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How to make a Tulle Pom Pom Ball

29 Oct By 50 Comments

How to make a tulle pom pom ball for wands…otherwise known as, “how to make a cat toy” in my house.

I made a tulle wand the other day and I was going to give it to my friend Kims daughter, but she is pretty young and if she were to pull the pins out, it could mean a dangerous situation. Not wanting to responsible for my best friends child’s untimely death by lace pin, I decided to get to work on a tulle ball tutorial for all those in the same situation.

Except instead of a tulle wand, I’m going to turn my example into a cat toy for Gwen.

It could also be used for hair puff pony-o’s, cheer-leading pom poms, decorative shirt..um…decorations. Earrings? OK, that’s too far and way too 80′s.

Here is your How To Make a Tulle Ball {So you can still give it to the baby girl/kitten in your life} tutorial:

1) First you have to decide the size of your tulle ball. I took out a glass from my kitchen since I was making this for my kitten, and traced the edges on an old used shipping box I had laying around.

2) After tracing, I used a straight razor and cut the circles, including a smaller circle in the middle so it has an appearance of a doughnut. To be honest, I didn’t take care to make this perfect, so don’t kill yourself over it.

3) Take a string, twine, or whatever you want to use to tie the middle with. I had ribbon laying around, so I used a nice skinny ribbon. They have some really strong materials on the market if you are using your pom pom ball for something that needs to hold up long term.

4) Make a loop as if you are tying it and lay it between your 2 doughnut pieces. Its considered the cream now. Sandwich it up.

Ribbon cream.

(this is a real professional tut isn’t it)

5) Moving on to your tulle. My pom pom was going to be small since it was for a kitten toy, so I took about a yard of tulle and started wrapping. Just put your piece through the middle hole and then wrap around through the hole and back out again, round and round till its filled up.

6) Take a pair of crafting scissors and cut the outside of the tulle now around the entire thing. Take care not to cut your middle string if its sticking out somewhere.

Trust me, I cut mine.

7) Once the tulle is cut, you will have two distinct sides. You separate a little bit and you should see your string/ribbon/twine in the middle. This is where you tie that sucker up TIGHT in a knot.

8 ) Then pull off your cardboard sides and you will be left with a puffy ball.

9) Just trim your tulle ball up so the tulle is even and mush it around so your string is covered

10) Now you can attach it to whatever you want. Rules on attachment are going to depend on the craft you are making. In my house….well, it was just a cat toy.

So take it and throw!

Happy Kitten:

Btw, if you do want to make a cat toy, getting some crinkle paper or ribbon and wrapping around would also make it a ton of fun for a cat!

I’m going to test it out some other ideas and I’ll post an update when I have it.

~Trisha

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How to make a hairbow holder

25 Oct By 43 Comments

As you may or may not know about me, I can make a mean tutu hair bow holder.

But I am not here to showcase those but instead teach you how to make a hairbow holder that will help you encase your beautiful hairbows, headbands, and pony-o’s in one beautiful display. I have thought a lot about how I could hang Charlottes ponytail holders (also know as Pony-O’s) so here is what I came up with yesterday.

How To make a Hair Bow Holder ( tutorial and do it yourself project):

You will need:

  • a Canvas the size of the holder you are making ( i used a 8.5/11.5)
  • Hot glue or staple gun
  • 1 inch grosgrain ribbon
  • enough material to cover canvas, a half a yard should be more than enough
  • any decorative pieces you want to girly up the holder
  • velcro
  • 3/8ths satin ribbon

The first thing you do for your hair bow holder is to cut your material and put your canvas on top of it. I chose to use hot glue because its what I had on hand, but you can secure with staples as well if you have a staple gun. I folded the edges so they were even and hot glued down.

Continuing all the way around, I did the top and the bottom and then secured the sides much like you would a Christmas package.

The next step is to prepare your ribbons.

