Daily December- week 2

I love it when I get into my crafting groove. I love sitting down at our dining room table covering the entire surface with all of my craft supplies- making us eat supper on our laps sometimes! This is what my table looked like last week when I was working on my daily December album. Week 2 is ready to go now!

I'm using the card sleeve to seperate days 8 & 9.

day 10

Day 11. I'm waiting to add all of my embellishments when I actually do my pages. I'm going to keep it simple- tape ribbon, stickers and a little journaling.

Day 12- this might be my favorite! There's an overlay on the silver page that says live, laugh, love. A great mantra for any month, but especially December.

Day 13.

Day 14. Half way there!

origami crane mobile

 Not long after my son, Simon, was born I came across this post on Ohdeedoh and I knew that I wanted to make an origami crane mobile for Simon's room. I went to Michaels and picked up a pack of origami paper and went to work folding the cranes. Here's a tutorial, I think that it's the one that I used. I couldn't choose just one colour family to stick with, so I used them all. Once the cranes were all made, I threaded them on a piece of fishing line, tying a knot after each crane to keep them in place. 

Then, I headed to the Home Depot to get a piece of dowel to use as a mobile frame. I asked them to cut the dowel into 12 inch pieces. I probably could have made one a little bit bigger, but I wanted to keep the birds in a bit of a cluster. I used an acrylic white paint to paint the dowels. Then, I just made a cross with the sticks and secured them like that by wrapping the fishing line around them in a X shape. I tied on the strings of cranes to the mobile frame. The mobile is suspended from a hook in the ceiling. 

I'm so pleased with how the mobile turned out. I love all the colours. I think that it looks great hanging up in Simon's room- the only problem is that now Claire wants one for her room.

Linking up with Craft-O-Maniac & The DIY Show Off.

Daily December- week 1

I'm trying so hard to put the finishing touches on my Daily December album this year. I've wanted to do it for a few years now, but somehow I've never been organized enough to do it. If you've never heard of this project read more about it here. It essentially documents the month of December through photos and journaling. Here are my pages for the first week:

Cover

I've cut up a few sheets of plastic that you use for storing cards and placed them throughout the album.

The #6 is actually on a transparency, just to add another element to the album.

I also cut out a few tags using my cricut. I thought they might be good to journal on- I might take them out if I don't end up using them.

freezer stenciling

Not too long ago I discovered this fantastic blog called I Am Momma- Hear Me Roar. If somehow you aren't already a huge fan of the blog then you need to go check it out. Anyway, on there you'll find an awesome tutorial on freezer stenciling. You really need to watch Cheri's video and then you too will be set to freezer stencil. I have so many more projects that I want to make using this technique.

This is my newest one. If this doesn't want to make me do the dishes then I don't know what will.

I'm not going to do an in-depth tutorial here since Cheri's is so awesome- but here are the basics. You need fabric paint, paint brush, t-shirts (or tea towels), freezer paper (parchment paper will not work, not that I tried that first or anything!), and an iron. I also used my cricut cutter to cut out my shapes, but you could use a utility knife and trace out a shape.

Once you have the shapes cut out and place them on your shirt (or towel). Run the iron over the freezer paper. It seriously only takes a few seconds for the paper to stick.

Then paint and let dry

And that's all there is to it! I love my new dish towel, unfortunately it hasn't made me want to do my dishes any faster.

I also made a little shirt for my son Simon. I'm thinking I probably should have bought the next size up in the shirt, it doesn't look like he'll be wearing it too much longer!

thumb print snowmen tags

 In the spirit of finding Christmas crafts to make, Claire (and I) made these thumb print snowmen. I've seen the snowmen done before using the whole foot, but I thought that this might be a little cleaner! I cut out some tag shapes using my cricut cutter. (You could use a large circle punch or just freehand it if you don't have a cricut.) Then Claire made the body of the snowmen on the tags ("all by self"). We waited for the snowmen to dry before Claire painted on the hats. I just added a bit of bakers twine through the hole so that we can attach the tags to gifts, or hang them as ornaments on our tree. (I'm pretty sure I won't be able to give any of these away!)

turkey handprints

I just love crafting with Claire, and I'm always on the look out for new crafts and things to do with her. She loves painting, especially when she can cover her hands in paint! This is her latest creation. I love that she's going to have these paintings to look back on.

