MSCE April Days 20-25

This past weekend was Alison's wedding. I've been posting about crafty projects revolving around her wedding for some time now, and it's hard to believe it's all over! It was a whirlwind weekend, a lot of fun, and I was honored to not only stand up in her wedding, but also to share some of my handmade love with her as well.

MSCE April Day's 20-24 were spent working diligently on the pinata. Making this from scratch was such an interesting experience that I'll be posting a tutorial sometime soon. I learned so much while doing this and want to share my tips and tricks with you all. I should have started on the final product more than a week out, but I managed to get it done on time. Hubby was a huge help, he rigged a drying station upstairs in our office where we hung the pinata directly above two fans pointed upward. This meant that I could get two layers dry in about half a day. Genius!

First layers of paper mache are on balloon, then the points were added.

The finished "body" spray-painted pink...

Tissue paper flowers cut and ready to affix...

The completed pinata, ready to hang...

I should also note, that although he may not admit it if you asked, Hubby helped assemble the tissue paper flowers when I was stressing the day before the wedding. What a trooper!

In the evening of MSCE April Day 24, which was the day before the wedding, I had to finish up some last minute gifts for the lovely bride. Mum and I made her a tote bag with her new initial. We made it in the wedding colors, in the same way we made the Spring Tote Bag.


I also made her a mini-scrapbook with photos from all of the events leading up to the wedding.



Check back throughout the week for MSCE Days 25 and 26 (wedding wrap up) and for a boatload of new projects now that the wedding is over, and MSCE April is coming to a close! Oh, and don't forget that I'm looking for folks to participate in the Jump In! Challenge with me. Go HERE to see the original post, and sign up! I'd love to make something for you, and for you to pass the homemade love to some other folks as well...

Catching Up: MSCE April Days 15-19

So I may be a bit behind on the posting side of things, but I'm certainly not behind with all things MSCE April. I've been doing surprisingly well with the challenge - even though I may not be COMPLETING projects everyday, I'm certainly working on something daily. I'll show you!

(Click on photo to enlarge and see projects a little clearer...)


MSCE April Days 15 & 16: Heather's purple scarf!
Heather's birthday was LAST MONTH - and it's taken me this long to get it even close to being done. Another six inches or so should do it. It's made from really interesting yarn with fuzzies and pieces of fabric woven in. You can hardly see the actual stitches once it's knitted up. Good thing Heather is patient! : )

MSCE April Day 17: Black beaded necklace
All of these beads came from a store bought necklace that broke - months and months ago. I salvaged everything I could, bought some extra seed beads, and have started putting it back together - my way. I'm being ridiculously picky about it, and have started over numerous times already. Plus I know next-to-nothing about jewelry making, so I'm working on he fly. It's less than a quarter of the way finished...

MSCE April Day 18: Sidewalk Chalk Flood!
There was a phenomenal event downtown on Saturday - one in a series of "urban experiments." Essentially, the Sidewalk Chalk Flood was organized by a college guy, promoted by the media but mostly through Facebook. Hundreds upon hundreds of people showed up, received free sidewalk chalk, and went to town! We went with friends and had a blast - it was a BEAUTIFUL day.

The local newspaper did an article on the event the next day and amongst several quotes from participants was this one... "It's both kid friendly and artist driven. In the current economic climate, it's almost as if you're seeing people embrace life and play. It's not about consumerism. It's about people." -- Boy, I just LOVE that. I'm not sure if anyone could have wrapped it up better.

For more about the event click HERE.

MSCE April Day 19: The Pinata
Remember my friend Alison? Remember her wedding? Remember the pinata I was making for her wedding reception? Weeelllll.... her wedding is this coming Saturday! So, after the prototypes earlier this year, it's time to get down to it for real. I got the first two layers done today, and rigged it so it's hanging from the ceiling in my studio to dry. I also cut out and scored the cones to make the points of the pinata - but I forgot to take photos of those. You'll see them in a later post I'm sure, there will be a lot of pinata-ing this week!

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

Make Something Cool Every Day in April -- Days 3, 4 and 5

What MSCE has taught me so far is to realize the creative things I do every day - even when I don't realize it! I've been working a lot with kids lately, teaching classes and encouraging creativity. I'm working on projects without even realizing it - and sharing art and crafts with kids is not only rewarding, but great fun!

On Friday - MCSE Day 3 - I worked with a group of elementary school students at the YMCA. We made flower pens. These are super quick and easy, fun to make, and perfect for gifts. I have a tutorial coming for them later in the week.

The same afternoon, I headed over to the Cook Library Center to work with the kids there. We made handprint lily flowers, to be given to some of our donors at a luncheon this week. The kids were so focused! Find the how-to at Family Fun HERE.

On Saturday - MCSE Day 4 - I hosted an all-day Bachelorette Party for my dear friend Alison and our first stop of the day was at "Paint Your Masterpiece" - a paint your own pottery studio in Lambertville, MI. We each painted a dessert plate for Alison - which she will get to keep. We used the same color palette, but were free to do whatever we want.

I used flower stamps on a sponged background. We also painted personal messages on the back of each of our plates.



I was exhaused on Sunday - MCSE Day 5 - from all of the weekend festivities, but the crafty work continued! My mother and I (who is a fabulous costumer and seamstress) are making the costumes for a dance recital at the YMCA. We have almost 100 girls to costume! They are providing their own tights, shoes, and leotard - and we are making the rest - on a very limited budget.

