Ribbon & Rhinestones Birthday Blog Hop

Day 1.

Project. Card.

Objective. Awesomeness!

I was SO excited when Stacy, the Ribbon DIVA, invited me to participate in this blog hop. What could any girl love more than ribbon and rhinestones? Answer? Nothing. ;) So HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Stacy!! I hope you are having the most amazing birthday!!!

Now I'll admit, I'm not much of a card maker. So I've been "forcing" myself lately, to get more into it. I've learned all kinds of things about stamps and border punches! This may have been a bad thing. haha!

First of all, if you started off on my blog and want to start at the beginning of the hop, check out Stacy's blog here, and we'll see ya when you get back to my blog.

Ok. So here's the card I created. The color palette I went with is black, and shades of pink and teal. The one ribbon is an olive-y green. The picture makes it look yellow. :S I'm pretty much obsessed with teals/aquas/turquoise right now. SUCH a fun color, and perfect for the spring/summertime!

I had a lot of fun playing with dimension in this one! The main card is made from core'dinations cardstock, the rest of the paper is from Echo Park. Love them. LOVE. THEM.

The card itself is 5x7. I cut the background paper at about 4.5-ish x5. I didn't actually measure it, I just laid out the circles on my card, and estimated a little extra room for the border punch and ribbon. Then cut my paper at that estimated length. (I'm very precise and technical when I craft, can you tell? lol!) The circles were all on a 12x12 paper from Echo Park, ("Script Polka Dot" from the Be Mine collection. The background is just the reverse side of the polka dots) and I just cut out 20 of them, then inked the edges, and adhered them to my background paper using foam dots, to raise them up. In between the circles, I used a rhinestone from My Mind's Eye "Lush" collection in the teal.

The ribbon came from American Craft's "Dear Lizzy" line. It's just two ribbons, layered together using Tacky Tape. The border punch was from EK Success, which I inked once I punched it out. Inking is just fun!

Confession. I don't own a Cricut. Or any die cutting machine. Haven't been able to buy one, and I haven't decided which I want when I finally DO buy one. Definitely not a Cricut. I refuse to be limited to cartridges. I'm leaning toward a Pazzle. Thoughts? I made the Happy Birthday tag in Adobe Illustrator. I created the shape by putting two of these: {} together in a cute font, then "welded" them together. Then I used the font American Typewriter. Then it was just print and cut. I used foam dots again, for dimension. The patterned paper behind it is also from the Be Mine collection from Echo Park. (Have I mentioned I love their paper? No? I LOVE THEM. lol)

Thank you for stopping by my blog while making the rounds! Come back tomorrow, and I'll have another project. Now that we have a birthday card, we need a fun present to go with it! ;) The next stop on the hop is over with Cathy at http://cathiescafe-scraphappy.blogspot.com/. Have so much fun, and we'll see you back here tomorrow! I'll have some fun blog candy to go along with the present project post. :D You won't want to miss it!

New Earrings!

I've been working on some new earring styles, and I'm pretty excited about what I came up with. :) I got the idea from the old fashioned ribbon candy.

I love the 70s inspired ribbon on this one. SO FUN! Disco, baby! ;)

This ribbon is my fav out of the 4. I love the color combination and the stripes!

Who doesn't love a fleur de lis? lol

I love the combination of green and purple. Damask is always one of my favorite patterns!

I'll be adding these (and more!) to my Etsy site today. YAY!

Fabric Flower Project

Ok, back when I made the video with Kristine McKay on fabric flowers, I talked about different things you can DO with fabric flowers. One of those projects was a headband. Today I finally made one! The kids and I are going to be doing family pictures in a few weeks, and I wanted to make my daughter a super fun and colorful headband.

So here we go!

First, gather your supplies. I have strips of fabric ranging from 1" wide to 1 3/4" wide, a headband base, ribbon, needle, thread and a glue gun.

Take one end of the ribbon and wrap it around the end of the headband, keeping it at an angle to wrap around the rest of the headband. Hot glue it in place. (If you have the eye hand coordination to sew it as you go, go for that. I definitely don't have that kind of dexterity, and therefore use hot glue. lol!)