 

I love this time of year. We had our first snow flurries yesterday, which probably means that we should get our winter tires put on, BUT for me, it really means, break out the Christmas decorations. I've got a lot more crafting to get done before Christmas, and I feel like I have a plan to get it done. I should be back to regular posting this week- and I've got lots of projects to show off!

oh happy tape

When I first saw happy tape, I knew that I needed it. I didn't have any particular project in mind, but I knew that the possibilities were endless. I'm what some people might call a stationary collector. I love to shop and buy stationary things, but never what to use up what I buy. I have embarrassingly large quantities of post it notes, post it flags, note pads and pens. So it really came as no surprise when I had my happy tape for more than a year before I first used it. There were so many things that I wanted to use it for, but I didn't want to waste it. Then I was upstairs in my daughter's room and I thought that there must be a way that I could brighten up her room a little bit more. So I broke up my happy tape and went to work on her closet door. I just love how it turned out. Now I want to order more colours so that I can do the closet in my son's room too!

Update: The tape has been on Claire's closet for over two years now, and still look great.

Linking up with: Skip to my Lou

nursery wall art

When I was pregnant with my daughter I really wanted to decorate her room with some handmade artwork. Since paper is my favorite medium to work with I sat down, pulled out my paper collection stash, and started playing around with the different colours. We didn't know if we were having a boy or a girl, so I didn't want to use all pinks or blues. (Looking at it now I suppose this print does look a bit girly though!)

I broke out my cricut, and a few of my favorite cartridges, and started cutting out numbers. It took me quite a while to find the right size that the numbers should be (which of course varied with every cartridge). I played around with the layout quite a bit too. In the end I'm so pleased with it (although I wish that I had placed the 0 a little bit higher on the page.) It hangs over Claire's bed, and I'm just putting the finishing touches on an alphabet print that matches the number print.

Linking up with: Skip to my Lou

Keep Calm and Merry On Printables

I love the latest round of Keep Calm printables that I've seen floating around. My favorites are the Thanksgiving ones seen here. BUT, since I live in Canada and Thanksgiving is already over, I decided to make a few Christmas ones. I couldn't decided whether on not I preferred the white tree or coloured tree, so I made them both.

To download click on the picture and then right click to save it. Enjoy!

I'd love to see pictures of your Keep Calm poster hanging up- leave your link in the comment section.

Hungry Caterpillar

I found this blog, Meet the Dubiens, and I'm in love with it. She is so crafty and she's always posting loads of ideas and things to do with small kids. Some of my favorite crafts that she does are the ones that use her kids hand prints. I think that it will be great to look back at these crafts in a year or two and see how much the kids have grown. 

I've been trying to do some of these with my daughter, Claire (2 1/2 years), and she loves them. We started with the Hungry Caterpillar. I stamped Claire's thumbs to do the body and head, and then I used her pinky to do the antennae. I should have tried to make the antennae longer so that it looks a little less like a bunny, but I was afraid I'd mess it up. Claire didn't seem to care. I hung it up so that she could see it from her seat at the kitchen table, and she was so excited when she saw it. She started shrieking "It's the Hungry Caterpillar. Claire made that."

Go check out Jill's blog. It's awesome. We're working on the turkey hand print animals next!

Painted leaves

I'm a little late posting this one now- but these are some fall leaves that Claire painted to help decorate our house for fall. We usually just paint with one colour at a time so that we don't end up with one big mess of brown paint. I love having Claire's works of art displayed around our house. However now that Halloween's over we'll be working on Christmas things. I love love love Christmas, and I can't wait to start working on our Christmas crafts.

Happy Halloween

I was so excited when I saw this post with a Curious George pumpkin carving- I knew that we had to try it.

 There's probably a way easier way to do this but I wasn't sure what it was. We pricked the outline of George with thumb tacks (the pushpins hurt our fingers too much).

 

 We had picked up a cheap little pack of pumpkin carving tools and just carved out in between the lines that we had pricked. It was super easy, and didn't take that long to do.

 I was so happy with how it turned out- but most importantly Claire loved it!

 Man it's hard to get a picture of the kids together. Simon can't quite sit by himself yet, and Claire defiantly doesn't like to hold him! My little chicken and Thomas the Train.