Pretty Mod Podged Boxes

One of my goals for this month was to decorate some boxes to hold my extra greeting cards and my paper scraps.  For some reason, I kept putting off my projects this month, and this one was really easy, so I'm not sure why I took so long to get around to it.  First, I grabbed an old mailing box and cut off the top flaps.  Then I measured (!) and cut pieces to fit the four sides with a bit of overlap.  I mod podged those onto the box and let it dry.

Meanwhile, I cut some coordinating purple cardstock dividers to separate my categories.  For my cards, I have birthdays, weddings/anniversaries, baby, thank you, and other.

I used some extra file labels that I had on hand to label the sections.  Functional and easy!

While I had my mod podge out, I also did a second container.  This bin came with my House Party kit when I threw the Pull-ups Party last month.  I had some cool square paper that I cut into pieces, and did an argyle pattern around the bin.

I love all the colors! Jonah had fun helping hand me the squares too, so yay for bonus time working on colors with him!

I still have to make some cardstock dividers for this one, but once I do, I'll put my paper scraps in here, which will be much better than the binder clips I've been using to hold stacks together.  Maybe then I can finally get to using some of them to make some more cards and other projects...

Thomas the Tank Engine Ornaments and Ornament Storage

It's that time of year: time to take down the Christmas decorations. We actually only ended up putting up the tree and a couple random things this year, rather than all of our stuff, which was fine by me.  Most of my decorations are breakable, so I plan on saving those for when the kids are older anyways, since I have limited "can't reach" space.  The few things we did have out, the kids loved playing with, so I'm happy with that.

One tradition we had growing up was that my mom would give us kids each a new ornament each year on Christmas morning.  I loved that, and I love having all of those ornaments on my tree now, so I wanted to continue that tradition.  This year, obviously, I didn't make it by Christmas morning.  But I still wanted to grab these super easy toy ornaments before I packed up the tree!

Step 1: Find a toy that represents something your child loves.  In this case, at least in our house, that would be Thomas the Tank Engine.  We have a huge drawer of trains, and we have some duplicates, so I just "borrowed" some of the extras.

Step 2: String some ribbon through a hole or around a part of the toy to hang it from the tree.

That's it!  That was really quick, and I have no excuse for not finishing those before Christmas.  I put them in the boys' new ornament boxes.  These are the $0.97 plastic bins from Walmart.  They're nothing special, but they will work for quite a few years before they get too full.  Next year I might make some cardboard dividers so they look a little neater, but for this year, they're fine.

Besides, my ornament container is stuffed!  Next year I will have to invest in another bin (I have one similar to this one), hopefully from an after-Christmas clearance sale, since we don't take the tree down until January anyways.

Christmas time is now officially over in our house.  When do you normally take down your holiday decorations?

Homemade Christmas Presents: Tile Coasters

One of my favorite parts of Christmas is creating and giving homemade gifts.  I always try to come up with something personalized that the person will really love and use.  I have seen several variations of these tile photo coasters around the blogs, and I knew I wanted to try them.

Materials:

• 4 or 5 plain white tiles ($0.16 each at Home Depot)
• Scrap felt for feet (so they don't scratch the table)
• Hot glue
• 4x6 photos, trimmed to size
• Mod Podge and a paintbrush

 After laying down some of my favorite comics (love Baby Blues!), I cut out some scrap felt squares for the "feet" for the coasters. 

I also trimmed my 4x6 photos to fit. 

Then I hot glued the felt to the bottom of the tiles.

And finally, I painted on a layer of Mod Podge.  It looks terribly streaky at first, but it does all soak into the paper and dry after a bit.  According to the bottle, you need to wait at least 15-20 minutes between layers, but I waited a little longer than that.

I ended up doing 5 layers of Mod Podge, and then I sprayed them with some clear fixitive to seal them.

Then I wrapped them up with some pretty ribbon and ta da! Homemade present!

Also, please excuse the messiness of my table in the photos.  A lot of crafting and baking has been happening here over the past few days...

Homemade Christmas Presents: Snowman Hot Cocoa Jars

Aren't these adorable? I made these up for some of our nieces and nephews for a little Christmas treat.  They are really simple to make. 

