Brian and I have been slowly, but surely, redoing the laundry / mud room in our house. He’s in charge of the heavy-lifting stuff like putting together cabinets, mounting a chair rail, installing a sink and painting. I’m in charge of aesthetics – art work, window treatments and decorative touches. This weekend’s project was a paper orchid. I LOVE orchids, but they don’t bloom for long leaving nothing but a pretty green stem that has to be babied into blooming again. We tried, with some fair success, to keep an orchid when we lived downtown. My new one, however, needs little to no TLC…which is good….because all my TLC for the laundry room is directed at washing, drying, folding, washing, drying, folding…..repeat….repeat…repeat

The first thing I did for this project…besides thinking, “I wonder if I could make a paper orchid” was to hit the good ol’ Google search. I’m 98% certain that I’ve never had an idea that someone else didn’t a. have before me and b. decide to post pictures / instructions or a template on line! I found this awesome “moth orchid” template on a website by RadMegan (who is, indeed Rad to share her template!)

http://radmegan.blogspot.com/2011/03/making-paper-orchids-how-to.html

I downloaded said template, formatted it for my cricut, cut it out 7 times and away we go! This was all purely trial and error based on some actual orchid pictures I looked up…plus a few more paper sample ones I saw on line. The one thing I didn’t do was to read a tutorial (that’s like cheating…and besides, it takes far too long – ha!) Here…instead, is the tutorial of what I did

Step 1: gather materials. I actually forgot a couple that are not pictured, but here is the complete list

one silk floral stem (stem should contain wire, but any flowers on the stem should ideally be attached by plastic since these will be cut off and you don’t want to damage your scissors…I found mine in our crawl space…purchased from Michael’s some time ago), scizzors, orchid template, heavy white card stock, pencil, floral wire, floral tape, water color pencils and water brush or just plain old water colors….or an ink pad!, hot glue gun, glass vase, rocks and green card stock

Step 1: Cut the silk flowers off of your stem

Step 2: I used my cricut, but you can also cut out the pieces of the orchid template and then trace them on to paper. Cut out each group of shapes then use water color pencils to lightly color around the edges of each shape. I completely colored the two pieces that go in the center of each flower to add contrast (plus this is kind of what the real moth orchid looks like….light on the outside and dark inside). If you want to use an ink pad, you can lightly drag it around the sides of each shape on an angle (called distressing) and then use a small sponge or your fingers to lightly color the inside pieces. If you use the water color pencils, use a damp brush to blend the pencil around the edges and into the center of each piece to create the watercolor effect.

Here are the pieces before I used a water brush

Follow the assembly instructions printed on the template. Since my flowers were slightly damp from the water brush, it was really easy to use a pencil to curl the edges once I had it all glued together. Sorry for the shadows on the pictures!

Step 3: take a nice-sized piece of floral wire, one for each of your flowers and double it over. Wrap a portion of the wire with floral tape

Step 4: Using a hot glue gun, attach one piece of wire to the back of each flower

Step 5: Arrange your flowers on your “naked” stem by twisting the floral wire around and securing each (looking up pictures of actual orchids on the internet is helpful with the placement….all the flowers face forward and bunch together) Place from the bottom of the stem up. I made 7 flowers since someone once told me (my 5th grade teacher actually) that mother nature works in odd numbers :)

Step 6: After you have wrapped each individual flower around the main stem, go back and wrap (from the bottom up) the entire main piece in floral tape. This is a bit tricky and involves some weaving around the flowers. You will also have to stop and start by breaking the tape and beginning with a new piece, but floral tape is SO forgiving and easy to work with…it all looks like a naturally bumpy branch in the end!

Step 7: Stick your branch in a vase filled with rocks. I also free-hand cut some leaves, squeezed them tight at one end, attached them to the stem for floral tape and used a pencil to shape them the way I wanted.

I just couldn’t get a good picture of this thing – but there it is, ready for my laundry room!

We're doing 2 different crafts for Aiden's 3rd birthday party next Friday: tiki or flower shrinky-dink necklaces and sand art palm tree people. Each project requires a bit of prep and a few different steps so I'm working on setting up as much as I can ahead of time to save on mass chaos during the party.


Aiden and I tested out the necklace design and construction. I think they turned out pretty well. Here are the steps:

1. Buy the shrinky dink paper that can go through an ink jet printer (not laser). It's important to know what kind of printer you have. I, for instance, had to borrow my neighbor's for printing since ours is laser.

2. I searched for on the internet for "black and white image of" or "coloring page of" for both tiki man and hibiscus flower. I found 2 great pictures, saved them, and pasted them into a Microsoft Word doc (the shrinky dink paper size is 8X10 so you need to adjust the page layout in Word).

3. It's hard to estimate how big to make the original images. The paper shrinks to 1/3rd it's original size so I did a couple tests. I ended up with the following -

tiki men: started 1.5 x 3 inches, ended up at: .5 x 1.25

flowers: started at roughly 2x2 and ended at a little under 1x1



4. This paper is not designed to be colored on, but markers do just fine. Even if the coloring doesn't look that great on the original, by the time they shrink, the streaks mesh together and the colors intensify. For the tiki men, there are a lot of intricate details so lighter colors like orange and yellow are better than darker ones like brown. By the time they shrink, brown would probably cover up the actual design.

