving away untouched. one did have some Christmas tree stickers on them, though.
along with jars, I've been on a picture frame kick as well. this was only 99¢, so I figured why not?
this ornament was only 45¢it's so cute, I'm going to rip it off and make my own out of polymer clay O:) sorry Hallmark.
and this was my favorite find of the day - $6

it's in great shape - not sure why it was given away, but whoever you are, thank you for tossing it so I could buy it so cheap :)