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Inspired by Claire at Say Yes to Hoboken to make a tassel necklace:

Most of the time, my Pinterest pins are for future inspiration, but every once in awhile, something comes along that says "make me now!" So I did.

The directions were very clear, and I was easily able to get all of the supplies at Michael's. I used DMC floss E317, from the Precious Metal Effects line. I do have a tip for you if you are having a hard time placing the knots just where you want.

Tie a knot around a large needle.

You can then move the needle up and down the length of your string till you get it to the position you want. Then gently withdraw the needle as you tighten the knot.

After putting on the beads on either side, I put both pieces of string through 2 final beads. The last bead stays in a fixed position, but the other one can side up and down to adjust the length of the necklace.

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Inspired by Print Workshop by Christine Schmidt, via Janet, to do a little stamping:

I took an existing stamp and covered up the wood mounting block with tape to protect it. Then, I just wrapped some leftover cotton yarn (you know I've got plenty of that on hand!) around the block. This is stamped using a regular ink pad onto some paper that's going into my journal.

I love this book! There are so many projects in it that I want to make. (The project in this video is not in the book, and the template is not on the website anymore. However, it's good to watch her technique. You'll be able to preview some of the other projects in the book at the end of the video.)

PRINT WORKSHOP by Christine Schmidt from Yellow Owl Workshop on Vimeo.

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Inspired by Ruth Bleakley on Poppytalk to make some relief prints from styrofoam:

This was a fun and easy craft project, and it helped the kids to better appreciate the Japanese woodblock prints we have.

Even though we're doing our best to avoid styrofoam, some of it still makes its way into our house. We clean it and save it in a bin to be taken to the recycling center when it's full enough. For this project, we raided the "stash." We used acrylic paint and a sponge brush since we don't have a brayer.

Oh (Dragon) Baby!

We had a baby shower for my sister this past weekend, which was the reason for my visit. This is the Year of the Dragon, and she's been playfully referring to the little one as Dragon Baby, so that became the theme for the party.

We started with invitations designed by Chloe Marty. I had spotted her cute dragon invitation on Pinterest, and she worked with me to change the original dragon into a more Asian-looking one. Naturally, we sent out the invitations using a Year of the Dragon stamp!

I drew a lot of inspiration from the Lunar New Year party at And Baby Makes Four. Although I didn't get a picture of it, I ordered the same paper tassel garland seen on that blog, and it turned out just perfectly. We also had a few red lanterns scattered here and there.

I loved the arrangement of branches and lucky envelopes seen on The Party Dress. My sister's mother-in-law found a beautiful red vase and outfitted it with dried mountain laurel limbs. Guests were encouraged to write a little note to Dragon Baby and to leave it in a lucky envelope.

We replicated centerpieces originally seen on Pier One's website (they're no longer there, but you can view them at Asianmommy.com). They were really easy: mini takeout boxes, silk flowers, chopsticks, and dragon picks.

The water bottle labels were made using the Silhouette cutter ("chinese_dragon_C01001_20508" in case you're interested), and that same dragon motif is used for some of the signs. Off to the right, you'll catch a glimpse of the mimosa bar, which was inspired by Simple Modern Weddings.

For favors, we put custom fortune cookies inside miniature bamboo steamers and tied them up with red ribbons. We also dipped some of the fortune cookies in chocolate and served them on Asian spoons.

The rest of the menu was mostly Asian-inspired.

No party is complete without a themed dessert, right? I fell in love with the dragon cupcakes seen in the book Cupcakes, Cookies, & Pie (yes, from the same geniuses who created the sheep pound cakes), and I was so fortunate to find Amanda at Esquire Confections, who executed them perfectly!

I'm excited for the Dragon Baby!

Eggs-citing

We went to a local children's museum yesterday and discovered a different way to dye eggs to create a swirled or marbled effect. It was a lot of fun, so I thought I'd share it with you! You can use the tablets of egg dye, or you can make your own dye. For the latter, I usually use 1 tablespoon of vinegar to 1/2 cup of water and add food coloring to that. There are also lots of recipes on the internet for natural coloring options. In addition to dye, you also need shaving cream. Warning: this is messy!

Squeeze out a little mound of shaving cream and squirt on your dye.

Then, place your egg into the shaving cream and swirl it around. We left ours on for just 30 seconds or so. Rinse off the egg in water, and you're done! At the children's museum, they had plastic sheets on top of tables and just squeegeed off the shaving cream residue after each child was done. At home, I would use a rimmed baking sheet or plastic container to corral the mess.

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I was inspired by my favorite enabler to start journaling again. Janet introduced me to Smash Books, and I was smitten! It's a perfect blend of journaling and scrapbooking--more fun than the former, less fiddly than the latter. It's not really a new concept, but the entire Smash Book line is really attractively packaged, and I'm a sucker for their marketing. The only thing was that I had a hard time letting go of being able to control which papers were in the books and in which order.

Then I stumbled upon the Arc notebooks at Staples. These are essentially a more affordable version of the Circa notebooks I had coveted from Levenger catalogs years ago, and they're similar to Rollabind systems. As far as I can tell, they're all interchangeable. I love the flexibility of this system!

I settled on a pink leather junior-sized book (8.5" x 5.5"). I'm calling these my Smarc books--part Smash, part Arc!