Continue wrapping around the headband, hot gluing as you go until you get to the other end, wrap and hot glue (or sew) down.

This would be cute just like this too! :)

Take a strip of fabric. Fold one end over slightly and secure it with a stitch. Then loosely weave the needle and thread through the length of the fabric.

Once you get through the length of fabric, fold down the other edge and secure with a stitch. Then pull the thread to scrunch the fabric. It will automatically make itself into a circular shape.

Wind the fabric on itself, creating layers. Stitch the layers together.

Tie off the thread and you're done with the sewing on that flower. You can add any kind of embellishment to the center, or just leave it plain. I love myself some bling, so I add things like buttons, rhinestones, brads or whatever I find that I think would be super cute. You could seriously use most any scrapbook embellishment.

This was a scrapbook embellishment that had a foam adhesive dot behind it. I took off the dot and glued it down. Done and done. :)

This was just a brad that I stuck the "brad" part through the center, spread the prongs to "extra" secure it, then glued down the button top to the fabric.

I had a felty button that I glued down. Then I removed the adhesive foam from behind the rhinestones and hot glued them down on the felty button.

This was an acrylic sticker thingy that I just glued down. I didn't end up using this flower on the headband, but I still wanted to show another way to finish a flower. :)

I took a rectangle of lace that had a scalloped edge on one side. On the un-scalloped edge, I weaved some thread through one edge. I gathered it then sewed through it to secure, making a clam shell shape with it.

Take an oval of felt. Glue or stitch the lace to one end of it.

Then glue/stitch your flowers onto the felt, placing them for your desired look.

I took another length of ribbon and glued it to the back of my felt, letting it peek out. When you turn it over you see the loops.

All you have to do now is glue it down to the headband!

I can't wait to see my little princess all dressed up for pictures (with her hair done. LOL) wearing this! I'm making the boys ties to coordinate with the colors in the flowers. It's going to be so much fun!

Other things you could add to your headband would be netting. You could either gather it under the flowers to have as a base, or create a veil. You'd make the veil part how I did the lace for this particular headband. You'd just cut it a bit bigger. Feathers are a lot of fun too! They create such a fun vintage look. I know at Roberts Crafts we're expanding our selection of feathers and felt and we've added fabric! The fabric pictured did not come from Roberts, I bought it before they put the fabric in the stores. But if you check out the Roberts Youtube channel, I made a video of the fabric we have in the stores. I know you want to check out my video editing skills! hahaha (Or lack thereof. ;)

Flowers & Ribbons & FUN!

This has to be one of my most favorite frames that I've put together.

It was super easy too! Here's what you need:
• Frame (Mine is 11"x14", but you could adapt this to any size)
• Pre Cut Mat - You'll want a small opening, compared to the frame. The opening in my frame is
  a 5"x7". The frame I used, found at Roberts Crafts, came with the mat.
• Scrapbook Flowers
• Ribbon
• Lace Cardstock
• Paint & Foam Brushes
• Coordinating Scrapbook Papers
• Mod Podge®
• Rhinestone Swirl (We've got a fantastic new selection of these in at Roberts!)
• Glue Gun & Hot Glue

Basically, all you do is apply a thin layer of Mod Podge® to the mat. (Take it out of the frame first, of course.) Lay the lace cardstock down, smoothing out the bubbles and wrinkles. Once it dries, paint over it with acrylic paint. Let that dry. Tear the scrapbook papers diagonally, making it look like hills in the horizon. Or something like that. ;) Line with ribbon, or ink the torn edges. Hot glue ribbon around the opening in the mat. Mod Podge® the paper to the mat. Cut lengths of ribbon to be the length you want the "stems" of your flowers. Hot glue those down. Tie a shorter length of green ribbon in a bow or knot, and hot glue to your stem. Those will be the leaves. Hot glue the flowers to the tops of the stems. Apply the rhinestone swirl to the top. I thought it looked like clouds. :)

Done and done!