Season's Greetings!

I love getting Christmas cards in the mail! It's so nice to see a hand written piece of mail in the box now and again (not just that hand writing look font those tricky marketers use to get you to open their junk mail!) and it feels good to make the cut among your friends... after all, they did have to add yours to the total number of cards purchased, hunt down a pen and your address, and spend 44 cents on you. 

 

Trinity St Studio made these cards for us this year... I hearted them on Etsy a couple years ago and didn't have the right photo to use until Ashley Yvonne did our family photos recently (at Phillippe Park for those of you that are local... it was such a great location and she was wonderful to work with if you're looking for a photographer!).

To all my bloggy friends, you would make my cut... I'd totally spend 44 cents on you if I had your address! Thank you for reading my ramblings so that I'm not just out here talking to myself. I hope you'll have a fabulous holiday and an even better 2012!

 

 

Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Winner

drum roll please!  The winner of the felt chain Christmas countdown is.......

Jamie said...

My favorite tradition is eating cake for breakfast. One year, my oldest daughter asked Santa for cake and he brings it every year since!

Congratulations Jamie, and thanks so much to everyone who shared their traditions with me, and to those of you who follow my blog as well! 
 
Stick around for all the after Christmas posts about the gifts I made (I can't share them ahead of time for fear/hope that a few of the people on my gift list read my blog :))
 

GIVEAWAY DAY!

Christmas shmishmas!  Who cares about that boring old holiday when there's Sew Mama Sew's giveaway day?!?!  Ok just kidding, but seriously this ranks up there in my book!

So I get that this giveaway is a little late for what it is, but I really love the idea and wanted to share it with you.  It's a felt advent chain countdown to Christmas.  Time was a really hard concept for my now 6 year old to grasp and having this visual representation helped it make more sense to her.  The links are felt with velcro closures, "Merry Christmas" is embroidered on the last solid red link, and I'll send it to you in this cute storage box so you can keep it safe until next year.

Putting the chain together and removing a link every morning has become a family tradition for us.  Want to start a tradition for your family too? Here's how you can win it:

• One entry for leaving a comment about one of your family's holiday traditions.  It could be any holiday!
• For a second entry, if you have a sec to look through my blog or if you like this chain idea well enough to want to see what else I'm up to, follow my blog and leave a second comment to let me know.  Existing followers, you get a 2nd entry too!

You have until midnight EST Dec. 16th to enter. I'll pick a winner at random from the comments and email them on Dec. 17th.  (if your email address isn't part of your profile, you'll need to leave it in your comment so I can find you if you win). I'll ship the chain to you within a day or receiving your mailing address.  Contest open to international residents as well. 

Good Luck!

 

Advent Paper Chain Printable

A couple years ago, for Thanksgiving, I made paper chains to count down to Christmas... I'm a bit behind this year but it's not too late to use this printable I made.  It's super easy to print, cut, and tape/paste the links, decorate your kiddos room and have fun counting down! 

 

Applique Applique Applique

My poor poor embroidery machine! I feel a little sad that I rarely break out the embroidery arm and hoops... but why go through the hassel when applique can be so cute?!  Case in point:

With just a few inexpensive onesies you can create so many fun options.  I spent an afternoon with a friend dreaming up designs and whipped all of these up in no time.  I think my favorite one is the M onesie, espeically when paired with these adorable baby legs:

Although I also really love using a simple blanket stitch to highlight a fun piece of fabric like I did here with this Japanese scooter print:

It really couldn't be easier once you know a few simple tricks... which I just looked through my blog for, assuming I've told you what they are at some point in the past several years, but I don't see them, so here you have it, an impromptu tutorial

• iron double sided fusible interfacing (like this one) to the back of whatever fabric you're using for the applique. Leave the paper on the back of the interfacing for now.
• Cut your shape (ties, letters, a piece of the fabric... the possibilities are endless!) out of the fusible interfaced fabric
• Iron one sided fusible interfacing to the inside of the onesie where you're going to sew the applique (this is the one I use for baby stuff... it's so soft against their skin)
• Peel the paper off the back of the applique and iron it to the front of the onesie
• Stitch around the applique.  You can use a variety of stitches - satin, zig zag, blanket, or even straight.  You'll just want to be sure to keep the majority of your stitch on the applique itself and know that if you don't completely cover the edges of the applique with the stitch (like if you just use a straight stitch) the edges of the design will likely fray a bit.

Easy right?!  Do you like to applique?  I'd love to see what you've come up with if you'd care to share in the comments.  

