How to Make Your Own Christmas Bows

 After a long blogging break, I'm really excited to be back sharing a fun tutorial today.  I've always loved dressing up packages and presents with a personal handmade touch, and this year, I learned how to make my own bows.  It's so much easier than you would imagine and quick, too- in fact, it took me longer to upload the photos for this post than it did to actually make a bow.

This tutorial will cover two different types of handmade bows:  felt and paper.

The photos in this post are from a felt bow-making project, but it's the same directions if you're using artwork or felt.

Let's start with supplies.

You will need:

• Felt or Children's Artwork.  A 12" x 9" square of felt is perfect or a comparable size of artwork.  The thicker the paper (if using artwork), the better.
• Rotary cutter and mat, or ruler and scissors
• Pen
• Hot glue gun for felt; tape or school glue if using artwork.

Cut your felt or paper into 1" strips.  I tried many different sizes of bows and found this size to be the most sturdy, easiest to assemble, and most beautiful bow.  

Cut the following strips from your felt or artwork:

• 3 - 1" x 12"
• 3 - 1" x 11"
• 2 - 1" x 10"
• 1 - 1" x 4"

Set the 4" piece aside.  

For the 12", 11" and 10" pieces, use a light colored pen or marker to mark the center of the strips.  Do this on all 8 strips.

Starting with the 12" pieces, fold the top to your left.

Then, flip the end under and bring it to the line in the middle of the strip.

This really is the hardest part of the entire project, and it's one of those things that easier to show you than to explain to you, so just follow the pictures please.  When I taught this craft at my church mom's group, I found it so much easier to go around and show everyone how to do it than to try and explain it.  Maybe I'm just not eloquent with words....

Then, put a small amount of hot glue on the red line.  

And glue the raw edge down on the red line.  

It helps to practice the turning part a few times before putting the glue on your felt or artwork.  But once you get the turning thing, you've got it and can pop out a hundred of these babies in no time!  :)

Okay, so then you're going to do the same thing to the other side of your strip.  Some people say it helps to flip your strip upside down, but I didn't find that helpful to me.  

So if you keep your strip in the same position, flip the other raw edge to your right.

Again, flip it under and meet up with the first raw edge on the red line.

Once you get the hang of the turning and flipping, you'll find that you can put one strip of hot glue and get both ends glued down pretty quickly.  But it takes practice, so don't get frustrated on your first bow!

Your two raw edges should meet perfectly together.

Repeat this with the other two 12" strips, until they all look like the photo below.  You'll know it's right when you see a continuous figure eight.  

Then grab your 11" and 10" strips and do the same thing.  Keep them separated by lengths.

Now find your 4" strip that you set aside earlier.  Put one small strip of hot glue on one end and make a loop, or an "O".

Now it's time to start assembling your bow!  Remember that several layers of felt can get thick quickly, so use just enough glue to stick and not too much!  

Grab your set of 3 12" figure eights.  

Put a small (pea-sized) amount of hot glue on the meeting point of the two raw edges.

Put the second 12" figure eight on top of the first one, but don't make it perpendicular (or an "X").  You have three to fit on this bottom layer, so stagger it accordingly.

See how there's enough room for the third 12" figure eight to fit in?

Add some glue (another pea-sized amount) to to the second figure eight and put the third one on top.

This is the bottom layer of your bow!  

Follow the same directions to put the three 11" strips on.  One by one, add a pea-sized amount of hot glue and stagger the figure eights on top.  Space them evenly so that the bow looks full and balanced.

Once the 12" and 11" figure eights are all glued together, glue the 10" figure eights on to the existing bow.  Since you only have two 10" figure eights, they will be perpendicular to each other.

This creates a perfect "pocket" or "bowl" for your little loop.  Glue the loop, raw edges down, into the bow.

And you're done!  

To affix your bow to a gift, I suggest tape for artwork bows and hot glue or ribbon for felt bows.  Artwork bows are a true treasure to grandparents, aunts, uncles and anyone who treasures your children's creations.  Felt bows can be used over and over again- much longer than store-bought bows.

A helpful link on making bows from magazine pages can be found here, but I haven't found these bows to be as durable.  

Here's to handmade bows this holiday season!

Monster Birthday Party

 A few weeks ago we celebrated half a decade with my oldest baby!  I cannot believe how fast these five years have passed by.  I was miserably ill my entire pregnancy with him.... morning, noon, night, midnight sickness lingered the entire nine months!  We moved to a new state and a new career for my husband when he was only two months old.... a move through the snow, ice and other horrendous weather conditions.  Then, when he was 19 months old, we brought home a baby sister, who he lovingly welcomed into our family.  Just six weeks after that, we moved across the country to our current city of Orlando.  The first two years involved way too many moves, but he has always been an amazing kid to "go with the flow" and keeps us laughing and smiling all day long!