As you can see, there's a pocket in the front and a pen loop in the back. The loop is not big enough to hold a Smash Pen, but it'll fit most other pens. The Arc notebooks come with ruled paper, but I took some of it out and added pretty printed cardstock. These were on sale at Michael's for just $10 for a pack of 48 sheets. I cut the cardstock to the size of the notebook and got 2 pages per sheet, with some decorative scraps left over. If I had gotten 8.5" x 11" cardstock, it would have been an even easier cut to get 2 perfectly-sized pages from one sheet. Then, I used the Arc paper punch to get my cardstock pages to pop right into the notebook. If I change my mind about the order of the sheets, it's easy to rearrange them.

I picked up a pocket divider to store little scraps in the back of the notebook, as well as a a zip pocket that can be added to the top of the notebook for journaling on the go!

I got some other fun Smash accessories--pads of journaling prompts, washi tape, clips, and paper pockets. I also picked up some other cute office products and brought out some of my scrapbooking supplies to assemble a little kit. The girls and I have had fun setting aside a bit of time most evenings to work on our journals!

A Little Loopsy

I came across some really cute Lalaloopsy cakes and was inspired to make one for my daughter's party. Many of them include really cute fondant buttons, but since none of us like fondant, I opted instead to make button cookies to decorate the cake. My older daughter helped! Since I don't have circle cutters, we just used different sizes of bottle caps--not as pretty, but they served just fine. I used the same cookie recipe that JaeBellz did, and the food dye was Wilton Icing Colors in rose, teal, and violet. This particular recipe holds its shape really well. Since the cookies didn't spread, we decided it was much easier to roll out the dough onto parchment paper, cut out the circles, and then pick up the scraps around them. The parchment paper then went directly onto a baking sheet to go into the oven. This saved having to transfer the cookies individually and risk messing them up. The cookies that weren't used for the cake were given out as part of the favor bags.

I had a lot of fun with the cake topper. Lalaloopsy packages have cute handles on the top, and of course I saved them because they looked too good to discard. I got a 4" round pressboard box and hot glued the handle to the top.

It doesn't matter if it's messy because no one will see that. (And in case you're curious, I was able to later dismantle it, peel off the hot glue, and save the handle intact). The box was covered with frosting, and then I added a couple of her mini dolls. Ta da!

My daughter had requested an ombre pink and white cake, and this one was made with 1 box of white cake mix and 1 box of strawberry cake mix. The bottom layer is strawberry, the top layer is white, and the middle layer was created by mixing the 2 together. If you're using a kitchen scale to make sure everything is even, it's about 600g of batter in each layer.

We also made a few mini cakes for the dolls out of Golden Oreos and decorated them with Candy Buttons. They sat on mini cupcake stands I had made for a previous party.

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A Little Loopsy

I'm back with some more Lalaloopsy. This next one is really easy. You can twist 5/8" screw eyes right into Lalaloopsy pencil toppers and convert them into little charms. I just used my fingers to do this and did not require any tools.

We used these charms to make bracelets and necklaces at my daughter's birthday party.

The other craft they did was to glue felt pieces and buttons onto barrettes.

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A Little Loopsy

My younger daughter got a cute felted purse from Janet for Christmas, along with some yarn to embellish it. Right now, she's in Lalaloopsy mode, so that's the kind of bag she wanted. I thought she did a great job!

She had received a package of Lalaloopsy pencil toppers, and we put them to good use. She arranged everything and used chalk to draw a design.

Then, she stitched some yarn along the chalk lines.

For the next part, I made holes in the pencil toppers so that they could be sewn onto the purse. I dug around in my husband's tool box and found a pick an awl (thanks, Gail!), which I careful worked through the pencil topper. Look away if you're squeamish...

I admit that part was really hard--and kind of dangerous--but I managed to finish all 3, unscathed. After my daughter had stitched her design, I sewed the pencil toppers into place and fashioned a little closure for the purse.

She has decided she wants a Lalaloopsy party for her birthday, so you'll be seeing more Lala posts soon!

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Inspired by numerous Pins to make some melted crayon art:


There are lots of different versions of this, and various techniques, including using a hair dryer, glue gun, or even an oven to melt your crayons.

My little one had to do a 100th Day of School project, which involved making a display of 100 things. We brainstormed some ideas, and she looked at a bunch of pictures before settling on using 100 crayons. She had hoped to make a heart shape, but we couldn't fit all the crayons onto the canvas we were using, so we decided to make 2 rows of crayons instead. This was a good exercise in the concept of "half," as she had to sort out the colors and use half of a given color on the top and half on the bottom. I put lines of hot glue onto the canvas, working small sections at a time, and she arranged the crayons into place. (ETA: This was meant as a family project. If you want your child to do it on his own, I'd recommend using tacky craft glue over regular white glue). We then put the whole thing into a large cardboard box to protect from wayward drips and splatters, but actually, it was all very tidy and we had no mess at all.

The crayons were melted using a hairdryer with the heat set on high and the fan speed set on low. My daughters and I took turns holding the hairdryer very close to the crayons (and obviously they were supervised during their turns). I was going to make a note of how long it took, but honestly, it was so much fun watching the process that I lost track of time! There are already a number of instructions out there in case you want to make your own. We used the one at 52 Kitchen Adventures as a reference.

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