Glitter Spider Art

I have had this idea bouncing around in my head for a while, then, when I saw Jen's specimen art I knew I had to make it a reality! I had already tried glittering some spider rings for a project that FAILED!! I knew it would work but I needed the rest of the supplies. I ran to Michael's and got the exact frames Jen used (they were a steal!). I also had to buy some glitter- Michael's had a pack of about 10 different colors and with a coupon it turned out to be about $4. I bought a pack of spider rings at Wal-mart for $2 and I have a TON left over.

To start I lightly coated the spider with glue on the whole top and the bottom of the legs. I just used Elmer's and it works great. Then I sprinkled it with glitter and let it dry. Repeat for all your spiders. When they are dry, I took them outside and gave them a light coat of a clear varnish so the glitter would stay put a little better.

After they dry, cut off the ring part. I used these jewelry wire cutters because the angle of the snips let me get in really close to the spider body.

Using foam squares (I doubled them up) I placed the spiders on my scrapbook paper in a grid pattern.

Put the frame around it and there you go. I wish I could take better pictures of this, but it's hard to see the glitter and not have reflections in the glass at the same time. I LOVE this project! I love all the colors of spiders, but it would also be great with all black or just black and orange spiders too!

*update- my awesome friend and neighbor Chantelle helped me out and took the first two photos! They are much better than what I managed to get. Thanks a Ton Chan! Go check out her other amazing pictures here!

Two Awards!

I have to say thank you to Gwen from Gwenny Penny and The Heaps for giving me the one lovely blog award. (I'm sorry I don't really know how to get the image on my blog.) I am really flattered that I even show up on any one's radar- so really, a BIG thank you!

And you really should go look at both their blogs- they both have great crafts up today- definitely worth popping over!

Now I am supposed to spread the love to five other blogs. I really hate chain letters, so I'm going to let them off the hook by not officially passing the award on to them, but I love these blogs and maybe you'll like them too.

1. A Feathered Nest
2. Just Another Hang Up
3. Restless Risa
4. Featherty Sews
5. and givin the love right back to Gwen from Gwenny Penny
They all have great ideas, tutorials and beautiful blogs. And do me a favor and tell them Amy sent you so I don't get in trouble with the award genies! Thanks.

Card Ideas

These are the two kits I came up with for a super saturday class I taught last week. Here are the pics I promised ladies! If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment here or e-mail me. Thanks Jeanette. (sorry if I spelled it wrong!)

Fuzzy Spider Pillow

I could also name this post- okay, just one more pillow! I don't know what my deal is this year, but I'm drowning in pillows at my house this year! (luckily my aunt bought the pumpkin pillow and took it off my hands or it really would be ridiculous around here ;) )

This pillow is inspired by my EEK! Banner- I have loved this little guy ever since I glued eyes on him!

To make this pillow you will need some fun fur, felt, and background fabric as well as buttons for the eyes and a pillow form. To start decide how big you want the spider and cut out an oval shape from the fun fur. *one hint for cutting the fur, take small shallow snips at the back of the fabric so you don't actually trim the fur, just the backing. Then, using the picture as a guide for the shape, cut out eight legs. *I have one large set, two medium sets and one small set- eight legs total. (I didn't do it on this pillow, but if you're going to leave the legs free like I did, you might consider putting interfacing on the felt first before you cut out the legs to give them even more body)

Then place the felt legs on another piece of felt and stitch all the way around the legs. Sorry, I know they're hard to see in this picture. I used a blanket stitch but you could zig zag or just straight stitch them.

Cut out the legs and position them around the body on the top of the pillow (cut the background fabric to the size of your pillow form). I used pins to mark on the legs where the body covered the legs, so I knew where to stitch them on. Take the body off and sew down the legs on the inside of the body mark.
Then sew the body on.

The lighting in this picture is terrible, but I wanted to show how I sewed the fur on. I used a seam ripper like a comb to part just a small amount of fur away from the body and then stitched very close to edge of the backing. The stitches tacked down that small layer of fur, hiding the edge of the backing, and the rest of the fur hid the stitches.

Finish the back of the pillow (you will need to pin the legs together so they don't get sewn into the cover) and you're done. Enjoy!!

Linking up to Tatertots and Jello , Someday Crafts .
blue cricket design

bridal shower thank you cards

We just had a bridal shower for my cousin who is getting married next week. (Yay!) She asked me to make some thank you cards for her to give to the guests.

