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Beach Themed Ornaments DIY

11 Dec By 10 Comments

As a beach girl living on the Gulf Coast, I could not resist having some beach-y themed decor this year. I mean, hello.

You remember my sons room, right?

But instead of buying some (and there are cute ones!) Charlotte and I decided to ruin my dining room floor with fine grain sand and hot glue.

Fun stuff, this parenting can be.

I am also going to let you in on a secret……….we bought our sand. Yep. 5 trillion miles of ocean and sometimes it’s just a bit quicker and costs less to just stop at Hobby Lobby.

Beach Themed Christmas Ornaments DIY

(inspiration!)

What you need

  • Plastic Balls for decoration (you can use glass too). You get these in the CRAFTING section, not the Christmas section. $7.99
  • Bag of Shells, I like the mini ones that include color.  $2.99
  • Sand. The sand comes in all colors, I just bought regular white sand. $2.49
  • String to hang the bulbs .99

Instructions:

1) All we did was create a makeshift funnel to help distribute the sand into the bulbs and then pick out random shells for design. I made sure we didn’t over fill the bulb so it didn’t get too weighted down. After showing Charlotte once, she filled and added shells and I did the hot gluing! Making Beach Christmas bulbs is a very easy craft for about 6 and up as long as you are using plastic. I left the bulbs in the container they came in because this and is really fine and I didn’t want it all over the dining area.

2) My best advice is to hot glue the toppers back on and then use a ribbon and hot glue closed to create the hanging tie.  We also added a little blue glitter to some of our bulbs for variety. VERY easy and lots of fun!

Voila!

Filed Under: Crafting Tagged With: , , , , ,

DIY Fall Fairywand Centerpiece Crafting Project

24 Sep By 10 Comments

A few months ago when fall crafts starting hitting Hobby Lobby I got all exited to make a Fall fairy wand. I have done many wands in the past, including the

but have yet to do something that wasn’t so…well...pink. This weekend I finally broke into my crafts and warmed up the glue gun for some fun!

Now this post is serving more as an inspirational piece (than a how to) to encourage you to create a fall fairy wand that you can use as a beautiful fall decoration or a centerpiece, while still pulling them out as an accessory or imagination toy for your upcoming Halloween party. If you want some more ideas and a better instructional post, click on one of the above links.

Fall Fairy Wand Centerpiece

1) I purchased some cinnamon sticks so for the wand handle.

They smell good and look beautiful. You can also get a whole bunch of them for about $10 and with the coupons Hobby Lobby has, they were only $6. I also grabbed some random ribbons, matching tulle, fall leaves, and some pumpkin tops.

2) I wrapped the wands in ribbon, leaving extra hanging to hot glue beads and leaves to. I also attached feathers and tulle underneath the base of the pumpkins before gluing on to my cinnamon sticks.  While I didn’t do it, you can make your ribbon korker prior for some curly cues!

3)  Attached my pumpkin tops to the cinnamon sticks and then finished decorating with other pieces I bought!

Just really a “do it as you go along” project.

 

 

I was going to do more but my son woke up from his nap and the hot glue gun isn’t conducive to a walking baby, so I filled up my vase with some extra tulle, tied with a ribbon and added a my last “wand” to create a centerpiece.

 

Which the cat decided was her own personal play toy….

I hope to fill the whole vase up soon!

Look for more fall crafts on Momdot this season!

~Trisha

Filed Under: All About Trisha, Crafting

How to make a flip book for your toddler

30 Aug By 16 Comments

This week I was tasked with the challenge to find a creative use for my Fellowes laminator. Pretty much, 900 things ran through my head. From laminating everything in the baby box (cards, bracelets, mementos) to keep them safe over the long years, to  categorizing and laminating all of Charlotte’s drawings from Pre-K on that are sitting in a box gathering dust. Goodness knows they are starting to get some strain.

But with P getting ready to be 1 year old next Thursday, I wanted to make him something that would not only be helpful to his growth and development, but also showcase the love our family has for him.

What you need to create a flip book

  • pictures
  • Fellowes Laminator
  • Lamination sheets for the size photo you are covering
  • printer paper
  • markers/pens
  • ribbon
  • hole punch

Few things to note: When picking out lamination sheets, there are several kinds of ‘mil’. You usually only need 3mil, which is what I used here, for photos. If you are going to protect something larger or more long term, you may need to find stronger sheets to cover your photos. the “mil” is how thick the sheet is. My laminator machine does 3, 4, and 5 mil.

 

Instructions for your DIY Toddler Flip Book!

1) Print your pictures! I ran to the store this morning and printed pictures right on a machine that spits them out immediately. They were 25cent a print and looked pretty nice. It’s hard to remember since we do things so much digitally to get this done, but its smart to print your photos monthly or put them in a photo book. If you ever lose your computer or digital files you will have wished you did this! I have a computer under my desk that was hit by a virus in June and I can only pray that the photos will be recoverable.

