DIY Sew Your Own Baby Moccasins!

One of my absolute favorite go-to Baby Shower Gifts are Handmade Baby Moccasins!

They are so adorable and actually not all that hard to make. They are a bit time consuming because you have to sew slowly, but the end result is SO worth it!

These three pairs I made for my niece! I tried a free pattern I found online, but ended up buying a pattern from Etsy. For your first pair, you might want to try using Suede first. It's a lot easier to work with than the leather. The leather I used, is also from Etsy!

Quilt Number Nine!

Quilt number nine is a throw quilt I made for absolutely no reason, so it means it's a quilt for me!! Until my blanket loving 5 year old steals it from me and it appears on her bed!

I made this using a Jelly Roll from Gingiber by Moda  called Savannah. I love the colors of it!

You can almost see, but the backing is a light yellow color. It took me a little longer to finish because I forgot to put my walking foot on my machine, and broke my machine. So I am currently borrowing my sisters sewing machine until I figure out a new one!

Should You Paint Your Cane Chairs?

 I debated and debated. Consulted with my sister who did not paint the cane chairs she acquired. And decided YES, YES you should, or in this case, I should!!

 

 I bought the pair of cane chairs from Craig's List for $30!! They needed to be reupholstered, that was a given. The previous owners had cats and the fabric was white and nasty. The cane was ok, but they were very worn and chipped, so I decided yes I was going to paint! And I am so glad I did, they look AMAZING!

I splurged on the fabric, and purchased this fabric at $25 a yard!!!! I never spend this much on fabric, but since I only needed a little, I splurged. 

 Aren't they pretty?? I am so happy with how they turned out!!

 And for about $25 a chair, you cannot beat that!!! Take the risk, paint your cane chair!!!

Best Adhesive for DIY Wedding Pocket Invitations

I can't believe my youngest sister is getting married in a couple months!!! I have three sisters and this is the last of my sisters to get married!! While it is a very very exciting time, its also a little sad its the last of my sister's weddings! Because sister's weddings are so much fun!!! 

A few weeks ago my sisters and mom got together to assemble the awesome invites my sister designed for her wedding. Aren't the cute! Her colors are navy and gold!! (Two colors I myself am currently obsessed with!!) 

 When preparing for our get together we questioned what was the best adhesive to make pocket wedding invitations. We tried a couple different options but decided adhesive dots where the best solution! They were easy to assemble and created a secure pocket!  

 The dots work perfect for adding the invitation to the front of the pocket invite.

And stretching a glue dot the entire length of the pocket holds the pocket perfectly in place. It is narrow enough that the contents of the pocket fit in perfectly.  It also creates a secure pocket so your contents stay in place!!

I just got my invitation in the mail and it looks perfect! I can't wait for her wedding and I am sure you will see more of it as her wedding gets closer! 

Quilts from Baby Clothes

After I finished my first quilt in the fall, the wheels were turning for my next quilt.  When my daughter was born my sister-in-law gave me a bunch of special outfits her girls wore when they were babies and instead of handing these special outfits to someone else I knew I needed to do something with them for my sister-in-law. That's when I decided to be an over-achiever and sew TWO baby clothes quilts for my nieces for Christmas.

Since I only had about ten outfits, coming up with my design took me a while. I eventually decided to use the babies outfits and create a bunch of hearts! Once my design was determined, I then procrastinated about cutting up adorable, perfectly fine baby clothes!!! Once I started I was very happy I did. I love how it turned out and more importantly my nieces and sister-in-law loved them!

How I created them:
After getting over cutting up baby clothes, I cut the clothes so I could add fusible interfacing to the back of the clothes. Then I traced various sizes of hearts onto the interfacing and cut out my hearts.

I than laid out my washed purple piece of flannel and determined my design with the hearts and pinned them in place. Next I carefully zig-zag stitched around each heart with a darker purple thread.