I used the rolled paper flower tutorial over on Little Birdie Secrets (I love all their video flower tutorials!) These cards are beautiful, but will probably need to be hand delivered to avoid extra postage. (that's what she planned on doing anyway- which is why I made them this way!)

For those who need to get theirs in the mail I made the other half of the cards like this. I used my cricut to cut out the shapes and stamped the sentiment. To add a little "bling" I put some self-adhesive rhinestones in different sizes, just to dress it up a bit.

What a great way to say "thank you".

Subway Art

So, since I know you were all wondering, I looked up the origins of Subway Art- kinda- I googled it! I found out that subway art comes from the vintage signs that used to mark the New York Subway stations. They were vertical, white lettering on a black background and they used two sizes of the same sanserif font. I'm not sure of all the steps in the evolution of those signs into the current form of "Subway Art" but there's the shorthand version for you. ;)

When my sister and I decided to make these, she had the brilliant idea to make it two sided. Halloween on one side and Fall on the other. We used a cream background and a simple mdf rectangle. (it's probably 9X11- or somewhere close to that) Doesn't the fall one look so amazing next to her book turned pear? LOVE IT!

More Pillows!!?!!

Who knew I was a pillow girl? Actually I have never been a pillow girl, but I am finding with all the great tutorials out there, and the fun fabrics, and the impact of switching out a simple pillow cover- I have quickly become one.This is one of my latest pillows. I have some fabric I want to use in my daughter's room when we re-do it for her birthday. I had this idea to gather the front of the pillow so it would be puckered and I wanted to see if it would work. This is the result. I LOVE IT! I used this home dec fabric I got on clearance at Joann's last year. I picked it because it seemed sort of "fall" to me. I think the way the pillow is gathered sort of mimics the lines of a pumpkin.
Here it is on my couch. I really like how all the pillows actually work together, not only for the season, but they match the colors in the couch as well- who knew I was so good at coordinating? Not me certainly! A couple of tips if you want to try to make this pillow. The front was twice as big as the back then gathered on the top and bottom. Because this fabric was so thick, I ended up not using all the fabric. If you want the gathers to be smaller, use a thinner fabric. Also, you will want to use a pillow form, and a stiff one at that. You don't want the stuffing to "puff" out the front of the pillow. To make the envelope back, follow the direction in the pumpkin tutorial, but because the front won't be a good guide to placing the two pieces, place them on your cutting mat, or use a ruler, to make sure the dimensions of the back match your insert, then pin the pieces together to be the right size. If you have any questions, of if someone wants a tutorial, just leave a comment and I'll try to answer them.

Every Batty needs a friend

So I thought the Batty Felt Pillow needed a little companion. At first I thought I would follow up on some one's suggestion to make a white on white ghost pillow, or an orange on orange pumpkin pillow. I fiddled around with the orange felt and decided that I didn't want to do just another same old felt pillow that mimics exactly the bat one.

I thought the pumpkins needed a little something more. I found this orange polka-dot fabric and cut it out slightly larger than the felt pieces. Then I hand frayed the edges. The pumpkin furthest to the right I sewed up before I placed it on the black felt, the other two I sewed the pieces right on the black. I think the fraying is a little crazier on the other two, so if you make one of these- decide which look you like best and do that method. :)

To make the pillow, get a pillow form- mine was 12"X16" (they are 50% off at Joann's right now). Cut two pieces of black felt, one 13"X17" (to account for seam allowances) and the other 13"X24"- then cut the longer piece in half. Take those two pieces and on one 13" side, fold over about 1" and sew down. This creates the pieces for the envelop back- and since felt stretches- it will help keep your pillow cover from getting too misshapen.

To make your pumpkins, cut out a horizontal oval, with a stem on the top of one of the long sides. Cut a vertical oval about the same height (or slightly smaller) as the larger oval, but narrow. Use the pumpkin pieces as templates for the orange fabric and cut the shapes slightly larger than the felt. (I did not cut the stem into the fabric- it's just the oval).

To create the pumpkins sew the large oval to the large piece of fabric- around the edge- about 1/4" away. Then place the small felt oval on the small fabric piece and sew the two pieces together in the center of the large oval. Again- depending on the look you like it's probably easier to do this before sewing them on the black felt. You can fray the edges and trim them up, without having to try to get all the little strings off the black felt.