2) Decide the type of book you are making. I made two kinds. In one book I wrote a little story and included family photos:

in the other, I created more flash cards with words to read to Phoenyx.

In this instance below, I added a leaf and laminated it. I was able to do this with several outdoor items including flowers, grass, and types of leaves. Because the item is more raised than a flat photo, I ran it through once and then turned it around and ran it through again in the opposite direction. (top to bottom, than bottom to top to seal it)

3) The lamination is easy. Just insert your pictures between the lamination pages.

Then put through the machine.

In seconds, it spits out the other side ready for what ever baby drool your toddler wants to put on it.

4) Use a hole punch to put a hole in the corner of each sheet you created.

4) You can either use a loose ribbon to secure the pages together or purchase a key ring for long term use. I had ribbon available, so I chose that route and double knotted the ribbon.

Book complete!

If you don’t have a lamination machine and need one (there really are a million uses for one…and truth be told, its super fun to laminate), check out this deal:

August 5th – August 25th friends of Mom Central can use exclusive coupon code 87298 to receive $30 off the regular price ($159.99) of a Fellowes Saturn2 95 at Staples.com! (while supplies last; maximum two machines per person (Go here to check out deal!)

——————————————————

Don’t stop there!

As your child ages, you can add more pictures with advanced words, additional family members, or even create a book that includes pictures that represent every part of the alphabet!

 

The family book reads:

My family book.

This is my sister.

(pictures)

My family loves me!

This is my mom.

(pictures)

This is my dad.

(pictures)

My family loves me!

This is me.

(pictures)

I am amazing! I love my family!

——————————————-

I hope this simple craft project inspires you to make something fun for your kids!

~trisha

I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Fellowes and received a product sample to facilitate my review.

Filed Under: All About Trisha, Crafting Tagged With: , ,

How to make a Fairy Wand

4 Aug By 34 Comments

How to Make a Fairy Wand (DIY) Tutorial

I have always wanted to Make a Fairy Wand (and you can now check out my how to make a tulle wand tutorial), but not the usual kind of puff ball fairy wand, something different, more creative. Today I decided to get my craft on and started to conjure up what kind of fairy tutu type wand I could make to match one of Charlotte’s new play ballerina dress up dresses.

My initial thought was to make more of a “crystal ball” fairy wand. I had visions of sparkles in water and some really unrealistic things for the time I had scheduled, so I spent some time walking around Micheal’s to find some inspiration. That place sure is fun in the holidays.

This is what I came up…the project took about 30 minutes.

STUFF YOU NEED

What you will need to create this Fairy Wand (or one of your own style) is the following:

  • Dowels (i opted for a larger dowel and cut it in half w/ a hand saw…that didn’t go so well) $.99
  • Ribbon to wrap the dowel $2.99
  • Tulle (I had this at home)
  • Clear plastic Christmas ornament $1.29 (get 2 in case you hot glue mess it up like I did)
  • stuff to put inside the ornament..I used a stream of marabou fluff, other ideas are flowers, glitter, ribbons, bows or rhinestones. My marabou cost $1.99
  • hot glue  (took just 1 stick)
  • I also bought some charms to add on from the bead aisle $5.99

INSTRUCTIONS

After you have your dowel cut to the right length, the first thing you do is wrap your ribbons around your wand. What I did was opt for one large ribbon to do the initial wrap and then a smaller ribbon to go around and cover the remainder of the dowel you could see. Its fairly easy to keep wrapping this around and then starting the 2nd one above and it should fall into perfect place.

I usually dab hot glue on the bottom, middle, and top, so if I move my fingers and it slips, I don’t unravel the entire thing.

Leave some excess ribbon once you reach the top to hang down or, if you prefer, make up some korker curly ribbon and use those to hang down. At this point on my wand, I left both strands of ribbon hang and then cut additional pieces and hot glued on the top so I had several pieces flowing.

Don’t be afraid to get girly here. I am not sure you can overkill on the fru-fru when you are talking about a fairy wand.

Next I set up the “crystal ball”.

Take your Christmas ornament and pull out the piece that hangs from the tree. Its easier to hot glue when its flat. Take the top off and stuff inside with your filler. You can also leave it empty and add flowers or rhinestones on the outside. The trick here is that once you hot glue something on it, it doesn’t peal off very nicely. I discovered that when I put on my fancy Bird of Paradise, decided I didn’t like it, and tried to take off.

What was left was a huge gaping mess, so I had to put it back.

Oh well, it was my first try, right?

Hot glue the top onto the ball so its secure.