If you want just a hair bow holder, you can do a very easy design where you stripe all your ribbons down in a row and secure. Make sure they are long enough to go to the back side and hot glue or staple down.

I wanted to do a headband holder and a pony-o holder so I had more of an “all around” hair bow holder. I am not sure about you, but our house isn’t just caked in bows, its caked in ALL of it.

I first put on my hair bow holder ribbon and then centered the rest around that. I decided to make a headband ribbon, which is a design I use for my hair-bow holders. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of this process so Ill have to demo this way. By taking a long piece of grosgrain and putting a dab of hot glue every 1.5 inches and laying the other half down to secure it. This essentially leaves you with a ribbon with “holes” in it more or less that you can drop a headband into it.

Now to prep the pony-o holder, I took a satin ribbon and doubled the length I wanted it to be and cut. So if I wanted a 2 inch down, I cut a 4 inch ribbon. I sliced up 2 pieces of velcro and glued onto the ribbon so when the ends connected, the Velcro stuck together.

I tied a bow and placed on the top to give it a finished look.

After that, its just about doing a layout on your canvas and putting together. I went through several design layouts before I found one that worked for me. Originally I put my headband holder on the bottom and the pony-o holder on the top, but decided I need more space to hang the pony’s, so I took off and redid.

Just get creative with the hairbow ribbons that you have and think about the space you need so you don’t crowd them. There really isn’t a point to taking them out of the drawer so they don’t get smashed if you just smash them up again.

TIP: While I didn’t finish the back (I left the canvas open), you can always cut felt the same size and hot glue or staple down so its a nice smooth back.

I know I have been doing a lot of crafting blogs lately, but crafting your own fashion doesn’t get any better! I find that it all relates because what I cant find to fit Charlotte exactly, I just make. I hope they are helping someone fru-fru up the little girl in their life!

Don’t forget to check out these other crafting posts on momdot:

And my friend Koris page where you can find AMAZING princess hairstyles like this one she did!

(picture used with permission)

As always, leave your pictures or links if you create something or the tutorial helps you out!

~Trisha

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How to make a Tulle Wand

24 Oct By 40 Comments

After doing the post on how to make a fairy wand, I had extra materials that I had bought in preparation and decided to make a tulle wand. Here is a how to make a tulle wand tutorial and a few do it yourself directions that will hopefully inspire you to create for Christmas or even Halloween if you are still looking for an outfit completer for your princess (or fairy!).

To Make this Tulle Wand you will need:

  • Styrofoam Ball (they come in lots of shapes, I have just used a ball) (2 for $4 at Hobby Lobby)
  • Straight pins (I used bridal and lace ones) ($1.89 at Micheal’s)
  • Dowel (I used the other half of the one from my fairy wand) ($.99)
  • Ribbons for the dowel (I got these 50% off at Hobby Lobby yesterday, $1 a roll)
  • Butterfly or other decor ($1.99 at Hobby Lobby)
  • Tulle (I had this at home)

The first thing I did was cut my tulle into squares. I actually have tulle from the bolts, so its pretty long. I cut off about a 2 foot piece and cut length wise and stacked them on each other. Then I gathered and cut about every other 1.5 inches so it cut the tulle in long strips. Then I stacked the strips and cut again in 1.5 inches so basically what was left at the end was little squares. I didn’t pay too much attention to keep them even and if they are all jagged, its not a problem at all.

Its more about getting them closer to the same size over the exact shape.

I wanted to do my tulle ball in 2 colors, so I cut several preparation piles of tulle squares in two colors. Once you have your squares you can gather several squares at once (I thought 3 squares worked well) and I twisted the bottoms together which form more of a solid piece of tulle to stick your pin in.

Once gathered, stick pin and push into your tulle ball.

Continue until the entire ball is covered. It took me a few hours watching TV actually to fill it up how I wanted it.

Originally I had pushed in my dowel to create the spot for the wand, but that was pointless. At the end I couldnt even find the spot and had to make a new hole, so dont bother making a hole ahead of time.

