Merry & Bright Candy Christmas: Inspired by Sweats & Treats

The inspiration for this tree came from sweats and treats. I was looking for something  Merry and Bright while non-traditional at the time.Well little did I know that this theme and the colors would soon be the new Christmas Colors. Hehe!!
Although my tree isn't as pretty as it once was, I'm finally beginning to get my Christmas tree back to the way I had originally intended it to look 6 years ago. During our move, I'm assuming my other half decided he was tired of moving boxes and decided he would leave all my beautiful ornaments (mostly from Pier-one-imports) behind. Needless to say, I wasn't very happy, but it doesn't pay to stress over it.
However, the colors are still the same!!

I absolutely love the traditional red and green Christmas decor' (it has evolved significantly), but I started making and purchasing ornaments in the same colors as soon as I realized they were left behind. With that being said, I decided to stick with these colors!! The only thing I'm missing now is a white tree, which truly helps make these colors POP!! ... and of course I could always use more bulbs. Can never have enough bulbs/ ornaments!!! Hope you like!!

A MERRY & BRIGHT CANDY CHRISTMAS:  SWEATS AND TREATS INSPIRED

A gift of Thanks!

A little gift I make to show my appreciation for a couple I know. I frosted a Mason Jar with the couple's (last name) initial and added their first name initials using card stock.

Halloween Inspiration!

From a little Halloween Inspiration!!!!!!!!

I do believe I have already posted this, but with Halloween around the corner, I figured I would do a re-post. This allowance jar was created from left over scraps from my many projects. I told an edge scissors to the scraps before mod-podging them on in order to add something extra. I also took buttons in the same colors of the scraps that I used and mod-podged those on to cover up any imperfections.

This is the container created from inspiration received from a project did for my son's class last Halloween. I can't find the container at this moment, but I can give a little description. Using Halloween paper, I made a cone (inspired for the candy corn paper cones) to put treats in. On the orange cones, I put various size googly eyes on them. The kids at school absolutely adored them.  So being one of the colors in my son's room is orange, I painted one of his boxes orange and placed the left over googly eyes on the box!! He absolutely loved this!!! He still tries to jump around and do thinks to get the eyes to move!!!

Halloween Inspiration

 

 

Halloween Bow

It's that time of the year again... HALLOWEEN!! I believe it's because of the colors associated with Halloween that I absolutely love creating items for this holiday!!  

 

 

 

 
  Here are the black, white, and orange bows I made for customers. I am currently working on many more, but I will have to update the post once they're completed.

 

More than likely I'll be doing many more Halloween projects and will be sure to post them!!

Pin The Bow On Barbie

{{The pictures came out horrible because I was in such a
rush and wasn't thinking about a blog post at that moment.
 Please forgive all my photo imperfections. It seems as
 though my photography skills have digressed since I've
started Blogging!!}} 

My three year old niece's birthday party was rescheduled for this past Saturday due to the Hurricane and of course her mother went into labor a couple days before. She wasn't able to get out of the hospital for the party, so I ended up having to host the party for her (and decorate; of course). Being she choose Barbie as her party theme and we hadn't had a chance to get party games, I decided to make a "pin the bow on Barbie".
I had only a few hours until the party, so I gathered up some girly card stock packs from my paper supplies and got to work.

Using a pencil I sketched Barbie's Silhouette on loose leaf paper to use as my stencil. Then I used my razor knife to cut it out on black card stock and glued my silhouette on to a poster board.
Once Barbie's silhouette was glued down, I sketched a plain bow from a sheet of card stock (plain pink bow)  and glued it in Barbie's hair to use as a target so that the kids would know where the bows should be placed.
While letting the poster board dry, I started sketching and cutting out my paper bows that the kids would be using as the game pieces from different color card stock that matched the theme of her party.
I finished putting my game piece bows together and while waiting for those to dry, I placed pre-cut letters around the silhouette to say "Happy Birthday" and punched out butterflies with the scraps left over from my bows.
Once the letters were dry, I traced around them with a black permanent marker without taking my time, which left them a little sloppy, but she loved it anyhow!!





In the picture to the left, I was testing out the bows to be sure I made them big enough.

The bows truly make it!!




The picture below has some of the bows I made. Thought I took more pictures than this, but guess I didn't. I was kind of in a rush.

 

Trial-Run Frosted Vase {Etched Appeal}

Since I wasn't able to get much done for the blog last week due to the hurricane, here is an item I had created last school year as a teachers appreciation gift.
Well this was actually created for the practice/trial run. It was created before I got into blogging and creative websites for ideas of how to do things, so I had to actually do the trial and error myself.
With that being said, this vase has many imperfections, but I didn't want to throw away a perfectly good vase so I kept it for myself.
I try to avoid over-filling the vase with stems that way the imperfections wont be as noticeable and most people don't notice unless they are examining it closely.

