bad blogger! bad! and a sharky centerpiece

Super sorry for the lack of posting. I was at my first horse show on the weekend, which is my usual blogging time, and between little kids, work, and a life - I didn't manage to get in here until now!

Luckily I have another shark craft for you to try with your littles. I didn't take any progress pics, because, honestly, this one is super simple.

You'll need:

an egg carton
tissue paper in various shades of blue and white
bamboo skewers
googly eyes
glue
scotch tape
marker
grey cardstock

Cut out shark shapes from cardstock. Let your kids glue on googly eyes. Once the glue has dried, tape the dull end of the bamboo skewer to the shark.

Now wrap the egg carton in blue tissue paper and tape the seam. Layer the different shades of tissue paper on top.

Using the pointy end of the bamboo skewer, stick the sharks through the tissue paper and into the egg carton. Repeat with the rest of the sharks, leaving them at different heights. Fluff up the tissue paper if need be to make it look "wavier".

And here you go - sharks swimming in the ocean! This was a fun centerpiece for me and Boy Wonder to make and it was just the right size for snack time at his birthday party.

Shark party hats!

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These hats were originally created by Robyn Rasmussen. View her info here at http://tipsfromtheheart.blogspot.com/2011_07_01_archive.html

I apologize to Robyn - I saw her pic on Pinterest, and thought I could come up with somethign similar. I never visited her blog, nor did I see her tutorial on the hats. Now that she's brought it to my attention I can see we have nearly identical posts. With that said I feel it's not right to leave my post up here at the risk of looking like a plagiarist, so I'm removing it. Feel free to click the link to her blog to learn to make these cute hats.
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Shark party!

So after Princess P's birthday, we went to Mexico for a week, and now we are gearing up for Boy Wonder's birthday. (This is what I get for having kids' birthdays back to back! Oh well.)

Boy Wonder has requested a SHARK themed party. To be honest I am still scratching my head, a little bit, trying to figure out how best to do this. So far we have given out invitations and are just waiting for our RSVPs to come in. Here is the invite:

I made these at work, so I didn't have my camera with me to take piece by piece photos for a real tutorial, but here's a quick & dirty one.

You need posterboard in medium blue, sky blue, grey, and white. You'll also need scissors (and if you have any pinking shears, those too), white glue, and a heavy black marker (I used a Sharpie.)

It's pretty simple - you need to cut out a medium blue rectangle for your background. Match the width of the blue background to the width of your shark's nose, and cut it from the grey. Cut another smaller piece from grey for the shark's mouth. Inside the mouth glue a piece of white paper cut to the same size and trimmed with pinking shears to make teeth (or cut the teeth in yourself with regular straight scissors.) Glue a sky blue wave along the top of the card for your kid's name & party name ("Dylan's 4th Birthday", etc.)

I put the party details inside the shark's mouth. According to my sister in law, my nephew loves his and made it chomp dinner after we gave it to him.

More to follow when I get some more sharky ideas figured out!

Hyacinth flowers from cardstock - with tutorial!

Okay, here's a tut on making your own hyacinth flowers from cardstock. Like the wine bottle palm trees, these guys are awesome for a beach party/safari party/jungle party/hawaiian party/etc. As always with my party decorations, they're quick & cheap. You can get everything you need for this at Wal Mart or a dollar store.

Materials
1 large sheet of posterboard in a bright color
1 8x10 sheet of bright green
1 8x10 sheet of bright yellow
hot glue gun
scissors

Steps:

Cut five teardrop shaped petals from the posterboard. I like to fold mine five times and then cut so I know they're the same size.

2. Fold each one in half but only to the middle of the petal. Make sure the rounded end stays flat.

3. Roll the first inch or so of the flat end of the petal around a pen or something small and skinny to get curve to it.

4. Now put a dab of hot glue at the other end of the petal, in the middle of the fold. Pinch the fold shut over the glue. Repeat for all the petals.