(gwen helped me)

Once your tulle ball is done, its time to work on the wand.

I covered mine in hot pink ribbon, dabbing hot glue along the way every few inches to make sure it didnt runravel on me. Then I did a second color to cover the rest of the dowel.

After the dowel was covered, I added some Korker ribbon strings I had prepared before I started.

If you don’t know how to make korker ribbon (which is curly ribbon), all you do is heat your over to 275 and wrap your ribbon around your dowel, secure, lightly spritz with water over the dowel/ribbon, and bake for 10 minutes in the oven. Once you take it out, its curly. A lot of people put hairspray or other chemicals to make the ribbon stiff, but I generally don’t bother.

I added my ribbon to the top of the dowel and then removed some of the tulle to push a hole into the Styrofoam. Once I had the dowel inside the tulle ball, I pulled it out and put some hot glue on the dowel and put back in to secure.

Now from this point on its pure decoration.

I decided to take another strip of smaller hot pink ribbon and wrap around the dowel because it felt unfinished. I then added a small bow decorative bow in matching ribbon on the bottom. I also put a flower on the very bottom of the wand to give it more of a finished look.

Almost done, I pushed in a butterfly, which Charlotte really liked.

Because this wand has stick pins in it (although you cannot see them and they are unlikely to come out) its not really for a child that would be pulling the tulle out.

I would say more like 5 and up, but please judge your child and how likely they are to pull it all apart before you make this kind of wand. You can also check out my How to Make a Fairy Wand post for a hot glued version.

I think it turned out quite pretty! It is also super lightweight because its made with Styrofoam.

What do you think?

~Trisha

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How to make a tutu…for your kitten.

19 Oct By 26 Comments

Yes, I am that cruel. And bored

First, if you dont know how to make a no sew tutu, I have instructions.

The only difference in this tutu instead of the other instructions is instead of an elastic waist, I used a piece of ribbon and did a half tutu (cause I assumed she wouldn’t walk if it was underneath her) and hot glued the ends together. You can use this same concept on a human baby {as opposed to a furbaby} but instead make your ribbons really long so you can tie in a bow in the front.

I used grosgrain ribbon for this tutu, but I recommend satin if you’re making it for a child instead of a kitten. It produces a nicer bow.

Is there anything cuter than a kitten in a tutu?

Yeah, I dont think so.

Well..maybe if I could figure out how to attach wings on her.

Hmm.

Shortly after this, I let her take it off..then she waged a serious war on it.

Its now a pile of tulle mush.

~Trisha

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Charlotte’s Wall Mural…Remodeling continues

23 Sep By 31 Comments

As you know over here in my house we have been doing some lifestyle household remodeling upgrades. Or redecorating rather. Now that I have moved on mostly from the living room (atleast I will if my DH every gets the shelf I bought on the wall), we are now onto (into?) Charlotte’s room.

Yesterday, I scammed my friend Shasta (whom I met blogging and is the owner of Blog Friendly PR) into coming over and hanging a mural on Charlotte’s wall. We got this mural from Murals my Way over a year ago (you can see this Princess Mural Here) but didn’t open it because at that same time, we put the house on the market and didn’t want to put it up here.

We foolishly thought we could sell our house. Ha.

Now that we are over that dream, we decided it was time to embrace actually settling in and the mural was the first thing on my mind. Now it was cut to fit a specific wall in her room. You would think that a mural with three panels, hanging just like wallpaper, would be super simple to put up.

Yeah…notsomuch.

First, there were no instructions in the box.

Sigh.

Fine. I can Google. The instructions say something like “its so super easy a 1 year old can do it” and explain how to dust off the wall, apply paste to wall, hang up mural, smooth, done. Surely 2 grown woman that have battled poopy diapers, airplane red eye flights with 5 year olds, and the daily grind of twitter can do this.

