Fall Jacket Tutorial

Friday was the first official day of autumn! Which just so happens to be my personal favorite season. The air gets colder bringing lots of new scents and sounds. It also brings to me a strong desire to cook and sew! Ahhh.... staying in and getting back to being crafting.
I LOVE FALL!!!!

So get your little one ready for some colder weather with our sweet instant download

 Fall Jacket Pattern and Tutorial. 

After you sew up this sweet and easy jacket, try your hand at some homemade graham crackers.

Smitten Kitchen has an awesome and easy recipe for you guys to try.

Don't they look yummy?!?!?!

You can find the full recipe with some beautiful pics here.

HAPPY FALL!!!

Quick and Easy Summer Tube Top Tutorial

While browsing the internet for a quick project to do over the weekend, I stumbled across this super easy and cute tube top tutorial over at Craft Jr. Best of all, you only need elastic and regular thread and some fabric! No pattern needed; just use her measurement guide.

This is a really nice, easy to follow tutorial. And would make for a quick gift idea or last minute vacation bonus!! She also mentioned that her teen daughter has sewn up several of them. So if you have a teen who will need some easy entertainment this summer... keep this tutorial in your back pocket:)

Flower Petal Stained Glass

This idea is moving straight to the top of my to do list!

What a fun way to end a morning in the garden with your kids.

Artful Parent shows an idea for putting togehter your own window display using fresh flowers and contact paper. Love this!!

Konbit Sante Receiving Blankets

Lisa and I finally finished up the 30 tote bags and 30 receiving blankets for Sunday's party to benefit Craft Hope Project 11, Konbit Sante. 

Now I just need to make 30 tiny stuffed animals and we should be all set for Sunday.
By the way, if you missed it, the free tutorial for making receiving blankets in posted on our blog.  They make a really great baby shower gift. 

Valentine's Day Candy Buttons

I was looking through my new Taste of Home and I saw a sheet of candy buttons on one of the pages.  I used to love those things as a kid.  With Valentine's Day coming up, I decided to make up some sheets of my own candy buttons.

Candy dots are so great for kids.  They are fun to make and inexpensive.  You start with a batch of royal icing.  I use the meringue powder recipe for royal icing.  I would make a 1/2 batch because a full recipe will make more royal icing than you could eat in a lifetime. 

Royal Icing Using Meringue Powder:

4 cups (440 grams) confectioners' (powdered or icing) sugar

3 tablespoons (30 grams) meringue powder

1/2 teaspoon extract (vanilla, lemon, almond)

1/2 - 3/4 cup (120 - 180 ml) warm water

Note: Food Coloring (I use Gel Pastes that can be found at cake decorating and party stores or else on-line)

You can also make royal icing with egg whites. 

First, I removed 1/3 of the icing and put it into a sandwich bag.  I left it white.

Next, I tinted the remaining icing light pink and removed 1/2 of what was left and put it into a plastic sandwich bag or piping bag.

Finally, I mixed more red food coloring into the rest of the batch and made a dark pink icing.  I added that into a plastic sandwich bag. 

You can also use piping bag fitted with a small writing tip.  I used heavy duty sandwich ziplock bags.  That way you can close the bag and the kids don't get it all over the place. 

Cut the tips off of the bag.  

To make the heart shapes I traced around a cookie cutter on a piece of paper.  Then, I cut pieces of PARCHMENT paper and place 1 piece of parchment over the outline.   

 Pipe the dots on over the outline and then fill the inside of the heart in.  After you let the dots set up for a couple of minutes, you can poke down the spikes.

 If you want a more traditional look, you can cut strips of parchment and pipe rows of buttons.

 I put them on a cookie sheet and dry them out on the counter or in the oven (off) for several hours to dry.

 This is a great fine motor skills projects for kids.  My three-year-old made some candy worms. 

Another idea for working on the fine motor skills is to print out shapes, letter, or numbers and layer the parchment over the top. 

Valentine's Day Paper Bag Album Layouts

Lisa and I had a blast getting together last week and making about a dozen of these love and Valentine's Day themed mini albums for our MadAboutScraps shop.  I am personally going to use one for preschool Valentines Day Party photos.  Kamille might also give one to her preschool teacher as a Valentine's Day Gift. 

 I made a pocket by cutting the mats in half on a diagonal.  I used gems to make it look like it is attached with brads.

 I layered up some prima flowers for dimension and used a large brad for the center.

 I love to embellish my tags with some simple stickers. 

Instead of using ribbons for the pull-out pocket pages, I used stickers to create a tab.

Some Crafts with Burlap

This is a special little post I am putting together with a roundup of crafts using burlap.  It seems to be a medium Lisa loves. 

