Where has the time gone!

Wow, I can't believe how fast my kids are growing up. My little girl isn't so little anymore and is becoming a lovely young lady. My son is turning into an amazing young man This evening I got to them off to prom.  Since we homeschool, the kids go to a "prom" sponsored by one of the local churches. They met some friends at the event (that are also homeschooled.) I found a picture of 3 of the four of them from several years back on "crazy hat" day.

 Looking at them now I only catch glimpses of the smiling young faces of yesterday, but that's ok. I love seeing who they are becoming!

They call me "MOM"

With the festivities of Mother's day this past weekend, I didn't have a chance to share one of my favorite pages.

The light tan is a hidden journaling spot that reads: I always wanted to be a mom, cause I had such a great one! I couldn't believe when you came into my life. One by one you changed me with your smiles and your love. Each one of you is special and amazing, every day I marvel that the Lord has given you to me and that you call me "mom"!

When I was taking this years "mother's day" photos I was thinking about this page. How grown-up all my kids are getting. They have changed in so many ways since this page was created. My oldest is now 6'4" my younger son is now taller (by over a head) than his "big" sister. But the changes have been more than just physical. Their convictions are stronger. Their passions are greater. They have new hobbies and friends. Their love has grown and expanded. I get to see the young men and women they are becoming and they are amazing people and still they call me "mom" and because of that I am very very blessed!

Supplies: MME laundry line, Prisim cardstock, MME Bohemian embossed chipboard, AC letter stickers, prima flowers, Heidi Swapp gemstones, Border from? (it's from an old MWE kit) glue dots, and fiskars adhesive.

Tie Dying!

I love our homeschool group. We meet for field trips, special classes and once a month meet for activity day. Activity days have different themes could be science related or history themed, or occupations, or just fun days. This was our last activity day of the school year so we had a field day. This year I again had the privilege of helping the kids tie dye shirts. Being a crafter I have tie dyed before but it's usually with the store bought dyes. For our activity day there is an AWESOME gal named Cheri that gets all of the supplies for it and the good stuff, the professional strength doesn't run off in the wash dye. Now it's always crazy doing this type of project with so many kids but I LOVE it. (Granted I do come home a bit "colorful") Even though things are crazy before we clean up, I get a chance to sneak in a project of my own.

This year I wanted to try making a tie dyed heart.
I saw a fabulous video on Tulip

The process was simple but took some patience to get things lined up.  First you dampen your shirt and fold it in half. Then using a pencil draw a 1/2 of heart shape (like you were going to cut one out of paper.)

Then carefully starting at the bottom of the heart fold and scrunch the shirt up along the line. You want your pencil marks to line up in a straight line. When you are finished scrunching you can adjust the folds to make sure things line up perfectly.










Then tightly rubber band it. Follow with a second one about an inch away from the first for a double heart.

Finally add additional bands underneath depending on the number of colors or personal preference.  I only wanted two colors to alternate to make it really stand out.  Those colors are actually Orange and Pink but it looks read both in the photo and real life.

For dying, the "top color" will be the center of the heart, the 2nd space is the "space around the heart" the 3rd space is your outside heart. Finally the rest of the shirt color.

After the dye has set, and you have removed the bands your shirt will look like:





















I have a blast doing this. I thank Cheri for being our "fearless" leader into the world of tie-dye  and all the moms that I have privilege to work with that make the day so much fun!

Scrap Challenge the sequel

So when I made the shadow box canvas I had a piece of canvas left over from where I cut out the canvas to form the shadow box. I saved it because it was a nice piece of mod-podged canvas and knew I could figure out something to do with it. Today in the midst of my second round of using your scraps challenge I decided what to do with it. Since it was sturdy and covered in music, I figured it would be a good basis for a book mark for my violin playing girls.


 I pulled out my Fiskars Ultra Shape Express and my
 Journaling/Bracket template and cut out a couple of shapes and then used a smaller template to cut out tabs to hold the book mark in place. Some ribbon thread through the hole punched in the top and then a quick monogram with some velum stickers. To finish them off I added a music note I punched out of vinyl. 

My daughters being not just violin players but avid readers LOVED the combination of their two favorite hobbies!

Supplies used: Canvas scrap, photo copied music, "antiqued"(Tim Holtz distress Ink-Vintage photo), Mod Podge, Ribbon, Velum Stickers-font wordsworth, black vinyl, Fiskars- Ultra Shape Express Journaling and Bracket Template, music note punch, Crop-a-dial.

Scrap Challenge

There is such a good feeling whenever I have a paper crafting marathon. I get a ton accomplished, the downside is the clean-up. I try to make clean up fun by challenging myself to make something out of the scraps. The deal is I can't use ANY new supplies I must use what is already out. I also can't pull out extra cardstock and such I can only use the scraps. Now naturally the cards won't be "standard" size, but I can make little gift cards and tags that are perfect to tuck inside a gift or a quick to/from on a present.

It's fun to see what I can come up with and I love the challenge of only using what is in front of me it forces me to be creative! This time I made 11 in the first sitting and 3 more with the scraps I found behind my desk. There is no end to the combinations and even the tiniest scrap can become a photo corner or punched out shape

The Green and the Gold

So last year around football playoff time I got into a little bet with my pal Kelly over on Fiskateers. Kelly's from Wisconsin home of the Cheeseheads er Packers. I being a good Chi Town gal am a Bears fan. We tried to see who had the most fans (that would post) on Fiskateers, Bears or Packers. Well sadly my fellow Bears fans were a HUGE disappointment to me and more Packers fans showed up and posted. So I lost. That meant I had to make something green and gold for Kelly.  I knew just the project I wanted to make for her and went out and bought green and gold yarn and was going to start the project for her BUT

Right after that, our family received some bad news that sent us into a spin. Everything stopped for awhile. We needed to not only take in the news but process it and form a plan of action. We then had to make it through the holidays. My project for Kelly got buried under a pile of deadlines and paperwork.

I recently cleaned out my area and found the supplies I purchased for Kelly's prize I had a chance to sit down today and make it for her.





To start I needed mini pom-poms. I had heard it was possible to create them using a fork and wanted to try it because the size would be perfect.

You start with wrapping yarn around a fork 50 times or so (depending on thickness of yarn) thicker yarn 50 thinner yarn could take up to 80-90 times.

To tie off the pom pom you want to take another piece of yarn about 12-14" long and tie the middle of the yarn. Thread the yarn from between the 2nd and 3rd prongs and up and around the pom pom. Tie it tightly in a double knot. I did this a couple of times. Each time allowed me to get it a bit tighter. You need this to be secure as it will hold the pom pom together.

Your finished pom pom will be around 1 to 1 1/2" You can use the ties to tie your pom pom onto what you want to. Or you can do like I did and glue them onto gloves. I made Kelly her very own pair of Packers pom-pom gloves.

GO BEARS errr Packers ;)

Blanket for Grandma

So ya know when you walk into Hobby Lobby needing one item for a project you are trying to finish and wind up getting something to do an entirely different project. That's how it was a couple of weeks ago. I went into pick up something and my daughter found music polar fleece. This wasn't just ANY polar fleece with random music notes no, this at the ALTO clef sign on it. (My mom plays viola, viola plays alto clef, the way she explains it is "ya know the notes in the white space between the treble clef and bass clef...that's what the viola plays, that's alto clef." Because it's such a rare symbol when we find things WITH that symbol we have to get them, only this time it involved an entirely new craft project.

So the girls and I set out to make a no-sew polar fleece blanket for grandma. These are a lot of fun to make and warm too. The girls couldn't resist getting a quick snuggle in under the blanket before wrapping it up for Grandma for Mother's day!