Fab 5 Friday from Pinterest!

 

First off, for all 3 of you that entered the giveaway…The winner is…..(via Random.org, though I asked my daughter to pick a number 1-3, and she picked 7)

Yeah Mandy!! That’s also our cousin. She happens to have the coolest birthday ever. This wasn’t rigged, because everyone who entered is somehow related to us. I guess that’s proof only our family reads this

Okay for the other 2 that didn’t win, you can go over to My Memories and purchase the software, regularly $0, and use this code and get $10 off!! It really is a good software, and I’m excited to play more with it. Here’s the code: STMMMS64456. You can also just click on the ad over on the right. Happy Scrapping! Onto our fab Friday!

Seriously I laughed when I saw these zombie cake pops. I must make some this year! Over at Baking at Midnight, and she has other Halloween inspired ones too!

Can you believe this was made from Pistachio shells! That’s a ton of pistachios! Over at Addicted 2 Decorating

I had an idea very similar to this in the wee small hours of the morning, so get excited…Coming soon! But this adorable one is over at Craftaholics Anonymous

Pretty sure I see a tie pillow in my near future….Oh, I have some fun projects coming up!! This one is over at The Creative Cubby

Must make for Christmas. Maybe even in orange and black for Halloween. I love this simple idea!! Over at Live Laugh Rowe. She has even more cute garlands she’s made. So fun!

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading!

Tulle Flower Girl Dress

Guess what?!

Today is The Hubster’s birthday.

He’s an old man--just turned the big 3-5!!

Yikes!

Happy birthday, Love Muffin!  :)

Smooches!

Aaaaanywayyyy…

 

It’s wedding season.

 

At least, I think it is.

I’ve been doing lots and lots and lots of wedding sewing.

I’ve sewn flower girl dresses for three weddings, and thought I’d share with you one of the dresses.  It’s super cute and super fun.

 

I can’t give credit to the person who came up with this dress, because I have no idea who it is.  I couldn’t find a tutorial for it online anywhere.  All I had to go off was a picture the mother of the bride took at a craft fair.  Sorry!  :)

 

Ready to see this pretty dress?

Isn’t that fun?!

It was pretty easy to make, but sewing on all that tulle was kinda tricky.  It was thin, stretchy, and slippery, but it all worked out!

For this dress, you’ll need:

• 13 yards of tulle--go with the non-stiff/itchy type, and it’s really pretty if you use the shimmery kind.  Oh.  P.S.  This is by-the-yard fabric; not the kind on the spools.
• one nine inch crocheted headband--you could have it match the tulle, but it would be really cute with different color, too.  You could do whatever you wanted in the wedding colors.
• 1/4 inch braided elastic
• a spool of tulle--hey!  That rhymes!!
• whatever else you want to use to decorate the dress, ribbon, flowers, etc…
• a pillowcase, slip, or other fabric for lining

Take the 13 yards of tulle and fold it in half so it is still 13 yards; just doubled up.  Make sense? 

Now, at the very top where the fabric is folded, sew a casing.  Just start an one end and finish at the other.

You need the casing to hold the elastic.  The elastic is very thin, so I just used my presser foot as a guide.  I moved my needle as far left as possible and just kept the fold of the fabric lined up with the right side of my presser foot.

Okay, now that you’ve sewn a 13 yard casing, it’s time to thread the elastic through.  Measure your little gal’s waist, and cut the elastic the same length.

Just pin the elastic to a safety pin and thread it through all that tulle.  Just to be sure I didn’t loose the other end of the elastic, I pinned the other end to my pant leg.

You know.  Just to be safe!  :)

Oh my gosh.  I am in my pajamas.  How embarrassing!

Oh well.  Don’t mind me.  I’m just keepin’ it real!  ;) 

The tulle/bottom of the dress is going to be really, really bunchy, but keep going until you have the elastic threaded all the way through.

Once you’ve reached the end, knot the elastic and clip the ends.

Do you want to know what’s really awesome about all this tulle?!  It won’t fray, AND since there’s so much of it, you don’t need to sew the ends together.  Sweet!  That saves us a few steps!

Now take the headband (with the right side facing out) and put it inside the top of the tulle skirt.  Pin it into place.

Sew it into place.  Do the same thing we did with the casing; move your needle as far left as it will go, and use the right side of the presser foot as a guide.

Sew all the way around the dress.  This part was kind of crazy, since there was so much fabric!!

When it’s all sewn, turn the dress right side out.

This is where we finish with the sewing.  Not too hard, right?!  Finish up the rest of the flower girl dresses, then we’ll decorate them.

These dresses were decorated with 6” strips of glimmer tulle (on a spool) with matching flowers.

