Maddy's Maken'

All I have been doing today is making and packing glue gun stands.  That is why I thought I would show you what Madison has been making.  She decided two weeks ago that she would rather be at home, doing school online, than fighting the yuck at the local public high school.  It takes a couple weeks to get all set up and started with the classes, so she has had TONS of time on her hands.  I have had her painting and gluing, cleaning and cutting.  Today, I simply ran out of busy work for her!

My sister Kallie asked Mads to make her some hair flowers/clips for her little 3 yr. daughter.  These are what she came up with.  

Don't you just love these Halloween and Fall clips!?!

You want some, don't you.  Well, I might be able to talk Madison into taking orders.

We will see about that.  She will finally start classes this next week, but should still have time on her hands for creativity!

Here is a closer look...

This is a little monster she made out of a lace puffball.  She actually made a few of these last year as ear rings.  Silly girl.  They are adorable though.  Maybe you have to see them in person, but simply darling.

Cutest Frank I have ever seen

Pumpkins for fall

And my own Sofie the spider.  I had like 20 sitting around here and am finally out.  Mads made this one new for Kallie's girlie.

Super cute work from my own baby girl.  I am afeared that the time is short before 

her creativity trumps  my own.  The girl has mad skills and she is only 16!  

"Tangled" Hair

Emmers wanted "Tangled" styled hair the other day.  This is what I came up with.  I totally loved it.  The pictures weren't taken until AFTER church, so it is a little fuzzier than it would have been, but still totally cute.

Basically, I made two smaller french braids on the sides of her head and tied them off with rubber bands.  Then I did a bigger one down the center of her head and just braided in the smaller ones when I got down to them.  We hot glued paper flowers to bobby pins and added a little bling for good measure. 

I had one happy princess thanks to the do ;0}

Mom, can you do Cinderella next time???

Quick Fix Up

Grandma and Auntie Kallie came to town last week.  

That always means we will be thrifting and we will be doing it A LOT!

Being that we are still fairly unfamiliar with our area here, I did an extensive online search for local thrift stores.  I only found a couple, but we are not that easily discouraged from bargain hunting, so we set out to see what we could find.  One by one we marked the stores off the list, all of them closed {only open on the weekends} or seemingly nonexistent because they had closed some time ago.  I know that the garage sales here are fabulous, but seriously!  There should be a good old fashion, non pocket robbing thrift store somewhere around Rosemount, MN!!!

As an exasperated last attempt before having to pick kids up from school, we stopped at Unique, a Savers store.  Walking in, first thought, AMAZING.  My best way to describe it to Madison when we returned was "Dazzling!"

While it was a Savers store, the prices were not quite as high as the new Savers prices.  In fact, they must have had a saint pricing back in the back because about every other item picked up was actually a reasonable $2 or something.  I don't know if you have experienced the robbed feeling I have had the last couple time I visited Savers or Goodwill, but I have no problem sharing my opinion, and usually rather loudly, about the exasperating prices being charged for DONATED CLOTHES!

I get that it is for charity, but if the prices get any higher I am going to need charity :0}

I will get off that soap box, back to Unique!

I think what made the store all the more magical was that ALL of the clothing and household linens were 50% off that day.  That and the store was freaking HUGE!  It had to be twice the size of any Savers I had ever been in before.  Let me just sidestep here and say just how much I miss Half Priced Saturday at Goodwill back in Arizona!!!!!!!!!!

OK, Long story slightly shorter, I found this cute froggy shirt for $2.  Done.  In the cart.  Little bit later, found this cute pair of florescent green pants.  Love them!  In the cart.  

Just before checking out I was doing my twice over of the cart and happened to realize there was a tear by the back pocket.  My first thought was to nix the pants, but I really liked them and was excited to have a complete outfit when pairing them with the frog shirt.  Since I actually visit thrift stores to find projects, not just clothes, I decided I would spring for the $2 pair of pants {especially since I had turned down a pair at Target that was $12 or $15 a couple weeks ago}.

This is what I did with them

Do realize, in typical "ME" fashion, I had suddenly remembered about 45 minutes before Emmers was to get on the bus today that I STILL hadn't folded or even sorted through my clean laundry.  Rather than facing the mounds of clean laundry baskets currently residing in my master bedroom, I ran instead to the craft room and pulled out the pants purchased last week.  30 minutes.  I could do this!

Found some black polka dot.  Folded over a corner and used my rotary cutter to cut out a heart.

Uh...how 'bout two.  That would be cute.  Cut another one.

Did a quick run through of my oh-so-sorry pile of crafting supplies {SO need to reorganize now that wedding is over} and could not find my heat 'n bond interfacing.

Oh!  That is right!  Glue sticks work great as a fabric stabilizer!  Bet ya' didn't know that ?!?

