placemat

Red Ranger Ray Guns is having a coloring competition - it ends today so if you're interested hurry and get your kiddos coloring! I knew Leo wouldn't color and paint on it since everything goes in his mouth, so I printed the picture off and "laminated" it with contact paper and let Leo go crazy at lunch on it. he had more food on him and the rest of his chair than the place mat, but it was fun!

onesie to t-shirt

I stopped liking onesies when Leo outgrew them really fast. we could make them snap, but he'd get that really low neckline even though it wasn't that much of a stretch to get it to fit together at the bottom. once he got to the size that he could wear t-shirts(why can't they make them in smaller sizes??) it was so much easier to dress him and keep his clothes clean without doing so much laundry - don't have to change the shirt when a diaper leaks. a lot of his stuff is still the snaps, so I went looking and found this tutorial on fixing that and it worked great! I'm not good enough to get it done in 5 minutes like she was, but I think I managed in 10.

more fun with a dapping block

I found a round box clasp with green acrylic gemstone in it. I thought it'd be perfect for a domed bottle cap... and I was right! I used a Henry Weinhard's soda cap for the clasp insert and some recycled saddle leather for the band.

I'm really pleased with how it came out :)

more of Leo's cards

father's day sorta sneaked up on me. I made cards yesterday to send out today! hopefully they all get there in time. I got my brown card stock and green paper at Hobby Lobby (on sale :D) and after combing the store... twice!, I found the little gears and sprockets. I didn't think those would be as hard to find as they were. I was hoping to find some stickers or something, but I had my mind set on these so metal was gonna hafta do. I hope I don't find them all in my mailbox marked as "un-sendable" or something.

I don't know where I got this font (nope, it's not stamped!) but I love it :) I'm not much of a stamper - I don't often use the same designs twice so stamps don't make sense for me to have - and I'm so prone to just print something off. I also love textured paper. this is leftover cotton paper I used for my wedding invitations forever ago! can't see it in the picture, but it's got a subtle weave to it. I use it whenever I'm making cards.. and I make a lot of cards, but somehow after 100+ invitations and 7 years worth of cards and crafts I still have 1/4 of a ream left!

this past weekend

for my birthday I asked Matt to get me a dapping block... and he did :) I found a small wood one at Hobby Lobby for $8.

I have a container full of bottle caps I've collected from the various soda we've tried (there's a place where you can buy it by the bottle and make your own variety 6-pack.. it's pretty cool) so I cut a couple down into small circles and domed them with my new block and made me some rings like these :)

the bike one is from my last birthday, I think. my in-laws brought over some beer for our last backyard movie night, so that's the only place I can think I got it from! I love the colors, though.

and speaking of birthdays and movie nights...
I wanted to do another backyard movie - this year it was ghostbusters! I haven't seen that in sooo long. it was a lot of fun :) I made Ecto Cooler punch from a recipe I found online.

the drink was a hit! I even did the little Slimer picks like the girls did in their video. I also made a trap out of a shoe box and put a push light in it, and drew ghosts on balloons and put them around the house.

I can't wait until Leo is old enough for themed parties! until then, I guess I'll get them :P

Alvin shirt resize

I pulled an old t shirt from my closet that I couldn't wear anymore and resized it for Leo. I lost all my pictures of the process but you can use one of the many tutorials out there to do one yourself.

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 :)

paper pens

this is a bit dated, but I came across a post about paper pens today and realized I hadn't posted anything from my baby shower! so here are the pens I did for my guests with just some printed computer paper and Bic pens.I reproduced the dots pattern from the theme my friend did with the invitations and plates and whatnot and did Leo's name and the year in the dots, printed them out, rolled them up and slid them into the pens. easy, inexpensive (I think 20 pens set me back a buck) and cute!
I didn't use glue or tape like One Pearl Button did in her tutorial - I did more what Happy Together said she did in her comment about rolling the paper around a bamboo skewer, but I just rolled it around the inner part of the pen.

my mother's day

I showed Matt the cake I wanted to make and he immediately said "no, I'll do it." he's so sweet! he cleaned the house, baked the cake, and made dinner for the family that came over that night :) any time I tried to do something he'd tell me to go sit down... which got a a little annoying because I wanted to help! he's too good to me :) it was a wonderful 1st Mother's Day!

slips 3

so my sprouts have rooted nicely and after a week (I've been busy!) I've finally put them in some dirt.as well as some others that I didn't get a chance to pull off but still grew roots while attached to the potato. they don't look as pretty as the sprouts I pulled off and put in the water, but we'll see if there's a difference in how they grow.

mixbook

for Mother's Day, I put Leo's pictures from last year in photo books from mixbook for his Mé and Grandma :)

| View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

| View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

mother's day jewelry

this copper and blue crystal bracelet and earrings are for my mom. I used a byzantine weave and sorta just made up the pattern as I went along. I went with making my own rings for this one, which wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I've made jump rings before, but not 100's of them at a time! I used two different sized knitting needles and just wrapped the wire around until I got what looks like a tight spring, then just clipped them apart. nothin' to it! ;)

I did silver and multi-color stones for my mother-in-law's bracelet. I did a search online for pictures to go from for her bracelet and found one I liked on Dawanda. then I found the earrings I wanted to do - so much harder than they look!

I found a cool site that's a great place to start if you want to get into chainmail, but they didn't have the byzantine weave I was looking for. this particular weave was hard for me to understand with just pictures, but I happen to find a video! I dunno what I'd do without the internet :)