Make your own fake snow A TUTORIAL

Good afternoon everyone!!!  How was your Thanksgiving?  Ours was awesome!

 

I know that it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything cool, or anything at all for that matter!  BUT, we put our tree up last night and I started putting up the rest of my decorations and realized that I needed some fake snow.  You know that flakey fake plastic stuff that you can buy by the bag fulls??  Well we live in a tiny town that doesn’t ever have the things you need, so I made my own!!  Would you like to make your own??

               

I thought you might say that so here we go!!  The top 2 photos are examples of the before the snow, which is pretty, but missing something and the after with the snow.  What do you think??

 

First of all you need to gather about 5 white plastic bags.  I only used a little bit of what I made in the jars and I have a bunch left over so adjust according to how much you need.

Second you need to cut the colored part off of the bag.  Look at photo below

                                     

Third you’re going to layer all of your bags together and roll them, scrunch them or just bunch them all up and start cutting!!!  See photo below

 

                   

 

And finally you have a container full of fake flaky snow!!!  So easy and so much cheaper than spending money on the store bought stuff!!!!!  And look how fluffy it looks

                      

                                   

Now just put it wherever you want. Now if you have small children please don’t put it where they can put it in their mouths, they can and will choke!!!!

Have you started decorating yet?  I’d love to see!!  So until next time………..

Happy Decorating!!!!!!!!!!!

Hooded Towel Tutorial

Good Morning everyone!!  I hope yall are enjoying your cups of coffee or juice or just enjoying waking up to a new beautiful day!!!

Ok, Here it is!!  Finally, were yall giving up on me?  Sorry yall had to wait so long.

Let's get on with it shall we??

Materials:
1 Bath towel, 1 hand towel, Scissors or rotary cutter and cutting mat, pins and sewing machine

Tutorial:

Step 1: Lay out your hand towel and cut it right down the middle

Step 2:  Lay out bath towel right side down.  Lay hand towel with finished edge slightly overlaping the edge of your bath towel and pin the 2 towels together (the raw edge that we just cut in step one should be at the top).  The pictures show it better than I can explain it.

Step 3:  Now we're going to fold the towel in half with right sides together.  Make sure the edges of your hand towel are matched together and then pin the top edges together.  Again picture explain better.

I am so glad it's clean under my couch.

 Step 4: Now we're off to the sewing machine.  We're going to sew along where we have pined.

Now remove your pins and put it on your model. 

Bet you didn't think it was going to be that easy did you?  Well now I'm off to make 2 more.  I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and I hope I explained everything well enough.  If not please as me any questions and I will do my best to clear it up.  If you make one I would love to see it.  So until next time........

Happy Crafting!!!!


Check out my parties tab to see where I'm linking this to.

Rosette hair clip tutorial

Good morning everyone, I hope you're enjoying your coffee, morning drink or breakfast (I'm not a breakfast person, but I am drinking me some coffee).

I was asked about a tutorial for my Mint Chocolate hair clip so yesterday evening when all the chores were done around here I sat down and put one together.  I burnt myself several times with my hot glue gun in the process so it took me a little longer than it should have, but I got it done.  I hope there are enough photos and explanation that you can understand my ramblings if not please let me know and I will clear things up for you.

So now onto the tutorial.  First off before we get started you need to gather your supplies.  You will need a hot glue gun, glass of water in case you burn your fingers,  fabric scraps, a barrette ( I used the kind you pop open and closed), some felt and some scissors or rotary cutter and cutting mat.

Tutorial:

Step 1:  My material for the 2 smaller rosettes on this clip measure 2" wide by 22" long.  So this would be the time to cut up your strips.  If you want to make the larger one you should cut it to about 3" wide and about 25" long (this is an estimate so just play around to see what works best for you).

Step 2:  Now you're going to fold the corner of your strip down to make a triangle shape.  When you have done this you're going to roll it up to make the center of your rosette.

Step 3:  This step is a little trickier to explain.  Your going to start twisting your fabric and wrapping it around what is your center piece until you have about an 1" to a 1 and a 1/2" tail.  The photos show it better than my explanation.  You may need to try this several times until you get it just how you want it.

Step 4:  Now you're going to glue, glue, glue until you think it's as secure as it needs to be.  REMEMBER your glass of water in this step because when I was making these last night I forgot and I'm paying for it today. Ok now you're threw with your rosettes and now onto the hair clip tutorial.