Stick sticky heart to pants, stitch around the outside with a zig-zag stitch.  Turn pants over and do the same to the heart on the front.

I also had to take about 4" off the bottom of the pants :]  See, Emmalee is kinda hard to fit for jeans, so I usually just buy them to fit her waist and then make them the length they should be.

I tried miserably to do a little decorative stitching over the heart.  Should have just stopped.  Oh well.  Still cute.

And does Cinderella Emmalee Sew*CakeMaker like them???

YES!

.

Real quick I took one of the pant cuffs I cut off, sewed it into a square, and made this hairbow to match.  It is totally ginormous, I know, but I love them that way!  In fact, the school bus driver bent all the way out the bus window today and said, "Nice!  I love the bow!"

She sure made my day. 

 Emmers is gone at school, I actually started and finished something today.  

I guess I can just go back to bed :0}

It's A "Bow"t Time

I am about three inches from throwing in the towel!  I have been trying for two weeks now to get this next Toolbox Tuesday post out and have been foiled all along the way.  I will try one more time tomorrow, and then it will just have to wait until summer is over and my whiny children are back in school!!!

It is really pretty bad.  We have been out of school for just less than a month, and I am ready for them to go back.  It was a little stressful to have them finish school and then move right in to a house full of work for me.  Now they all want to be entertained all day...All meaning Emmalee, and everyone else has things...blah, blah, blah.

I will just stop there.  

No more complaining.

So, the picture above is a hair flower I made last month during my 30 in 30, but Emmalee WORE the flower to preschool graduation and then lost it :0)

I finally unpacked her bag from the night and found it smooshed in the bottom.  I totally LOVE this flower!  My favorite color is yellow, and I am totally digging the combo of yellow and turquoise this summer.  Now that I finally found the flower, I need to figure out an outfit I can wear it with :0}

While trying to push that ToolBox post through the door tonight, I found this box of various hair bow bits and pieces.  As I dug down to the bottom of the pile, I found all these flowers!  I made them in Phoenix this time last year just before we moved to South Dakota.  I don't think I ever showed them to you, so here you go!

At the time I was racking my brain trying to come up with a different way to use fake flowers in hair flowers. Some were a bit of a stretch, but some turned out pretty cute. 

These are the one's I am not sure about.  They are cute enough, I just don't know if I would pick them to purchase if I were given another choice...hmmmm...

Then I have the corker bows.  Some are on flowers, some with bows from the stash.  Cute.  I think my original intention was to make a rainbow of corkers so that we always had a matching bow.  This is as far as I got.  Guess I will have to tackle the pile up above and finish off the rainbow...eventually :0)

Every Princess Needs A Crown

This past Sunday was my last as Young Women's President here in Sioux Falls.  I have been trying to impress upon the girls this whole time just how much their Father in Heaven loves each and every one of them and just how important each one is to his plan here on Earth.  A few months ago I gave a lesson about just that and had searched all over for small crowns I could give the girls that were not a fortune to buy.    

After months of searching...I figured it was time to make them.

I went to a couple stores over the past three weeks searching for the right trims to make the crowns.  I  picked some up at Mill End Textiles, Joanns, and Hobby Lobby, but in the end, the four above all came from Hobby Lobby.  I don't recall the cost of each trim exactly, but if I were to guess: the rope on the left was $2 for 2 or 3 yds, the crocheted elastic band next to it was $4 for 2yds, the other two were purchased from the by-the-yard stuff @ $3 and $2 a yrd.  The first two trims mentioned were spools included in the 50% off ribbon sale.

I was able to get 20 crowns out of 4 yards of each.  With my sales and coupons, I figured the crowns costing around $1 each.

I sewed the rose trim to the elastic, then the bead trim to the other side of the rose trim.

The off white trim close to the bottom I added last minute and it was purchased at Mill End Textiles for $2.50 a yard.  I decided last minute to make the crowns taller and wanted to fill the space between the rope and the flowers.

I thought I would use empty water bottles as formers for the crowns, but then realized I would not get enough crowns out of the trim I purchased if I made them that wide.

There was a lot of mind changing in this project.

I finally decided on how wide to make the crowns, cut the trim to about 6" wide, then dipped each piece in a 50/50 mixture of Ellmer's Glue and water, one at a time.  I pressed the two ends of a single piece together in a crown-like shape, then stood the crown up on a plastic grocery bag to dry.  I ended up letting them dry in three locations due to glue puddles forming under each crown.  In other words, they were so saturated with glue that the first place I put them on a plastic bag ended up a puddle of glue after the crowns sat for a few minutes.  I was afraid there would be a huge glob of glue blob at the bottom of crowns if I left them there, so I moved them to another plastic bag and scraped the extra glue back into my bowl.  After another 5-10 minutes of the crowns resting, spot two resulted in a smaller puddle of glue, but still too much to have dry to the bottom of the crowns.  I finally reached a happy place at bag number three.  There was just a tiny puddle of glue there so I let the crowns stay there the rest of the night.