You can find this burlap wreath tutorial over at Tatertotsandjello. 
Here is one more great burlap tutorial from Tatertotsandjello:

Here is a really cute tutorial for burlap place mats.  You could take this same concept and print so many different graphics on it.  I think that Lisa would love this with inspirational words printed on it for her dining room table.  Think about using your Cricut to cut out stencils. 

Check out the full place mat tutorial over at gomakeme.

This is a cute little tutorial for burlap favor bags. 

Here is a nice burlap bunny tutorial in honor of Easter from Someday Crafts.  If I don't start my Easter projects now, they won't be finished this year.

Another New Years Favorites Cleanup - 100 Crocheted Flowers

This is a great site that I stumbled upon that has a round up of over 100 free crochet patterns for crocheted flowers. 

So if you love all of those crocheted headbands and scull caps, I'm sure you will be able to find at least one great flower pattern.

They also have over 300 free crocheted toys and doll patterns like this adorable little bird:

Check out some of the other great free crochet patterns:

 
Check out some of the 150 free crocheted bag and purse patterns:

What I always try to keep in mind is that even though a pattern might look sort of ugly or outdated because of the colors, yarns, etc, it doesn't mean that I cannot make it super cute and modern with a few simple changes - like color selection, handle choices, etc. 

New Years Clean Up - Recyled Records Tutorial

One of my goals for the New Year is to go through my enormous list of favorites and clean it up.  There are literally hundreds of items in my favorites and at this point I could not tell you most of what is in there.  But, at one point it was all something that I thought was great enough to bookmark.  So, I am going to go item by item through my favorites and throw out things that I have already made or blogged about and write up some posts about some of the real treasures in there.

This first post is a great little project I found on etsy.  I have made dozens of things from old records, bowls, cuff bracelets, earrings, guitar picks, purses, etc.  I found this idea and have been wanting to make one for my mom. 

This is actually a cookbook stand crafted from two records.  You can purchase this item from etsy seller RetiredRecords.  I think that they are $25.00.  You can actually watch a video on metacafe to see how to create your own record bowl (if you haven't already made one).  It is pretty simple.  Bending the records in a more artistic and directed way takes more skill and time.  Basically you need a piece of metal you can heat up - like a giant nail you use on rail road ties or a piece of metal pipe and an oveglove.  I heat up the pipe in the oven and then place it on the record.  Then, you can slowly bend the record up around the metal object.  You may need to reheat your metal pipe multiple times to get just the right effect.           

A Trio of Valentine's Treats Tutorial

This is a little Valentine's Day Tutorial Trio that I put together.  I have a conversation hearts white chocolate bark, a heart candy bar, and finally, a delicious strawberry cream liquor filled chocolate shot. 

Conversation Heart Bark

Candy bark is a very easy and affordable treat to make and give away or just eat yourself.

For this bark, I melted some white chocolate candy coating (but you can use any white chocolate you want - disks, chips, etc.).

Next, I poured the white chocolate into a small dish. 

I placed my conversation hearts around making sure they were print side up.

Then, I sprinkled on some colored sugar.

Next, you want to put it into the freezer for about 5 minutes until it hardens.

Once it hardens, you can break it apart into nice sized chunks. 



Two Hearts Candy Bar

For this little chocolate car you need both white chocolate or candy coating and pink candy melts. 

Grease a small ramekin or cookie sheet lightly with butter. 

Next, you want to melt your white chocolate and a small amount of the pink candy melts until they are nice and smooth.

Put the white chocolate into your little ramekin.  Put the pink chocolate into a small, sturdy sandwich bag or piping bag.

Snip off the end of the bag so that you can squeeze out the chocolate.

 Pipe dots of pinks into the white chocolate.

Next, you need to take a toothpick or skewer and marble the chocolate by dragging your toothpick around through the pink into the white.  Then I piped two large hearts in pink and ran the skewer through the middle of each to give it a marbled effect.

Place it in the freezer for about 10 minutes to harden it up.  Then, pop it out of the mold.  If it doesn't want to come out you can run the bottom of the ramekin under a bit of hot water.  Finally, I wrapped it in plastic wrap and tied a bow around it.

Shooters

These little shot cups are soooo sweet but soooo good. 

First you melt your pink candy melts.  Then you need to fill a mini cup mold (you can usually find them online or at Michael's and JoAnn's.) 

The cups should be partly hollow inside, but they do not have to be perfect.  No one will see the inside.  I usually brush on a thin layer of chocolate, freeze the cups for a few minutes, and then brush on another layer.  This will give you a sturdy cup.

Then, I fill the inside about 1/2 way with strawberry cream liquor.  You could also use vodka, coffee liquor, or even that delicious chocolate red wine.  It really depends on your tastes. 

Next, I seal the top of the cups with a nice big twist of butter cream frosting.

Finally, I decorated the little cups with a conversation heart.  I think that these would be adorable at a bachelorette party too.