And I don’t ever need an excuse to use washi tape.  This morning while I was writing this post Creamie asked me if her surprise tomorrow could be more little tapes.  I might have created a washi monster yesterday. Haha!

I don’t remember having an exact start date, we usually made them about a week or a week and a half before Valentines Day.  And we never got candy in our pockets, it was always a not sugary surprise.  This morning Creamie found a little blue car in hers.  Blue is her favorite color and she carries blue things around with her all the time.

Creamie really loves paper crafts.  That girl is the happiest with scissors and glue and her rainbow of crayons.  The other day I found a blue piece of cardstock glued to her wall behind her door.  Yep, glued.  She tried to hang it up with the magnets from the fridge, and when that didn’t work she grabbed her gluestick.  I just left it there, it was too funny to take down, and I don’t know that I want to see what kind of surprise it leaves on the wall…

To make Valentine pockets each person will need two paper plates, and something to stick them together with.  You can staple, or sew them together with yarn, or anything else that will hold those two together.  And then add in whatever else you have. Crayons, glue, scraps of paper, washi tape, glitter, sparkly confetti, paper doilies, and a big pile of cutout hearts.   See, not an exact science, but a really fun project to do with kids.

So we sat at Scott’s desk yesterday afternoon and cut and glued and crayoned (her word not mine) for 45 minutes or so and it was awesome.  I cut out some hearts and a few letter C’s for her to glue on, but the rest of it was all her.  I think she is of the mindset that more is definitely better. I think she would have piled things on there all day, but we had to leave for dinner at grandmas.  But I think that I’ll make Valentines with her again this week.  She had such a good time.

She wrote her name on hers.  She gets all the letters in there, a different order everytime, but they are all in there.  She always sticks her tongue out when she is concentrating.  And writing your name is serious concentrating business.  Also, I love how her little knee is up on the table.  Better leverage that way.

I cut one of Creamie’s paper plates into a heart shape, which you can kind of see in the lower right picture above.  That way you can put stuff in it easily.  Then I used a hole punch to make holes and gave Creamie a piece of yarn on a bobby pin so she could sew the two plates together.

Then I punched two more holes in the top and added another piece of yarn to hang her pocket up on her doorknob.

She was really into the washi tape.  I think I might have to do more projects with these with her.

We both had our game face on.  This gluing is serious stuff you know.  I think the most important part with making these is to let your child do whatever they want with what you have laid out.  And be prepared to wash glue off the table and out of their hair.  I never could have predicted what Creamie’s would look like.   And I think it will be fun to compare this first one to the next years.  And thanks to digital photography I am pretty sure I’ll have pictures of this process every year.

She was so proud of her creation and so excited to show her finished product to her daddy.  And that makes me smile.

And it made her smile too.  Like a lot.  We are totally doing this again next year, and every other year till she decides she’s too old for treats in a paper Valentine pocket.

I don’t think I’ve made a paper snowflake for more than ten years.  And it was surprisingly therapeutic to sit down on the floor with my paper and my pink scissors and snip away.

The best part is opening them up and seeing what you’ve made.  It’s always a surprise.  After I cut them out I gave them a quick press with a hot iron to help the folds lay flat.

Well, Creamie’s was less of a surprise.  It was pretty obvious to me from the beginning what she was going to end up with.  But she was as happy as could be doing it.  I don’t think her scissors and sharp enough to cut all the layers of a snowflake anyway.  And that’s probably for the best.

Man, I love this little face of hers.  I mean, she is two going on thirteen, but sometimes she is just so sweet it makes my heart ache.  I am so lucky to have her in my life.

This was my favorite snowflake I made today.  I think I’ll be doing this a few more times this “winter”.  One of Creamie’s favorite Christmas movies is How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  There is a line in there when the Grinch is deciding to pretend to be Santa and steal all the toys where he says “If I can’t find a reindeer I’ll make one instead.”  I really feel like that sometimes.  If I can’t find snowflakes, well then I’ll make them instead.  Me and the Grinch.  Getting innovative with our available resources to accomplish our goals.  Or whatever.

I have a box of stuff that I use on my art journals, plus anything else I can see hanging out that is the right colors.  This particular page was inspired by the colors that Shimelle used on this page, which ironically was inspired by this photo.  I love how inspiration feeds on inspiration.  On this page I used springy colors, because starting fresh just seems like a springy colors kind of feeling.  A little (ok, a lot) of washi tape, a bit of vintage lace and fabric and a new paper doily finally came together to make this page.  I’m out of practice and this took a lot longer than I thought it would!

This would be Instax photo #3.  This one I took with the closeup filter.  The hardest part is not being able to see just what things are going to look like, and do a few test shots to make sure you have what you want.  Shooting with this little camera is going to be good for me I think!