We headed to JoAnn Fabrics to get started with patterns and fabrics. The theme of the ballet portion of the recital is "Secret Garden" and we're going to work with these patterns for the most part, in a variety of colors and patterns...

(top left corner, no wings)

(far left)

(top three)

I'm working with my dance instructors to determine thematic colors and elements for each class, and then we'll get to work!

Phew - what a long post! If you made it all the way through - great job! Thanks for reading! : )

Project Updates

The favor boxes for Alison's Shower are coming along - I have just over half of them done. This is good considering the shower is THIS SUNDAY! : )





I needed to whip up a quick tag for them, so I printed text on lightweight cardstock, then stamped over the top of it and used a circle punch to punch them out. Simple, quick, and cute!

I was out looking for some fabric yesterday for a SECRET PROJECT I'm working on... and found this.



I was originally looking for something in the purple family but there wasn't anything I loved. This, I think, is beautiful. I'll be posting about it's accompanying project next week.

It's funny really - considering my mother is a costumer and seamstress - that I'm just now discovering fabric and sewing. As a child I had little to no interest in it whatsoever. Now my mind is filled with all of the fabric creations ahead of me! Good thing I have Mum to help out!

Shower Favors

I started working on some origami boxes (40 of them!) to be used as favor containers at Alison's Bridal Shower this coming weekend. I found paper in three modern floral prints that each incorporate her wedding colors (raspberry and lime) and made up a sample in each.

I still need to work on creating a tag of some description to attach to each of them, but here are the samples thus far...



To see the pattern that I based these boxes on, click HERE.

Bachelorette Party Invitations!

I've held off posting these for as long as I can stand it! I was trying to wait until people received them in the mail - but I couldn't wait any longer! (Note I blurred out the details so Alison couldn't peak when she reads this!)




As you can see, I'm organizing Alison's Bachelorette Party - it's going to be SUCH a great day! I was really pleased with the way these invites turned out.

More crafty fun coming this weekend. Now that I'm done with Mariah's Get Better box - I have a whole host of projects in the works. Stay tuned - and Happy Friday!

Mexican Tissue Paper Flowers

I worked on these paper flowers last night that are serving as inspiration for the Pinata Project.



Then I worked on emulating some of the two dimensional flowers from the original photo...

Here's what I came up with:


I'm thinking I want to completely cover the pinata with tissue flowers, both 2D and 3D, of all different shapes, color combinations, and sizes. What do you think?

Pinata Project

I'm on fire with the blog posts today!

In case you don't remember, I'm making a Mexican-inspired pinata for the children at Alison's wedding. Since I haven't made anything out of paper mache since I was a kid, I figured I had better start working on this project EARLY, so that I can experiment a lot along the way.

To begin, I wanted to try different paper mache pastes to see what worked the best.

The first recipe I tried was the classic water and flour mixtures. I used about two parts warm water to one part flour, and mixed until it formed a thick, glue-like mixture (I ended up adding a little more flour than I had originally put in.)



It sure took a lot of mixing to get the lumps out!

Then I went to town with my newspaper strips. I felt like a big kid! I thought to myself as I was dipping and sticking that it would make a lot of sense to use a paintbrush for the paste application - but that would take away so much of the fun! it was sort of therapeutic to come home from work and play with goo!





I tried to keep the strips of paper as smooth as possible - but it wasn't easy.

The second paste recipe I tried was two parts white glue to one part warm water.



This paste was so much easier to work with! It was smoother, and while it adhered really well, it was glossier and didn't stick to everything ELSE in my work space. It was easier to create a smooth surface. And it LOOKED nicer - which in the end doesn't matter at all when you consider its going to be painted then covered with tissue...



It all depends on how they dry - but in terms of which paste was better to work with, the glue based one was hands down the best.

Alison Bridal Shower Invitation Update 2

They're done! I love projects that don't take months to do! (Especially since the shower is about 5 weeks away and the invites need to go out next week...)

Alison Shower Invitation Update 1

Through blog and e-mail feedback, the consensus was that the flowers looked best when monochromatic (big word!) or when both sets of petals were one color, with a different colored center - like this one:


I sat down and started the physical production of all of these invitations. After looking back at my notes I realized that I only needed 36 - so I'm making a total of 40 (plus one for my files.) Although all of the cutting was kind of a pain in my ass (believe it or not I do not own a paper cutter - I measure and cut EVERYTHING by hand! Side note to friends and family: a paper cutter would make a great Christmas gift next year...) these were so simple to put together, and can serve as a basic template for many types of invitations. You can replace the flower with ribbon, a sticker, or any kind of embellishment you want. You could also use decorative scissors and punches to further embellish the edges and borders.

I did these invitations to fit an A7 size envelope. I cut three rectangles out of different colors of cardstock which each measured 5 x 7 inches, 4.5 x 6.5 inches, and 4 x 6 inches. The cardstocks I chose for the two backing pieces had some texture, and a little bit of shimmer:


I then used ink-pads and a stamp for the details. As you may know by now, I hate my handwriting - and use stamps like these whenever possible. I'm passing these invitations on to another one of Alison's bridesmaids once complete so that SHE may hand-write in the details!




For the flowers, I used embellishment fabric flowers from the craft store, and a color-coordinating brads (glorified paper fasteners!) for the centers. I used a tiny hole punch through the center of the petals and cardstock layers to place the brad into:


Super easy, right?! One down... 40 to go. More to come soon...