A little crafty...

I have been getting into some crafting lately.  First up my new wreath:
Joel and I received one of those twig wreaths for our wedding.  At that time (8 years ago) it had some flowers stuck into it.  It was pretty, but over time and a few moves the flowers were lost.  So, I did a little searching on pinterest on what I could do.  Another friend of mine had done a tutorial at MOPS on how to make rosettes, so I combined the ideas with the tutorial plus some scrap fabric I had from my Christmas stocking to make a new wreath.

If you want the tutorial on how to make the rosettes please contact me; my friend Noelle has given me permission to pass it along.  The basic idea though is to take some long strips of fabric (I did all different widths to get a variety of rosette sizes) and roll and twist, hold the fabric in place with some hot glue.

After making the rosettes I hot glued a part of a pipe cleaner on the back in order to stick the rosettes on the wreath. 

I only spent $2 on the whole thing, because I bought 1/4 yard of the white fabric you see in the picture.

Here is the finished product:

(All pictures are from a cell phone since Joel's camera was spilled on and is now getting cleaned in AZ.)

The other craft that I finished yesterday were Kyper'sv valentines-V-day Bookmarks.  Last year, I felt so bad that I didn't send him to daycare with any Valentines.  He didn't go on V-day, but still got little cards from his buddies.  I don't even know if he needs them for preschool, but I didn't want him to be the only kid without them, especially since he will be in school on Feb. 14.  I only paid for the smarties, so these were super duper cheap!  Thank you again to Pinterest for this idea.

You go to Lowes, Home Depot or another store like it and grab a few paint chips.  Due to them being for Valentine's Day, I tried to get shades of pink or red.  My paint samples were really wide, so I was able to cut them approximately in 3rds. (I cut off the name of the paint and then in half from there.)  I threw the parts with the names away, although you could probably use them if you didn't care if they were on them or not.  I then borrowed a heart hole punch from my friend and punched a few hearts into each bookmark.  She also let me use white ribbon, so they have ties on them.   I wanted to put a fun little pun on the back with a label, but I realized I had punched holes in the bookmarks, so the label wouldn't really work unless I wanted sticky to show through the holes.  Which is why I opted to include a little packet of smarties.  I used the labels to stick the smarties on.  My friends Rebecca and Bethany helped with the puns: "You wrote the book on being cool."  and "You are pretty cool in my book"

Up next, a perpetual birthday calendar.  (Again, we got one as a wedding gift, but it fell into some dirty dish water, so I am going to make my own.)  I also want to make a picture board with some left over fabric I have and ribbon to put the Christmas cards up for the year (I cut out pictures so I can leave them up year round.)