Flower Pin Cushion

Continuing with the flower theme.....

I made my mother-in-law, a flower pin cushion for Mother's Day.

I'd been wanting to make one of these for some time now. It's made with cute printed fabric for the petals, a solid fabric for the middle, fiberfill, felt and a golf tee. The golf tee goes on the bottom, so that it can be put in a spool of thread for ease and convenience.

They were so fun and cute, I made several.

To Evelyn: If by chance, the moon, stars and planets have aligned just right and you are reading this, sorry for the spoiler... it's in the mail. Love you. Happy Mother's Day!

Harry Potter's Book of Spells

As you may know, kids in school equals lots of friend birthday party invites. I have a philosophy of not spending a lot of money on friend gifts... especially if I don't know the friend well. Because of this, I have GIFT BINS. I find things on clearance or super inexpensive and then put them away in a Rubbermaid tote, until a party pops up.

Just recently, my GIFT BINS have been getting low and my gift funds, even lower. So when Treyson was invited to a birthday party a few weeks ago, we made the gift. We put together a MAGIC TRICK set. I got on the internet and looked up simple magic tricks, then printed them onto cardstock, cut them up and bound them with a metal binder ring. Next, we gathered all the supplies needed for each magic trick and put them into a little plastic carrying tote. To top the kit off, we made a magic wand. I painted a wooden dowel black and then added glitter to one end for that magic sparkle. His friend's mom loved it...hope the friend did too. :)

Treyson was again invited to a friend's birthday party this week. Funds still being low, we decided to make another gift. The theme of the party was Harry Potter.

I went onto the internet and looked up "homemade Harry Potter gifts". I found a site that showed how they made a Harry Potter wand with a wooden dowel and hot glue. First gift idea, CHECK!

Next, I found a site that had all the Harry Potter Spells listed. This was a detailed list. It had the pronunciations, descriptions, where the spell was used in the movie or book and some even had the Latin roots to the spell's name. Second gift idea, CHECK!

I took the wooden dowel and sanded down one end to make it tapered. Next I hot glued around the dowel to give it some texture and make it look wand-like.
Then I spray painted it brown and called it done.

For the cover of the Book of Spells, I used an empty cereal box and paper grocery bag. I sprayed adhesive to the box and bag and then trimmed the bag around the cardboard. Next, I used brown ink to "age" the cover. I also burnt the edges with matches in some places to give a worn look. Finally, I took a cool metal button and some red ribbon and made a closure for the book.

For the inside, I copy and pasted the spells from the internet sight, printed them off in brown ink, then "aged" the pages with more brown ink.

I thought about many ways to bind it, but decided I would try and machine sew the 24 pages together.... and it worked! Then I hot glued the group of pages to the cover.

It wasn't exactly what I had envisioned initially. It was more of a Spell binder/folder, than a book, but I think it turned out fine.

The mom of this birthday boy loved the gift and emailed to tell me. Hope the birthday boy loved it as well. If not, at least I'm scoring points with the moms. :)

12 Days of Christmas

As a gift to my primary class this year, I gave them the 12 Days of Christmas. A fun way to count down to Christmas and remember the Savior during the season.

The original idea was to use a real nativity set and leave a new piece on the doorstep each night, along with a poem about the piece. I knew that wouldn't work for me since I have 12 kids in my class.... too much money and too much delivery time.

So I did the affordable thing. I printed off this cute nativity set onto cardstock, cut them out and put a magnet on the back (so it could be displayed on a refrigerator or magnet board.)
Then I wrapped each piece individually, with it's corresponding poem and numbered them in the order they were to be opened. I put them into a large envelope and wrapped the envelope with wrapping paper, so it felt like a "real" Christmas gift. (I secretly hoped they weren't disappointed when they opened it.)

I've had several mother reports that the kids DID like it and are enjoying opening a new piece each night. Whew. Maybe it's the mom's being nice... or maybe they really are getting into the "reason for the season".

Merry Christmas!!!

Fruit-a-licious

One of Jason's former employees brought this to him yesterday. She says she's starting a new business making these fruit "baskets". (It was actually a fruit pot.)

Almost too pretty to eat...almost.