Wine Glass Painting party

They glass I painted for my friend was such a hit I decided to have a wine glass painting party! We had a fantastic evening chatting and being creative. 

 

 

 

When I get bored...

...I make things :~)

My small group has been reading Joyce Meyer's Battlefield of the Mind. So far I'm really enjoying the book.  I have definately been able to relate to alot of it. Each chapeter if full of scripture and our group decided it woud be fun to pick out the one's that speak to us the most and put them on a board. We were supposed to the scriputre we picked on a note card.  Well, I got bored last night and decided to play with my Silhouette...

Then I broke out some paint and foam stamps and ended up with this...

and this...

Souvenir Pennies

I love to travel. I also love to pick up little things to remember my trips by. And my most favorite souvenirs are flattened pennies. They are cheap, generally around 51 cents unless its a flattened dime or quarter, and they are small which makes them easy to pack. I have collected quite a few over the years.

 
The one's not in my book are my newest additions from my trip to California.

A while back I was flipping through one of my mom's jewelry magazines. One of the articles discusses making these puppies into Jewelry.  I loved the idea!! So we got to work.

My mom and I ordered some copper chain and copper ear hooks online.  We also picked up some pretty glass beads at a local bead shop in town. My hubby used a small drill bit and put holes in both ends of the pennies I chose to make into Jewelry.

 

Painted Wine Glasses

Sadly a dear friend is leaving us to move to back to civilization:~( Last night we had one last get together.  Two of the ladies in the group really wanted to get something to commemorate our time together. They found a really fun wine glass online with a little black dress on it. But of course trying to get it to Alaska was going to cost an arm and a leg and that wasn't even trying to get it here on time. So they called me and asked if I could whip one up.  Of course I said yes! I love making things and any excuse that allows me to do that I'm all for, especially when its for a good friend.

At first I thought about etching a dress on the wine glass. I thought it would different and fun, but I really liked the idea of a black dress and adding color.  So I decided to do two and see which one I liked better.

The top glass is the one I only used paint on.  I borrowed the dress idea from a glass I found, here. I tried a few times to come up with my own dress design, but after several unsatisfying attempts I decided why re-invent the wheel? The second glass is the one I etched and painted.  It's cute, but does not have the fun playfulness about it that the painted black dress does. 

Painting the glass was extremely easy and fun.  I used a sharpie to draw the black dress and filled it in with Folk Art Enamels paint for Glass that I picked up at JoAnnes for about $2 a piece. It took several coats to get a nice solid black. After that I let them air dry for about and hour and then placed them in the over for 30mins to set the paint.

Since I had everything out and I was already covered in paint I decided to add a little something to the wine glass that I etched a while back.

 

I'm really very please with how they turned out:~)

Wall Flowers

Back in August I saw these wall flowers over at Younghouselove.com and I loved them!!

The link has been sitting on my browser bar for ages. I just couldn't decide where I wanted them and couldn't commit to spending the money for them plus shipping. Then the other day I stumbled upon this post over at BillieMonster.com.  I can't believe it never occured to me to make these puppies our of paper.... its BRILLIANT and the perfect way for me to figure out if I'm as in love with them as I think I am. 

They were super easy.  I used my sillhouette to cut them out, which made the project even easier.  I also decided to use double sided tape to adhere them to the walls.  This way there are no holes.

 

 

 

Spring Time Wreath

Well there might still be snow on the ground here, but the temps are going up which means spring has almost arrived in Alaska.  And since I'm sorta sick of looking at snow I figured it was time to break out the spring decor. It is April, right? I love those rustic, pottery barn-esq, grape vine wreaths, especially the ones decorated with flowers for spring. They just make me happy.

I went to JoAnne's yesterday and they have some really pretty ones on display that really got me inspired.  And since I had a handy new coupon and all of their flowers were on sale, I decided to make one. I ended up spending about $12, which isn't bad considering that the ready made ones they sell are about $30. It only took me about an hour to pull it together.

I decided to tie everything down with craft wire, instead of using glue, so that I can change the flowers if I ever get tired of them.

I think I really like how it turned out:~)

Fun with my Silhouette

I recently bought a stack of fantastic Amy Butler scrapbook paper and decided to have a little fun, with the help of my Silhouette, wrapping up the girl's dresses. 

Here is what I came up with...

They are simple and fun! I really like thow the 3-d flowers turned out. I them made using one of the template flowers that my silhouette came with.  Not that I mind spending $0.99 on a template, it's just that $0.99 adds up after a while.

Now my pretty little dresses have pretty little packages:~)

Diaper Cakes

On top of all the onesies I've been making lately I also managed to squeeze in a diaper cake for the baby shower I went too over the weekend. Not only do they make great gifts, but the double as decor too.  Plus they are alot of fun!

There are tons and tons of tutorials out there on how to make these.  Everyone has their own technique.  I have made several over the years and have used a few different ways of doing it.  This was the very first one I ever did.  I made this for a good friend who's sweet little girl is now 2!! Boy time flies. For this one I rolled all of the diapers.  I like this method, but you don't get that smooth outer layer.

This was the second one I made.  For this one I didn't roll the diapers, instead I layered them.  This gives you that smooth outer finish, but it uses quite a few more diapers.  I think I ended up using about 1 1/2 packs, instead of just one.

 

For my latest diaper cake I combined both techniques. I rolled the inner diapers and layered the outer ones. Here is a picture of the bottom layer.

This allowed me to use less diapers per layer and make it four tiers for more decorating room. Also I like to use large rubber bands to hold each layer together.  They make the whole project 10x easier.

Like I said, these are really fun to make and allow for lots of creativity.  You can go super "baby" or super fancy. I've done some of both.  Here are a few of the others I've made.

 

Burlap Rose Wreath

A couple of days ago I saw this...

 

...over at Choose to Thrive via Ucreate and I fell in LOVE. I just so happen to have tons of burlap left over from another project so I got to work. I've been looking for something to adorn my front door with, something that would be appropriate all year long. So I decided to make mine a simple rectangle instead of a heart.