Jonah and Matthew helped me fill the jars.  The bottom one has 1/4 cup hot cocoa powder in it.  The middle one has M&Ms, and the top one has mini marshmallows.  I hot glued the 3 jars together, drew on a Sharpie face and buttons, and wrapped a ribbon scarf around their necks.  Easy!  I'm sure they will enjoy this yummy treat.

Bubble Magnets

It's been quite awhile since I made bubble magnets, but Jesse requested some for his big whiteboard at work, so I went through my magazines to find some pictures that I thought he might like.  

Here's a closer look at his magnets:

The top left is a little whale that says "Save Me" and the bottom left says "Take Me to the Moon", but they're pretty tiny and hard to read.  Jesse is interested in politics, so I made him a few political ones as well.

And I picked some fun ones as well, with Curious George, the Monopoly dude, and a puppy dog.

Then I made these for myself, except for one:

Coffee themed ones, as well as a Thomas the Tank Engine magnet for Jonah.

I actually used up almost all of my magnets making these, although I still have plenty of glass bubble stones left.  These are a fun project and make an awesome personalized gift.  The longest part is finding pictures to use.  You can see how to make the magnets here.

Ribbon and Button Bookmark: A Naptime Project

Naptime projects are quick, easy projects that can be done in less than an hour while the little one(s) sleep.

Even though I don't have a ton of time to read with the two kiddos running around, I still like to indulge occasionally.  (With most tv shows in reruns, I find I have a bit more time for reading at the moment) But if I leave my book anywhere the kids can reach, my bookmark will inevitably get yanked out  fall out completely on accident.  Enter the semi-kid-proof ribbon bookmark.  It's loose enough for me to slide it around a little bit, but secure enough that little fingers will have a hard time getting it off the book before I catch them.  I like that.

You can find the tutorial here, but it's pretty simple.  All you need is a length of ribbon, a button, and a hair elastic, plus some thread to put it all together.  And you can still find where you left off reading last month when the kids napped at the same time and you had nothing else to do...

Iron Craft 2012: Earth Day Challenge

The idea for this challenge was to use something you would normally throw away.  I don't normally save bottles after we're done drinking out of them (although I have crafted with the caps before), but I have seen a lot of yarn wrapped bottles on Pinterest lately, and I thought the were really cool.  I also have absolutely zero patriotic decor in my house, and since the next big (or at least big enough that I might decorate for it) holiday season is Memorial Day/4th of July, I decided to go with that color scheme.

I did the middle one first, which is why it isn't as proportional as the other two, but I really like how these turned out.  I used hot glue to attach the yarn at the top, and glued a line down the back (bit by bit, not all at once), so that as I wrapped the yarn, each loop around was held in place.  They're not perfect, but they're cute and simple.  I like them!

Swiffer Duster Refills

My April goal was to make washable refills for my Swiffer dusters.  I received both of these as free samples, and when we had the actual Swiffer dust cloths on them, Jonah and I dusted a lot because it was easy and kind of fun.  But then the cloths got icky, I threw them out, and we dusted less.  I didn't want to continually throw money away by buying more, so I decided to make these. 

I used the pattern here, and leftover fleece from Jonah's blanket and a Christmas gifted scarf.  Because I was hand sewing, each refill took me about an hour to cut and sew, but I think it was well worth the effort.  Some of our window ledges were extra dusty, but as you can see, the dusters picked up A LOT of dust.

I am so happy that these were on my project list, because I know dusting will become a regular chore once again.  And the best part is that since Jonah's is made of "his" fleece, he thinks dusting is the most awesome chore ever, and anything 3 feet and lower is already clean.  Awesome!

Potato Print Art

Yesterday Jonah and I made some potato print art. I saw the idea on Pinterest (of course), and it looked easy and fun.

Jonah liked using all of the colors, especially blue (his favorite).


I decided to do a pattern to match the colors of the boys' room. It turned out really nicely, except I messed up the pattern in one spot. I still like it though.

Now to figure out an inexpensive way to frame it...

