(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!!!

Two Shirts, House Plans, and a little Silhouette Tutorial

As you’ve probably noticed, things have slowed down a bit over here. 

I’ve felt a bit more in control of my life this way—caught up on laundry and housework, and not so preoccupied with sewing/crafting.  My kids have definitely seen more of me, which has been wonderful. 

We are also in the process of working with a draftsman to design our home that we will be building this year.  I am super excited about it!!!  And it will someday (maybe not right away) have a large craft room in a sunny, upstairs location.  Squeal!!! 

Ideally, our dream house would be set somewhere beautiful, like England or elsewhere in Europe where it is green and lush and romantic with large trees, streams, and sunlight that looks like it does in this picture:

photo source

Beautiful, isn’t it?! 

We are moving somewhere that isn’t so much like that, but somewhere that I feel will be a great place to raise our kids.  We’ll have 3 acres.  THREE ACRES!!!  What will we do with it all?  Probably watch the tumbleweeds grow ;). 

Anyways, it’s been busier around here and will remain so for a while.  And I decided that the blog needed to slow down a bit so I don’t go insane.  I hope you understand!  On to two simple crafts!

I’m really happy the Silhouette cuts fabric!  I just used Heat n’ Bond on the back, rather than purchasing their fabric interfacing.

Did you see this Stunt Man shirt on Under the Sycamore?  LOVE it!  And it’s so easy!  Ashley took the idea from a J.Crew shirt and definitely improved it by turning the words upside down, in my opinion! 

My son received this shirt for his birthday and every time he shows someone, he has to try out a handstand or flip upside down on the couch.  He really doesn’t think people can read it unless he does that :). 

The second shirt I made was for my niece.  She is in a school where she learns in English and in Mandarin.  Her name is Eden and she LOVES anything Chinese because of this great program.

So I made a shirt that spells her name in Mandarin.  My brother-in-law pointed me to google translate to find out how to spell her name.

And I wanted to show really quickly something awesome I learned to do in the Silhouette program.  So sorry if you don’t have a Silhouette, but if you do, hopefully this will help someone!

First off, when you are opening an image to trace in your Silhouette program, make sure that when you click on the file to open, that you change it to say All Files under Files of type.  Otherwise you won’t be able to find any pictures to use the tracing function!

So find your image and open it.

Select the area to trace.  I hit just the top trace button. 

Then take the image you traced, move it over away from the trace lines...

And delete the picture you opened.

Now I don’t know if this happens to you when you trace, but it does to me.  There are two outlines for the image.  Which means your Silhouette will cut both of those lines and you don’t want that.  Maybe there is a tutorial for this already on the Silhouette blog, but I didn’t feel like searching for it and was happy that I figured it out!  So double click your image to make those dots all appear. 

Now do you see that red line?  I just clicked between two points on the outline that I wanted to delete.  Then I hit “delete point” over there on the right.

Which then shifts the red line between the next two point.  So I just kept hitting delete point over and over until all the outline was gone. 

Then I repeated with the other character for Eden’s name.

Now it is ready to cut!

Happy Monday, everyone!

Magic Party

My sweet middle son D turned six a couple weeks ago and requested a Magic Party.

Most of the party ideas online mentioned hiring a magician.  I thought, “Score!”  My father-in-law was a Rodeo Clown for many years and had a few fun magic tricks he’d perform during his acts.  But he was going to be gone in Hawaii, so it was up to my husband to learn a few tricks. 

So with my husband as the magician and only a few games and activities, the party was a success.  It’s not hard to please a group of kids that age!

THE INVITES

I used my Silhouette to cut the invitations, just using shapes from Silhouette’s website.  The invites looked like a plain top-hat.  But we left the top of a bunny sticking out of the middle of two hats glued together so you could pull the bunny out of the hat.  On the bunny, we had all the party information the guests needed to know.

PARTY FAVORS

I made some simple bow ties attached to elastic.  I used the method in my tutorial here, but you can see that I cheated a bit.  I didn’t sew a tube for the middle piece of fabric. Rather, I cut it longer and wider, folded the ends in, then sewed and left the raw edge as pictured in the bottom right hand picture (there was excess fabric so it was easy to sew, that I just clipped off after sewing).  I used hot glue to keep the bow and elastic together.  Easy!

The capes were also really easy.  There was an 8 yard bolt at Wal-Mart of the thin, silky, non-fraying fabric that most cheap Halloween costumes are made out of.  It was only $5.00 for the 8 yards.  So I cut the shape of a cape, then some knit for the neck, which I sewed into a loop.  I then started in the middle of the cape and the seam of the neck loop so the knit seam was in the back and not the front.

I used my Silhouette to cut the hats and names for the favor bags.  The white bags I found at Dollar Tree, 2 for $1.00.

Also at the Dollar Tree were these Magic Kits.  Not all of the tricks worked for my kids, but they had fun with the ones that did!

I also bought some Trix cereal to put in their party favor bags.  I thought of the idea only because of THIS website, because you can purchase a Bag of Trix.  I thought it was a bag of the cereal at first until I read further--it really is a bag of magic tricks.  So that’s how this came about :). 

I added the a.k.a. tricks under the word Trix, because my kids and even a couple adults said, “So, what’s magic about the Trix?  What do they do?”  Kind of funny ;).  But you can download the bag toppers HERE—they fit a normal sandwich Ziploc baggie. 

 

GAMES and ACTIVITIES

As the guests came, they tried to guess how many Jelly Bellies were in the jar. There were 123 and someone actually guessed 120!!!  Rather than letting that child take them all, everyone ate them.

Next they got their own wand to decorate.  I found an 8 pack of wood sticks at Joann for a dollar.  I tried to find some good stickers to decorate with, but didn’t find any I really liked.  So they used washable markers.  I wouldn’t recommend that because the marker got all over their hands.  Paint seems like it would be a little messy too, especially if it got on their clothes.  So I recommend stickers!

The third activity we did was like Hot Potato, only with a magician.  I found the idea HERE.   I just made an extra bow tie and cape for the puppy to be the magician, and my husband was in charge of starting and stopping the music from the another room.

The next game, also found HERE, was to have one person in the middle close their eyes, while the other people circle around him and pass the wand around.  When I said stop, the person with the wand hid it behind their back, and all the others in the circle put their hands behind their back also.  The middle person then opens their eyes and tried to guess who has the wand. 

Then, the moment we were building up to…my husband came out to be The Magician.  He did GREAT.  And looked even better with his bathrobe and ironing board he chose to use, ha ha!  I teased him about being some type of Housewife Magician.

I just love this next picture, despite it’s graininess, because D really was so amazed.  Dillon would perform a trick, and D would say, “Awesome!”  so sincerely!  Very cute.   (P.S.  I’m very much aware the D’s magician hat looks rather funny. That’s because it is indeed quite funny looking.)

B really enjoyed it also.  Dillon was pretty funny and if I wasn’t concerned about the privacy of the other kids more, I’d post some fun pics of the kids jumping and laughing.

We ate cupcakes and opened presents and called it a party!

I’m happy he chose to do this kind of party!  I was a little hesitant to agree, but seeing his happy face makes the challenge of some birthday themes totally worth it!