Snort.

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To hang a mural you will need:

  • Mural
  • Wallpaper paste
  • Wallpaper paste applicator (we used paint rollers and paint brushes)
  • Bucket for the paste
  • Towels to wipe off all the excess paint that will drip on the floor and you
  • A chair
  • atleast 2 people, preferably someone over 5’5″ or a few men
  • a straight razor/scissors
  • a phone in case you fall off the chair

Shasta and I started with the right hand side. I know its probably not a natural way to start, but I figured if we were going to make any mistakes, I wanted it to be behind the door. But the mistake we actually made was starting on the right side.

If you are hanging a mural, START FROM THE LEFT.

Murals are cut with overage and its not as simple as lining up the photo. Its really hard to explain and something you probably only learn by doing, but just trust me.

Left to Right. Left to Right.

Not only are you battling the sticking and heaviness of the mural (which is vinyl, not paper), just because you get the bottom area lined up does not mean the top area will line up.

(this was about the time we realized that our mural doesn’t line up and we needed to pull the entire left side down and readjust the other sides)

Tip: Slather a ton of wallpaper paste on the wall. We used a paint roller to “paint” in the paste, but it made it too thing. Wallpaper paste is like super expensive Elmer’s glue. Just dig in and throw it at the wall. Our biggest issue was that we were initially too conservative.

Tip: Stand back and take pictures claiming its for blog…be slow so friend does the work.

Originally we had cut around the outlet but after we had to adjust the mural again, now I have 2 cuts. Oh well.

The whole thing took about 2.5 hours to get up and no, it isn’t perfect, but overall, I think we did a good job for novice mural hangers.

After all of that, as I was reading the online instructions for hanging, it said that murals can be removed and reused at at least once. Good thing I waited a year to hang it. Figures, right?

Charlotte comes home, doesn’t say a word to me about it. I finally ask, did you see your mural? Yep. Do you like it? Yes.

It’s like talking to a teenager. Maybe I’ll have to host anniversaries of the “Wall Mural Hanging”  for her to apprieciate it more.

Anyhoo, so…what do you think?

~Trisha

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How to Tie Dye a shirt (fun Craft project!)

19 Apr By 28 Comments

This weekend we were looking for a craft project the whole family could get involved in and I had seen these Tie Dye kits at hobby lobby for $20, so we went out to grab one.

(tip: Hobby Lobby does 40% off regularly priced products coupons on their site weekly…print one off first!)

The kit came with 6 colors (although we only used 4 at this time), rubber bands, gloves, and extra dye in it for the future. We bought our shirts separately for $2.50.

Cost was under $20 and in the future will be even lower because we have more dye left in our kit.

This is one project that was ultra messy no matter what, so we decided to do it in the backyard on the grass, which turned out to be a really good idea. While we attempted to use gloves, and you really should, they were getting in the way, so we just worked with dyed hands.

I am sure that’s some sort of bio-hazard.

All you do is add water to the bottles with your dye and shake up. Fold your shirt and tie w/ rubber bands in odd places. You can really get creative here.

If you decide not to rubber band, you can also paint or sponge on the dye making a specific pattern or writing a name.

Once you have added the dye to your shirt, wrap in plastic wrap for 6-8 hours to set, then rinse the shirt out in the sink, wash in hot water (by itself of course) in your washer, and dry.

VOILA!

(its suggested you wash alone for the first couple washes as the dye runs out..you don’t want blue towels)

Warning: this dye gets on EVERYTHING.

It was on our legs, hands, fingernails, you name it. Soap does not get it off. However, if you spray a little Clorox bleach spray on your hands and rub under running water, it comes off in a snap.

No fear, clorox is here!

Have fun…

~Trisha

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How to make a tutu for your Barbie

18 Apr By 21 Comments

While I have how to make a tutu instructions for a little girl (or adult!) and how to make a tutu for your kitten, I was thinking this weekend that it would be cute for Charlotte’s barbie collection to have a tutu collection!