We added a strap with the tulle strip by threading it through one of the crocheted holes.

*Note:  You definitely need a slip or other lining with this dress. 

Then we added a tulle waist tie with the ends of the tie going the full length of the dress.  We clipped on a matching flower.

Didn’t it turn out so pretty?!

FYI--the other dresses were done in lime green and hot pink. 

A.D.O.R.A.B.L.E.

 

P.S.  There are so many different ways you can do the straps, sashes, and flowers for this dress.

• you could double up the straps on both sides and make some cute cap sleeves
• you could add more sashes/streamers/puffiness around the waistband of the dress with tulle from the spool.  How cute would that be with different colors?
• skip the flowers and add bows
• add small flowers to the ends of the straps
• tie the straps as a halter top
• use a beaded necklace as a halter top instead of tulle
• use ribbon in the straps and sash instead of tulle
• braid the ribbon and/or tulle for the straps and sash
• weave some ribbon in and out of the crocheted headband
• etc…

The possibilities really are endless.  You could do anything you want, and if you use safety pins, you can change it up each time you wear it.  If you try this let us know how it worked for you and how your little lady wore it.  We’d love to know!  :)

Hooray for Everything!

Have you entered the giveaway yet?
Okay this is a Pinterest-inspired project. I pinned this a few weeks ago

(source)
And let it stew in my brains for awhile. Then, I got to thinking about a favorite project of mine that I don’t even have in my own home! *Gasp* It was a gift that you may remember if you’ve been around awhile here.

I wax poetic in my own head about Amy Butler. I pretty much adore her patterns and fabrics. So I decided to use a favorite pattern for the Gum Drop Pillow and make my own storage.

It looks like she has even more pillow patterns you could use for this too. (like this one, or this one) All of our stuffed animals were in a nice, big wicker basket, but it was messy looking, and overflowing. So I made the gum drop pillow, and just made one little change.

I added a zipper. One of these days I’ll show you my hoard of zippers. It’s almost embarrassing. So I just did that on the final seam, and then turned it inside out. (if you’re really observant, you recognize the fabric from these pillow beds, another Pinterest project)

Then, we stuffed it full of the little critters

Zipped it up, and voila!

Seating for the munchkins, if they so desire it! And the basket? It now holds excess shoes by the door, instead of being all over the floor. Hooray!

Flower Pincushion

Pins.

You can’t sew without them.

I have a million of them.

Too many for my tomato pincushion.

Too many for my pin magnet.

What’s a girl to do?

Make her own, of course!  :)

This was a fast, fun, and easy project.  Are you dying to find out how I did it?!

Start off with two fat quarters or other fabric scraps, some fiberfill, embroidery thread, a needle, and a big button.

Cut an 8”x8” square from each fat quarter.

Place them on top of each other with the right sides of the fabric together.  Fold the fabric in half, then in half again so that you have this:

Snip off the outer corner--the one that doesn’t have any folds in it.

Trim the pointed parts so that the whole thing curves.

Open it up and you have two fabric circles.  You could also just use your shortening can as a template and just trace a circle.  It doesn’t have to be a shortening can, either.  You could use an oatmeal canister, a paint can, a frisbee, or anything you want!!  :)

Sew around your circle, but leave an opening for you to turn the circle right side out.

Turn it right side out and stuff it with fiberfill. 

Thread your needle with matching thread and sew the opening closed by hand.

Now thread your needle with the embroidery floss.  I used three strands, but I doubled it up and knotted the ends, so it was more like six strands.  Get it? 

Good.  Because I didn’t get a picture of that.  Oops…

Now, pull your floss through the center of your “flower,” wrap it around the flower and bring the needle up through the bottom center of the flower to make a “petal”.  Work your way out so that you have four equal sections.

Do the same thing again, but go between the floss so that you now have eight petals.

It is important to take some random pictures of your flowers outside and include them in your tutorial.

Firecracker ran off with my camera when I was making the pincushion.  That’s why I have real flowers in this tutorial.

Okay.  Break’s over.  Back to work.

When you have eight petals, bring the needle up through the bottom center of the flower so that the needle is on top.  Sew on your button.

Then you’re done!  Isn’t it cute, fun, AND functional?!

I love the two different fabrics together.

Oh yeah.  This is what the bottom looks like:

It’s a picture of loveliness, is it not?!

I think so too.  ;)

My Memories Scrapbooking (& Giveaway!)