Hair clip tutorial:

Step 1:  Your going to use your hair clip as a template to cut out the 2 pieces of felt that you will need to make your hair clip sandwich.  When your cutting out your pieces make sure you cut a little out side of your clip so you have some excess on the edges.

Step 2:  Ok now we're going to cut a little slit in the back piece of felt so it will be securely attached to the hair clip.  We're going to stick the little leg thing in the middle through the small hole we made.

Step 3:  Now we're going to use our hot glue (and watter) again and glue the 2 pieces of felt all the way around the hair clip.

Step 4:  Ok now we're going to hot glue our rosettes onto our finished hair clip.  Snap it in your hair (after it's cooled off of course) and enjoy it!!!

Now this is an additional step you can do if you decide to attach just one rosette and leave the rest of the clip showing.  Use embroidery floss or you could use regular thread and stitch around the outside of your clip to make it look much prettier and more finished like I did on this zipper flower clip I made for one my nieces.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, if there is anything that is not clear please let me know and I will clear it up for you.  So until next time.........

Happy Crafting!!!!


Check out my parties tab to see the parties I link to

Simple flower brooch with wrist warmers (mini tutorial)

These flowers are everywhere in my house right now so I have lots of things planned for them.  This is another project using them. 

These are wrist warmers made from the sleves of an old sweater.  The booches that are on them can be taken off and swithced out to match other outfits. 

I have started to love the color red !! I also love all shades of turquoise and aqua but there's just something about red.  Seeing it in the winter time seems to bring me out of the winter blues and brighten my day.  Does red effect any off yall that way?  Or do you have a certain color that just puts you in a better mood everytime you see it?

Oh and if you look at these photos very closely you can see some of my many rings that I was talking about in my last post.  And while I'm talking about my last post, I think these are something I will wear unlike all of the jewelry I've made.  I love them and as soon as I made them I just had to wear them.  They are so comfy and I think a big part of that is because they are made out of an old sweater. 

These brooches can be worn on the wrist warmers or on a sweater of shirt.  They could even be attatched to a headband.  This is a pretty simple project that only took me about 10 minutes to put together.  Below is a pretty simple step by step tutorial for these brooches.

Tutorial For the Brooch

1. Follow this tutorial to make the flowers

2. Cut about a 13" of lace and stitch a running stitch along the lace and pull the string to make a ruffle when you get the the end.

3. Tie a knot in the 2 ends of the string to make a circle.

4. Cut a small circle of felt to hot glue onto the back of the lace circle.

5. Cut a leaf shape out of a green colored piece of felt and hot glue wherever you want it on the top part of the
lace and then glue your flower ontop of the leaf.

6. You can use a safety pin or a brooch back on the circle piece of felt that you hot glued to the back of the lace.
If you are using a brooch back you can hot glue it, but if you're using a safety pin I suggest sewing it to the back of the felt.

I hope that this mini tutorial was detailed and simple enough.  If there are any questions please don't hesitate to ask and I will do my best to clear it up for you.  So until next time..........

Happy Crafting!!!

Simple flowers and a mini tutorial

I'm sure most of you have seen these flowers all over blog land, but I had to try my hand at making them.  They turned out perfect and I love them!!  Not to mention how easy they were to make.  I have lots of plans for these in the future.  I can't wait to show you what I come up with!! 

Oh and if you haven't seen these or have and don't remember how they are made.  This is a simple process that I can explain for you.

1.  Gather your materials.  (silk material or material similar, I found that different types of material work the same way, but be very careful some will just catch on fire instead of melting the edges. Candle, needle nose pliers to hold onto the material so that you don't burn your hands, string and buttons)

2.  You are going to cut your material into different size circles.  You can use as many as you like and layer as many as you like.

3. With your pliers you are going to run the edges of the circles through the candle flame so that they melt.  You can also run different parts of the circles through the flame to make different effects to the petals.

4. Layer your petals and add your buttons with the string.  Then you can apply these flowers to pretty much anything you can think of.

So until next time.........
Happy Crafting!!!

Magazine Bow - Tutorial

Well it's that time of the year ya'll!!!  What time, you ask?  Time to start wrapping presents and spending large amounts of money on wrapping paper and bows that are going to be destroyed by those excited little hands!!!  So why not use this time to be frugal and green at the same time!!! 

We all get magazines in the mail and if you don't there are plenty of places online that you can request magazine's from for FREE!!! This is a list of places I have compiled for ya'll of some of those places.....

