Fun Floral Tote Bag

I made this tote bag for my mother-in-law for her birthday. I love this floral corduroy! And I love making tote bags! They are pretty easy to do & I like changing little things each time I make one so that they are customized for the recipient or for whatever purpose I wish the bag to serve.

I also added a fabric yo-yo flower to the front of this one:

Here's a shot of the inside:

It's hard to tell, but one side has a large pocked & then the other side has a pen pocket plus two other smaller pockets (perfect for a cell phone or something that size).

So you know how I like to make cards to match the gift if possible. This is the card I made to go with the tote bag:

Not colors that I would typically use on a card, but since I was drawing the colors from the corduroy it worked out ok!

Simple Spring Wreath

I jumped on the Spring wreath bandwagon this week & made my own. I've been seeing so many on people's blogs that are just so cute! If it looks off-centered in the photo, that's because it is! I don't know why, but that clear wreath hanger doesn't work well on my front door & made the wreath very crooked. I actually have the wreath hung on a door inside of our house, but the lighting was absolutely horrible in there for taking a photo. Oh well, you get the idea. So I've been on this 3 flower thing for a while & that's what I did on this wreath as well. I wanted my wreath to be very simple, but I'm thinking that maybe it's too simple. Maybe I should add a couple more flowers? I loved using the burlap to wrap around the styrofoam wreath-so fast & easy! And it adds such a nice texture too. I also love these colors in the fabrics-cocoa brown, apricot & ocean blue. Such happy colors! I am so glad that Spring is here!

Embroidery Hoop Art for Spring

I have been seeing all sorts of these cute embroidery hoop art pieces on crafty blogs for a few months. I am so grateful for the Internet & for the inspiration of all of you crafty people out there, by the way! So I've been meaning to shift gears at our house & welcome spring. I thought I'd give one of these embroidery hoops a try. (Of course as I went outside to take the photo I grabbed it wrong & now it puckers over there on the left where my fingers slipped. Oh well, just ignore that!) So I wanted mine to have a vintage feel to it. I used my Silhouette machine to cut out this cute doily shape on some flocked white heat transfer. Then I ironed it onto some muslin fabric which I then put into the embroidery hoop. To embellish it I made the 3 fabric rosettes from some scraps of Stampin' Up! fabric that I had. I had never made rosettes before. To be honest I actually hated these ones at first. I was going to rip them off & try something else, but now that I am getting used to them I am really liking them. Funny how that happens! To finish the rosettes off I simply glued some pearl beads in to the center.

Here's a close-up:

I wish you could see the flocked heat transfer doily in person, it really looks cool! And overall this was a really quick & inexpensive project-which I love!

Embellished Frame

Would you believe that after all the craziness around here lately then we all got the stomach flu? Yep, ALL four of us! That was no fun. And it really put a damper on my crafting! Well, finally we are feeling better. And I needed to prepare a lesson for church yesterday. For part of my lesson I wanted to display my framed The Family: A Proclamation to the World, an article from my church that shares our beliefs on family & why they are so important. But, I wanted to jazz it up a little. As you know, I have been addicted to these adorable fabric flowers so I used some of my Stampin' Up! fabric to make some for this frame.

Here's a close-up:

So cute! I am lovin' these flowers!

I also photocopied the proclamation, shrunk it down a little & then embellished it so that I could give it to the girls in my class as a handout:

I hope they like it!

New Felt Flower Headbands

Did you notice the cute felt flower headband that my older daughter was wearing in this photo from the other day?

Yep, I've been making some felt flowers again. I love felt! I had seen this technique for making flowers around in the blog world, but Make It and Love It just posted a tutorial last week for knit baby hats that feature this type of darling flower on it. Click here to check out her awesome pictures & tutorial. They are so easy & fun to make & they are so cute that I just want to stick them on everything! And with my Big Shot I can cut out all of the circles I need at once. I love the weight of the felt for attaching onto headbands. And I just fluffed up the layers a little bit for these ones, but they also look super cute when they're not fluffed up & have a button glued in the center.

Here's the light pink one I made:

And the bright pink flower I glued on the bright green headband:

So fun!