36 More Days

Posted on | May 10, 2013 | No Comments

Until Jovie’s birthday party!

And I’ve gone a bit overboard on the planning — but hey, what’s new {::SMILES}

Jovie and I decided to do a fairy and pirate birthday party for her upcoming fourth birthday. Since we just decided a week ago, I moved the party back to the 15th instead of closer to the 4th of June (her birth day), so that I can prepare accordingly.

Soooooooo, to make the party oh so pretty and fun, crazy mama here ordered over 600 yards of 6″ tulle to make six tutus, a few pom pom tulle decors, and tulle wands. I think I may have also purchased enough ribbons to tie around our village. I’ll give more details on where I purchased the supplies later after the order comes in. That way I can also do a bit of a review on the shop’s shipping — in case you need to buy lots of tulle and ribbons.

I’ve been on the Internet whenever I have the chance Pinning ideas and using Evernote to organize my notes and check list. If any of you have ANY fairy and pirate party idea, please don’t hesitate to email me or comment here. I’d love all (easy and affordable) ideas.

Last night I started creating and got four cards done. After I post this blog entry I am going to finish making the last two. With Jovie, there will (hopefully) be six girls and one boy. She said they are her best friends {::SMILES}. The party is scheduled to be an outdoors party and I seriously hope it’ll be lovely that day. BUT, I have plan B aka in our living room, in case the rain decides to visit.

The card is simple and whimsical I think. Initially I wanted to use WPlus9′s Oatmeal cardstock to print the invite on. That card stock is my FAVORITE and I have been using it for 75% of my cards. But, I couldn’t run the card stock through my printer because it was too thick. The card stock is 100lb (lovely and thick — perfect for card making) and my printer can only handle up to 85lb (Stampin’ Up! card stock would work fine, their card stocks are 80lb paper). Boo!! After some messing about, I decided to just print on normal printing paper and adhere it to WPlus9′s Ballet Slippers paper. While I miss the speckles of the Oatmeal paper I was quite happy with the change of plan.

I also wanted to include a photo of Jovie in the invite. I’m not sure why since these kids are her good friends and all the parents know how Jovie looks like but I just wanted to add a photo and give the invite a bit of scrapbook feel to it. The buntings idea came from my friends and I love of buntings. There will be buntings at the party and I thought that buntings on the invite would be the perfect extra touch. So buntings I made!

I didn’t use a template or die-cutter. I just cut out estimates squares for the buntings and a rectangle for the banner. Then I trimmed the edges accordingly. Two minutes (did two/three layers at a time) was what it took to prepare the pieces. After the trimming I had to do another thinking moment. Baker’s twine, hemp twine, clothes pins, stamping, hand drawing or sewing? I went for the later. I figure it’d be quicker and flatter. And it was.

I know I said flat, but I had to have some sort of dimension. And that’s where the button came in. I just used a glue dot and voila, all done!

If I had the idea thought of beforehand, I could have created all four invites in 30 minutes. BUT, I was faffing about as usual and I didn’t go to bed until 4 a.m.

Jovie saw her invites this morning and she approved. Later this afternoon we will hand a few of them to her school friends. Yay!

Gimp Tutorial

Posted on | June 25, 2010 | 1 Comment

Want to learn how I did the below in Gimp? Gimp is a free Photoshop like application. I posted a tutorial at the Hybrid Chick’s blog. Come check it out!! Oh, I think the video’s messed up — kind of — just some pixels in certain areas. It’s my first one on the Mac… will get better!

Yes, short and sweet tonight… I need to get to my Was Gonna stuff before Jovie’s 2 a.m. wake up. Do you know of anybody who sleeps in their kid’s crib? If not, you now know one! How many weeks now since we put her crib up? Come on, Jovie, you can do it! I am still sore from sleeping with her all night last night. I got suckered cause she’s been sick. Suckered by a 1-yr-old. Pathetic, huh?!?!

Laters!

PS: I was gonna scrapbook the above but obviously never got to it. Ok, back to my was gonnas!!!