 

 The photo above gives you a better idea of how these vases look when in use as well as a different designs that you may want to create. It also illustrates the imperfections more intensely than in person being I edited the photo somewhat. 

 You can see the actual vases created for my son's teachers with a simple tutorial on a previous post, Frosted Vase Etched appeal and also my Mini Frosted Vases by clicking the titles in blue.

 

Hurricane Season

Wow, so its been a crazy week here. Our home was part of hurricane Isaac's path, but thankfully we didn't sustain serious damage. Being our power was just restored last night (thank goodness), I haven't been able to do to much for the blog. However, I do have a couple of pictures and videos for those of you who are interested.  I was able to video during the calmer parts of the hurricane being it was only a category 1.
The videos and pictures were taken from my phone, so please excuse the poor quality.

This is my neighbors house across the street. If you look closely you can see the wind whipping the rain back & fourth across the roof tops. It was much more intense watching it in person though.

 

This is my son's swing set and part of the back yard during the storm. We had tied the swing set down, but the wind was still able to pick it up and flip it.

During the eye of the storm we picked up two containers full of worms. Won't have to worry about fishing bait for a while!!

More photos of the back yard and some of the neighborhood...

 The winds were only 80 mph, which is why we didn't sustain much damage just mostly flooding. Also, our home was in the direct path. The homes East of the storm are those that tend to sustain the most damage from hurricane winds. For those of you who are familiar with hurricane Katrina, it was the Mississippi residents who suffered mostly because of the winds rather than Louisiana. Mississippi did sustain high flooding as well being they had to deal with both rising water from the gulf and rain which made it all more intense.  All and all Louisiana and Mississippi underwent some serious damages from Katrina. Thankfully this Hurricane (Isaac) wasn't nearly as severe as Katrina in 2005; however, those residents about 30 miles south of our community did suffer much more serious damages from Isaac.                                                 



 

 

 

There is a small ditch here that's usually about two feet wide under normal condistions, but as you can see here, this isn't normal conditions. The water submerges half of my neighbors' yards.  The photo below illistrates a better idea of that.

 





 For more footage of Hurricane Isaac, please click the link below.

 http://hiphopwired.com/2012/08/31/hurricane-isaac-causes-destruction-in-gulf-coast-downgraded-to-tropical-depression-photos/

 http://www.livescience.com/22841-inside-hurricane-isaac-s-eye-an-eerie-calm-video.html
 

LSU embellishments

Things have been a little hectic here; however, I have managed to get a few things done. Not quite where as much as I would have liked to get done, but some progress was made!!

These embellishments were completed in very little time; if only all embellishments took that little of time to complete!!

Materials:

• Small chipboard letters & Various (small) size Stars
• Paint: Apple Barrel Purple Pansy & Dandelion Yellow (you can switch out colors)
• Metallic Extra Fine Point Sharpie & Metallic Fine Point Sharpie (Don't have to use both, I choose to because I had both)
• Paint Markers for the sides of these tiny letters (if you want them that way)
• Glue pen
• E600 glue or Glue gun
• Small team emblems or any other items you wish to embellish with

I didn't use any sparkly trinkets because these are for a baby boy and I don't believe his father would have cared for his to have sparkles everywhere!! LOL!!

First, paint your small chip board letters in the color you choose as your base. I painted the sides of L, S, & U in yellow being they wouldn't get tiger stripes and then painted the front of them purple. Once they were dried I did another coat of yellow on the side in order to touch up any purple that may have gotten on the yellow. You can see in the picture above.

Using purple pansy as my base, I then painted all the other letters and some stars purple. Yellow wasn't added to the sides because those were about to receive tiger stripes. Once the purple was dried, I then took the metallic extra fine point sharpie to draw and shade in my tiger stripes on the letters.
For the star I used the same method; however, for the larger stripes I used the larger-tip sharpie. You don't have to use sharpie-brand, but if you do decide to use two different sized tip markers, be sure to use the same brand due to the variance in color.

Once your letters and stars are dried, you can now glue your stars together.  I choose to glue my smaller tiger-striped star on top of my larger purple star using E600 industrial glue.
It's not a big deal if the center stripes aren't perfect; you will cover that up.

To the left are the materials I used to make the star excluding the purple pansy paint along with the finished product of the two stars combined.


Once your star is complete, you can now secure your small emblem in the center of your star as shown below.