We had this party at a local park.  I paid to rent a pavilion for four hours, and timed the party to start one hour after the pavilion rental began.  This gave me one hour to set up and transform a park pavilion into a monster home!  I had lots of good help and it was all worth it for this birthday boy.

He requested a "Monster Birthday Party".  I always let my kids pick a theme -usually I give them three choices and let them pick one - and then I take over the decor and food and other party planning.  With an October birthday, monsters abound in the stores for Halloween, but that wasn't quite what I had in mind.  I wanted bright colors, silly faces, googly eyes, and fun textures.

The inspiration piece was a stuffed monster that I found at a local consignment sale, Boutique For A Week.  (If you live in Orlando, make sure to stop by their spring sale- it's the cleanest, most organized sale I've ever seen!)  This fun monster had the bright green, yellow, blue and a punch of black that I was dreaming of.  And, it was only $1.  Amazing.

I sat this phenomenal find on top of the cupcake stand that my father made.  It's a wooden circular stand with four "level" for cupcakes.  We'll use it year after year for parties, and I may even use it at craft shows when I sell items from my Etsy shop.  I was inpsired by this photo I found on Pinterest, and originally planned to add fur and googly eyes to the stand, but then decided it was better without.

My mother-in-law and "Mimi" (my husband's grandmother) graciously made the cupcakes.  They were delicious!!!  And, they looked perfect.  The edible eyes came from Target, but similar ones can be found here on Amazon.  The cupcake liners were from the Little Monsters Printable kit from MyGrafico.

For other food, we had a veggie tray, chips & salsa, and pretzels with spinach dip.  I also served fruit in clear plastic cups, which I had done at another birthday party a year or so ago.  It keeps little hands off the fruit bowl, keeps it from getting too mushy, and makes for a great display.  I rarely serve fruit any other way!

For the table runner, I bought a roll of wrapping paper from Target.  After the picnic table was covered with a white plastic tablecloth (from Dollar Tree), I taped down the wrapping paper.  I also used my green shag rug from my kitchen to put under the cupcake stand.  It gave the illusion of monster fur.  (Don't worry, I washed it the morning of the party and didn't use it as a rug again until after the party.)

For the decor, I made monster boxes - 28 of them!  This was, by far, the most time consuming part of party prep.  I collected latex glove boxes from work (most of you know I put on my RN "hat" from 4 pm to midnight each night) and transformed them into monsters.  First, I opened the box on the side and slid a piece of wrapping paper to form the "back of the mouth".  I always used two contrasting wrapping papers to give more patterns and color.  Then, I wrapped the entire box in wrapping paper.  Most of the wrapping paper came from the Dollar Tree, but a bit was from Target, and some was just found in the box under my bed!  After wrapping the box completely, I cut open the mouth (where you reach in to grab gloves) and taped it to the inside of the box.  I glued googly eyes, pipe cleaners, and pom pom balls to give the monster a "face" and then added teeth to the inside of the mouth.  Simple- even the birthday boy (and his sister) helped with some of it.

I strung fishing line through the monsters to make a "chandelier" of seven.  I had four sets of seven monsters, one to hang above each table at the pavilion.  I tied the fishing line to a beam directly above the tables.

On each of the four tables, I had coloring sheets (again from the Little Monsters Printable Kit) and a bucket of crayons.  The buckets were from Target Dollar Spot, but I removed the fall colored ribbon and glued googly eyes.

I covered each table with a white plastic tablecloth and then cut a square table topper from wrapping paper.

For the food table, I made a banner with my 1" and 2" circle punch.  I did a similar thing for my daughter's Pink and Purple Birthday Party 18 months ago.  It's so easy when you have the circle punches.  Of course, I added google eyes to this banner as well - the kids helped with that!

 Couldn't leave the cups out of the decorations!  They got googly eyes, too!

Since this party was at the park, I didn't plan many games or activities, but I did make this fun photo booth.  I used foam board to create the frame, and then glued fur (from Jo-Ann's) to the frame.   I printed the monsters on cardstock and added them to the bottom.  The frame hung from fishing line at the perfect 5-year-old height.

I had a table beside the frame with fun props for the kids to use in their photos, and it was certainly funny to see them put the eyes over their mouths and other 5-year-old goofs like that!