Magnetic Denim Pen Pocket

Here is a quick easy project I have been wanting to do for a long time. We have a markerboard on our fridge where we write our lunch and dinner menu plan, as well as the start of the shopping list as we run out of things. But the markers have just been sitting on top of the fridge. No more!

I had a pair of jeans with a broken zipper, so I decided to cut one of the back pockets off for a marker pocket. I just stuck two of my magnets from making bubble magnets on the inside, and voila! marker pocket.

No more losing markers! I may still add some sort of pretty embellishment to the front of the pocket, but it works just fine as is.

Easy Magnets: A Naptime Project

Naptime projects are quick, easy projects that can be done in less than an hour while the little one(s) sleep.

We got two magnetic nativities for Christmas this year, both of which are really cool. The pieces punched out of a big magnet sheet, and I noticed that there were some pretty large empty magnet spaces, so I saved the punched out sheets.

I added lots of stickers wherever they fit. They're mostly state stickers, which have been sitting in my sticker collection for a long time, and then some Disney stickers I keep getting in random mailers.

The longest part was cutting them out, but even that didn't take very long.


And now we have a whole bunch of new magnets for Jonah to play with. I don't care if they get a little beat up, because they were free, and this means my nicer magnets might actually stay on the fridge! And, as a bonus, I still have some bits of the magnet sheets left if we get some more cool stickers!

Handmade Christmas: Fleece Scarf

One of our Christmas exchange relatives this year is a Steelers fan. So I decided to make her a Steelers themed fleece scarf. This is actually relatively simple. Stitch a straight(ish) line down the center. Then cut strips like you would for a fleece blanket. You can find the tutorial here, but it really is that simple.

This took me a few hours, because I had to hand-stitch the line down the center, but if you have a sewing machine, it will only take a few minutes to sew that, and a few more to cut the strips. Another gift that is customizable! Love those!

I'm planning to make a Cars one for Jonah with the leftover fleece from his blanket. He's excited...

Handmade Christmas: Bubble Magnets

These bubble magnets are one of my favorite gifts to make and give, because they're easy and you can customize them to the recipient. You can see the tutorial here.

I made two sets this year for part of our Christmas exchange. We have some on our fridge at home as well. Please ignore the uckiness of my cookie sheet - it needs a good cleaning.

Easy and unique! That's a good Christmas present. And as long as you have magazine pictures/patterns saved (I just tear them out as I read magazines and put them in an envelope with my crafts), this is definitely doable as a naptime project.

Coffee Creamer Snowman: A Naptime Project

Naptime projects are quick, easy projects that can be done in less than an hour while the little one(s) sleep.

I saw this guy on Pinterest (of course!) the other day, and I just happened to have a nearly empty bottle of creamer. This is a project that can take as little or as much time as you want. It took me about a minute to cut off the label and Sharpie on some features. And then I spent about 30 minutes knitting a little scarf for this guy. But you could just wrap a few strands of yarn around him for about the same effect.

As winter progresses, I expect more of these guys will make an appearance in my house. And then at the end of the season, I'll probably recycle them, but keep any decorative elements in a baggie for next year.

Birthday Cards: A Naptime Project

Naptime projects are quick, easy projects that can be done in less than an hour while the little one(s) sleep.

What's a birthday without birthday cards? I put these together for Jesse's birthday tomorrow, one from me, and one from the kids.

For the one from me, I used a patterned paper for the background, and sewed some little paper hearts together for a banner. I wrote him a note on the inside. That's not for you. :)


For the boys, I did a simple stick drawing, and a conversation bubble cut out from a magazine page. I let Jonah color a picture on the back.

Easy cards that will bring a smile to Jesse's face!

iDad T-Shirt: A Naptime Project

Naptime projects are quick, easy projects that can be done in less than an hour while the little one(s) sleep.


Jesse's birthday is on Thursday. He is a hard person to shop for, because there are a few boring things that he needs, and not too much that he wants. So I decided to make him an iDad shirt, since he likes his iPad so much. I had seen a few freezer paper tutorials for putting designs on shirts, but a) I couldn't find freezer paper, b) I didn't want to cut out the stencils for this text because that would have been hard, and c) we already had this print and iron-on paper.

I went to good old Wikipedia and discovered that Apple's font is a variation of Garamond, so I just used that. Close enough. For the iron-on, you have to reverse the text, so I made my words into WordArt in Microsoft Word so that I could flip them around. It took me a little while to figure out how to do that, which is why I mention it. (The little words say "Established 2009", by the way - that's when Jonah was born).


I printed it out yesterday and stuck it in a drawer (it's supposed to dry for at least 30 minutes, and I figured the kids would be awake by then). So I ironed it on today. Finished shirt! The whole thing was pretty inexpensive (Walmart sells plain t-shirts in the craft section for just over $3.00), and I think he'll find it funny, like I do.

Fall Wreath: A Naptime Project

Naptime projects are quick, easy projects that can be done in less than an hour while the little one(s) are asleep.

Since summer is about over here in our neck of the woods, I figured it might be time to take down the mini umbrella wreath and put up something for fall. I have been seeing a lot of these yarn wrapped wreaths on Pinterest lately, and I wanted to try one. It didn't hurt that I had a wreath form and a ton of yarn on hand. A wreath form that was covered with diapers and given to me at my baby shower TWO AND A HALF YEARS AGO and has been sitting in my craft pile ever since. Pretty sure it was more than time to use it.

Wrapping the wreath form took me about 40 minutes. I did it while catching up on an episode of CSI. Adding the red and yellow accent colors took less than 10 minutes (and that long only because I was using up some scrap pieces, so I had to keep tying them on in the back). I added some pretty ribbon and voila! Fall wreath.


It's simple, but pretty. I like it!

Wedding Invitation Ornaments: A Naptime Project

Naptime projects are quick, easy projects that can be done in less than an hour while the little one(s) are asleep.

I know, wedding season is basically over. But I actually have two more weddings that I was invited to that will be in October. The rest of you can save this idea for next year...

I found this on Pinterest, of course, but here's the link to the original. It's so simple, and a lovely way for the couple to display their wedding invitation.

The first one I made for my uncle's wedding. I cut the invitation into strips, and rolled it around a pencil. I put the strips into a clear glass ornament and tied a pretty ribbon on top.

The second one is for my cousin. I like this one better, because I was able to get some of the strips to stretch out (like their names). In both ornaments I tried to get the parts with the important information (date, names, church, etc.) to show. It worked better in the second one, I think.

This project technically took place over 2 naptimes, because I started it and then the kids woke up, but it took me maybe 10 minutes total. Piece of cake!

Easy Cards: A Naptime Project

Naptime projects are quick, easy projects that can be done in less than an hour while the little one(s) are asleep.

My sister-in-law and her husband's anniversary was last week, and my Grandma's birthday is this week. These cards were really easy to make - I took a couple plain folded cards, covered the fronts with scrapbook paper, and embellished.

For the birthday card, I just added a square box for "Happy Birthday!"

For the anniversary card, I used a cutout heart from a wedding card. You see, awhile back, I went through all of our cards and cut out pictures that I could use for gift tags or projects like this.


A little gluestick, and ta-da! Easy cards!

Mini Umbrella Wreath: A Naptime Project

Naptime projects are quick, easy projects that can be done in less than an hour while the little one(s) are asleep.

I knew as soon as I saw this project on Pinterest that I would be making it. I just had to find a time to do so. Naptime today seemed like a good time.

I bought these little drink umbrellas several years ago to decorate for something in college. I forget what exactly. It's been awhile. Maybe my birthday party freshman year? And they've been sitting with my crafty supplies ever since. I also used a dollar store wreath, and ribbon that I had on hand to hang it. That means, total cost for this cute little summer wreath: $1!

I poked somewhere around 22 umbrellas through the wreath. Then I made sure to trim the backs, because yikes! that would hurt. And would make it stand out from the door funny.

And then I hung it up. All in all, it took me about 20 minutes, but only because I tried a couple lengths of ribbon before I settled on nice and short.


How cute and summery!

P.S. Crafty Link-Up will be back next week. It slipped my mind to finish up the post yesterday.