Okay want to know something ironic? I was unpacking scrapbooks (it may be plural, but don’t let if fool you. There’s only 2) last month (finally, it’s been 4 months?!?) and thinking to myself “Self, do you realize you haven’t gotten any professional pictures of your baby who is now 2 done? And heaven only knows if and how many pictures we actually have of the last 2 years with her in them. Seriously? You need to get pictures done, you need to do some scrapbooking, and you need to somehow make it work in your schedule.” That’s a pretty bossy thing coming from me. So I was beyond thrilled when I got an email from Liz with My Memories asking if I wanted to try out their software that is supposed to make albums easy. Um, heck yes! I used Adobe Photoshop to create things for scrapbooking before, but I’m always up for a new product. So I went ahead and downloaded the software (yeah, it’s immediate, awesome, right?) and browsed around My Memories looking at the cute kits they have available. And get this, some are FREE!! Woohoo! They also have a dollar store section. I mean, it looks like something for every budget is there! That’s my big beef about paper scrapbooking. You have to get pictures printed, have all of the supplies, and that means lots of storage that could go to fabric (see my priorities?) and then whenever you want to scrapbook it’s pulling everything out, making a mess, trying to glue with a toddler, whatever. So I LOVE digital scrapbooking. Plus, if you’re awesome and watch deal sites and such, you can get really cheap photo books to print your works of art. I use it to make Christmas/birth announcement cards, and then hold onto it for an awesome deal and can sometimes get my Christmas cards printed for free. So, do I have you convinced yet? Okay, here’s some awesome crap I made with My Memories software. (click the thumbnails to see my cuties bigger) 

I’m hoping I have a few minutes today to upload my pictures and get my photo book printed. I’m pretty excited about it. I managed to do 26 pages (it’s an alphabet quiet book, see?) in a week, in spare time. The girls will hopefully love it, since what kid doesn’t love to look at pictures of themselves, and people they know? While using the software, here’s my honest review:

Pros:

It comes loaded with lots of papers, embellishments, etc. already

As I mentioned above, it has a lot of free kits and add ons to use with it

You can edit pictures somewhat when you add them to the page

It is pretty straight forward, and easy enough to figure out with just clicking around, at least for me

The pre-loaded templates are cute and fun, and it’s super easy to customize things to your liking

Cons:

It’s somewhat tricky to figure out how to print the book after it’s finished (meaning save it to the computer and then upload it to your printing method of choice)

You can’t do nearly as much editing with it as you can with Photoshop, so some things may need to be edited first

I have a bunch of things (papers, embellishments, etc.) I already had when doing scrapbooking with Photoshop, and I haven’t figured out if I can use them yet in this program. I’ll let you know

When you get your things from the online store, you have to download and install each thing individually. At least I haven’t figured out a way to download them all at once. So if you go crazy with the free kits (like me), you have to individually install them. After that, you’re fine

I just whipped this up from their free calendar template to help start potty training Thing 2. You know, places for stickers. I’ll probably print it on some pretty paper and call it good. It’s more than I did for Thing 1.

So, since I went through the uploading to print, I’ll tell you really quick how to do it. It has a nice feature where you can click on the “Check Album” and you can check album for errors, meaning hanging off the end, spell checking, etc. That’s a nice feature. You can view the photo album too on there to see how the pages look on layout (click on “View” View Album, and then choose whether you made a photo cover or not to make sure it's matched up properly). After everything is checked and ready, then you go to “Share Album”, “Export Pages”. Then you need to figure out on your computer where things are saved (mine was C drive, Users, my user name, and then a folder there for my album), and you should have a folder called whatever your album is called, and you just need to upload the JPGs to your printing method of choice. I’m still figuring out where to get mine printed, but that’s more because I haven’t had time to sit at a computer for longer than 10 minutes to actually upload and get it all ready to print. It’s easy, I’ve done it before with Photoshop. So, once I get it printed, I’ll show you the finished product! Plus, once I actually get some family pictures done, I’ll show you my awesome Christmas Card I’ll make….

Want to see the favorite page I did for this book? I shouldn’t have, but I think it’s hilarious….(click it to make sure it’s big enough to see…)

Do you guys love the idea of scrapbooking/card making/whatever on your computer? Do you want to win your copy of My Memories Suite (worth $40)? Well, leave a comment here telling me why you are amazing or horrible at scrapbooking (hopefully so I feel better as a mom), and I’ll use the random.org to pick a winner the end of the month. We’ll announce it on Saturday, September 1. You have until Friday, August 31 at 11:59 MST to enter. And guess what? It’s digital, so I’ll email you your copy and you can start right away! Make sure your email is enabled in Blogger, or leave me an email address. Thanks! Good luck and Happy Monday!

Disclosure: I was given a free copy of My Memories Suite to use and review, as well as one to giveaway. All thoughts and reviews are my own)