Early Spring Pillow

When I first saw this chenille fabric in the clearance section of JoAnn's I knew exactly what I would use it for. It reminded me of early spring, when there's still dirt on the ground, but things are turning green, promising lush beauty to come. The fact that it was an additional 50% off was a bonus.

I thought I'd share with you how I made the flowers- in case any of you wanted to try to make one of these yourself. You will need a 1 1/2" strip of fabric, approx 18" long. I ripped my strip on both sides so it would be frayed.

This process is VERY technical {or not}. I'll try to describe it, but really the best advice I could give is to just try it a few times until you like the result. {I tried swapping the fabric hoping it would make it easier to see the turns, I'm afraid it didn't help much}

Fold one end of the strip in half, take the end of the strip and scrunch it up for the center {I told you it was technical}. Start folding the strip over to make the petals. {right now it's still folded in half} Adjust the folds {sometimes I folded over, sometimes under} so they aren't right behind each other.

Eventually you will end up unfolding the strip to make the turns easier- just go with it. When you are satisfied with your flower, tuck the raw end under the flower and place it on your fabric to be sewn down.

This is the best shot of the stitching I could get. You can kind of see that there are two rectangular-ish shapes sewn in the middle, offset from each other. Try to catch any loose ends {especially the center part} but don't sew too heavily, you want the flower to fluff a little.

Each flower will be different, and that's good. Just enjoy the process and try to not worry about perfection.

Voila! Your own bit of spring, ready to urge the snow to vamoose and the sun to shine! {At least that's what mine tries to do.} :)

Enjoy.

xoxo,

Amy

linked up to Flamingo Toes' Think Pink link party!

Indoor Snowballs

Linda from Craftaholics Anonymous posted a tutorial on how to make these t-shirt pom poms a few weeks ago. As soon as I saw them I knew they would be perfect for indoor snowballs. I had purchased a set of manufactured "snowballs" a few years ago, but we needed to add to our arsenal, since there were more kids of throwing age around now. Her tutorial is clear and it was perfect for using up some t-shirts I didn't need/want anymore. Plus, I love the yellow! I also noticed that yesterday she posted some tips and tricks, if you need more advice.

The only thing I modified about her tutorial is that I sewed through the layers with a needle and doubled up thread before I snipped the outside edge. I didn't want little t-shirt shreds around my house- t-shirt pom poms scattered everywhere were going to be enough trauma. ;)

In this picture you can see the ends of the white thread I used to hold the pieces together. I wasn't precise about my stitching line, and I'm sure I missed a few strands, but at least this way the whole pom pom wouldn't explode. When I tightened the inside t-shirt tie, I also tied off the strings tightly, to secure the strands even more.

I was going to try to take a picture of the children chucking these at each other, but how 'bout you go make some and hand them over to your kids- just see for yourself what happens. :)

xoxo,

Amy

A BIG Announcement!

Today is Monday- or "Mom"-day around these parts. Normally I would regale you with stories of my attempts at conquering motherhood or things I have learned through hard experience. But, I have something to share that won't be ignored- so we interrupt this stream of motherhood gone awry to bring you:



A few weeks ago I went to lunch with Jonie from Just Between Friends. I had met her at Jen's cookie exchange party and we had chatted back and forth through comments and e-mails for a while. We decided to meet up, which is when we realized that we only lived 10 minutes away from each other! It really is a small world.
We had both just finished up our stints in various crafting competitions around the blog world, and were comparing notes. We decided that what we really enjoyed was the challenge to push ourselves out of our normal "safe" zone and try new things or focus on topics we wouldn't necessarily do otherwise. But, I decided for myself, that competition does NOT bring out the best in me. I found myself worrying less about what I wanted to do and more about what would bring in the votes. (since I only made it past the first round- I'll leave it to you to judge how well that worked. ;P )
In our discussion we decided to create our own take on crafting competitions. All the challenge, push and out-of-the-comfort zone excitement, WITHOUT the competition. :) And so Point of View: A Creative Collaboration was born!
We decided to invite a few blogging friends to join us on this journey, and we are thrilled to introduce you to these amazing ladies who all agreed to participate:

Jonie from Just Between Friends

Amy from Ameroonie Designs- I'd link, but you're already here. ;)

Gwen from Gwenny Penny

Stacy from Not Just a Housewife

Camilla from Rosy Red Buttons

and Michelle from A Little Tipsy!

I hope you'll go check out these blogs- as there is so much great stuff found on each and every one!!!
Want the skinny on how this all works?:
Each month we'll choose a theme/topic/medium/tutorial , something to give us a general direction. Each of the six bloggers will create a project around that theme. On the 4th Friday of each month we'll show you what we all came up with, with links to each of the blogger's tutorials/explanations of what they did.
But that's not all, there's more! YOU can get in on the action too! Each month we'll host a linky where you can link up your projects that fit the theme. All of the bloggers will do feature posts on their favorite projects from the link party- so your chances of being featured will be high!
Want in? Ready to get your creative juices flowing? The theme for March is Skirts! Just in time for spring and Easter, we thought skirts would get the fashionista in each of us excited to roll! So pull out that tutorial you've been dying to do but never had a reason, get the pattern cut out, find that Must DO refashion you've been putting off! The ONLY rule is that it is Skirt related, other than that, there are no rules- make it, mock it, knock it off, re-do, un-do or make it over! Have fun and get ready to contribute to our Creative Collaboration and let YOUR Point of View be heard!
Hope you'll join in on the fun!
xoxo,
Amy