Paper Flower Topiary Centerpieces

Happy Weekend Eve! So excited for Thursday :)

I recently made these centerpieces for a friend. She was hosting a party and wanted something small but spring-y for the tables.

She also wanted something she could give to the girls who helped her plan that party (and the guest of honor) as a keepsake.

These Paper Flower Topiaries worked as both centerpieces and thank you gifts!

Fortunately, these are the easiest to put together.

For each centerpiece, you need:
1 terra cotta flower pot (mine is 5 inches in diameter)
1 small wooden dowel
1 floral foam for inside the pot
1 styrofoam ball (mine is 5 inches in diameter, just like the pot)
Ribbon
Straight pins
Moss
Paper flowers (I cut mine with my Sizzix, which was a tad time consuming, but to make this even easier, you could use pre cut flowers!)

1. Place the floral foam inside the pot. You can hot glue it in there, but mine was so snug, I didn't worry about it.

2. Wrap the wooden dowel in ribbon. I secure my ribbon with glue dots at the top, middle and bottom to make sure the ribbon stays put.

3. Push the dowel into the floral foam. Put the styrofoam ball on top of the dowel. A dab of hot glue may also help here.

4. Begin sticking the paper flowers into the styrofoam ball with the stick pins. I usually start at the bottom and work my way up, being sure the cover any blank spots. Continue around the ball until all the spaces are filled.

5. Place the moss around the top of the pot.

6. Enjoy your centerpiece!

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How to Make a Jack O'Lantern

Ohhhh, it is only Tuesday!

This is actually a layout from a few years ago! I don't think I ever posted it because I couldn't find it last week. So I couldn't resist posting it now (since we don't have any jack o lanterns for this year!)

I have no idea where I got these papers from. But the Jack O Lantern letters are cut from the Halloween and Scaredy Cat Sizzix cartridge.

The little tabs at the top pulled out to reveal the pumpkins we carved (using templates of course!)

Did you ever forget something essential for work? I totally forgot my laptop yesterday and I was thrown off all day long! I had no idea what to do with myself!

Since I'm writing this on Monday night, I'm really hoping that I remember to bring it to work tomorrow/today!

I'll be back tomorrow for WOYWW and with the pumpkin picking story (because I'm working on the pumpkin picking layout!) I feel like this story has been built up by me so much now that everyone's going be like, um, seriously Katie?! So I'm going to preface it with, its not that funny

Thanksgiving Feast Candles

School starts today! Well, for the new teachers it does, the students still have about a week and a half of summer left!

But, the start of school has got me thinking about fall.

AJ and I went to the Dollar Tree this week and picked up some votive candle holders. I originally had another idea for these candles, but they were much wider than I thought, so I had to change it up!

I already have a "give thanks" decoration, so I wanted something different, and it had to be 5 letters or less. Fortunately, AJ came up with the word "feast". Yay!

These were actually super easy to make!

First, I cleaned the votives using rubbing alcohol.

Then, I cut out the letters using my sizzix eclips Christmas and Traditions font. I ran them through a Xyron with temporary adhesive and placed them where I wanted my letters to show up.

After that, it was just painting left. First, I tried painting them with a mix of modge podge and a little brown paint and brown glitter, but I didn't love how it looked. So, while the modge podge/paint was still wet, I covered everything with fall colored glitter.

I pulled the letters off and let it dry overnight. The glitter was shedding a little but, so I covered it all with a clear coat of modge podge the next afternoon, and now the glitter isn't shedding anymore!

I can't wait to get the right candles and see how it looks all lit up, but for now, they are packed away until after Halloween!

Well, I am off to the first day of school! Do you have any first day of school traditions? My mom always used to take a picture of us on the first day of school, but AJ's already at work, so there is no one to take pictures!

Project Pinterest: Summer Wreath

Its Friday!!! I am very excited! Its also the first day of finals, which means a nice quiet day. I've been battling a headache all week, so I'm very much looking forward to quiet.

Its also June 1 (did June sneak up on anyone else?!), which means its time for Project Pinterest!

This month, I pinned this wreath from Mary Pat.
{the pin is here}
{the original blog post is here}

I had lots and lots of paper left over from the decorations for the Asbury Park party, so I decided to make a patriotic themed wreath.

Mine is a little different from Mary Pat's because I made a rectangle. I had leftover foam board, also from the party, and decided to cut it into a wreath shape. The foam board was awesome for two reasons - the total cost of this project $0 and I didn't have to take off my pjs to go to the store!

