Christmas 2012: Stroller makeover!

I'm making a concerted effort to be more organized with our Christmas plans this year. At the top of this list has been getting a head start on Christmas presents. I've found thus far that if you start early you can get the things you want at the best price (and sometimes super cheap!) allowing you to either get more than you planned for the ones you love or put that money towards something else altogether (student loans, anyone?)

One of the things on my Christmas list for my boys was a doll stroller.
(Yes we are the kind of parents that buy doll strollers for their all boy brood).

We picked up this little beauty at a garage sale for 50 cents (saweet!). 




One of the straps was only attached by a thread which was going to be an easy enough fix so I went ahead and... 

recovered the whole thing and spray painted it to match the new cover.


Gotcha! You thought I was going to say I fixed the strap and called it good. Yeah, well I thought that was what I was going to do as well, but then the wheels started turning...

I decided I wanted something slightly more masculine than purple and pink and ballet shoes BUT I didn't want to spend a dime more than the whopping 50 cents I'd already shelled out so whatever I did needed to be using stuff I already had on hand.

And here's how it turned out:

Cute, huh? I used some fabric I had on hand to make the cover. I just used the old cover as a pattern, paying close attention, as I dismantled it, to how it was put together. I even made my own bias tape to go around the edges.

 (Note: no matter what all those bias tape tutorials tell you [i.e. how it's so easy to make!] just know that making bias tape is not for the faint of heart or the impatient or sleep deprived. I'm glad I did, but boy howdy does it exercise those brain cells.)

Ideally, I would have spray painted the frame white with blue wheels and handles. However, I didn't have any white paint on hand and the goal was not to spend another penny on this project.

All in all I think it turned out pretty awesome!

 

Chick-fil-A Cow repurpose

The last few months have been kind of crazy (hence the absence of posting here). Mostly its just been dealing with sick kids: colds, hand-foot-mouth (which I also had the pleasure of getting), and most recently a nearly week long bout with a stomach bug. I'm hoping that with the warmer weather here we'll experience less sick days and more fun.

Playing both mommy and nurse to my twinners hasn't left much time to get any projects done. I've been itching to do something creative lately, but I knew it had to be simple and quick. Enter the ugly Chick-fil-a cows. This is possibly the lamest craft project ever, but it was fun.

So we got 2 little free Chick-fil-a cows at a 5k I ran a few months back. I held on to them even though I'm not a super fan of toys that double as free advertising. I was on the verge of just tossing them, but I thought I might be able to salvage them  by removing the sign. No go. The front sign came off, but the back sign wasn't removable.



So instead I decided to turn them into super hero cows. It was super simple to do with a little hot glue and left over felt from another project. They are now sporting the boys' initial on the front and I turned the sign in the back into a cape.

super.simple.
super.cows.

I don't know how much use they'll get by the boys, but it was nice to put a toe (like a pinky  toe) back into the creative world.

Daddy-Baby hand print art

Well I've taken a bit of hiatus from this blog as of late due to illness and teething and two cranky babies. I'm hoping the worst is behind us for this cold/flu season (crossing my fingers!). I am happy to say that I've still managed to get a project or two done over the last month. Yeah! So more to come on those a bit later. The project I'm sharing today was a Christmas present for my husband (but it would make a great father's day present!). Inspired by this on pinterest I decided to try a DIY version.

Source: Pinterest

I really wanted these to be a surprise so I blindfolded my husband one evening after the kids were in bed and stuck his hands in acrylic paint and put his hand print on two 8x10 white canvases. The blindfolded part was a little tricky, but his hand print turned out pretty well.

I let the canvases dry overnight and then did our twins hand prints the next day. I first tried doing their hand prints in white like the original, but you couldn't really see them (I think because the canvas was white as well). The beauty of using canvas is I could wipe off the white prints without really damaging my husband prints. Sweet!
(If I had to do it over I'd paint the canvas a darker shade of the hand print color first, then do the adult print then the baby print in white. I think  that would work.) 

So I tried again with my twins, this time using a darker hue of my husbands print color. This worked great on the blue and not as great on the green (I think the green wasn't light enough to begin with, live and learn)

With two wiggly one year olds it took me several tries to get a decent print (having another adult help would've been invaluable!). Again, canvas saved me because I could just wipe off the bad print while it was still wet and try again.

I wasn't thrilled with how the green one turned out, but it was too close to Christmas to redo it so I wrapped them up as-is (er, as-was) and figured I could redo it with some help from the hubby.




Well my husband loved them and insisted he didn't want to redo the green one. So I added the text (sketched out in pencil first and then painted over the pencil marks) and sent him off with some new art for his office.