Then I pinned together my batting and another piece of flannel for the back and quilted with long lines with the same dark purple thread - avoiding the hearts. Lastly I binded it and I had two fabulous quilts for my nieces for Christmas!

I did a few test runs of appliqueing the hearts onto flannel first to figure out what worked best. I did a couple without the fusible interfacing and it works SO much better with it! This is my 2nd and 3rd ever quilt, so this was pretty simple!

When adding my hearts I also added an initial for each of the girls, so they could tell their quilts apart!

I can't wait to some day make these for my kids with their baby clothes, but we all know that won't happen until my kids are at least 20!

Train Artwork

I have slowly showed bits and pieces of Little Man's new Big Boy room. Well today I have some simple artwork I made for his book shelves. I downloaded the shape from the Silhouette website. 

Little Man loves to say "All a board" so it was an easy addition to add to the sign!

This was so easy to make!! Check out the other stencils I have made with my Silhouette Cameo for tutorials on how I made this! 

DIY Baby Headband Holder

With all of the headbands I made for Baby Girl, I had to also make something that we could display them on!! There are a lot of different ideas on Pinterest, but I decided to modify and make my own version.

I took a beautiful framed picture I bought at Goodwill MONTHS ago and painted it pink. I then lined it will some cute brown chevron fabric and used some pink drawer pulls I bought at Target. 

I then used my favorite Command Adhesive strips and attached it to the inside of her closet door! It works for now, but it maybe should have been a little bigger! Since little girls love their hair accessories! 

Linked up at: DOG DAYS OF WINTER “ORGANIZE IT” LINKY PARTYhttp://www.craftyscrappyhappy.net/

Baby Girl Headbands

In a few (hopefully short days we are expecting a sweet little baby girl. So I just had to make some cute little headbands for her to wear! Since our son was basically balk until he was two, I figure our little girl will probably have similar hair and instead of telling people she is a girl, I figured the headbands will MAYBE give people a clue to not ask!! 

These were so easy to make!!! And they are all interchangeable! The flowers are attached to the elastic bands with Velcro! There are a lot of different tutorials for these around Pinterest, but this is one version I used. The only difference is I sewed the circles onto the felt, and used Velcro instead of pins!

I can't wait to see these headbands on our new little girl!!!

Top Posts of 2012

My top 2012 posts are as follows:

DIY Burlap Wedding Shower Invite

Red Envelope Knock-off Artwork

Craft Room Reveal

Chevron Curtains

And my most popular post of 2012 is my DIY Pouf

I can't wait to share my projects in 2013! Happy 2013 to everyone and thanks for reading!!

DIY Christms Card Holder

On one of my many Pinterest viewing sessions I saw this on Pinterest, but of course did not pin it and can't find it again! But here is my DIY Christmas Card Holder. It was so easy to make.

I used several clear Command Adhesive Strips and some shinny green gift wrap ribbon. Create a tree shape and wrap the ribbon until you have a shape you like! SO Easy!!! I then used little clothes pins to attach my cards to the tree! I think it could use a star on top and maybe some fancier clothes pins.... we will see if I have time.... :)

Using Grommet Math to Add Grommets to your Cutains!

Nothing sounds more nerve racking than spending so much time sewing curtains only to cut huge holes in them for Grommets!! But I love the look of Grommets and I think they are easier to open and close especially if you have a bulkier fabric and they lay a bit better on the rods.


After spending hours and hours sewing curtains for my son's room that I lined with black out fabric, I was then tasked with cutting holes in my beautiful curtains for the grommets!

Adding grommets to your curtains are very easy. Besides grommets you really only need a scissors, pencil, ruler and a calculator.

Grommet Math 101

I personally think one of the hardest parts to adding grommets to curtains is figuring out the math! (And I love math!!!)

The first step is to measure the width of your curtain and determine how many grommets you want to use. My packet came with 8 grommets, but since my curtains were only 50.25 inches wide I decided to make my life easier and only use 6 of them.

Time for some grommet math!!!!