 

DIY Cake Stand

At Liv's last birthday I challenged myself to pull together a party with some creative touches for under $100.  The big hit of the party was the ice cream sandwich "cake" and roll your own toppings bar.  I piled the ice cream sandwiches into a 2 tier cake which of course needed a a cake stand!  I was wandering around Home Depot hoping inspiration would hit and found myself in the tile aisle inspecting the fauxe marble tiles.  A helpful Home Depot guy came by and asked if he could help... I'm not afraid of being the crazy lady with a wacky DIY idea so I told him what I had in mind, he whipped out a sharpie, wrote "sample" on the back of the tile I picked out, and I walked out with the top of my cake stand for free!  Some spray paint, a pillar candle stick I had in my home decor stash, some industrial adhesive, and a papaer and ribbon bunting later I had the perfect and virtually free cake stand!

 

Camera Strap Cover Tutorial

 

A good friend of mine just celebrated a birthday.   I make her kiddos handmade gifts for all their special days and I know she appreciates it (I can tell by the mile long list she has for me of "future projects to make... you know just in case you can't think of anything") but it's harder to come up with something for an adult. So I was really excited when I had the idea to make a camera strap cover for her fancy shmancy camera!

 

Here's what you'll need:

2 pieces of fusible fleece cut to 2 1/2" x 24"

2 fabrics cut to 3 1/4" x 25"

ribbon or trim... some sort of embellishment

 

• press all 4 short sides of the fabric 1/4", then fold over and press another 1/4" and sew
• Fuse a fleece strip down the center of the wrong sides of each of the fabric strips
• Press the long sides of the fabric around the fusible fleece
• Make a ruffle with fabric or ribbon or sew some pre-made trim down the center of the right side of one of the strip
• With wrong sides together, pin the strips together, tucking the raw edges in, and sew 1/4" from the edge down each long side, leaving the short ends open.

So now I'm thinking about whether anyone on my Christmas list has a fancy shmancy camera... I may be out of luck though, so I'll have to come up with more ideas for handmade gifts for adults.  Do you have any suggestions?

 

Halloween Inspiration

 

I got to be a part of a really great Halloween party last year!  There were tons of fabulous Halloweeny elements to the party (I posted about them here) my favorite though was this make your own caramel apple bar I designed.  The cupcake stand and some little funkins got a coat of black spray paint, some spooky spider webs, and a sweet TomKat Studios printables set were the perfect stage for the sweets. Nothing draws a crowd at a kids party like a crock pot of gooey caramel sauce & candy toppings to roll your apple in!  

Bloggy Booot Camp

After 4 years of blogging (i.e. writing a crafting/sewing/bento/party diary that just so happens to be shared with the world) I decided it was time to figure out exactly what I'm doing and/or should be doing with this whole blogging thing, so I'm in Atlanta today for Bloggy Boot Camp. Here's to a day of motivation, inspiration, and owning the title of "blogger"!

Speaking of, Atlanta isn't owning up to its"hotlanta" title this morning... I parked 2 blocks away and am pretty sure one of my toes has frost bite.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Disney Outfits

Despite my lack of recent blog posts, I've been crafting and sewing away & have lots of stuff to show you! Like, the sweetest princess inspired backpack ever, tons of appliqued boy onesies (you'll see... boy stuff can be cute too!), photo blocks, details about the cake stand I made for Liv's party, and bentos bentos bentos. So much good stuff, I just need to find the time to post it all!

But you'll have to wait for all of that because today I'm posting about the outfits I made for my cuties to wear to Disney. Elle's 6th birthday was last week, so we celebrated by heading to Disney with our good friends whose 5 year old was also celebrating a birthday that week.

sorry for the crappy picture! It's of course the way it should be... you know... a trip to Disney where your camera decides to mess up in a way that it never has and over expose every picture.

I made both of the big girls birthday outfits using this skirt tutorial and simple number appliques I added to the Ts I picked up at Target. Liv's pillowcase dress came together quickly using this tutorial.

Birthday outfits wouldn't be complete without birthday hats though! I've made several birthday hats in the past, but these turned out the best and were the easiest by far. Definitely give this a try the next time you need a special birthday hat. You'll need:

A plain ol' party store party hat

a little bit of fabric

spray adhesive

hot glue

an exacto blade (not pictured)

If you're adding ears to your hat, pick up some stiff glittery black felt

Here's what you do:

• unhook the tab on the party hat so you can open it up and lay it flat.
• rough cut the fabric about half an inch bigger all around the hat
• spray adhesive over the outside of the hat
• lay the hat onto the fabric and smooth it out
• run a bead of hot glue along the inside edge of the hat, pull the fabric around the edge of the hat and press it into the glue.
• repeat until all the raw edges of the fabric are glued down to the inside edge of the hat.

• using the exacto blade, cut a slit in the fabric where the slit for the hat tab is
• insert the tab into the slit to put the hat back together

• Embellish your hat:
• If you're making the ears, you'll cut the circle ear shapes out of the glitter felt, draw a generous amount of hot glue along the sides of the hat, and hold the ear in place until the glue dries
• you could also glue rick rack around the bottom edge of the hat
• make little crepe paper pom-poms or hot glue already made ones to the top

Disney is already the happiest place on earth, but when everyone stops to say happy birthday and tell you how adorable you look... it makes it magical!