Fabric Flowers

Photo by Jackie Ray Photography

My sister, Katherine, and I spent the last two weeks before her wedding sewing flower girl dresses, making a ring bearer pillow and paper cone flower girl baskets. These fabric flowers originated from a brainstorming session about ways to embellish the flower girl baskets. Katherine shared with me a magazine clipping she’d found of balls of fabric that were used as “bouquets” for a wedding. She thought something similar would be fun for her wedding, but wasn’t sure how to create them. They reminded me of the tissue paper pom poms that I created for Elizabeth’s bachelorette party. So with a little experimenting, we came up with these fabric flowers.

Photo by Jackie Ray Photography

They looked so cute on the paper cones we decided they would be perfect as corsages for all of the ladies helping serve food and drinks at the wedding. I made 10 of these beauties. I took me several evenings to complete all of them, but that was with a newborn baby in the house.
These corsages would be perfect for a mother’s corsage for a baby shower or even used as embellishments for your next sewing project.

To make your own fabric flower you’ll need:

Eight 3”-by-5” pieces of fabric, floral wire, wire cutters and a safety pin. Optional items include: felt, hot glue gun, ribbon, card stock paper, green tissue paper, green floral tape and green floral wire.

1. Stack eight 3-by-5 pieces of fabric. Make ½ inch wide accordion folds, holding fabric tightly.

2. Fold a six-inch piece of floral wire in half, and slip over center of folded fabric; twist.

3. Separate layers, pulling away from center one at a time.

4. If using the flower for embellishment, trim wire and attach with a safety pin.

To make a corsage:

1. Cut a 3-1/2 inch circle from felt. I cut a scalloped edge on the felt, but you can leave it a simple circle as well. Snip a small slit in the center of the felt circle.

2. Tie a piece of ribbon around the wire at the base of the fabric flower.

3. Slip the fabric flower wire through the slit in the center of the felt circle and hot glue the felt, ribbon and flower together.

4. Cut a leave shape from green tissue paper and twist the green floral wire around a ball point pen to create the curly cue stem. Attach the tissue paper leaf to the floral wire stem using green floral tape. Using hot glue attach the leaf and stem to the flower between the flower and the felt backing.

5. To finish the back and hide the wire, I placed a small piece of card stock cut using a circle punch on the back of the felt.

Crepe Paper Party Streamers

While on vacation in June I spent most of my time nursing a newborn baby and reading old issues of Country Home and Better Homes And Gardens. It was relaxing AND educational. One little gem was this lovely party decoration. Crepe paper meets windsock.

At the time my sister-n-law was planning a rainbow inspired birthday party for her daughter and I envisioned these in rainbow colors. She took on the challenge and created six of these. Below is a picture of their final creation. They were BEAUTIFUL swaying in the early summer breeze and added a whimsical feel to the party.

This simple, inexpensive project might be just the thing for your next event!

Directions seem simple: Drape roughly 8-foot lengths of crepe paper over the inner side of an 8-inch diameter embroidery hoop. Fit the outer ring around the inner one and tighten. Hang with fishing line. I think my sister-n-law draped the crepe paper over the outer ring so that the hoop didn’t show.

Photo by Tiffany Shelton.

Button Flowers

While working on Marin's photo album I researched flowers created from the combination of buttons and embroidery. It lead me to a few ideas I thought I'd share with all of you.

Button Flower "How To" from Artsy Crafty Babe.

Button and embroidery embellishment ideas on Craft Log.

Embroidery art you can purchase on Folksy.

Scented Sugar {Handmade Hostess Gifts}

A baby shower was held for me this weekend. I knew the girls throwing the brunch would go all out, so I wanted a thank you gift that I could hand make to show my appreciation. That's when thanks to the Martha Stewart website, I found Scented Sugars. This easy to make gift turned our really pretty and I was excited about giving these little delicacies as gifts.

I utilized small jelly jars and created my own lables for each of the scents: Chocolate Mint, Vanilla Bean and Citrus. This website provided the best recipes and instruction for making your own scented sugar. My favorite concoction was the Chocolate Mint. I used fresh chocolate mint leaves from Mom's garden (thank you Mom). After washing and gently drying the leaves I simply layered the mint and sugar within the jar until full.

It's best if the sugar and scented items are sealed and stored away for two to three weeks. Once the sugar takes on the scent, the scented items are removed from the sugar.

Two jars were packaged in each of these small gift bags with a custom label and an insert with instructions on uses for scented sugar and how to store it. My only regret? Not having made myself a set of scented sugars!

Easter Fun! {Easter Egg Animals}

Marin and I made these animal Easter eggs last night. Marin was in charge of spreading felt and pom poms all over the floor and telling me if the animal was cute or not. She really wanted to use the hot glue gun, and didn't appreciate me hogging it. Once they were complete I had to hide them away for Easter morning, otherwise, I'm not sure that Bunny, Chicken, Mouse and Pig would have survived "playing."