1. Measure the width of your curtain and determine the number of grommets you will be using.
2. Determine how far from the edge you want your first and last grommet to be. I ended up putting mine 2.5 inches from the end (from the center) This number is up to you and you can sort of play around with it and the next steps to make your middle spacing work out for you! You probably don't want to go any closer than 2 inches (from the center of the grommet) to about half of your spacing for your below spacing, so they hang correctly. In my case my spacing was a little over 9 inches, so I would not want my grommets to be more than 4.5 inches from the edge so it folds nicely)
3. Next subtract the end amount from your total curtain width. (5 in my case)
4.  Now take this number and divide it by the number of grommets you are using minus 1. (Because you want the inches between each grommet)
5. This is how far apart your grommets should be.

A helpful way to figure out even spacing number for your grommets is to divide your total curtain length by your grommets minus 1. In my case I get 10.05. This gives you an idea on how far apart they will need to be so you can play around with your numbers to get something that works out well and makes measuring easy!

Once you have the math figured out, it's best to layout your grommets and make sure the math will REALLY work!!

Once you have the math figured out, it's time to measure!

Packages of grommets should come with directions and a circle template. In my case I had to cut out the circle and mark the center myself on my template. 

My grommets I bought over a year ago on clearance and have since used a newer package and it came with a better template!! Marking the center makes it easier to line up your template!

The you simply line up the center of the template to your measurement and draw your circle on the fabric.

Next is the difficult part.... cutting your beautiful fabric.... it's so difficult to make that first cut!!!! Emotionally that is! It's better to make the hole small and if you need to you can always remove more.... you can't add back more fabric..... 

The hole..... it won't look pretty at this point, especially since my curtains had about 6 layers at the top with the liner!! 

Place the grommet in according to the directions of the package, but they should just snap together... SO EASY!!! 

And you are done!!!! 

Repeat several more times and then its off to hang your lovely new curtains!!! Again, here are the finished hanging curtains!

Stained Wall Art

I have had an almost empty frame in my dining room since we moved in. I have changed it out for Holidays... and all summer it held artwork I made for my son's 2nd birthday (in April) that was all about cars!!! And its been on my to-so list to make something more permanent for the space!

AND I wanted something different!

I had some left over wood veneer from another project and thought this would be the perfect place to start! I stained the veneer the same color as my dinning room table (since it was going to be in the same room....)

Once my stained dried, I cut out a design with my Silhouette Cameo.

I was a little nervous with painting over the stain, because if there was bleeding I would not really be able to fix it.... BUT it turned out perfect!! I did use a wet paper towel to clear a little smudge

I am really happy with how it turned out!!! (And I can cross another item off my to-do list!!!! YEAH!!!)

Little Man's Last Nursery

When Little Man was born we rented an apartment in Michigan while Casey finished Law School. The awesome thing about our apartment was we were able to paint (not so awesome when we had to prime it back to white when we moved out!!!) Little Man had a really nice sized room for an apartment, not that he EVER slept in there!!! So this is his first nursery.

I was never a fan of the glider we bought for Little Man's room (and trust me I spent HOUR and HOURS in it trying to get Little Man to sleep!!!!) so I sold it before we moved to Wisconsin (why move something I didn't have too!!) We lived with my parents for about 5 months after moving to Wisconsin and because we did a lot of traveling back and forth with him when we lived in Michigan, they bought a crib and he had his own room. So while living there I helped my mom decorate his room there.

Then we have Little Man's nursery in our new house.

About 6 months in our new house I decided I wanted another glider in his room.  So we have our final and last version of Little Man's nursery. Soon we will move him into a toddler bed and in the not so near future he will be moved down the hall to his big boy room.

So I give you Little Man's last nursery!

I love how it turned out!! And I will be very sad when Little Man moves out of this room. But I am so excited to start working on his Big Boy room and all of the fun that will bring!

Here is how I made the alphabet canvas artwork.