For party favors, I made each child a monster snack bag.  I didn't want to give more sweets, so I figured something useful would be perfect.  If you aren't familiar with reusable snack bags, click on this link to learn more about the ones in my Etsy shop.  The monster fabric was found at the Sewing Studio in Orlando, one of my all-time favorite sewing stores!

Before we sang "Happy Birthday", all the kids sat on the bench and my mom read Where the Wild Things Are.  

It was such a fun party!  Happy 5th Birthday to my sweet boy!

Helpful Links:
Monster Party Pinterest Board (I certainly didn't use every idea, but this helped me plan the party)
Googly Eyes for Cupcakes on Amazon
Monster Printable kit from MyGrafico- search for Little Monsters Birthday Party (what I used for cupcake liners, photo props, and party favor labels)
Where the Wild Things Are book on Amazon
Circle Punches on Amazon

Other Parties I've done:
Dino-Four Birthday
Dora Birthday Party
Pink and Purple Birthday Party

Kitchen Cabinet Makeover

It's no secret that my kitchen cabinets were screaming for a remodel.  The early 1990's kept calling and asking for their honey oak cabinets to come back.  I am thrilled to have oak cabinets gone forever and welcomed new white, modern, clean cabinets with open arms!

First, lest we forget how far we've come....

Here is the kitchen prior to us purchasing the home- in the summer of 2010.

Ugh, right?  You can see more of those pics and the incredible floor remodel (prior to our move-in) here.

Because funds were limited, we removed the wallpaper and painted the walls to match the open family room (which was also painted prior to move-in).  

That helped a lot, and then my kitchen looked like this....

In July, I met with a painter who gave me a very reasonable quote to paint the cabinets.  Based on her quote, I had to save $1000 more than what I already had.  We did not have any wiggle room in our budget, and I have a separate account for my Etsy sales, consignment store sales, and other random side-job type things I do (none of which make a lot of money).  I told my painter that I would work hard to save the money and hoped to call her in two months or less.

So, I started listing items in my Etsy shop, and thing started selling.  One of the biggest lessons I have learned about selling on Etsy is that the more you list, the more you sell.  Keeping your inventory up will almost always guarantee more sales.  At one time, my inventory was close to 100 items, and it has dropped a little since then, but 100 items is my goal.  My Etsy sales accounted for the single biggest contributor to my $1000 goal- nearly 40% if I remember correctly.

I also sold kids clothes, toys, and other items at a local consignment sale, Boutique for a Week.  This sale helped me earn about 30% of what I needed for the cabinets.  I made bridesmaids gifts for a friend's wedding- that was another 15%.  I also purged some books and sold on Amazon- another 10%.  I made another 10% from Google Ads, and things started coming together.  

By September 1, just seven weeks after my meeting with the painter, I had all the money I needed to call her and set a start date!

She and her team arrived on a Monday morning, and worked tirelessly until Friday afternoon.  I was incredibly pleased with the quality of work and professionalism she displayed.  If you are in Orlando and would like the name and number of such an outstanding painter, please email me.

I'll stop talking now and let these amazing photos speak for themselves!

The cabinets coordinate perfectly with the pull-out kitchen pantry my husband made.  My  magnetic spice organization is still working wonderfully for our family!

The paint color is Clear Moon by Behr.

The kitchen light deserves an entire post, but my dad and my husband are  responsible for this amazing transformation.  Also, this photo give a glimpse into our family room, which underwent an incredible transformation about two years ago.

I really like the clean, white look, but am adding pops of green as I can.  Green curtain, green shag rug (Target), green baskets on the microwave (also Target).

Before the white cabinets, I thought the countertops were so dated.  Now that the cabinets are updated, the countertops don't look nearly as bad.  In fact, I think they match the floor well!

Next to my mixer is my recipe binder (Target), which I use daily.  I talked about how meal planning has helped me survive working full time in this post.

Another pop of color- not green, but pink flowers from a friend's garden.  I try to keep either flowers or a candle on the stovetop.

This print was found on Pinterest, and is available as a free download here.  The frame is from Target (big surprise!).

Barstools are from Wal-Mart.

Through the door you can see my laundry room, which was remodeled last summer.  You can also catch a small glimpse of my sewing room, which was remodeled last summer as well.

I absolutely love this kitchen!  It turned out so much better than I imagined, and I couldn't be any happier with the finished product.  It was absolutely worth all my extra work to save towards my goal.

Anyone else had any home projects lately?  I'd love to see!  Leave me a link in the comments if so.