Now I was somewhat at odds over how exactly to stiffen the fabric.  I knew that the paper mache method mentioned above would work, but might take a really long time to dry.  After drying all night {actually only 6 hours since I finished the crowns at 2am and got up at 8am the next morning},they were still wet.  I decided to speed up the process by employing method number two in addition.

I sprayed the crowns with heavy starch {spray bottle bought at Walmart for $1 in laundry soap section} and placed them on an old cookie sheet.  Some of the crowns had popped open.  I just left them planning on hot gluing them shut later.

I placed them in a pre-heated oven heated to 230 degrees for 20 minutes.  They were still wet when I checked them, so I put them in again...and again...thought they were finally done, but put them back in for one more 20 minute session.  If you decide to make these, I would really make them the same way.  It made them stiff enough to paint.  How do you know when they are really ready to come out of the oven?  Just touch them where the fabric is the thickest.  If it feels damp at all, just throw them in one more time.  That last time, when I felt them right out of the oven they seemed dry, but once they cooled I could feel the dampness, fired up the oven again, and threw them back in.  You can also bump the oven up to 250 if you want to speed things along.  250 isn't hot enough to cause any problems.

Once the crowns were done cooking, I hot glued any open seams as mentioned before, then painted them, insides first, then outsides with Modern Masters Iron Paint.  Honestly, I don't think you need the expense of buying the expensive stuff.  Just use regular black paint.  Use a bristle brush with stiff bristles and jab at it.  

Did you notice that the crowns ended up way shorter!?!  I didn't like how long they were after all, so I cut off the bottom!  It was kind of neat, because the bottoms were just enough to be crowns too, and looked like King's crowns.  I didn't use them for this project, but totally will in the near future ;0)

Once it is completely covered in paint, let it air dry on the same cookie sheet you baked them on.  If you are in a hurry you can throw the crowns back in the oven at the lower temps used before and speed the process up a bit.

If you end up wiping the paint off the pearly thingys or other areas of the crowns, don't stress.  You are going to add another coat of paint later.  I like things like this to look a little messy anyway.  It adds to the vintagy aged look.

Ok, once the black paint was totally, completely, absolutely dry {no black streakies are welcome in the next step} paint a top coat, on the inside then the outside once again.  I used a golden tan color to look a little gold-ish, a light, light pink, and a sea green blue that was very light as well.  Sadly my pictures taken with my phone just before we handed these out do not show the colors very well.  Rather than wining and complaining more about not being at home with all my own lights and crap, I will just let you know what I learned about the top coat process.

I painted the tan and pink.  My sweet temporary landlord and best friend I have in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, painted the blue/green.  I LOVE Mary's!  I was trying to cover the crowns completely, with only a very little black showing through.  Mary very lightly, almost dry brushing, brushed the blue onto the crowns so that all the detail showed through, but didn't cover up the black.  Totally jealous. I started painting mine like hers.  So, don't blop the paint on!  Just brush it gently and let the black make them look aged.

I did a slight, light brushing of silver here and there on top, then let them dry the final time.

Had I been home with all my products, I probably would have put a light finishing spray or varnish on them to give them just a touch of shine.

There you have it!  Princess crowns for my sweet princesses in Young Womens.

Left to right, Blue, Pink, and Tan.

I hope you give these a try.  They were SO FUN TO MAKE!!!

They would be darling on a clip too.  I ran out of time, so didn't put them on a hair clip, but all the girls  put them on their heads and smiled from ear to ear :0)

Hair Flowers...Done!

Wohoo!  What a fun day I had yesterday :0)

While watching some kiddos for a friend I sat on the floor and made yo-yos.  I have been wanting to make some hair thingys out of them for a long time.

First of all, I didn't make this one...Eli did!  I don't know what possessed him to want to make a hair thing, but he did it.  He probably spent an hour shuffling through the buttons and do-dads looking for the perfect middles for his flowers.  I think he did a great job.

This one was especially fun to make.  I had the pink satin flower pieces cut out in my scrap pile, so I figured I might as well melt 'em down and make them into a flower finally.  The middle was a broach that came with some outfit.  I just used my wire cutters, that magically happened to be in my box, to cut the pin off the back and then glued the gems to the flower.

Look how cut it looks in Madison's hair!

This big baby was another that I figured you would think was totally weird.  Here it is in Madison's hair too....

Isn't it cute!?!  

And it can be worn on a belt or top of a shirt...

Love it!  One more massive project to mark off the list.  

I would totally LOVE to see any projects you have recently finished.  Email me at vanessa.cam5@gmail.com your photos and I will show them right along side mine!!!

Remember, no project is too small ;0)

Sometimes its the smallest projects that take the biggest miracles to accomplish!