Silhouette Mustaches

Do you remember last May when I got a Silhouette Cameo for my birthday?

I am ashamed to admit I haven't really used it much since I got it. Most of that is due to the fact that my laptop crashed last summer and my desktop can't handle the program. But now that I have my new fancy laptop, I've started to figure out how this bad boy works!

First project I worked on is cutting a vinyl phrase to put on the wall at work. It look me a super long time to figure out how to do this and I definitely made some mistakes, but my photo manager got the saying she wanted and she's happy with it.

Super awesome cell phone picture too! The hardest part was cutting out the little Mary Poppins!

Even though that saying didn't work out all nice and perfect, it gave me the motivation (and extra vinyl paid for by my boss) to create something I've been wanting to put in my house for a long time....

I love it! It's right above my closet in the entry hall. We have vaulted ceilings and that huge empty space was screaming for some attention!

And then last weekend, after a little vodka, I felt silly and made these...

I mean really, who doesn't need a mustache on their outlets?!?! I seriously walked around my house and put them on random outlets. They make me giggle every time I see one. I made some for my friend at work and my sister, who's totally obssessed with the stach!

For those of you who have a Silhouette, here's a tip for you....
The mustaches and the fancy scroll thingy besides my last name are both fonts. Go to dafont.com and look under the wingdings section. You can find TONS of cool shapes and things to use on your machine without having to pay for the graphics. Just download and install with your regular fonts and type away!

Now that I'm getting the hang of how this machine works, I might just start putting vinyl on everything! Haha

Hope you are having a great week!

Freezer Paper Stenciling Tutorial

You all know I just had my 2nd wedding anniversary. And you saw my gorgeous anniversary band Mr. Perfect bought. Well I don't believe I told you what I did for him. His main gift was this baseball gift basket I put together with tickets to the Royals vs. Yankees game. We had a blast! But there was something else....

Something a little funny and kinda an inside joke, but I'm gonna tell you about it anyway.

A couple weeks before the big anniversary, Mr. Perfect and I were looking online to see what the 2nd anniversary gift was. The traditional was cotton.

Me: (listing off various cotton gifts described online) Babe, it says clothes, linens, napkins, a bunch of stuff that doesn't sound like anniversary gifts.

Mr Perfect: Like a t-shirt that says "all I got for my 2nd anniversary was this lousy t-shirt".

And then we both laughed until we had tears coming out our eyes and couldn't breathe. See, so it's kind of an inside joke, but you might chuckle a little at it anyway. But seriously, after a joke like that, I couldn't not make a shirt that said that!!

I decided to make this my first try at using freezer paper to stencil something. I printed off on the computer what I wanted it to say and gathered my supplies.

I had decided to do 2 t-shirts that were matching so it could be a "his and hers" type thing. Plus, if I screwed one up, there would always be another one.

I cut 2 pieces of freezer paper the size of my printed paper and layered them on top. I figured I could cut 2 stencils at a time to save me from spending an entire week cutting out words for my stencil.

Then I got to work cutting out my stencil with an exacto knife. If you cut out words like this, you should probably rent a movie.....just sayin. Here's my stencils all cut out.

And here is the pile of dots and such for the inside of the "O", "A", "R" and "D". Can't forget about those!

Next all you do is iron your stencil to your t-shirt. Then paint! I used a sponge type brush and dabbed the paint on there. To make the shirt washable, make sure you mix fabric medium into your paint before you start applying it.

After it is all dry, tear the stencil off your shirt and you are done!

They both turned out great! So he got the navy colored shirt and I got the teal one.

Now here's how he reacted when he opened it.....

We were sitting there, each of us with a shirt sized box in front of us. We had both said this box we were giving each other wasn't the real gift (mine was the baseball gift basket and his was the ring). I think we were both thinking the same thing......that the other one had a gotten a t-shirt with that saying on it. He opened my gift first. And he didn't laugh very much or anything. I thought it was weird. He thought it was hysterical when we joked about it. So I opened his gift. He had made a t-shirt for me that said the same thing! He had printed on an iron-on transfer and just ironed it on a shirt. Not nearly as crafty as me, but hey, gotta hand it to the guy for making me a shirt!

I'm sure you are tired of my babbling and reading about my inside joke with my hubs. Hope I didn't bore you to death! On a crafty related note....I kinda like the freezer paper stenciling. Might be doing more with that here soon!
 

Business Card Altoid Tin

I think I mentioned earlier in the week I'm going to Bloggy Boot Camp this weekend. It's in St. Louis, which is about a 4 hour drive from me. Soon as Mr. Perfect gets home from work, we will switch cars and I will hit the road! I'm pretty excited to learn some new things. And equally nervous. I'm not exactly the most outgoing, social person around new people, so this could be challenging for me. Mr. Perfect suggested I take a flask to help loosen me up lol. I don't think that's really necessary. I just hope I don't end up being the weird, socially awkward girl that no one talks to!

Anyway, I made business cards this week to take with me. They aren't fancy or anything, but I think they work well with my blog design. What do you think?

I feel so savvy having that QR code on there! Fancy right? But does it look like something is missing?? Yeah, that's my email address. I made these and had that "something's not right" feeling, but couldn't figure it out...then when I was like 2/3 done with cutting them, I realized I forgot to put my email on there! DOH! But I suppose it's going to be ok. My email is on my blog, so if someone wants it, they can surely find it right?? At least that's what I told myself to feel better about my mistake.

So I can't just throw these in my purse with a rubber band around it! Bust out the mod podge, scrapbook paper and an altoids tin.