They didn't turn out perfectly, but I love them!

Repurposed Birth Announcement: Christmas Ornament

So life got a little crazy after our twins were born and while I went to all the work of designing birth announcements I never actually sent them out. Whoops! But they still have sentimental value for me and we didn't have a baby's first Christmas ornament for them so I thought it would be fun to try and make a little ornament using their announcement.

Here's what I started with: 

and here is how they turned out:

I used a simple wood circle and mod podged the pieces I'd cut out from their announcement 

(side note: I would recommend having a couple copies of the announcement so you can try different layouts)

I really like how they turned out, mostly because they have sweet sentimental value for us. I really like that they are much more personal (in my opinion) than they typically "baby's first Christmas" ornaments I've seen. Plus, it was super easy to do. Win-Win!

Repurpose Wedding Announcement into Christmas Ornament

I love pinterest because it connects me to fabulously creative people and their amazing ideas. I make a concerted effort to at least occasionally do one of the great projects I pin.

 Before Christmas I saw this idea on pinterest and loved it.

                                                                                                                                         Source: christyrobbins.blogspot.com via Katy on Pinterest

 She cut up one of her left over wedding announcements and put it in a simple glass ball. I thought it was lovely and really wanted to do it with our wedding announcement. Problem: our wedding announcement is a photo announcement and I wasn't so sure how it would turn out. But I decided to give it a whirl.

I started with this

Instead of cutting my announcement into even strips, I cut different size strips so I could highlight the information that was most important to me and just left out what wasn't. Then I curled the strips around a pen and popped them into my ornament. I ended up rearranging things a bit and used a pair of tweezers to pull strips out and rearrange them.

Here is my finished product:

I love how it turned out and it is such a nice way to make a wedding keepsake. I know I haven't looked at our announcement in..um well...since we mailed them out. Now we can look at it every Christmas. I love it! Thank you pinterest for connecting me to people with such fabulous ideas!

Here it is hanging on our window garland.

DIY Christmas Window Garland

I'm going to rewind for the next few posts and talk about all the stuff I made during the Christmas season. First, Christmas isn't quite complete without some kind of twinkle lights and while I loved our felt Christmas tree we needed something more. Plus, while I could do without the traditional glass balls and such, I missed our special unique to us ornaments. 

So using these two ideas as my inspiration

                                                                                                                            Source: savingmoneylivinglife.com via Katy on Pinterest

                                                                                                                                Source: goodhousekeeping.com via Katy on Pinterest

I came up with this:

(forgive the less than stellar picture)

I wrapped our curtain rod in greenery and twinkle lights and then hung ornaments from it. I really like how it turned out and it looked much better than the photo depicts.

Here is a little close up. A post on the first ornament is coming soon!

bebe au lait inspired burp cloth

A friend of mine recently asked how to go about making these burp clothes she saw 

 bebe au lait

Cute, right?

Well I decided to take a shot at making one myself and write up a tutorial while I was at. I failed to look at the dimensions of the clothes on the bebe au lait website before I did mine (whoops!) so I did mine quite a bit wider. If I had to do over I think I would do something more in the middle (6.5'' (bebe au lait) seems a bit narrow and 10'' (mine) seems a bit wide). 

supplies:
1/2 yard terry cloth (2-10''x18'' pieces or 2-6.5''x18'' pieces)
52'' of bias tape (I would use 1/2 inch double fold bias tape)
scrap of fabric 4.5''x10''

1. Cut two pieces of terry cloth to your desired size. Lay one piece on top of the other. Using some kind of rounded edge (I used a kitchen bowl) trace a curved edge around the corners of your terry cloth and then cut.

2. Take one piece of terry cloth and pin the scrap of fabric about 1/3rd from the bottom fold the long edges under ~.5'' and then sew it down (I used .25'' seam).

  

- You have two options when it comes to bias tape. You can buy double fold bias tape in a coordinating color or You can make your own bias tape from the accent fabric you choose. {use this tutorial to make your own or you can make faux bias tape (which is what I did) using this tutorial.} While the faux bias tape is faster to make I would still recommend using real bias tape. There is great tutorial here on what bias tape does.

3. Pin the two piece of terry cloth, wrong sides together. Do a wide basting stitch around the edge (again use a .25'' seam).

4. Finally, attach your bias tape! (this is a great tutorial on how to attach bias tape)

And here is my finished product. I think it turned out really cute! Next time I think I will make it a little narrower and put a solid color of flannel on the back instead of the second piece of terry cloth.