Then, I covered the white board with left over yellow tissue paper, so yellow would show through the center of each flower.

I am pretty happy with how it turned out. I do want to add a dimensional accent to it somewhere, but I can't decide where to place it. Do you have any suggestions?

Click on the link below to check out even more Pinterest inspired projects and link up your own!

Sturdy No Sew Painted Burlap Bunting Tutorial

If you've been stalking wedding blogs like I have you've seen the famous burlap wedding bunting. I loooove the bunting, it is one of those tiny details not everyone will notice/remember/care about, but I really want it!

Now, before you get all Mason Jar Manifesto on me, I'd like to point out a few things about our wedding:


Yes, my wedding venue has firefly lights. Six years ago, when I walked in to my venue as a sophomore in college trying to plan my sorority's formal, I saw the lights being put up for the first time. I immediately said, "I can't have my formal here, I'm getting married here" and walked out. 

Yes, my wedding is going to have mason jars. I saw them decorating a restaurant on a special dinner date turned crazy adventure with AJ and without skipping a beat turned to him and said, "That will be the theme for our wedding", not even knowing they were the new "it" thing.
Yes, there will be hay bales at my wedding. I'm getting married in October, and that's what my wedding venue uses to decorate. Guess what, my mom had hay bales at her October wedding in 1983, no one wrote a manifesto against her!
Yes, I'm doing almost all of the decor myself. I understand that this is a party celebrating our wedding, and the real important focus of the day is that AJ and I are getting married in a lovely ceremony before anyone even sees my DIY projects (well, except the save the dates and invites...). But I like doing crafty things. And AJ likes that I'm happy when I do crafty things. So my wedding will be full of lots of hand made rustic details, because that is very us. 


End rant.


So back to the bunting. As I said, I love it. You can find it all over Etsy. But, its expensive, and we will be having lots of bunting (Mr. & Mrs. for the sweetheart table, Love is Sweet for the cake table, Just Married for the pictures...if I can think of another phrase to bunt, I will!)

Instead, I took my Jo-Ann's coupons and headed out to buy some burlap. And buy some burlap I did. It was so inexpensive that I got 10 yards in three different colors - traditional brown, white/cream and light green!

Once I got home though, I was STUCK! I didn't know how to make a bunting. And all of the tutorials I could find just didn't fit the vision in my head.

I tried just cutting the burlap out into triangle shapes. I don't recommend this. It got all wonky and I had to back it with card stock to make it stay in triangle shapes. Although, I don't think the finished result is bad, I'd like to avoid the card stock because it takes away the fabric element.

Card stock backed bunting!

I went back, looked at some tutorials and I tried again. This tutorial had used felt and something called Heat Bond. While I didn't want any felt showing around the edges, I thought I could take the basic premise and make something out of it!

This is my No Sew Painted Burlap Bunting Tutorial

Materials:

• Burlap
• Neutral colored felt
• Marker
• Stitch Wizard No Sew Fusible Bonding (or any fusible bonding I assume)
• Iron
• Ironing Board
• Kitchen Towel
• Acrylic Paint
• Sponge Paint Brush
• Twine
• Stencil
• Hot Glue Gun

Time: 1 hour active, 8 hours drying time

Step 1
Cut out a tracer pennant. Now, you can do this out of paper, but I make banners a lot, so I know what measurements I like to use, so I did this with my felt. It saved me all of 5 minutes, but hey, that's my 5 minutes!

For this size: Take a 9" x 9" square. Mark a dot along the bottom of the square at 4.5". Draw a line connecting the top right corner to the dot. Repeat with the top left corner. Cut along the lines. Viola! A bunting.
For the 10-5-13 size seen above, I used a rectangle 7" x 9.5". Then, I marked a dot at 3.5" along the bottom, drew a line from the top right corner to the dot, top left corner to the dot then cut.
*This method can be used for any size measurements, just make sure the dot is centered along the bottom of the square/rectangle, draw your connecting lines and cut :)

Step 2
Trace your template onto felt. You will need to repeat this until you have enough. For this bunting, I needed 4 pieces, so I did this four times.

Step 3
Cut out all your felt triangles.

Step 4
Lay one felt triangle flat on your ironing board. Place a strip of Stitch Witchery along each side of the triangle.

