Felt Big Shot Flower Pins

I made these felt flower pins a while back as gifts for my scrapbooking buddies. Weelll, it was a bit more than "awhile", they were Christmas gifts!!  There are 10 of us "gals" who get together each and every Wednesday for a little "girl time".  Most of us do manage to get at least some scrapbooking done each time we get together!! lol!

I wanted to give each of them something special for Christmas and this is what I came up with. I made a bunch of the flowers and then put them on a wire card display tree "thingie".  Then I let the girls each pick out their favorite pin.  It made it very easy for the girls to see all of the choices! When I got home from our little "Holiday Party" I realised that I had forgotten to take a picture of whole display!! Darn!!!

Well these are the old maids that no one wanted!! hahaha!!

They went together very quickly ~ I just picked several colors of felt, used various flower shapes from the Stampin Up! dies and spent about 15 minutes zipping them through the Big Shot!!

Then I "built" the flowers by picking 5 or 6 shapes and colors and stacking them until I got a flower that I liked!

I wanted to have a border around the base flower and finally figured out a way to get it without too much trouble. I took the largest flower and laid it onto a contrasting piece of felt. Then I rough cut the base piece and sewed these 2 together. I then trimmed the base piece so that there was just a bit of the contrasting felt sticking out from underneath. I cut small holes in the center of each of the flowers and then either sewed a button through all of the layers or inserted a fancy (haha) rhinstone brad through the whole stack.

Then I went to town on them with one of my favorite guilty pleasures ~ glitter!!

To me the hardest part of using glitter is knowing when to say "ENOUGH ALREADY"!!!

Believe me, the worst feeling in the world is to have spent a good amount of time on a project, have painstakingly added some "extras" and then decided to add ....one.....more....dot....of...glitter...right...here...and then plooomph.....a big glob of glue shoots out onto your previously perfect project. ARRRGGGHHHH!!!!

Hope you enjoyed my felt flower pins!! I think I am going to try some nice springy ones next made with regular fabrics!!
  

A Sweet Bundle of Baby Boy!

I have been scrapbooking every Wednesday for several years with a fun group of women. We call ourselves "The Scrappin' Queens". Needless to say, we have all gotten very close and have shared many joys and sorrows over the years. One of the girls gave birth recently to her first child, a son, after many years of trying. We were all thrilled for her and her husband and I wanted to make something special for the baby that they could use for many years. I love the idea of personalizing things and expressing my creativity with a handmade gift. One of my favorite new baby gifts is a set of decorated letters spelling out the baby's name. This sweet little guy's name is Spencer! So here's what I came up with!

I bought wooden letters at a local craft store, sanded them and then painted the edges of each of them with acrylic paint. The baby's bedroom is decorated in bright green, light blue and chocolate brown, a very unique choice, but one that will certainly work for him for many years. I painted 2 of the letters in each of the 3 colors, alternating them. I was able to find a collection of patterned paper that had all 3 colors AND that had a boy theme, vintage cars and bikes to boot!! How lucky was that? You know I love all things shabby chic!!

I roughly cut each letter out of the paper and glued them down to the wood.  I let them dry and then sanded the edges of each one. It was a slow and tedious job, but well worth it. I then distressed them all with some Close-to-Cocoa ink and then came the fun part ~ decorating them!!

I saw these adorable frogs in our local craft store and decided that that would be the perfect theme ~ bugs!! How does that poem go ~ "snips and snails and puppy dog tails". Well, there are no puppy dogs tails (ewwww) here, but there are snips (of twine) and a snail too!!

I added star buttons, brads, corduroy buttons, eyelets, twine and a bit of ribbon. I just couldn't help myself with the ribbon!!

I stamped the dragonfly image (Stampin Up!), colored it, bent the wings up so it looked 3- dimensional and attached it with pop dots. I LOVE how the froggie's googly eyes are looking up at the dragonfly. He looks to me like he is thinking ".....mmmmm lunch!!  Now if I could jussst stick my tongue out farrrrr enoughhhh.....".

Here is the other frog and friend and a close-up of the first two.

I think my friend was very happy with them when I gave them to her.

Enjoy them as you grow, baby Spencer!

FYI ~ Christmas is 292 days away - that's only 6987 hours!!

You're Unfrogettable!!

My son's girlfriend, of 9 months (wow, has it been THAT long, I hadn't counted before) had done several nice things for our family and I decided to do something nice for her in return. I figured that nothing could be nicer than a hand stamped item! She LOVES frogs so, of course, the stamp set "Unfrogettable" immediately popped into my mind, even though it is retired and no longer available from Stampin' Up!. I got going on the planning and I knew I just had to play with my new Nestabilities that I purchased last month at a local stamp show! When I originally cut them out I intended to use them vertically and mount each letter of Liz's name on it's own one. Sometime in the middle of the night though, I happened to think that if I laid them on their sides they might look like lilypads, so in the morning I gave it a go!! I was happy with the look and just kept building on it. I stamped all of the little critters and then colored them with my new copic markers (also purchased at said stamp show). I then took my "Versamarker" and covered them with the ink and clear embossing powder and heat set them all!! It really made the colors POP!!! After cutting them all out, (which wasn't all that bad to do, since I didn't get anal about it and left a white border around all of them) I played around until I liked the placement of everything and then attached them using oodles of Popdots! Love those SU! Popdots!! I wanted the flowers to look like water lilies, so I used white cardstock and vellum for the petals and added a bit of So Saffron sponging to each one!! I was pleased with the way it all turned out and I can't wait to give it to her!!

Happy Spring!!

This is a little goodie that I designed and made for the birthdays of 2 of my good friends,  Jane and Wendy. I scrapbook with them (and 7 other friends) every Wednesday and we like to celebrate everyone's birthdays  throughout the year!!

I have a bazillion coasters and love all the cute hanging elements that I have seen made with them posted all over Splitcoast. I used the "On Board SoTweet" chipboard from SU! and covered all the pieces with paper from the "Good Morning Sunshine" Designer Series Paper collection. I hand cut the "Happy Spring" banner and of course sponged EVERYTHING!! (My motto is, after all, "it's not done until it's been sponged and glittered"!!) I was trying to figure out what else it needed besides the birdies and the branch and thought that a sun might just give it the "happy" feeling I was looking for. I thought that one of the flowers from the So Tweet assortment was a pretty good standin for a sun especially after it was sponged and glittered! I did add a circle of "Summer Sun" card stock to the center trying to make it more "sun-like" before adding the sponging and glitter.

Hope you like it and "Happy Spring" everyone!!