Lace and Burlap Decorative Banner: Wedding Decor

This banner was really so easy!
I don't know if you heard the story, but I was asked to come up with some wedding decor for my SIL two days before the wedding. Not much time right. The good news in all this was almost all of the decor was borrowed from a girl who had just had a wedding with a simliar theme. It is always a good idea to save money. We went to work using the material we borrowed and turning it onto something all our own. I think what made this banner work so well was the contrast of textures.
 (Thanks to my friend Ashley for helping me with this!!)

 This is what I used:
Lace with lots of sparkles on it from Joann's
Muslin (two different types)
burlap
twine
satin fabric in beige
A crystal Christmas tree garland

 This is how you do it!!
First of all most of the fabric was already pre-cut because it had been used as chair ties for the previous wedding. We only had to cut the satin and one other type of muslin. We did this simply by making a small cut in the fabric and then ripping it the rest of the way. Each type of fabric varied in width.

We tied a length of twine to two chairs in our desired length and began to loosely tie the fabric to the twine in a desirable pattern. When we were done with the fabric we were able to detach the Christmas tree garland by the rings it used to connect each crystal together. We layered it between the fabric. I'd say it was about 18-24 inches long.

It was simple and just the right touch!

 Happy Crafting!
XOXO,
 Amy

Tulle Pom Pom Topiary DIY

I really don't need an excuse. I love to make pretty things. I love to create and since we have one more family birthday party coming up, I feel like I had good reason to make these beauties. 

 I made the tulle pom poms using the tutorial I found here. However, I did modify the project a bit to make my pom pom a little bit larger. I used to 8 in paper plates as my template to wrap the tulle around.

 and they turned out like this:

To finish the look, I filled three tins with rice, tied a hot pink ribbon around the center and then hot glued the pom pom onto the top of wooden skewers.

The fun thing about this little project is that you can modify the colors to match the color scheme of any party! And all of the supplies are relatively inexpensive. Just go to your local dollar store and look around!

Happy Crafting!
XOXO,
 Amy

Party one and Two: Done and Done

I have a confession to make. I ran out of time. Plain and simple. I had a grand plan of amazing birthday decor that would transform our house from ordinary to extraordinary, but alas it was not meant to be. Between the two youngest getting sick and a mid week photo shoot (which I was happy to do) I had to go into necessity mode: meaning kids don't care too much about decor but they do want to eat and they do want to play fun games. Plus I had a handful of my old skirts that I needed to resize to give to my girls as birthday gifts. So while  I had dreams of decor that looked like this and this, it simply didn't happen. Not to worry though! The kids didn't know what was missing and a good time was had by all! 

Here is a small recap! 

 I used the hanging rosette balls that I made for Raia's birthday. You can find the tutorial here. 

Mine are slightly different.

"C" for Cambria's birthday

I tried my hand at some tissue paper pom poms. Find the tutorial here. (Mine don't look like Martha's because frankly, I'm not Martha. It feels good to get that off my chest:)

 "K" for Kiera's birthday.

I put scrapbook letters on skewers and stuck them in a bowl of rice

Here is a close up. You could hot glue them so you can't see the tape, but I didn't know how to do the dot on the "i" I guess I could have done a capital. Of course, you could also cut around the tape better. Ninja vanish!

We played pin the bow on the LalaLoopsy for party number two. I free handed this image onto a poster board after I used my large round laundry basket to trace a circle.

We played pin the bow on the Hello, Kitty for party number two!  I also free handed this.

My hubby provide entertainment while this kids waited in line:)

We had coloring pages . . .(free handed this too)

My dear friend, Ashley, of Bany Canyon, who is incredibly amazing at many things made this little outfit for my Kiera so she could feel like a Lalaloopsy.

back:

We played this AWESOME game. Put a baseball in one leg of a nylon (we used little girl tights) and knock down a row of water bottles. You can do it as a minute to win it game and try and knock them down in one minute, but we did it as a relay. Knock a bottle down, then race back and hand your headwear to the next kid in line. They loved this and wanted to do it again and again.

Then we had another relay. We used two big kitchen serving spoons in which we place an egg. The runners goal was not to drop the egg.

They had to jump over an ice chest . . .

go around the toy car . . .

and drop the egg in the basket before running back to tag their teammates hand. This was also a lot of fun and a big hit with the kids.

We ended the day with ice cream cake a birthday song and lots of presents!

We did the same thing two days in a row with two different sets of birthday girls and two different groups of kids and both groups had so much fun, though the 9 year olds were WAY more competitive. I hope this can give you a few ideas on which to make your own!

Now, I just have one more party to survive throw! The family party that will be in a few weeks. I have saved all the decorations and maybe just maybe I'll get to add a few. We'll see!

Follow my birthday party ideas on Pinterest! There are a million fun ideas out there!

Happy Crafting!
XOXO,
 Amy

Birthday on the Brain

In my family we will soon celebrate two birthdays almost back to back. My two oldest girls are two years apart with brithdays three days apart. It is almost like Christmas all over again as far a gifts are concerned. Maybe more so since we only get the kids roughly three gifts each for Christmas. Anyhow, My oldest daughters class has a tradition of spot lighting the birthday kid with an "all about me" poster that is displayed in the classroom. I started to rummage through old scrapbooks for pictures to display and quickly realized, I needed something more. Something to make the poster stick out 3D style. It is some much more appealing to the eye:) I had seen cute little scrapbook paper banners here and there and thought they were cute. So I thought it was time I try out making my own.

I stole a triangle from a shape puzzle that my kids rarely play with anymore and began tracing.

Then I cut out the triangle shape and glued them to a thin grosgrain ribbon and my banner was done- so easy and yet so satisfying!

Next . . .

I wanted to make some kind of flower embellishment. I got the idea for these cute tissue flowers badges here, from Fave Crafts:

Unfortunately, I didn't have all the same scrapbooking tools that she has. So I folded the blue tissue paper so that I would be cutting through four layers, then I traced the shape of a large plastic cup and a small glass cup with a pencil and cut the paper using the scissors above. Then I scrunched them up until I was happy with the "badge look" and hot glued them together (using just a tiny dap of glue in the center of each tissue petal). Then I printed out my phase and cut it in the circular shape you see in the picture and hot glued that on too! Then I used my favorite zebra print ribbon, cut two short strips, cut a triangle shape in the middle by folding the ribbon and cutting on the fold toward the top of the fold.

I think these made perfect embellishments for an otherwise boring poster. Cambria said all the kids in her class thought it was the fanciest poster they had ever seen! I'll take the compliment. My other daughter also took pause to compliment my craftiness. I'll take the compliments now before they get to the age where they think I don't know anything:)

Here are some other fun banners to look at: From Bandy Canyon:

From the Toy Maker, Happy Spring Banner- thetoymaker.com

From:  At Second Street  An America Banner

Hope You find some inspiration for your  next event!

Happy Crafting!

XOXO,

 Amy

Getting Ready To Party

My Baby Girl is turning one this week and this could very likely be the last first birthday party that I throw (sniffle).

I have been having such a difficult time deciding what to do for her party since she really isn't "into" anything (accept all the stuff that she shouldn't be into)

After searching for ideas, I think I am just going to go girly and feminine. I got some great Ideas from a blog called "The fickle Pickle" You best go check it out:)

My color schemes and materials are not quite the same, but I'll let you know how it turns out:)

edit: Find the tutorial for these hanging roses here.

Make the world prettier today!

xo!