Lay a piece of burlap on top of the felt triangle, being careful not to knock the strips off and to cover the entire triangle. Iron as directed on the package (mine required a damp towel to be placed on top of the fabric, which is what you see in the pictures).

Step 5
Cut out your pennant using the felt triangle as a guide.

The front will look like this when you are done.

Repeat until all of your triangles are cut out and you have a lovely little pile of burlap triangles with felt backing.

Step 6
Use your stencil to paint on the letters. If you are using a store bought stencil skip to Step 7. If you'd like to make your own stencil, see the directions below.

Cut out the letters you want to use out of poster board using a die cutting machine, or cut them by hand with an exacto knife. *Note, when I run poster board through my eClips, I set it on heavy weight card stock and tape the board to the cutting mat using painters tape, to avoid it lifting up.

Carefully remove the letter from the board, and leave just the negative. Cut out each negative to be your stencil, leaving enough room around the sides to protect the burlap from unwanted paint. Run the negative of the image through a Xyron machine loaded with temporary adhesive. Adhere the stencil to your burlap.

Step 7
Using the paint brush, sponge the paint over the stencil. Depending on the colors you are using, one coat may be enough (as in the green paint on white burlap 10-5-13 bunting above) or you may need two (like the white paint on green burlap banner I'm showing now!)

Step 8
Remove the stencils. Let the paint dry overnight, or at least for a few hours.

Step 9
Attach twine to the back of the bunting. Now, I realized after I made this that I could have put the twine in between the felt and the burlap way back in Step 4, but I didn't. So instead, the hot glue gun and I became friends. I assume you can also sew the twine on? That will remain an assumption on my part!

Step 10
Enjoy your bunting!

(Note: This photo was added on 5/24/12, after our engagement photo shoot. Credit for this photo belongs to Brooke of Brown Eyed Girl Photography. Please do not copy this image. Thank you!)

Did you/are you/would you have DIY stuff at your wedding?

Take 12: April

Yesterday was April 12, which meant it was Take 12 day with Ella Publishing Co. Only I almost forgot! I remembered in the morning when I woke up and put my camera in my bag, but was in a rush to get to the doctor for a check up that I forgot to take pictures until I was running errands!

1. Running errands 2. My favorite cheap delivery pizza place had a buy one pizza, get a little pizza free! I'm set for the rest of the week now :) 3. Spending time checking out Wedding Bee!
4. Enjoying a cup of tea with honey in it 5. Waking up after a nap feeling refreshed, but still in couch cuddling mood! 6. Supplies for my first official wedding craft!
7. Trying out the paint colors - I love the orange and the green on the right together 8. Creating a template for my banner with my eclips 9. So worried the paint would run under my template
10. It didn't! I love my "Save the Date" banner. 11. Starting to cut out out pieces for my next banner, but feeling a little tired, so it will stay like that until tomorrow 12. Heating up some pizza for dinner (at 10pm!)

I have to say, I may be the only person who is disappointed that it is Friday! That means my spring break is almost over, and I still have lots to do (more crafting, some work, spring cleaning, finding a dress for next weekend!), I am so not ready for break to end! But, for everyone else who had a busy week - yay Friday!!!

Project Pinterest

Today I'm linking up with Sarah from its on the tip of my tounge for Project Pinterest!

This is the original project:

Click on the picture to go directly to the pin :)

And this is my version:

I changed up the colors to go with our living room. To make the insert, I cut a piece of pretty scrapbook paper (Echo Park Splash Collection Fish paper, this is the back side) to fit the mat, and printed the sentiment in navy blue on a piece of transparency paper. Then, I cut the heart out of navy blue paper using my Sizzix eclips and the starter cartridge, and stuck it to the transparency.
*Sorry for the very odd angle, I kept getting my reflection in the glass instead of the actual saying!

I love this heart, I think its one of my favorite hearts of all time, so it totally deserved a close up!

The Rules:

1. Decide which pin you'd like to recreate.2. Create it!3. Flop or success, create a blog post about your re-do and include the original pin's url.4. Add the Project Pinterest button to your post so others can join in too!

5. Link up and check out other bloggers' posts!

Have a wonderful Friday and an awesome weekend! I can't wait for the weekend to start! We are going out for Valentine's Day on Saturday - but all the of details are a surprise for me! I'm just supposed to be dressed up and ready to go by 6:30pm. I also have to organize all of my stamps...they are in a mess on the floor right now! Do you have any fun plans, maybe finding some time to be crafty?