5. After coloring, cut out the image and punch a hole near the top where the shrinky-charm will hang from the necklace

6. Bake according to instructions. When the pieces come out, coat each with a little clear nail polish. I noticed that the color on our was coming off on my fingers even hours after they cooled off.

7. Add a jump ring (a small circular piece of wire that you can purchase by the dozens from any craft store) to the top of the charm. This makes the charm hang forward instead of sideways on the necklace
8. I bought a ton of wooden beads for next to nothing, a few packages of black necklace cord (make sure the openings in the beads are big enough to fit onto the cord), and a bunch of fasteners. I pre cut 20+ super long pieces of cord and attached one end of the fasteners to them. (in this picture, both sides of the string are tied to the fastener, but before construction, you would only tie one side so that the beads can be slipped on to the other.)

The kids can take one of the pre-assembled strings and just add the beads and charms. When they are done, I'll tie the other side of the necklace onto the fastener, trim the excess and away they go!

The second project is sand-art palm tree people. Super easy!

When I was little, I remember my mom blowing eggs out of their shells for scrambled eggs. She cleaned out and saved the eggs. Over a period of few weeks, she collected at least a dozen of them. We painted the eggs and made an Easter Egg tree. We had those eggs for a long, long time! I wanted to duplicate the project this year with my boys so I did a little internet research. I found a TON of great ideas!

For our tree, we went with brown eggs and muted acrylic paint. You can choose to use brown, white, or even dye them after you clean them out (I saw a picture of a beautiful tree all with dyed, robin's-egg-blue ones). I also saw someone use brightly colored plastic eggs instead of the real ones. Here are the steps we did to make our tree:


1. grasp the egg tightly in your fist, then use something small and sharp to sort of chip a hole in each side. I used a small pair of jewelry pliers.
2. Blow the egg out of the shell into a bowl. Fill the egg with water a few times (cover the holes with your fingers, shake the water around and blow it out to clean the inside).

3. Lay the eggs back into the carton and allow the water to drain out. After a while, dry the eggs and the container with a paper towel, place the eggs back in for just a bit longer until they are pretty dry inside.

4. Use a paper punch to make flowers (or purchase them...or any other shape you like for that matter). Put a dot of hot glue over one of the holes, lay a piece of ribbon in the glue and then press the flower down on top. Another option: feed ribbon through the egg (the holes have to be pretty well lined up top to bottom) and either tie a knot or use a bead to anchor the ribbon on the outside of the egg bottom. You can use another bead or knot at the top of the egg (loop the ribbon and tie it close to the top for hanging)

For ours, I just tied the ribbon together at the top after the flower had set in the glue.

Use acrylic paint to decorate the eggs. Hang for drying.

We found a good branch for our tree, spray painted it cream, anchored it into a vase with rocks and hung the eggs.

Ta Da!

I went easy-peasy on the thank you notes from Logan's party. Green cards, black stamps. Now...if only writing them was as fun as stamping them. :)

Ok...let me just start by saying that I am by no means a fantastic crafter. I just love doing lots of different projects and wanted a place to document them. I used to read this awesome blog every day when I had a desk job and this girl (who I did not know personally and only found her blog because I was searching for some specific Christmas ornaments one year) was AMAZING. She works as a designer and has the cutest stuff. Anyway...that being said, I think I might turn this blog into a book as well someday just for fun. I spend a lot of time doing these projects and I always forget either what I've done or how I did it :)

Here are some details on the knight costumes I did for the boys this past weekend. Just to reiterate, we attended a Cinderella birthday party for one of our neighborhood friends. The boys were supposed to dress as princes, but Logan didn't think that was cool at all. :) In the interest of coordinating my children, I made them all knights instead

Sadly, the closest fabric store is a good 20 minute drive from my house. Thankfully, the craft store right around the corner sells big sheets of felt in a few different colors and small sheets of felt in about 20 colors. YEAH! I bought one big sheet and 2 smaller sheets for each costume...at a cost of around $5 each (which technically would have made 6 vests based on the size of the larger sheets)
First I cut the larger sheet in 1/2. Pictured below is that half, folded over. I then folded that piece in 1/2 and marked the center with a piece of chalk.

I had used Logan as a model for his vest, but the little boys were sleeping when I made theirs so I found tee shirts in the clean laundry to use as guides. I marked the width and depth of the neck openings and cut those out...

...then I measured about 1 & 1/2 inches away from the shoulder seam on either side to determine the width of the vest. I folded the fabric and cut a smaller rectangle. I didn't take a picture of the next step, but you fold the smaller rectangle in 1/2 and mark with chalk (or free cut) a shield shape.

To make the center emblems, I did the same thing: fold a small piece of felt in 1/2 and draw one half of a shield shape. I cut another 1/2 a shield from a coordinating color, cut that in 1/2 across the middle, flipped one part of it and glued it on the larger shield shape to make a checkerboard pattern (that's hard to understand so check out the final pictures below)

I needed to make a small circle. McDonald's happy meal "littlest pet shop" to the rescue.

This was for Aiden's vest. I wanted to make his with a basketball on it. The hardest part of his was free cutting some small black lines for the b-ball details.

Ta Da! All you need to attach the emblems is a little tacky glue - works like a charm! I also stuck some velcro on the insides of the vests to hold them on the boys, but THAT sticky substance doesn't get alone with felt and the velcro was off within about 10 minutes. Logan's is in green (obviously), Aiden's is the one with the funky basketball on it and Brady's has the stars. Check out my other blog for pictures of the boys IN the vests :)