When you have them ready, place them on the front piece of the pillow and sew them where you like them. Keeping the right side of the front piece up, place the right side of the two back pieces DOWN on top- lining up the outer edges. (they should overlap each other by a few inches). Sew around all four sides of the pillow. Clip the corners, turn right side out- and stuff in the pillow form.

Enjoy your new pillow!
also linked up to sawdust and paperscraps halloween link party

Great Big Bag

This is the latest tote bag I have made. I was given the fabric by a neighbor and she asked me to make one for her. I thought I remembered the dimensions of my large tote, but I was wrong. The bag turned out GINORMOUS! The final dimensions ended up being around 16 inches tall, 17 inches wide and 6 inches deep. It is perfect for going to the pool (with all my kiddos- towels, sunscreen, etc) or what I will likely use it for- church. I teach music to the children and I have books, props, pictures and everything else it takes to keep kids entertained for 3 hours.

I put lots of pockets in it, which is really handy since it's so deep, you'd lose every little thing you put in there. There are pockets for pens and pencils, keys and treats (for me not the kids). And my favorite feature? The string ties- so you can overstuff the bag and still keep everything where it belongs! I'm sure I'll use that feature more than once.

In Progress

I have been working on a few projects. None of them seem to be working out exactly like I had planned. The board above has been in process for a couple of months. I finally painted it, and was trying to figure out how to use it to hold my necklaces. This is the first iteration. I love how the necklaces look, which is what I wanted to decide first. Now I need to cover the cork board with fabric (after making it thicker- the thumbtacks don't go all the way in) and attach it more permanently to the board. The adhesive strips I used didn't work well and when I went up to bed a few nights after taking this picture, all the necklaces were in a pile on the floor!

This little guy I love. After seeing the pompom spider on http://www.eighteen25.blogspot.com/ I thought I would like to make some. But I only had black netting, not yarn. So I hijacked Martha Stewart's Pom Pom flower tutorial and made these. I love the squirrely wire legs, but they slide all over and don't stay in place. My sister gave me the brilliant idea of hot gluing them in place before tying the center down and hopefully that will solve the problem! Almost there with this one. (you might notice the back leg looks different- I tried beading it. I don't love the seed beads- takes forever! But I might try some other LARGER beads)

This is a project that my sister and I started this afternoon, just for fun. Subway art is so popular (does anyone know why it's called Subway Art?) and we thought we'd try our hand at it. So this is the Halloween side, and the other side will be Fall. We spent all our time getting the letters and images cut, we ran out of time to glue everything down. Hopefully it will only be a day or so and this one will be checked off the list.

I really hope I'm not the only one who sometimes has to take a detour on a project when things don't go exactly according to plan!

Repairs

Trying to figure out why my blog went crazy. I need to keep out of the Html screen.

Edited***
It's back to normal. I don't know what I did or how I fixed it, but it's better. :)

Happy, Happy

The first time I saw banners in a Pottery Barn catalog, I was smitten. I started making my own in felt and thought they were so much fun. I came across some $1.99/yard fabric, and veered off into a whole other direction with my Happy Birthday banners. Well, after more than a year, they're BAAA-CK! I was asked to put together a kit for a group of ladies, and well, the fabric ones were just too complicated for the money they wanted to spend. So, re-enter felt. And, you know what? I love them!! The colors are so bright and cheerful and I love that I can embellish them in ways that are just much more complicated with fabric.

There are two versions, one with white letters and one with multicolored letters. I am thinking of making a new one with a bunch of hand embroidered embellishments and designs. Hooray for Felt!!!

Trick or Treat

When I went back through my posts, I couldn't believe that I had never posted about my Trick or Treat blocks! I have been making these for a couple of years and I love them. It started when my sister had some left over 2X2 posts from building her new deck. I knew I could do something with them, so these blocks were born. First I cut them to size, used the router on the edges to give them a "face", and did a three step paint treatment using crackle medium. Then I printed the letters off my computer, hand cut them out and mod podged them on. I actually used mod podge all over the block to give them a glossy finish. I decided the blocks looked kind of plain, so I started making the figurines to go on them. They are sculpted by hand out of polymer clay and then I actually used mod podge on them as well, for that same glossy finish.
Here are some closer views:
Just right for a not-so-spooky Halloween decoration. ;)
check out more mod podge projects here: