Finally! - no really it has been busy

I know you are probably wondering if I have dropped off of the face of the earth and believe me there are times that I wonder too.  I have had a couple of months of complete madness.  I am using this excuse because of sick kids, growing another kid, and birthdays.  So I thought that I would show you some of the crafts that I did but have not posted yet.  First - I had a party to give my little girl and all she wanted was a "princess" cake with a yellow dress.  After fretting about how to make it, I decided to try fondant for the first time.  I have to say that I love that stuff.  So here is a picture with how it turned out. 

Next, yes - I did say that I had to grow another kid.  So I am pregnant and due in November and just loving getting sick around 3 pm and staying sick until I eat breakfast.  I swear my poor husband will never eat another bowl of mini-wheats as long as he lives.  He has been a trooper with helping with cooking for our family because I can't stand the thought or the smell of food.  Thankfully, I am starting to get over some of the sickness and just starting to look and feel fat. :) 

Last but not least, I have been busy with life.  Sick kids are all around and I just love having to clean the smell of puke and other ailments out of the carpet - especially when I am having a hard enough time keeping any food down as it is.  I promise that I made some things though - Here are a couple of pictures for mother's day.  I made a cute card for my mother-in-law and somehow (spouse anyone?) it was erased.  So you don't get to see that but you get to see the darling flower that I made to put on her present.  I had a blast making it with my cricut. 

Here is the picture of the card that I made for my mom for mother's day.

I also made around 11 birthday cards for my mom because of her calling and I forgot to take any pictures of those so you don't get to see that either.  I know I am a slacker.  I do have a great idea for my next project and I am going to make 2 so I can give away one to a follower.  So here are the rules - You will have to be signed up as a follower to receive one entry into the drawing, you can get a second entry by commenting on the next blog too.  I don't have that many followers so your chances are looking good. :)  I will give you a tease of what it is -  It is a spinoff from the crayon rolls that you see around alot.  That is all the hints that I will give so you will need to stay tuned!  Have a great day and I hope that I will start getting more faithful about posting again.  Thanks!

Tricia - Crafty blonde chick

Darling little girl's skirt...

Hope you had a great Easter.  We woke up to around 6 inches of snow and it felt more like winter than spring.  We still had a great time and I love having an excuse to have so much chocolate in the house. 

I found this website that had a Easy Skirt Tutorial and I wanted to try one out for my little girl.  The size that it made was around a 2T to 3T.  I had this darling fabric that I wanted to use that I got out of the bargin bin and I knew that it would be great as a skirt.  The website's skirt used only 2 patterns of fabric and I wanted to use all of these fabrics because they work so well together so I modified the pattern just a little.

First - look at how cute this fabric is....

Okay now that you know how cute the fabric is you probably agree with me that I had to use it. 

In the tutorial it states that the bottom piece of the fabric is 34" by 5.25" so I cute that out of this fabric..

I then finished the edge by using a zigzag stitch since I am not rich enough for a serger. :) 

The top part of the skirt was listed on the tutorial as 28" by 9".  I wanted to use 4 types of fabrics so I just divided it by 4 and came up with 7" each.  I wanted to do 2 pieces of each fabric so that would be 8 total pieces (2 each) of 4" by 9" to account for a 1/2" seam allowance.  I sewed 4 pieces together (just one of each fabric) and it turned out like this.

So after sewing all the top pieces together - I then sewed the bottom piece.  On this piece you use your widest straight stitch and then pull through the top thread to slightly gather it.  When it is gathered enough that it is the same width as the top piece, pin, and sew it on.  Then the skirt will look like this.

Now you can sew in the elastic.  I had zigzag stitched the top of the skirt so I could just fold it once.  After folding it down (leaving enough room for the elastic) I stitched it and put the elastic through using a safety pin.  I then top stitched it to help hold the elastic in place since I hate it when your elastic folds and twists. 

Then I hemed the bottom of the skirt and sewed it together.  I had to modify it a little by trying it on my little girl to make sure that it fit.  I figured I would make sure that it stayed on her since I had her here to try it on for me. :)

Here is the end result - Darling isn't it!

Try it - it is easy and well worth the little amount of effort!

Tricia

Easter madness!

It has been a while since I posted because I have been going crazy trying the finish a dress for my little girl and trying out a bunch of other crafts from the blogs that I follow.  So here is what I have been up to.  In my family growing up we would always get church clothes for Easter and I am trying to follow that tradition in my family.  So I found some darling fabric that comes like this at JoAnns:

and a idea was born for a cute spring/summer dress for my little girl.  I figured I would just measure, cut, sew and maybe add some straps and voila!  I would have a darling dress.  Well, the material is pretty thin so I had to put a liner in the dress and then I wanted to add some ribbon and buttons for the straps.  I am not good at making button holes so after some thinking on my part, my husband told me to put snaps on it.  So that problem was solved.  Then I tried to make a dress for her baby doll but too much work for something that will be thrown into the bottom of her toy chest.  My daughter has a thing for taking the clothes off of the dolls and doesn't bother putting them back on.  Anyway - So I got the dress finally finished and it looks great at least that is what I think.  Here it is -

The second one is a close up on the cute little straps and buttons.  I am pretty proud of myself since this is my first dress sewing attempt. 

On to the next project - I decided then that I have all this cute flannel left over from my girl's blanket that I made for her crib and her birthday is coming up so I decided that I would make something for her baby dolls.  She likes to sing to them and put them to sleep or "night - night" as we call it around here.  I decided to make a sleeping bag for her doll.  I just made 2 small blankets and then sewed them together leaving an opening at the top and a small opening on the side so you would be able to fold it down like a real sleeping bag.  I love to applique so I did a flower on the front of the bag.  I then tried out my first ruffle and it was sooo cute that I added it to the front too.  Here is the finished product with a baby doll in it - sorry about the condition on the doll - just be glad that you can't see that she has no clothes on (See comments above).

Here is a close-up of the applique and the ruffle -

Lastly, I was following one of my favorite blogs and she did a flower week and so I just had to try out some of her flowers.  Some of them are links to other blogs so I will just give you a link to her blog and you can check them all out.  These are the ones that I made and you can find instructions on Lolly Chops

 

They are all easy to make and they are all shown on Lolly's blog. 

That was my week and that didn't even count the vacuuming everytime one of the kids would get into the tomato seeds that we planted or any other catastrophe that we had.  I hope you have a great time and enjoy reading this post.  Try out these flowers they are a blast to make. :)

Tricia

It's all about baby .... girls that is!

So there is always someone having a kid around my neighborhood and I love making baby stuff.   I decided that I would make something for a baby girl because I went a little crazy with the scrapbooking supplies when I had my girl and need to use some up to make more room right. :)  So here are two gift and card sets for a baby girl that I made this week.  The first one is just a card and I made a bag on the cricut that is the perfect size for a gift card.  I don't know any mom that doesn't love a gift card to a baby store or just for diapers.  Those diapers seem to eat up the budget pretty fast.  The finished card size is 4 1/2" x 6" and I used scraps of paper and a stamp stepped up with some color and sparkles.  The bag is 4" tall and I used the same stamp that I got at Micheals forever ago.  On the bag, I used just scraps of paper too.  Don't forget to ink the edges. 

The second set I decided to make a frame for the new baby girl's picture with a card to match.  The frame is 8x10 but with the mat - it will fit a 4x6 photo.  The perfect size for a newborn picture from the hospital or a really cute snapshot that grandma took.  I love the flower on the frame and the smaller one on the card.  It was super easy and I got the idea from a website that used to sell some scrapbooking supplies but has shut down their sales.  The website is one heart one mind and when I last looked they had shut their sales down but not the website so you can still see their ideas.  Anyway - the flowers were soo soo easy to make.  You just punch or cut out circles and ink the edges.  Then fold them and overlap them on each other till you have the size of the flower you want and put something in the middle.  I used a brad on the frame and a button on the card.  They both turned out so cute - Look!

Here is a close-up of the flower on the card so you can see how easy it is. 

My sister who does a blog called Craft Affection says that she has seen this flower used on fabric for a cute hairbow too.  I just might have to try that. 

 

So I am done posting another craft and next time I hope to do something different.  I found some very cute fabric at JoAnn's on sale and I really need a new quilt for our master bedroom so I am going to try a new pattern for a quilt and hopefully it will turn out.  Here is a picture of the fabric --

If you have any interesting but beginner quilt patterns let me know.  I just might use them.  Next post I hope to have a giveaway too!  So stay tuned.

Tricia

Cards, cards, and more cards

There is nothing that I love more than making cards.  I would rather do that than scrapbook because lets face it - the gratification is faster than when you are making a scrapbook page.  Maybe it is because I just can't decide what pictures to use when I make the scrapbook page or I just have too many.  I have posted a picture of some of the birthday cards that I have made.   Let me know what you think and I would love to see a picture of your cards that you make.  

Enjoy your crafting today! 

Tricia