I have never made a tutu this small and yes, having to work with elastic this tiny has its downs, so your fingers must be nimble.

Time: Took me about an hour from start to finish because of how much I had to concentrate on getting my fingers under the elastic.

Gather up:

  • 1 Barbie
  • 1/8th inch elastic (approx $1.29)
  • thread
  • needle
  • tulle
  • something to wrap your elastic around. Spray bottle, shot class, etc.

1) First I took out the elastic and wrapped it around barbies waist to measure the initial length. When you make a tutu and wrap the tulle, the elastic will stretch as the tulle goes on..so in a normal tutu you would deduct a few inches from the waistline to account for that. However since this elastic doesn’t have room to spare on this tiny of a length, I decided to deduct at the end and went ahead and sewed the two ends to each other based on the original measurement.

2) You will need to find an object to wrap your elastic around so you can put the tulle on it. I was able to use a spray bottle.

3) You will have to decide if you want a long or short tutu. Take your measurement length and double it. Cut your tulle. You will be making a slip knot under the elastic so you actually fold your tulle together.

(this is why you double it..so if you want a skirt 4 inches long, you will need to cut in strips of 8 inches).

As you can see in this photo, originally the elastic only fit on the cap of the bottle, but as I was adding tulle, it stretched out and I was able to move it down over the bottle itself.

The first and second picture shows the slip knot. You fold the tulle in half and slip the loop under the elastic. Then with the hanging pieces, you  slip under the loop and pull tight. This creates a knot.

You can make tiny knots or larger ones. However the smaller the knot, the more your elastic will stretch out and make for a bigger waist at the end.

I have demonstrated both here.

4) Continue all the way around, only leaving elastic showing if step #5 applies to you.

5) Once I got close, I took the skirt off the bottle and trimmed the excess elastic (basically making the skirt smaller) and resewed the ends and then added the last few pieces of tulle to cover where I had sewn and finish the skirt.

6) Trim the ends of your skirt so its even (I actually do this as I create it, but its fine to do at the end).

You can also hot glue rhinestones, flowers, ribbons and more to really customize a look.

7) Let your model walk the cat walk!

I am sure Ken (and your little girl) will appreciate your hard work!

~Trisha

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How to Make a Crayon Roll

15 Nov By 19 Comments

Have you ever wondered how to make a crayon roll?

I have a crafty family. We have crayons, paints, coloring books, glue sticks…basically anything that has to do with crafts laying around this house in piles. The sad part is every time I go to the store, I have to contemplate whether or not I should buy new crayons. We go through them like toilet paper. The vacuum eats them, they get thrown out, tossed in drawers.

To stop that, I have decided to make a crayon roll. Goodness knows I have enough loose material around here to create one! I have done some research online and if you are interested in also creating one, check out these sites:

How to make a Crayon Roll

Instructions #1 – Pretty good pictures, easy instructions. I think I could follow these pretty easily. I am going to test out this tutorial first.

Instructions #2 – Easy to follow crayon roll instructions. This has a nice rick rack around it too. I am not sure I am ready to add embellishments quite yet.

Tutorial #3 – These are just text instructions. Unless you are someone that knows how to sew really well, these were not my favorite. No pictures. The upside is that they are easy to print!

Crayon Roll Instructions #4 – Nice pictures. Not too terribly detailed on the instructions, but straight forward.

Crayon Roll instructions #5 – Really detailed, even down to the pictures with the pins in them. Thats helpful because I never would have thought to buy pins.

Crayon Roll Tutorial #6 – The pictures are small, but just another way to learn if none of the rest help out.

If you give up doing it on your own and a want a pattern, you can purchase one here for a few bucks.

Want to BUY one? This may be where I end up after I try. HA! This etsy shop has some adorable ones.

People that succeeded in creating a crayon roll:

Ill update when mine is done!

~Trisha

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