Thanksgiving Banner

I've been working on this banner for almost two weeks now! I've been able to cut a little bit here and a little bit there, but I finally got to sit down today and finish it!

I really love how it turned out! I might make a little version of the banner and use it on a scrapbook page about Thanksgiving, along with the thankful cards I made a few weeks ago...

Have a great day!

More Halloween Decorations

I added some Halloween decorations to the living room Thursday. I just thought the windows needed something. But the haunted house looked better in the bathroom!

I just didn't like how anything looked in the center window, but AJ suggested putting ghosts on the smaller side windows. He was right, that was the perfect place to put decorations!

First, I cut out this adorable spider and his web from the eclips Halloween and Scaredy Cat Alphaber cartridge. I cut the web up so that I could put part of it on each corner of the window.

Isn't he just the cutest?

Then, on the other window, I cut out some ghosts! I cut these from the Cricut Mini Monsters cartridge. They are actually supposed the be a layer for a kid's costume on the cartridge, but I just cut out this layer and made it a ghost for the window!

AJ thinks they look like Pac Men ghosts...

Yeahhhh, he may have a point!

Well, I'm off to work, have a wonderful Monday!

Halloween Banner

Back in July, I found the We R Memory Keepers Spookville line, and I just had to have it! I am the worst with Halloween paper, it is definitely my favorite paper - as long as it isn't scary at all!

After I bought the paper, I had an idea for a Halloween project - I wanted to make a banner the apartment. I first wanted it to say "Happy Halloween" or "Trick or Treat" but I realized, I didn't have anywhere to hang that up. So I kind of sat around with this idea in my head, waiting to figure out how to use it.

Then I though, I could hang it up on the front door (well, on the inside of the front door, we aren't allowed to decorate the outside). But it couldn't be as long as "Happy Halloween" or "Trick or Treat", because my door is just a normal sized door!

So I made this banner:

Yeah, I have no idea about the penny. I didn't even realize it was there until I uploaded the pictures! It must have fallen out when my bag fell off the chair last night...

This is a close up of the purple...um...what do you call one piece of a banner? I have no idea how to rotate the picture though!

To make the triangles:
Make a mark 6 inches across the bottom of the cardstock, then cut from the top right corner to the mark, then the top left corner to the mark.

To make the circles:
You need two 3" x 12" strips of cardstock. I used my score board to score every half inch on each strip, then folded them up like an accordion. Then, I attached the ends of the papers to get a circle, and flattened it out onto a piece of cardstock. (I'm thinking I'm going to make a video for this, because those directions should super confusing!)

The letters and the spiderwebs I cut from the Sizzix eclips Halloween and Scaredy Cat Alphabet cartridge.

Then I just layered it all up!

I hope everyone has a great weekend! Thanks for stopping by :)

Promise Ring Scrapbook Page

It was very important to me to create a scrapbook page about my ring as soon as possible. I wanted to document how excited I was feeling, so I could always look back and remember this time of my life.

I knew right away that I wanted to use Bo Bunny's Sophie's Notebook paper, because it is set up so nicely to write on.

 I really love this paper, but putting them next to each other, I sort of wish that I could change the flowers on the right paper, to the right side, instead of on their left side, so the large flowers were on either side. But, it is what it is, I'd add more flowers, but I can't find my cardstock stickers. I guess that's the problem with packing half of the scrapbook stuff already!

 Sizzix Curly Girly Alphabet - its one of my favorite scripts!

 I love the flowers in this paper line, they are the reason I love this line so much!

I just love to look at my ring :)

The journaling was especially important to me. I went through several revisions before I wrote this, and even then, I was revising as I was writing on the lined paper!

     For my twenty fourth birthday, AJ gave me a promise ring. A promise ring can mean different things to different people, but to us, it means we are going to spend the rest of our lives together. Moving to Chicago is the first step in our adventure, and no matter where this adventure takes us, we will be there together.
     I am so thrilled and excited that AJ chose to express his love for me in this way. I am so proud to wear this ring, as a symbol of our love, and our commitment to our relationship. It is a beautiful reminder of where we are going as we take the first steps of our wonderful journey together.
     I cannot wait to move to Chicago with AJ and begin our adventure.To quote him, "We are going to have an amazing life", and I am so excited that we are going to be together to share it all.