I added a few layers of fabric flowers with some ribbon and a vintage button to give myself some dimension… and really, the flowers were just sitting there on the shelf, and if it is the right color, it goes into the pile on my desk.  Sometime this week I’ll have to take pictures of the giant mess I create while I am making things.  It’s ridiculous!

Anyway, I’m off to bed, we had a late night at a family party, where I made some delicious raspberry lemon ice cream.  If we hadn’t eaten it all I would be having a raspberry lemon midnight snack!  More art journals tomorrow.  I think I’ll dream about them tonight…

Yeah, that’s my story.  Not always, but today.  This nice little stack of fabric was supposed to be a really cute fabric bunting, like this 4th of July one, and the pink one I made for my pink week giveaway.  But, I did something stupid.

I picked the total wrong thing for the binding.  In my mind it looked a lot cuter.  In reality it looks like a big old mess.  And I realized it as soon as I finished the last stitch and pulled it out of my sewing machine.  Failure.  Crafty Failure.  So I threw it on my desk and ate a lot of cupcakes and today I feel much better about it.  But I am still going to unpick all 20 feet of stitches and redo the binding with navy blue or something not quite so stripey.

Oh, and that exciting thing I was going to tell you about… it happened.  It was lovely, and I didn’t take a single picture.  But Amy did.  And as soon as I can steal pictures from her I’ll post about it.

A few weeks ago I was out thrifting and I came across a whole pile of necklaces that were fifty cents each.  I think I bought a dozen of them.  At least.  And these two white plastic “pearl” necklaces were too long to just wear, and not long enough to loop twice.  Which I of course didn’t realize until I got them home.  So a little fixing was in order.  My favorite part about it is that if I get sick of it and want to use the parts in other projects it is easy to take apart and I could use the necklaces again.  Here’s what I did:

Gather some supplies.  I pulled out my ribbon scrap box and pulled out a bunch of scraps in all colors of pink, some white, and a little bit of pale pink lace.  I also had a few parts from silk flowers that were in my same color scheme.  (Pulling apart a flower is pretty easy, just pop off the little plastic part that holds the center on at the back, then you can use the individual layers for whatever you’d like.)  I also had a big pink gemstone floating around in my sewing box, and it got added to the pile.  I also needed a little scrap of felt for the flower pin and an alligator clip.

Start by folding your necklaces in half and then tying a piece of ribbon through the loops.  This adds some interest to an otherwise boring string of white palstic beads, and it also gave me the length I needed without having to cut my necklaces apart.  Cut a circle of pink felt, and make two slits in the middle.  Then thread your clip through and use a dab of hot glue to hold the two together.  Next stack up all your flower bits until you like them and hot glue them together as well.

Next lay out your ribbon tails s you can check length and composition.   I ended up using the bright pink ribbon as a backer or the lace so that it shows up better.

Working in layers, glue your ribbons all together.  Then glue your stack to the back of your flower and cover the ends with your felt circle and alligator clip.

Then it’s as easy as clipping the flower over the knot on the side of your necklace and tada!  You are done.  Because I had so many ribbon scraps this necklace cost me exactly $1.  And I can still take it apart to use the pieces again.  And because the flower clip is removeable you can use it  on another necklace or a bag or if you are feeling totally awesome, put it in your hair.

I love how with very little effort I can dress up my standard T-shirt.  We took this picture at our not quite midnight but still really late for a 2 year old summer solstice picnic.  Nothing like eating pizza at the park and watching the sun go down on the longest night of the year.  It was awesome.  But now this outfit looks awesomer because I have pink hair.  Yay!

This my friends is a raindrop chandelier, or a paper rainstorm or something.  I got the idea to make this from a pile of leftover scraps from an art journal page I made last spring.

You can see the awesome pile of leftover raindrops up in the corner, right?  I guess I kind of went overboard on cutting them out.  Anyway, they sat in a pile for a long time until I got the idea to sew them together and tie them onto a ring.  And it hung up above my desk like that for a year.  And then a few months ago I got the idea to add a larger ring of rain and a smaller one and turn it into a much beefier, rainier chandelier.

I used some chrome spraypaint one one side of my papers to add a little shimmer, and to cover up whatever was on the backside.  Some of my paper scraps were double sided, and if the flip side didn’t fit into my color scheme I sprayed them chrome.  After I sprayed all my paper I started cutting out raindrops.  I think I spent one evening watching a movie and cut out about 300, maybe 400 raindrops ranging in size from .5 inches tall to about 1.5 inches.  It didn’t take as long as you might think.  I was surprised at how quickly my little pile of raindrops became a large pile of raindrops.