Crochet Flower

Posted on | February 23, 2010 | 4 Comments

Hey! I’ve been learning how to crochet again the last few nights. My grandma taught me the basics when I was in middle school but I haven’t done anything much since. I bought some thread and crochet needle a few months ago and I finally sat down to do it using this book: Teach Yourself Visually. Now, if you’re new to crocheting, I don’t recommend this book. Yes it’s visual but if I were brand new I’d have a hard time in a few spots. A few times I had to re-read a part over and over again. My grandma taught me how to turn around but I forgot and I spent a good 30 minutes or more trying to figure it out according to the book’s instructions. The book did though have a nice crochet flower recipe which was pretty easy:

Slip knot (you always start crocheting with a SK)
2-Chain stitch (CS)

Stick your needle into the 1st CS and do a slip stitch (this basically ties the two edges together)

After the SS make 5-single crochets (SC) — keep putting your needle into the 1 CS when creating each new SC

After the 5th SC, stick your needle into the last single crochet you did (closest to your needle) and do 1 SS.
After the SS, do 2-CS and then do 3-Double Crochets (still sticking the needle into the same hole)

After the 3rd DC create 2-CS
After the 2nd CS stick the needle into that same hole one more time and do a SS to tie it up
You should now have completed one petal!
To start on the next petal go up to instruction #5. Just stick your needle into the next hole and do it again!

Here is a video that takes you from start to finish. It’s a bit different than mine. For example instead of 2 Chain Stitches at the beginning she had 4. This I think depends on how big you want your center circle to be. When she started the petal she did a Single Stitch instead of a Slip Stitch and before I did the 3-Double Stitches I did 2-Chain Stitches. But overall they’re more less the same. I guess experiment and see which flower you like better. Oh, I got my thread, they’re cotton, from WalMart. My crochet needle is 4.25mm.

Here are mine:

Tut: More Flowers

Posted on | January 2, 2010 | 4 Comments

I’ve been messing with flowers the last two days and today I made this for M. This flower hair piece was created using two tuts… or a combination of. The main idea came from this party flower tutorial minus step 5. Instead of the fluffy look I wanted to do this flatter look based on the Fabric Flower tutorial (plus I only have this fabric, scissors, white thread, and a needle). The two tuts were created by the same person. Pretty neat huh?

Next time I’m going to use these flower techniques using pattern/tissue paper. I think it’ll give the flower a very nice fluff. I don’t have my die-cut machine either but when I get back to my machine I want to use some flower die-cuts on fabric/felt also. It’d be fun to ink up the paper and sparkle the tips of the flowers. I also want to get some stamens. I think the stamens will make the flowers really fun.

M loves her little hair piece. It took me 15-minutes I think to make this thing.

Ok, off for a little date with the hubby! Tomorrow we’ll be driving back to good old Missouri. We’re in the Memphis area now and looking at spending some time in the world famous (that’s what the site claims) Beale Street. Laters!!

Tut: Spiral Paper Flower

Posted on | January 1, 2010 | 13 Comments

Jovie’s laying on my lap sleeping and here’s me bloggin’. I can use a nap but I think I’m ok. I did get a card put together and I even did something extra… followed a tutorial on how to make this pretty paper flower (very fun blog! You should give it a few minutes of your time!!). It took a bit to get it right but once I got the hang of it it’s easy.

If you want to try this flower out, follow the instructions and once you get to the end, let go of the flower and let it expand naturally. If you use a nice heavy cardstock the flower will keep its form. I did though super glued the last two petals together and before the flower was glued on to the card I did push the center of the flower in so that it adhered to the super glue on the last petal. It just holds the shape better for card purposes.

For this card I used Caardvark’s sketch, PTI stamps and paper, Martha Stewart butterfly punch, Fiskar border punch, SU cardstock and ink, and you can see it because I didn’t take a side photo but the flower was created on pattern paper… more Dani Mogstad digital paper from Sweet Shoppe. The part you see is the white part.

I’ll be making cornbread this evening. My first time. Wish me luck!!