Land of Nod

Ballard Designs

Through The Country Door

The Home Marketplace 

There are many many more you just have to do some looking online to find them.

Ok, now onto the tutorial!

First I want to show you what we'll be making

Isn't it pretty and doesn't it look like a store bought bow?!  And not to mention, it was free because everything you need to make this you probably already have!!!  The best part about these is you can decide what color you want it to be and how you want it to look.

Ok enough chatting let's get to it.

Supplies:  Self healing cutting mat, rotarty cutter/or exacto knife, Magazine, a glue stick, and a ruler or something else to use as a straight edge to cut along.

Step 1:  First you want to decide which page you're going to make your bow out of and either rip it out or cut it out.

Step 2: We're going to cut the magazine page into 3/4 inch strips width wise.  Ok did I loose you?  We are not going to cut from the bottom to the top of the page, we're are going to cut from one side to the other width wise. 

You will end up with an entire page of strips.  You will only need 7 strips for each bow. So set your other strips aside becuase you can use them later for another bow!!!


Step 3: We are going to be making the bow loops for our bow.  You are going to add some glue to one end of your paper and loop it around to the middle inside of your paper strip, and then rotate and do the same to the other end.  You will do this to 6 of your strips.

First loop

Second loop

 Keep in mind that you are making a figure 8 shape with your loops.  You don't want to end up with something that looks like wings on a butterfly!! 


Step 4: We are going to make our center loop for our bow.  With your 7th strip of paper you're going to cut it down to 4 inches.  We're going to make a circle out of it by adding glue to one end and gluing the 2 ends together.

At the end of this step this is what you should have.

Step 5:  Now it's time to actually start layering and putting our bow together.  You are going to take one or your loops and use it as the bottom and take the next loop, add a bit of glue to the middle of the back of the loop and start layering adding your middle cirlce at the very end.

Isn't it pretty?!  I know that this seems like it's a long process but it only takes maybe 10 minutes from start to end and once you've made 1 you'll want to keep going.  I've made about 20 or so because they are so easy!!  All you'll need to stick them to your package is either 2 sided tape or you can just use the same glue stick and glue them in place.  I hope ya'll enjoyed my second ever tutorial!!!! 

Don't forget to pat yourself on the back because you just saved yourself a little money by making these cute little bows yourself!!! So until next time..........

Happy Crafting!!!

100% reusable wreath tutorial

I'm finally doing it, I'm posting my very first tutorial!!!  You know what makes it even better, it's 100% reusable!!  You can take it apart and re-use every part of this project.  Right now I have it decorated more for halloween-fall.

What you need:

1. Styrofoam wreath for (mine came from dollar tree $1)

2. Masking tape (helps keep the thumbtacks in place already had)

3. Nikel plated flat head thumbtacks (I used about 600 for about $2 from the dollar store)

4. Ribbon ( I already had some so this was free)

Directions:

1. First of all you need to wrap you wreath with the masking tape.  I suggest doing this so that your tacks stay in place better, because if you don't the taks will start to fall out because they break the foam down and it starts to crumple. If you choose to skip this step go straight to #2.

2. Next you're going to start pushing your tacks into the wreath form, make sure to overlapp them so that all of your masking tape (or wreath form if you choose to not wrap) are covered completely with the tacks.  I chose to go in a slanted pattern to cover my wreath.  I only pushed the tacks into the top half and left the back half plain.  Your wreath will be kinda heavy when you have finished pushing in the tacks.

Oh and this is a lengthy process so I would do it in a few sessions so that your fingers aren't killing you.  I did complete mine in one afternoon over the weekend when I didn't have kiddos.

4. Now you can use anything to embelish your wreath, I used ribbon and wrapped it around my wreath and tacked the starting end and the ending end to the back of the tack with 2 tacks, then I cut about a 6" piece of ribbon to create a hanger and I also tacked it to the back of the wreath.  I used several tacks to hold it in place.  It's been hanging on my wall for several days and we haven't had any problems with it so it holds just fine.

This is what the 2 ends look like after wrapping
them around the wreath.

This is what the hanger looks like.



And finally hang it on your door or somewhere in your home!!!  The best part is that it can be taken completly apart and re-used.  You can use the tacks, ribbon and wreath form over and over again in many  different projects!!!  I hope you've enjoyed this tutorial it was exciting for me to finally post my first very own tutorial!!!



Happy Crafting!!!