But the hardest and most time consuming part of the whole project was not the cutting out of a gillion tiny little raindrops.  Assembling the three rings for the chandelier base was MUCH more frustrating.  I bought thee sizes of rings at the craft store and then spray painted them chrome, they were originally gold.  And then  I think I tried about 8 different ways before I figured out how to hook them together and keep all three flat and level and evenly spaced between each other.  It was totally annoying. And it’s probably a good thing I already had all my raindrops cut and sewed together into raindrop chains.   Because if I had started with the ring base I probably would have given up on this project and thrown the whole thing in the trash long before any raindrops saw the light of day.  But now I have it figured out and next time I won’t be nearly so frustrated.  (I have another chandelier project in mind and when I get that one made I’ll take pictures and share my many trials and errors, and the long last successful route.)

But I love the end result.  And I love that I still had clouds pinned to my fake dining room curtain from a baby shower a few weeks ago. (This is the same thrifted sheet turned curtain backdrop I used for Creamie’s birthday party.)  The clouds were the perfect backdrop for my little paper rainstorm.  Here in Utah we had a ridiculously rainy spring.  And while most people think that rainy days (or snowy days for that matter) are “bad” weather, I think they are absolutely beautiful.  And those are the kinds of days that I want to stay inside and bake bread and make something.  I love those “bad” weather days!

This little rainstorm is currently hanging up in the corner above my desk.  And everytime a little bit of breeze comes through, or the heater turns on and moves the air around a bit, or I open the door it starts to spin and twirl and shimmer.  It is absolutely beautiful.  Much prettier than I ever could have imagined.  Besides, now I can tell people that I have a dancing rainstorm over my desk.  And how awesome is that? Not bad from a reject pile of blue paper scraps, and a little spray paint.  Not bad at all.

Divine Twine in every color.  Eeep!  One of my favorite etsy shops, sugarbsupplies, recently listed sample packs of twine, I know, awesome right?  Ten yards of awesome in every color.  I could hardly order it fast enough.  And it arrived this week, and it is just so pretty.  Last year sometime I picked up a bunch of vintage wooden clothespins at the thrift store and last night I spent a few minutes wrapping all my twine around those cute pins.

And I am pretty sure that a Pyrex bowl of colored twine is quite possibly the best Easter basket I’ve ever had.  Well, you know, except for last years.  Next year maybe I’ll splurge and buy a whole spool of each color!  Sigh, I’ll stick with my little clothespins for now.

They are so pretty.  It kind of reminds me of candy in a bowl, or ice cream. And I should be eating it with a spoon.  Or something.

Here’s a quick how-to.  They only take about 10 minutes each to make and cost next to nothing.  Perfect.

Supplies Needed: green felt, a shamrock shape as a guide, alligator clip (or you could put it on a headband), glitter, Elmers glue, hot glue and scissors.  (I actually tried to do one with mixed dark and light green glitter… big mistake.  The light green looked really yellow and not very St. Patricksy.  So keep that in mind.)

Pictures are pretty self explanitory, right?  Cut out your shape and spread Elmers glue all over one side.  I tried three different kinds of glue and I liked Elmers the best for it’s ease of spreading, ease of cleanup and the glitter stuck on pretty well.  When it has dried completely it made the shamrocks rigid which I also liked.  Instead of trying to spoon glitter onto my shape I just turned it upside down in my little pile of sparkles.  Much more effective.

After you are all be-glittered your shape will lose a little definition as you can see in the shamrock on the right.  The shamrock on the left I trimmed with my scissors to get all those glittery stragglers off the edges and give it a clean edge.  (But don’t use your good fabric scissors.)

I like these kinds of alligator clips because I have fine hair and the teeth help them stay put a lot longer.  They were a little longer than my shamrocks were wide though.  Which means I didn’t want to put hot glue along the whole side.  Glue your sparkled shamrocks to the clips and wear with lucky pride.  Maybe I’ll get myself put together enough before Green Day to get a pic of these in my hair.  Maybe.

I bought this pattern last week and today I sat down to finish up pretty much the best baby gift ever.  Really.  Ever.  There are so many cute things for little girls.  Making a little skirt, or an apron or hairbows or ruffled onesies is a piece of cake.  But there aren’t that many super cute things for baby boys out there.  Bigger boys?  Yes.  Babies?  They kind of get the shaft.

This little onesie only took me about 30 minutes to put together.  Actually, the hardest part was picking out which fabric to use for the ties and suspenders.  You know, among the derth of good boyish options.  Sigh, in my perfect world I would design fabric.  For girls AND for boys.  What a concept.  I have four more cut out and waiting for a spare 30 minutes.  Now that this one is done, I am searching out places to buy plain white onesies in bulk.  Because I kind of want to make one for everyone I know.  Seriously.  It was just the thing to get me out of my sewing rut.  Or non-sewing rut as it were.  [ Suspenders and Tie pattern from WinterPeach.  And it's only $4.  A $4 well spent I'd say. ]

Happiness is homemade Valentines.

And this face.  Have a great day!