After I had the wand and ball done, I gathered some tulle with a ribbon and again let the ribbon have some excess tails. I made two of them, hot glued them together in a cross, and trimmed up the tulle. I also took a piece of the ribbon and wound it through the heart charm, and attached that to the tulle and made a knot.

Then I added the tulle “cross” directly to the top of the wand.

I took some of the larger ribbon and covered the ornament part of the plastic ball and then turned upside down and hot glued the ball onto the tulle.

I’m not going to lie here…while it was really stuck and not going anywhere, the ball attached to the tulle made it slightly wobbly. More so than I liked. In the future, it might be smarter to attach the ball directly to the top of the wand and then add tulle with a small piece of elastic or some other clever way I haven’t discovered yet.

At this point you are pretty much done!

Its all decor from this point out.  I added a bird of paradise ornament I found in the Christmas aisle at Micheal’s, but I am regretting it. Unfortunately hot glue made it where I couldn’t take it off, so make sure you are sure before you stick.

(left: assembly pre-dressed up  , right: all gussied with flowers and birds)

Although a bit gaudy, Charlotte was a fan of the sparkly, so it wasn’t a total loss.

Consider adding satin bows to the front like I did or maybe even bells to the bottom of your ribbons so it makes a “charm” sound when you walk.  I have another wand I am trying out later on tonight or tomorrow, so I will post the results of how that one worked out.

If you liked this article, feel free to share the link, stumble, or twitter.

Maybe someone you know has a fairy in their life that needs some magic.

~Trisha

Other sites that may inspire you make a wand

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DIY at Home Baby Lock

18 Jul By 6 Comments

Today while I was fixing my hair (yes, we still do that on occasion, right moms?) Phoenyx kept opening the cabinets. He would open, I would close. Open. Close.  While I do have “child locks” on several of the cabinets (chemicals, etc) I haven’t gotten around to locking EVERYTHING up.

Quite honestly, its a pain in the arse.

So while I was standing there, rapidly losing my patience and wondering what item in my drawers I would give him that would change his focus (a floss container if you are wondering) I realized that a hair tie makes for a quick and efficient way to lock up your “french door” cabinets, provided they have knobs.

Here are the regular locks:

Here are my new makeshift bathroom ones….which work perfectly and look a lot less intrusive.

Plus, I have about 400 hair ties lying around, so it was a free and quick option for the moment I needed one.

I still recommend getting strong locks for anything that could be a potential hazard to a child, but this will totally work for the times that you are playing the “open” “close” game with your baby!

~trisha

P.S. Here is my hair all fixed after I got to concentrate on that instead of the cabinet game.

Filed Under: All About Trisha, Crafting

DIY Easy Tissue Paper Flower Tutorial

17 Jul By 3 Comments

The other day my friend Lynsey and I were out at the cupcake shop drooling over some cupcakes and I noticed this really adorable table top tissue flower decor:

 

Cute, right?

So we headed over to Micheal’s and picked up some tissue paper so I could attempt a similar craft at home. What I found is that this is a super easy DIY craft that would add a fun (and inexpensive) decoration to any room.

Tissue flowers are great for:

  • Flower girls
  • Table tops (change w/ season)
  • Holiday
  • Living room mantel
  • Little girls room
  • anything you can think of!
  • (psstt…bloggers, cute idea for your food pictures!!)

DIY Easy Tissue Paper Flower Tutorial

1) Gather your tissue in the middle. You really only need 1-2 sheets, but you can use more if you are looking for a particular color scheme. I used really big full sheet tissue for this set up, the same kind you would get for a present.

2) Tie in the middle with a twist tie, ribbon, or metal  tie as seen above

3) fold in half with both ends facing the same direction and then put the bottom inside a jar. Some ideas are to fill the jar with marbles, tissues, or shells to “pretty it up”.

 

After I made this “big” flower, I decided to cut the tissue in half, gather both pieces in a bunch, use the same method of tying, and cut around the edges to give it more of a “flower” look. I combined both tissue flowers into the jar.

Here is the result:

 

 

And because you don’t need to water these “flowers” they would make a perfect addition to a guest bathroom or bedroom!

Enjoy crafting,

 

Trisha

Filed Under: Crafting

How to make a tutu chandelier

8 Jun By 20 Comments

In my never ending quest to use up all the tulle in my house without making another no sew tutu, I decided to make some hanging decor.

Namely…a tutu chandelier.

I am not saying this craft turned out perfect. I think I have a long way to go in figuring out exactly all the details of how I want to perfect this, but for a first try, I thought it was cute. More importantly, my daughter loved it.

I will warn you that I put it all together and then realized I should probably add the tutu. Then I had to rip it all apart, so in some spots you may see some torn lace or extra glue. Those are my “moronic crafter” pains.

