When a little girl requests a butterfly birthday party, I'm happy to oblige. I went the VERY simple route for this one, even though I could have gone crazy with the decorations and crafty projects. There just wasn't time or money for anything too complicated! So here's what we ended up with:
butterfly birthday plates & napkins from Big Lots
white tablecloth with patterned paper butterfly cutouts sprinkled around it
three scrapbook pages featuring newborn Ayla and pictures from this past year
a borrowed cupcake stand
butterfly and flower cupcakes from Sam's Club (we added gummy worms for caterpillars)
Party Favors: butterfly nets, wings & glasses from the Dollar Tree
butterflies made with fabric strips tied in knots (so the kids could throw & catch butterflies in their nets)
Easy! And it all fit into a rubbermaid tub and cooler to bring over to the park. Too bad the butterfly birthday balloon I bought flew away as soon as I opened the car door...guess I didn't have it tied down as well as I thought!
Since I made Paxton a birthday shirt this year, I didn't want Ayla to feel left out. She picked "butterflies" as her party theme, so we took a good old Garanimals t-shirt and turned it into a butterfly party shirt with a reverse applique design and some scrap fabric (actually, I think they were hankerchiefs)!
Glad I could get this smiley picture of her. She was in a silly face mood yesterday:
With all the pictures I take, it's about time I framed a few. :)
I've had this collage frame sitting in my "to do" projects forever, and finally decided that a bathtime baby bathroom collage would be the perfect use for it. So, I printed several bathtime baby photos of both of our kids in black and white, added some patterned paper & Imaginisce "Splash Dance" rub-ons and stickers and viola! A cute little bathroom collage.
While I was working on this project, I flipped the Splash Dance packaging over and was surprised to see a familiar face looking back at me!
Instead of doing all the things I *should* be doing today, I was inspired to make these photo tags for each of our Christmas stockings as I was in the middle of decorating the house for the holidays:
I made Paxton one too...but he doesn't have a stocking yet! I gotta get on that...
My friend Kortney made this cute skirt to match the Bears shirt I made for Ayla. She sells them on Etsy and does custom orders if you've got a little girl to shop for!
Looking for something to do this afternoon, I decided to see if I could make Ayla some Easter puppets to play with this week. A little bit of scrap fabric, buttons, and a hot glue gun, and here's what we came up with:
It's been a long process, several coats of paint, and a lot of debate about colors and furniture, but finally we have Ayla's room "finished". I hesitate to say that because I think I still would like to add some more things to the walls and the shelves by the dresser, but for now, it's done. Mostly because the bedframe is painted and set up! Yay!
Here is my mock-up picture:
And the finished room (which I did not stick as closely to as I did in the nursery, as you can see):
We haven't painted the dresser yet...and I'm not sure if we will anytime soon or not. I kind of like the wood now...
And finally, here are some detail pictures of around the room.
The last picture at the bottom is Ayla's version of the wall canvases...she did a good job, didn't she? After she made it, she asked if we could hang it in her new room. How could I say no?
It really wasn't too hard...but I can't guarantee their launder-ability. :) I'll wait until after the photos are taken before I wash them!
The steps:
Pick a simple block font and cursive print to make your t-shirt saying.
Print it on computer paper.
Choose a t-shirt to alter and a contrasting color fabric for the block letters.
Use straight pins to pin the saying to the front of the shirt where you want it to be, layering the contrasting fabric BEHIND the front of the t-shirt. (contrast fabric, then t-shirt, then printed paper on top).
Hand-stitch with a backstitch around the outline of the letters, including any center sections (as in B, R and O).
When you've finished stitching, gently tear away the paper (GENTLY). You should see an outline of the letters you just stitched on the t-shirt.
Inside each letter, carefully separate the t-shirt from the contrasting fabric so that you can cut a small hole in the t-shirt fabric. Do NOT cut through the contrasting fabric or the stitching.
Trim carefully around the inside of the stitched outline to reveal the contrasting fabric underneath.
Turn the t-shirt inside out and trim away any excess contrasting fabric.
When the block letters are finished, pin the cursive word above the block letters on the front of the t-shirt. Use several pins to be sure it stays put.
Hand-stitch with a backstitch along the cursive font.
When you've finished stitching the font, gently tear away the paper and you're finished!
Tip:
Use a light gray font on the paper and a contrasting thread color so that you can easily see where you've stitched.
I need some practice still, but I like how they turned out. And I like the price. I had everything on hand except the t-shirt for Ayla and brown thread. Total cost: $4.50. When compared with the prices you'd pay in a store...likely $30 each or more...
Inspired by the Imaginisce Twitterpated paper line, I just finished up the wall canvases to hang over Ayla's bed in her new "big girl" bedroom. I'm so thrilled with how they turned out:
I painted the sky and landscape background (using the light blue wall color of her room for the sky and the green paint color that we originally were going to use, and then painted over because it was too dark).
Then I added grass and hill details with acrylic paints. That took a couple of tries...but with Ben's suggestions, I like the final result. The good thing about paint...you can paint over it if it doesn't look good!
I decided not to paint a border or frame on this set of canvases because I wanted them to just kind of pop out of the wall. I'm liking the resulting effect.
Once the backgrounds were painted, I added the paper pieced trees, birds, butterfly & bee. I had a great time picking out patterned papers from all different paper lines to make the right color scheme and piece together all the elements.
After everything was glued together and glued down and covered in Mod Podge, I added button eyes to the birds, brad eyes to the bee, and some black string antennae for the butterfly & bee.