These were designed so that the plastic egg still opens. My plan is to fill them with goodies and place them in her Sunday morning Easter basket. She'll be excited to see them again!

Only items you need to make your own are: plastic eggs, felt in various colors, scissors, a hot glue gun and your imagination.

Mustache Madness {The Holiday Prank}

I'm a sucker for pranks and rarely pass up an opportunity to tease or trick someone. My hands down favorite prank involved Darci Grimes and the walking track, but that's another post. I think my love for pranks came from my mom. I'm always wary around her on April fool's day. She's good. Shocking right?!

So with all of the hype about Steven's recently acquired mustache, a prank was in order, and Christmas with my family was the perfect setting.

When nearing the end of the "gift opening extravaganza" I told Steven I'd left a package in the car and kindly asked him to retrieve it. While he was away, I flew around the room distributing brown felt mustaches. He tells me he was suspicious, especially when he didn't find the "small green present." But when he walked in to a room full of people sporting mustaches, the smirk on his face was priceless. Of course everyone exploded in laughter. Ahhhhh perfect.

So, encase you have a need for felt mustaches, here is the pattern I created. We just attached the felt to our faces with double stick tape. (Click on the image to open a letter size copy.)

Oh, and since you know I'm constantly thinking in party mode. You'll love this "Yellow Party" on Stephanie Ford's blog Simply Radiant, where she incorporates yellow mustaches into every element of the party. Cute, oh so cute.

Tooth Fairy Pillow

Found a free pattern for these ADDORABLE tooth fairy pillows on mmmcrafts.blogspot.com. My nieces, Julia and Corynn will be turning five this coming year and I thought these would make perfect Christmas gifts. As a child, we didn't believe in Santa, but the tooth fairy was REAL. Real, I tell you. Sharing one of my favorite childhood memories for Christmas....perfect.

Advent Calendar {Or Advent Forest}

I LOVE the season of Advent. So weeks before Thanksgiving I began scouring the internet for advent calendar ideas. My favorite was a calendar that another graphic designer, Julie Ree, had created using paper truffle boxes. Our calendar is a variation of her design. When I saw her pyramid shaped boxes I immediately envisioned a forest of Christmas trees.

If you visit Brownie Points, they have a downloadable pdf file of the truffle template. It's funny how a simple box template can inspire so many fun ideas!

To create our advent calendar, I recreated their template and scaled it to four different size templates. Then I traced the templates onto colorful scrapbooking paper I found at wal-mart. Many evenings in November were spent cutting, scoring, folding and hot gluing. Each "tree" is filled with a tiny treat. Stickers, new socks, finger puppets etc. Finding numbered stickers is impossible, so I created my own numbered star stickers.

Today we opened the first of 24 advent trees. Christmas is on its way!

Felt Birthday Hats

I first discovered custom birthday hats while researching party ideas for Marin's first birthday. I was smitten with these adorable felt beauties and knew it would be a wonderful memento from her first birthday party. The red and white polka dot hat was Marin's. It matched her "Red Ball" theme party. The neon green and pink hat I made for a friend and the first birthday hat with the baby song birds is my most recent creation. It's for Jami's birthday party. Can't wait to see the little song bird in her new birthday hat. But, don't worry Darci, I won't cry if she doesn't want to wear it!

Paper Lotus Flowers

These beautiful paper flowers will be used as place cards for our dinner next Saturday evening. I discovered that when you placed two different sized fortune tellers together they looked much like a flower, particularly a lotus flower. I was so excited about discovering a way to incorporate the fortune tellers into the decorations for Elizabeth’s bachelorette/lingerie party. Having sent our Asian themed cootie catcher as invitations it was perfect!

And like icing on the cake, after a little research I found that in Asian traditions the Lotus flower represents the virtue of sexual purity. What a truly beautiful symbol for my sister and her closest friends.

Another Ribbon Wand

I made another Ribbon Wand for Corynn's birthday. I'm still perfecting the design. Having problems with the decorative wooden animals staying attached. Steven helped me this time and we used tiny screws to hold the lady bug on. I also chose to use a satin ribbon this time. I'm anxious to see if it holds up to "child abuse."

I thought the yellow pole with the red and black ladybug was so pretty! Happy Birthday Corynn. I hope you like your Ribbon Baton.

Make Way for Ducklings!

I’ve been busy planning for Marin’s 2nd birthday. Honestly, I started planning her party the day after her first birthday (blushing). I’ve decided to do a duck theme for her party because she loves “wack wacks.” While looking for duck theme ideas, lucky me, found this “Free Lucky Duck Tutorial” from Noseynest.

I made a couple this weekend. Marin and I are in love with them. I think it’s necessary that a family of these felt ducks attend Marin’s party. You can see other ducks made from this pattern if you visit the Nosey Nest Tutorial Group at Flickr.

The first three photos in this post were taken by my sister Katherine.