What you will need to make your own tutu chandelier:

  • A solid ring (I got mine for $2.30 at Hobby Lobby)
  • 6 inch spool of tulle
  • lace or decor ribbon for the outside of the ring
  • 8 flowers you can pop the heads off of
  • spool of beads for the droop
  • hanging bead string for the middle
  • ribbon to hang the chandelier

how to make a tutu chandelier

1) First lay out four ribbons on the four sides of your ring. I first hot glued the ribbons together near the bottom and then set on each side and hot glued to the ring itself. This is what you will use to hang your tutu chandelier, so make sure they are as long or short as you need them from the destination, leaving a little room for trimming and error of course.

 no sew pretty tutu

2) Cut all your tulle pieces out evenly. I used the entire spool at about 12 inches per length. Then add to the ring in a standard no sew tutu knot. If you do not know how to do them, please refer to my How to make a Tutu Post.

It’s easy peasy.

 tutu_chandelier

3) Then I decided to go around and knot every other piece of tulle to its neighbor. This gave it a little something extra. Of course this is competly up to you. Leaving it hanging straight is also quite pretty. If you really want to get creative, do two layers and leave one hanging and one knotted!

4) From the inside, add a piece of your beads from the spool. I cut about 8 inches and drooped. The easiest way to keep this even is to count your tulle knots. I knew that every 8th knot I needed to glue down the other side. If you start your beads on the outside, it wont lay as flat for your decorating ribbon or lace. Once your beads are evenly around your chandelier (like a lamp) take hot glue and glue your decorating ribbon right onto the top of your tulle and all the way around.

 Tutu Beading

 

5)  All you have to do now is tie your ribbon up and hang some middle beads. If you care to, add flowers around. I used 8 flowers, putting one at each starting point of the ribbon and alternating colors in the middle.

 I think the point of any crafting is to be inspired and make it your own! I hope you love this craft and find a great way to incorporate the idea in your princesses room.

All done!

Your tutu chandelier!

~Trisha

If you would like to share my craft on your website or blog, you are welcome to use (1) picture and a link back to this article. Thank you so much!

Filed Under: All About Trisha, Crafting

Tutu Hairbow Holder Instructions (Step 3)

29 May By 56 Comments

If you are here randomly, you may be wondering where the other tutu hair bow holder instructions are. This is the 3rd step, so you may have to go backwards to one of these posts:

This is step 3, finishing work to include details and your back.

Last we left off was #15 doing the middle of the skirt. On we go!

16) At this point the main part of your bowholder is complete. What you want to do now is some finishing work. Initially I said that a few creases on the front were not a big deal for me because I knew I would use some tricks to cover them up. If you are going to keep your bodice plain, just make sure you work on that a little longer so it has no mistakes on the front.

Hair Bow Holder Free

For the middle, my two favorite ways to do the middle part are three ribbons on the front and flowers. In this case, I used flowers. I just buy the ones from Hobby Lobby and pop the tops off and hot glue down.  I prefer Gerber Daisies in the middle because they seem to have them in lots of colors and have good coverage on a bow holder.

17) I also love a criss cross bodice. Take two equal length satin ribbons and hot glue the ends on the bottom and flip over and cross and glue in the back. I dont bring my ribbons all the way over and around because its a waste of ribbon, so I just double back. You can use this to cover up creases fairly well by strategically placing ribbons over those spots. The criss cross has a very practical purpose as well by allowing your smaller tinier clips to be placed at the top.

18) I also always add a shoulder bow. Just create your bow with your satin ribbon. I prefer matching double bows to pull it all together.

19) Now you are ready to do your back. (Tired yet?)

For this part you need a piece of felt that goes about 2 inches all the way around your bodice. The easiest way to do this is to lay your felt onto the back of your bodice and TRACE IT with a pen, and then cut out. Your piece will be bigger, obviously, but will give you a starting point.

20) Starting with the neckline, hot glue around the edges to seal up the bodice. I always start in the neck area, work across the shoulder, then do the other neck area and shoulder. This will leave you with some excess felt. VERY CAREFULLY start to trim around the back and then glue down. Do one side at time. If you trim too much, felt as a tiny bit of give and you can pull it, but heed my warnings on this. Take your time trimming up. Once each side is done, you can trim the bottom in a straight line.

Free Tutorial Hairbow Holder

That’s it!! Now all you have to do is hang and enjoy.

The other parts of this post:

If you liked this tutorial, please consider sharing the link on facebook, stumble, or twitter for others to enjoy and learn to create!

If you create a bowholder based on my tutorial, I would love to see it so email me your pictures! (trisha (at) momdot.com)

~trisha

I am so excited if you love this post and want to share this tutorial with your audience. The rules on this post is that you may use (1) photo and a link back to the article with proper credit. You can email me at trisha@momdot.com if you would like to share any other part of my content on your site.

Filed Under: Crafting