SO CUTE! Now when I hand out a card, it actually looks like I'm crafty, not ghetto.

I suppose I should probably go pack, and figure out what I'm going to wear, and hope I don't have a breakdown trying to figure it out! Wish me luck! Hope everyone has a great weekend!

A Spring Wreath

I FINALLY won over Mr. Perfect with a wreath!!!!

Woo Hoo!!

If you've been reading for any length of time you know Mr. Perfect hates wreaths. Well, I may have changed his mind with this one :) 

I believe his exact words were "Looks great hunnie".  That's a whole lot better than the response to my last wreath, which was "are you trying to pay homage to a powdered donut?"

Did I forget to mention how much this beauty cost me?

Let's break it down...

*wreath form = $1 (dollar tree)

*felt = $1.30

*Ribbon = free (already had it)

TOTAL = $2.30!!

You know how I love a cheapo craft!

Since Mr. Perfect likes it so much I just might leave it up all year round. Pretty sure I'll never sell him on another wreath again. This was a once-in-a-lifetime, isolated event lol

And this is what the kiddo had to say about it..."woah, that is so cool how you got those twigs to curl together like that".  ME: "I bought that". KIDDO: "oh, well I like the pink flowers"

ME (silently in my head): "Big shocker! A 10 year who loves pink (eye roll)"

hehe

{How Pinteresting} #8

Can you believe I've been doing this series for 2 months already?!?

Wow!

I've seen several projects around the web world using nail polish to paint jewelry, bobby pins, and keys!

Yes, I said KEYS!

So genius, why didn't I think of painting things with nail polish??

Saw this as my "pin-spiration"

source

Woah

And mine...

Sweet! Hope my boss never wants the key to the office back {tehe} cuz it's teal now!

Notice anything different about these pictures???

That's right, they're Instagrams!

I'm so stoked that Android has Instagram now. I have several other apps on my phone that are VERY similar to Instagram, but they don't have the nifty borders and online community sharing. Squeal!

I've been thinking that maybe one day every weekend I will do a post with Instagrams from my week. After all, I am a photographer by profession {wink}. 

What do you think?? Wanna see pics from my week?? Lemme know

Also, if you are reading this in a reader, click on over to my blog for a sec, would ya...

See over there in the side bar where I have a FACEBOOK button????

I decided it was time I created a fb page for the blog.

I haven't really done much of anything with it yet, just a few posts. But I'm working on figuring it out. I'll pretty it up and post more often...like all the time...I'm a fb junkie :)

So do me a favor, click on over there and "like" me. Please Please Please. I love you forever!

Now get out all your polish and bling out your keys!

How to Braid with 4 Strands

I had someone a while back that left a comment on this bracelet I made

Her mind was baffled on how to braid with 4 strands.

No worries, I will show you how!

I going to use 4 different colors of embroidery floss so you can see what I'm doing. 

I'm also going to braid it rather loosely so you can follow.

Ok, here we go!

Step 1: Move left string (blue) over one spot to the right.

Step 2: Move right string (yellow) under one spot to the left and over the next spot to the left. Make sense? We moved the yellow under the purple and over the blue.

Repeat!!

Red goes over yellow

Purple goes under blue and over red

Yellow goes over purple

Blue goes under red and over yellow

And here's how it should look repeated over and over

 

SUPER DUPER EASY PEOPLE!!!

Now you are in the know on braiding with 4 strands :)

Dollar Store Wreath

 I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before that Mr. Perfect hates wreaths. I'm not sure why exactly. But he does. He says something crazy like "a wreath screams 'a woman lives here'". Well, hello, a woman does live here! This is not your bachelor pad buddy!

I had a wreath hanging on this mirror at Christmas. Ever since I took it down I feel like the mantle has been naked....not completely butt naked, but like one sock is on, one sock is off kind of naked. It has been bugging me.

I've seen coffee filter wreaths in blogland and I like them. They look nice, they look clean, and let's face it, they're cheap to make. We all know I love a cheap craft. No money tree growing in this chick's backyard!

Here's what you will need to make one like mine:

*Coffee Filters
*Floral Foam Wreath
*Large knitting needle {or something pointy, but blunt}

 

 

for some reason the camera focused on the mat and not the objects...so sorry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Take your coffee filter and scrunch it up.

Fold the bottom part a little and place it on your wreath

Then push it in with the needle or whatever you are using.

Place all the filters relatively close together. I went all around the top and the outside edges. I didn't worry about the inside of the wreath since the puffiness of it all kinda hides the inside anyway.

Fluff and that's it!

What did Mr. Perfect think about this wreath?? Well, usually when I have something new hanging up in the house, he notices {without me saying anything}, and makes some comment on how great it is or how nice it looks in the room or whatever...he's very supportive like that. Not so supportive of the wreath...

Me: Did you see the wreath I made today?
Him: Yeah I saw it.
Me: What do you think?
Him: Are you trying to pay homage to a powdered donut??
Me: {rolls eyes}
end of conversation

A couple days later my brother-in-law and sister-in-law stopped by. She of course likes it and gushes over it. He does not. Here's how that convo went...

Him: Is that new?
Me: Yeah, just made it.
Him: What's it made out of?
Me: Coffee filters
Him: Oh, now that I know what it's made of, I don't think it's so cool.
Me: Your brother {Mr. Perfect} doesn't get it either.
end of conversation

Seriously. Men.

Sorry boys, I happen to like wreaths. So deal with it!