5. Now put a dab of glue on one side of the folded end and press another petal to it. Pinch to seal them together using the glue. Repeat with another petal so that you have three petals glued together - it will look something like a cloverleaf.

6. Fold a V shape in the ends of the remaining two petals.

7. Put hot glue inside the V, then pinch it around the three petals you have glued together, like this:

8. Repeat with the fifth petal and glue it on. Once you've got it attached and pinched, it should look like this:

9. Dab hot glue on the two open sides of the flower (where you just pinched) and then put your hand inside the petals and pinch them together. You want to open up the petals and seal the spot you used to attach them.

10. From your yellow paper, cut a small piece and fold it five times.

11. Cut a stamen shape from the paper so you have five identical stamens.

12. Roll the stamens around the pen to get them to curl a bit.

13. Dab hot glue inside the petals and glue the ends of the stamens inside.

14. Add some green leaves and you're done! These guys are heavy so beware if you want to hang them.

DIY party invitations

I use GIMP to make party invitations for my kids' birthdays. I'm too cheap to buy Photoshop, but I bet if I had it, I'd love it.

I'm not even going to begin telling you or writing a tut on how to make your own invitations. There's a bajillion out there, and believe me, there are people who are WAY more talented with it than I am. To inspire you, though, I'll tell you that I'm self taught (aside from following tutorials) and I just played around with it. A good trick I have learned is to make sure you change your image settings before you start to a high DPI (dots per inch) to avoid being pixelated when you go to print.

Here's the invite to Princess P's birthday in a couple of weeks:

And here's the invites to a jack-and-jill bachelor/ette party Scruffy and I organized last summer.

Honestly, this stuff is cheap and easy. It takes a bit to get used to it, but it's fun. Anybody can do this.

If you decide you want to tackle this kind of stuff, I HIGHLY suggest checking out www.digiscrapdepot.com and taking a look at their freebies. You can pay for a kit or design elements that you are crazy about, or if you're planning to do commercial work with it someday, but if you're just looking to have fun or do some personal stuff like cards, freebies are a great place to start. Have fun.

wine bottle palm trees

I just finished doing a couple of wine bottle palm trees for Princess P's birthday party in a couple of weeks and thought I'd share them here! They turned out really great so if anyone's considering, say, a monkey party (or a jungle party, or safari party, beach party, whatever) these might be something you want to try!

Materials:
1 wine bottle, rinsed clean with no cap or cork
scotch tape
3-4 lunch size brown paper bags
1/2 sheet of green poster board (I guess you could use a lighter paper but I don't think the leaves would stand up so nicely)
hot glue gun - you could try white glue but you'd be there forever waiting for it to dry

Here is what we're going for! They are really sturdy too, which is especially nice for a kids' party!



Steps to follow:
1. Cut out six leaves from the green poster board. Make sure they are gently arched and cut triangles from the bottom part. Don't worry about making them identical - it's better to have a variety of lengths & degrees of arch in them. Keep one end of the leaves a bit wider than the other. While you're at it trim the bottoms from the paper bags so they are tubes instead of bags.

2. Slide the paper bags over the wine bottle and crumple as they reach the bottom, like this:



3. When your bottle is covered with bags, take a strip of scotch tape and wrap it around the paper at the mouth of the bottle so it's tight. Don't cover the mouth of the bottle.



4. Take two of your palm leaves and cut a 1/2" strip in one end but don't cut it right off - just make it a slit that covers about 3/4 of the leaf. Layer the leaves over each other so the strips line up, and glue them together, like this:



5. Insert the glued strips into the mouth of the bottle. If it's a little tight, you can either fold the strips a bit to make them fit, or do what I did and just jam 'em in there. Be careful not to rip the leaves off at the top of the strips.



6. Now fold a tab into the wider ends of the remaining leaves. Folding on an angle will affect which way the leaf hangs from your tree - if you want them perfectly symmetrical fold them all straight, if you want them to be at different heights, fold in different places and on different angles.



