Craft Time!

I finished my big magazine project about a week and a half ago and, instead of some retail therapy, I had some craft therapy. I love to do crafts!

About two years ago I came up with a Christmas ornament craft for my MOPS group. The MOPS coordinator wanted the ornament to be personalized somehow with the MOPS logo. I remember as a child seeing an ornament where different swatches of fabric were pushed into a styrofoam ball with a knife. I decided to take the MOPS logo, put the date under it, and then print it out on t-shirt transfer paper. I ironed the logo onto white fabric and then bought patterned and solid Christmas fabrics to make the ornament pictured above. I also bought pearl strands to hot glue in between the fabrics. It was a fun and easy craft.

About a week ago I was working on a baby gift basket for my favorite blogger Kelly, and I thought of some different things that I could make by hand. She already has a lot of really cute baby clothes so I wanted to come up with something different. One thing could be my MOPS ornament idea except that I could personalize it with her soon-to-be-born baby's name and some of Kelly's favorite colors. Check out her beautiful baby bedding here. Now that I have experimented around with this ornament idea, I want to make some more personalized ones as Christmas gifts for friends and family.

Here is Amanda watching me while she eats some of her Halloween candy. That reminds me that I need to make her a dental appointment! Ha Ha!

I put a scripture verse on the pink fabric on the back of the ornament. The same scripture verse is on the inside of the notecards below.

I also made Kelly some Thank You notecards and return address labels on my computer. She has two baby showers coming up soon, so I thought that these would come in handy. I had the notcards printed at VistaPrint and printed out the labels myself. VistaPrint did an O.K. job, but I would love to be able to print out the notecards on my own printer. I did a wedding invitation once, but it was a lot of work because the invitation was actually a little booklet. I will have to play around with that when I have some time.

I made a basket and bow using stiffener. My first attempt at this did not work out well at all. 

I wanted the basket to have a zebra print bow. I could not find brown and pint zebra fabric anywhere. I finally found a brown and tan zebra pattern at JoAnne Fabrics. My mother suggested that I dye the fabric with some red food coloring and then the brown would turn pink. That part turned out great. The disaster happened when the fabric stiffener turned the pink color a bright pink when the bow dried. It looked terrible and I did not take a picture of it! I should have just ordered a yard of the fabric from the website that made the custom bedding! Also, the fabric from JoAnne's was a soft fur fabric--it just was not the right kind of fabric to turn into a stiffy bow! I have learned my lesson. At least I was able to use some of the fabric on the ornaments.


Here is the finished basket with a paisley brown and pink print. Oh, and in the way way back (you can barely see it) is a cute little dress that has the brown and pink zebra pattern on it. I found it on the summer clearance rack last week at Macy's and could not pass it up.


Amanda loves to do crafts too! She has her own painted clothes and everything! Here she is painting with sponge stamps after making a beaded necklace. Crafts are so fun, I wish I had more time to do them!