The Blog — tutorials

I woke up to snow this morning which, let me tell you, was not a happy thing.  Stupid snow.  But here's a craft I did with my kids to help combat the cold. We gave away a few of these as gifts, which was great because they were cheap and easy, and I seriously made my kids do half of the work.  Here is how to make your own: First you need to make a pattern (we did hearts and stars).  Basic shapes are easiest - just take a piece of paper, fold it in half, draw half a shape,...

Are your kids out of school yet?  Today is the last day for my kids until January, so we need THINGS TO DO. I made this little playset with the intention of the kids helping me put them together.  Except then I got all crazy obsessive about it and did it all myself so that they would look better.  (But I'm not really that crazy, because my kids are super lazy cutters, and when I say, "cut on the lines" they hand me hacked up pieces and are like, "I'm done!" and I'm like, "uuuuh, it's missing half of it's...

Pretty much no tutorial of mine is complete without somehow making a huge mess.  And while I could tell you about my experiences making ornaments with glitter swirls and even glitter-y dots, I don't think it's necessary to bore you with tales of finding glitter up my nose and in the cracks of the sofa for a solid 3 weeks.  Instead, let's talk about glue guns and mod podge. Part 3: Getting Ornaments Together, Piece by Piece This is yet another idea I mooched from pinterest, but there are few things that random pictures can't tell you.  Such as: these...

The cool thing about borrowing ornament ideas from pinterest is that you don't have to actually come up with any ideas on your own.  (And this is where you think, "duh?")  So basically today's tutorials are my versions of some ideas that I totally mooched from someone else. Part 2: Slap Some Paint on that Ornament No tree would be complete without a mustache*, right?  I'm not sure how other people have made their 'stache ornaments, but this is how I made mine: First, I drew half of a mustache on a piece of paper and cut it out.  Then...

With all the awesome ornament ideas floating around on pinterest lately, I couldn't deny the urge to pull out my paint.  And glitter.  And ribbon.  And glue gun.  And mod podge.  So I'll be doing a 3 part tutorial on some of my favorites. Part 1: Monogrammed Ornaments This ornament is for my niece, who owns all things black/white/pink. To make it, I started by painting a white circle on a silver ornament.  It works best if you start with a small circle and then just add to the edges to make it bigger and bigger until it's the size...