7. Put hot glue on the folded tabs and glue them to the bottle. Space them evenly around the mouth of the bottle.



8. Now your topper leaves: cut out two symmetrical leaves from the green poster board.



9. Fold them in half and trim triangles (you want triangles on both sides of the leaves when they are unfolded.)




10. Roll these leaves around whatever you have handy (a rolling pin, a water bottle, a glass... I had a paper towel roll) to get a nice gentle arch to them.



11. Dab hot glue on one end and stick into the mouth of the bottle. You'll have two leaves sticking a bit higher up than the other ones - you can curl them a bit more if you need to have them hang a bit lower. You can also recrumple the paper bags to make sure you like the how bumpy the trunk looks. I'm pretty happy with how these turned out! Quick & not too expensive, either! (Assuming of course you have as many wine bottles lying around the house as I do, lol!)

Kitchen style

Sorry for the delay in entries, kids - Blogger decided it didn't like me, and wouldn't confirm my email so I couldn't get in to enter! But you can all breathe a sigh of relief, because I'm back.

This week the kids decorated my new apron (with my help.) We got a white chef's apron and a package of fabric paints. I spread the apron out and prepped the paints (squirts of each color on a sheet of wax paper.)

Then I had the kids dip their feet in the paint.

Princess P needed some help, obviously.

Then the best part: stepping on the apron and making footprints! Boy Wonder got to do his hands, as well.

The finished product. I can't wait to wear this proudly for many years to come!

love glue gunnin'

Given that her mother is an avowed diva, it should come as no surprise to you that Princess P's room is VERY girly. I've decorated it in a shabby chic sort of idea that involves a lot of flowers and sparkly stuff. Here I'll show you what I did along with instructions to make your own.

Gem & Flower Mobile

Materials you'll need:

- glue gun & glue sticks

- 6" (or bigger, if you like) foam wreath

- sheer ribbon in color you like - about 12' long by 2" wide

- artificial flowers - depending on the size, you'll need anywhere from 6 to 12

- gem beads

- fishing line

- sheer ribbon in another color - 1/2" wide. Just get the whole roll - every one is different and there are no hard & fast rules here on how much to use.

1. Wrap the 2" wide ribbon around the wreath to cover the green floral foam. You'll probably go around it a few times. I used 2 different colors on mine. Use your glue gun to fasten the ribbon.

2. Cut a 8" piece of the thin sheer ribbon and glue each end to the wreath opposite from each other. Then repeat with another 8" piece laid crosswise over it. Then repeat with a third piece of ribbon. To explain better, you want to glue two pieces of ribbon over the wreath to make what looks like a pie. This is how we'll hang the mobile.

3. Cut another piece of narrow ribbon, this one about 10" long. Glue each end to the wreath. This is where you'll hook your fishing line to hang it from the ceiling.

4. Now comes the hard part. Thread the gems onto ribbons cut different lengths - I had a couple of 8" pieces, a few 10" pieces, one big 12" piece, etc. I actually used a safety pin to feed the ribbon through the holes pierced in the gem. It's slow, finicky work, but worth it. Once you have the gems hung on the ribbons, tie knots at the end to keep them from sliding off. Try putting two or three gems on one ribbon for a pretty look, as well. Glue the ribbons to the wreath - put a few closer to the middle, a few closer to the outside. Space them evenly around the wreath. Tie a couple of the ribbons with the gems to the center of the wreath where the crossed ribbons meet as well.

5. Once the glue has hardened and all the ribbons are hung, glue your flowers on. Make sure to cover as much of the wreath as you can. Then get your big piece of ribbon on top and tie a knot in the middle (to create a loop.) Make the loop about 1" long. You can string gems on here as well if you like. Tie a length of fishing line to the loop but don't cut it - this is where you'll decide how high to hang your mobile. I used a white thumb tack in the ceiling to hang mine (this mobile will be quite light, as long as you didn't use a wooden wreath as your base) and just looped the fishing line where I wanted it hung. I trimmed off the extra line. Pretty!