Gift Bags Project

My daughter's 3rd (can't believe it!) Birthday in going to be this week and it means everything needs to be ready on time. Birthday Theme - Ocean and Sea Creatures.

Today we are doing a Gift Bag for Party Favors.

Materials you will need:

Lunch Brown Bags

Pencils

Pages from Magazines with Water Images

Sea Shells

Hot glue gun

Yarn in "Water" Colors

Hole Punches

Punches with Sea related Images

Glitter paint in "Water" colors

Let's Begin! Fold inside the top of the Brown Bag for about 1 " or so

Punch holes to accommodate future ties

Cut yarn into strips long enough to to tie a bow and decorate the ends with mini sea shells of your choice attaching them with hot glue.

Draw a basic sea scape using Crayons. Brush over some glitter paint to add dimensions.

Punch Sea Creatures or cut out from magazines and glue them over the Sea Scape to create an underwater scene.

For the next set of ties, do the same thing as before but for the decorations we are going to use a different trim. Punch few rounds out of magazines.

Then punch a sea creatures of your choice. Put a contrasting color craft paper behind your punch circle and we've got a new set of trims for your Favor bags:)

Last touch, add a Fish Shape Cut Out on top of the bag with initial of the guest

and you are done!

Tomorrow we are going to be talking about Favor Bag Contents:)

Happy Monday everyone!

The simplest and the dearest

This is probably the easiest and at the same time the dearest projects of mine. In our busy and stressful days we sometimes overlook the beauty of the simple things that surround us.

I woke up early in the morning to a bird singing outside. It was so peaceful and cheering at the same time. It made me go to the backyard and look around, I got a fresh morning breeze in my face and felt.... happy. I wanted to celebrate this feeling and made this bouquet out of my backyard plants.

I hope these plants will uplift your spirit as well and you will find joy in something simple, in something easy that is next to you and I hope you will smile....

Beach Bag or 30 days till our summer trip to the ocean

I can't wait when we will hit the road and spend a week by the ocean. May be that's why all my projects now are related to this subject. Ocean is the only thing I can think of right now.

This Beach bag is the first item in my so to say "Marine" collection. It's done in white and dark Navy colors (very Marine) and it's been crochet out of my husband's OLD T-shirts.

Remember - No Money Spent - that's a slogan. I've started with 4 and i thought that would be plenty, but ended up using 9 T-shirts for this bag. Can you believe it? - Nine! and my husband is a tall man who wears size - Large. Way to go! As usually, my epiphany happened on a way to my regular donation bag, and one day later, after intensive slicing and crocheting, and two broken crocheting hooks (I've had the ones with plastic handles:( ), I've got my bag. Finished size 20" Wide by 12 " High, plus handles Extra 10 ".

I've use up everything from these T-shirts! Back of the bag:

One had a front pocket and it was put to a good use as well!

Believe it or not, the hardest thing in this bag - was to create a button. I've had a vision of large red color button for a bag closure but couldn't find any large size available in my treasure boxes. At that moment, I've had a devil's voice in my head saying very nicely, that I can BUY it easily, but I stopped it right there and then!!! Sure enough, I found a perfect piece of leather triangle in RED color, that I rolled into a perfect size red button! I've messed it up with a glue, after all, but Oh, well..... we'll call it Distressed Look or may be you know how to remove an extra glue. That would be great, if you do. Making this story short - I have a perfect beach bag and a few strips of T-shirts left for a Marine Style necklace:) I already have an idea!

Beach will be only 29 days away tomorrow!

Organizing, organizing, organizing......

I guess, I am into organizing lately, but this project has an educational background as well. I want to teach my daughter early how important it is to organize and how easy it is to find what you need if everything is in place. She is not even 3 years old, so she can't read but she knows shapes really well..... Take a look! Can you guess what is inside each bag? You are right - we have Lego, Play sets of dishes, Train and Building blocks. Now, she is able to put her stuff away and finds what she needs really fast and easy. I hope she'll keep it through her teen years (just kidding)

Money spent? None!

I've used cotton bags from my purses and shoes and just added appliqué with shapes related to bag contents.

Caterpillar from egg packaging

This is a ten minute project.

You’ll need Styrofoam egg packaging, bottom part folded in a half.

Chenille stems in assorted colors for legs and antennas

Wiggle eyes

Different color pens

Scotch tape

Double sided Scotch tape

Cut out felt shapes for decorations (optional)

This is the easiest project of all. My daughter lately into bugs and their habits, so when I was making us breakfast we were talking about caterpillars and I was holding an egg packaging…… Well, ten minutes later we had a caterpillar.

Cut of the top of the packaging. Fold the bottom part in a half. Cut chenille stems in a half and create as many legs as you want. Feed them through the package to create legs and antennas and secure with Scotch tape. Close two parts together and use a Scotch tape again (see the picture)

Using double sided Scotch Tape attach wiggle eyes. Draw the rest of the face. Decorate the rop of your Caterpillar and you are done!

Have fun!