A Year in Crafts

I have some very talented crafty friends and family members, and I would love to be as crafty and awesome as they are some day.

 

So last year, instead of just admiring my friends' awesome creations, I decided to try some (basic) crafty projects of my own. I had lots of fun, and learned a lot! Here are some of the projects I worked on throughout 2012, along with links to some of the tutorials / blogs / etc that I checked out along the way.

 

For Valentine's Day, the girls and I made Valentine's cards for their classmates. We used the free printable template from this site -- http://inspirationforhome.blogspot.com/2012/01/15-valentines-day-craft-ideas-for-kids.html. After that, it was just a matter of cutting, decorating, glueing, and sticking. Easy enough. Here was our butterfly tootsie pop Valentine army!

 

I made the girls some korker hair bows using the tutorial on this site (http://www.girlythingsbows.com/korker_bows.html). If/when I make some more, I'm planning to do them a bit differently. I attached the bows to clips using my glue gun, but the glue alone didn't hold them very well -- next time I'll use my glue gun and a ribbon wrapped around the center of the bows; the extra ribbon would definitely make the hold stronger. Next time I'll attach the bows the other way (so they go the same way as the clip, instead of being perpendicular to it), I like the other way better. The link suggests 30-50 korker ribbons for each bow, but I found that using less (maybe 15-20) was a lot easier to work with, and still looked pretty neat.

 

I made some other style bows later in the year as gifts for some friends with little girls, and I really liked how these came out.

 

 

Most of them I did Pinwheel style, based on this tutorial -- http://www.girlythingsbows.com/pinwheel_bow.html.

I tried a few other styles, like this one -- http://www.girlythingsbows.com/basic_bow.html , and this one -- http://midwesternmoms.com/2011/02/how-to-make-a-boutique-style-hair-bow/.

 

I did a few mod podge projects, like scrapbook paper mod-podged to picture frames, and fabric mod-podged to letters --

 

 

I did a few glue gun projects, like a fabric-covered photo album and recipe binder --

Most of my glue gun ideas come from the "A Girl and A Glue Gun" blog --http://kimboscrafts.blogspot.com/

 

Later on in the year, I made super-hero ornaments for a friend, based on stealing the idea from this site (but I forgot to take a picture of the ones I made, oops!) -- http://www.happylooksgoodonyou.com/superhero-ornaments/. Then I made sparkley ornaments, based on the tutorial on this site -- http://littlegrayfox.blogspot.com/2011/12/holiday-diy-simple-filled-and-painted.html.
 

I made some melt-and-pour soaps (tutorial here -- http://crafts.kaboose.com/easysoap.html) --
 

And finally, I made some fleece tie blankets. The girls liked the ones I made as gifts so much, that I ended up making them each one of their own. Here's a link to a tutorial -- http://www.gettingcrafty.com/tutorial-fleece-tie-blankets/ (I went with two yards of fleece, and I cut 5" squares from the corners, instead of the 3-4" squares suggested on the tutorial), and here's a picture of one of the blankets I made --

 

 

I don't have many crafty projects in mind for 2013 yet, but I'm sure that'll change as the year goes on. Happy crafting everyone!