Easter 2012

I made Mr. Zippy’s tie using THIS tutorial from Sharing the Wealth (and yes, it’s too long by my own fault, but I just need to re-tie it and it will work).  I made Sunshine’s bow tie using my own pattern found HERE, and for Poppy, I bought a dress at Old Navy about a month ago (cheater, I know, but I LOVE it) and just made a quick bow for her hair to match.  I hope your Easter was great! 

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Also, I’m kind of floored that my easy peasy shirt made it into the ‘top of the tops’ of week two for Rae’s Spring Top Sewalong, because well, there are a lot I consider much better than mine, ha!  But go vote for your favorite, and I’m most certainly not asking you to vote for mine!  Voting closes this Friday at 12 noon EST.

Lam-Bees

Can you tell what these are?

Those are cute little lamb bums!

This is part of what my kids will be receiving in their Easter baskets this Sunday. They call them Lam-Bees—they had some lamb stuffed animals that we lost (well, one was lost, the other one I gave to the thrift store) and my son D came up to me crying and said, “Lam-Bee was my most favorite toy ever.”   So I thought Easter was a good time to make one for them all.

I forgot I had bookmarked them last year when the Purl Bee posted them HERE:

I think I have over 200 items bookmarked in my “crafts to make” folder!  It feels good to cross one off the list!  

Mine are not perfect, but my kids will love them.

I just used fleece like Dana did in her version HERE:

I also wish I had remembered about Homemade by Jill’s version HERE:

I wish I would have remembered to embroider my kids’ names on them!  It’s such a cute touch!

Are you ready for Easter?  I’ve finished B’s dress and will post that later this week.  I feel like I have a million things going on, but not much to show just yet:). 

(don’t hate me) 3 Silhouette Projects

Happy April Fool’s!  No silly posts here, but there have been some fun ones out there today.  My favorite was on Crafterhours :). 

Just so you know, I get no compensation whatsoever for posting projects I use my silhouette on.  My husband bought it for me for Christmas, and since I love it and it makes projects easier, I post about it!  All the things I show you today could be done with freezer paper, or just tracing your fabric/paper—it just takes a little more work.

First off, I’ve seen these “peeps” shirts everywhere, and have always liked them!  I had some saved that used freezer paper and paint, but used my silhouette to cut them out of fabric. 

B was afraid of our dog behind the fence, so she opted out of the photo shoot here.

Gotta love bed head!

Life is sure hard as a two year old!

Trying her best not to smile!  She LOVED her shirt, though.  So did the boys.

I used brown paint to color in the eyes and nose on the boys’ shirts, plus brown fabric for the words.  If doing that, just remember to put paper between the shirt layers!  I always seem to forget that and thank my lucky stars that it didn’t soak through yet! 

They looked way too girly before using brown, and I knew they wouldn’t wear them if they looked girly!

Next is just some small goodie bags for some family or friends.  Not too much chocolate, but it hits the spot, and fits in the budget!

You can just fold a paper in half and trace the bunny shape to cut out.  I have found a lot of templates for these bunnies online by doing a quick search for it.

The healthy option!

And lastly, I have 3 nieces from the same family all having a birthday next week, all two days apart:). 

I boxed them all up together (because I’m a little lame and didn’t want to wrap three tiny presents).  I taped the lip gloss and hair clips onto the tissue paper though, so that when they open it up it won’t look bad.

**A few of you have asked how the Heat n’ Bond works—it works wonderfully if the fabric is thin.  I used thicker fabric on the flowers and it had a harder time cutting through it all, but I just used scissors and cut anything that didn’t work. 

How I use the Heat n’ Bond with my Silhouette:  Iron it onto the back of the fabric, peel back the paper.  Press the fabric onto the sticky mat.  Set the speed to 2 or 3, and the thickness to 33 (highest, I believe).  Use the pink blade.  I hope that helps!  That is what works for me, at least!

Have a Happy Weekend!  It’s finally warming up here and has been BEAUTIFUL!!!

Easter Wreath Tutorial

Easter is so soon! It always seems to sneak up on me. I needed to hurry and make something so I can enjoy it longer! Inspiration for this wreath came from Hope Studios, Chris, Erin & Jayce (she covered her eggs this way with paper--genius!), and How to Sew a Straight Line (Sabra wrapped a wreath with ribbon, and that's what I did with the ruffles). AND, somewhere, once upon a time, I saw a frame or wreath that had a few pine cones hanging down the middle and I thought I'd do that with Easter eggs someday.

And that day is today:).

Here's what I used to make this wreath:
-some cute cotton fabric
-4" x 60" knit
-elastic thread
-normal thread
-glue gun
-13" wreath
-3 plastic Easter eggs
-ribbon and ric-rac (I actually didn't use the ribbon pictured here--I thought I would when I started!)
-spray paint (in the picture, I had already sprayed it and let it dry)
-Mod Podge (not pictured)
-foam brushes (not pictured)

Cut your knit into two 2" x 60" strips.
Using THIS method, ruffle the knit.

Start wrapping around your already spray-painted wreath. I wanted the color to show through a little, so if you don't, just make sure to have a little extra knit--otherwise those two strips you cut might not be enough.

Glue the ruffled knit on.

Looks like this now.

Take your cotton fabric and decide how long you want it for hanging up. I did that length x 4". Sew the right sides together on the edge, turn the tube so it's the right way now, and top stitch along both sides.

*I have to say this now: I got my Easter eggs at none other than...Wal-Mart. I get a lot of things there, it seems. It's not that I love it, it's just I live in a town with hardly any other options, so Wal-Mart it is. So my eggs were the size of the $2.00 bag o' eggs at Wally-World.

Take a 4" x 5.5" piece of cotton. Measure in from each long side 1.75" and mark. So you'll only have 1/2" in the middle. Cut about 1/4" slits up to the lines you marked.

Take the Mod Podge and brush some of it around the center of the plastic egg. *Let dry*. That is an important step as it will help greatly in the end result.

Paint your egg with glue on top, then one strip at a time, start gluing. I liked to add a bit of glue at the top on the strips so they stick together. When you glue a strip on, pull it straight up and glue, so that it doesn't bunch at the slits you cut. Repeat with other end.

It will look like this when you are done. See that bunch of the slit "tops" on the right?

Cut it off.

Your cute little egg is done. Now make 2 more.

Glue some cute ric-rac or ribbon around the egg. I like this because it kind of helps hide the middle crease from the plastic egg, and also other imperfections that might have occurred:).

Take your wreath and cut your ribbon how you'd like them to hang, with an extra inch or so. Then glue one end of the ribbon on the egg (this part is on the back of the egg so you won't see it).

Hot glue the 3 ribbons with eggs attached to back of frame, where you will also hang the strip, which I also just hot glued to the wreath.

To make the flower, here's what I did. I know that people do it differently than this, but I was upstairs, the computer was downstairs, and I didn't feel like going down to look up exactly how others do it. So I winged it. I had a piece of my cotton fabric left from it being too long to hang the wreath from. So it was a 4" strip and then I'd say about 10-12" long. The ends are just left unfinished, and this is before I had done top stitching.

 

Start at one end and roll a little bit.

Until you have an inch or so rolled down.
 

Now start rolling the roll you just made, hot gluing it while you go. Just go as far as you want to make the size flower you want.

Hot glue it to the wreath.

Here's the finished wreath.
I liked that little flower so much I had to make one into a clip for my little girl.

P.S. Don't forget that you only have until tomorrow, 12 noon, MST to enter my "Thank You" giveaway!