Using a glue pen apply your glue behind  your emblem and place it in the center of your star. Even though they these were already sticky, I recommend using glue to ensure security. The adhesives usually tend to ware off as time goes by; however, if you don't have a glue pen or craft glue, using the original adhesive can work. 

To the right is the completed piece.




Once my star was completely dried, I then glued it on the the letter "I" of the wall letters using the E-600 industrial glue.

 Completed!! Still have more of the wall letters to complete though.
I'll post a picture once they are all completed and of course more tutorials explaining the embellishments!!









Here is a better picture of the tiger-striped letters once completed. I orginonally was going to place them on his "T", but being he has two "T's" in his name, I'm not sure if it will look right to have to have one with the tiger letters and one without, especially since they are right next to each other.

 

By the way, all these photos where taken with my phone, so please excuse the imperfections.

Hope you enjoyed this and if you have any tips , please inform me!!

 

Have a wonderful day!!!



 

Collegiate Bow "LSU"

Just finished putting this bow together for a friend's two daughters. When I do come across "team" bows, they usually tend to consist of plain ribbon in the team colors with a small resin consisting of the team emblem or letters.

To give these a little more character, I Incorporated ribbons that had the team name while making the bow and in the in center piece; however, I also tried my best not to "over-do" it.

 Figured I'd post all the bows I made from this ribbon combination for you!! Hope you like, and it's not too overwhelming.

Some of the resins may be off-centered, but I hadn't yet secured them when I took the shots.

Any suggestions while I'm working on these would be deeply appreciated!!! Always open to new ideas and thoughts!! I hope to inspire you, as I would love to receive inspiration for you!!

Have a wonderful day and stay tuned!! ... you never know what will be next at this rate of un-organization!!! hehe!! I'll catch back up one day, hopefully sooner rather than later; thanks for being patient!!!

Stars, Stars, & More Stars

I know the number of post are beginning to decrease and I'm deeply sorry for that. There has been a small crisis along with other things going on; however, I was able to somehow get a few things accomplished during this period.
Although my son's room has a little ways to go before its completed, I figured I would share a couple ideas with you.

This first project is a simple and perfect way to include your child in the process of redesigning their room, even for children as young as 4 or 5 years of age.

Simple as baking cookies!!! ... and what little boy doesn't love space stars??

Clay Stars:   We used polymer clay and star-shaped cookie cutters.                                                                    

1. Using a roller, roll your clay on wax paper to your desired thickness.
2. Cut out your stars with the cookie cutter just as you would cookies.
3. Once you have all your stars cut out, bake in oven (on low)  or hot-plate (on low-medium). I prefer to use a hot plate; it allows you to bake them with more precision being you don't have to look at them through an oven door. If you choose to use an oven, you may want to keep them on low and check every 10-15 minutes, and adjust heat as needed.
4. After you have taken your stars out the oven, allow them to cool. Once cooled, you can then paint them. I use white acrylic gesso on this particular star before painting and the color came out much better than the other stars.
5. Now you can place these stars any where you wish!!

 Here's a photo of the stars my five year old cut out and painted!!

 These stars were embellished with additional stars and made into hooks for the wall.

 

Boy's Room Decore' and Organization

With hopes of your forgiveness for the lengthy time period of not posting, this is one of many post from my experience of reorganizing my son's room. Being we live in a rental-home that has few closets, it can get a little frustrating when there is no place to store toys, especially for a child who seems to have every toy ever created!!
If you have ever noticed in any of my pictures that expose the walls, you're probably wondering why they aren't cute and colorful... well, this is due to the reason is the same. My walls won't lack style once we are in a new house!!! he-he!!!

For those of you who have little boys, I'm sure you know how destructive they can get as well as how big of a mess they can make... So you can only imagine living without closet space!!



Paper Patterns that will be used in this room

I'm hoping to finish his room before he starts school. He should be able to have all his school clothes organized neatly in his room and in his reach in order to decrease the morning hassle and also increase his independence.



This is only two small ideas out of the many to come.



As of now this is his headboard; however, once I start placing everything on the wall, it may serve a different purpose.
Can you tell that I used coffee to stain this? Didn't have stain or varnish and didn't want to make a trip to the store; however, this was much cheaper and I rather the way it came out. It doesn't have that shine on it, which I rather for boy decore'.

A small shelf that will have hooks for hanging items. Have a little more to add on including the hooks, but there is a dark spot in the center that needs to be covered.

He is only age five. With that in mind, I plan on placing a rod to his level for hanging his clothes and intend to keep all his other school clothes and accessories at his level as well. Be sure to check back for those posts in the near future!!

Enjoy and have a wonderful day!!!