Cute Letters

I thought it would be kind of fun to decorate letters for my roommate and I to hang on the outside of our bedroom doors. (She thinks it's a little too sorority house - I was in a sorority by the way.) So in line with my yarn and felt theme, I made these.

Basically, I just wrapped khaki/ivory colored yarn in whatever direction would work until the MDF craft store letters were colored. I used Tacky Glue to attach the yarn to the letters. Then I made some felt flowers (see the yarn wreath tutorial). After trying the Tacky Glue to attach the flowers, I ended up using hot glue. The yarn and felt absorbed too much of the liquid glue.

I haven't hung them up yet, but the plan is to staple (gun) a loop of sheer brown ribbon to the back. I'm going to use the nickel colored 3M hooks to hang the letters on the doors.

I actually think her "M" is cuter than my "K", but oh well... Hopefully I will remember to post pictures of them on the doors soon.

Check It Out!

Check out my friend Robyn's Etsy page! She makes really cute crocheted hats and accessories. She also loves custom orders!

Here's a link: Pretty Swell

PS- I am totally jealous of her crocheting skills... My great-grandmother taught me how to crochet when I was in elementary school and it would probably take me 2 weeks to make a cute hat like that!

Yarn Wreath

I saw a couple of yarn wreaths on Pinterest and I knew I had to try it!

So here's the basic idea (then I'll break it down): wrap a foam wreath base in yarn, add felt flowers, and tie a ribbon at the top. And this is what you get:

Materials:

• 1 foam wreath base (make sure it is round, there are some options with hard edges)
• 1 skein of yarn
• Ribbon (for hanging the wreath... I only used about 18 inches of ribbon)
• 3-4 sheets of felt (you pick the colors! I bought way too many sheets... Fortunately they were only about 30 cents a piece.)
• Straight Pins
• Craft Glue (I used a combination of Elmer's Glue All and Liquid Stitch)
• Buttons (optional... I kind of wish that I had left the one button off of mine)

Directions:

Get your yarn ready for wrapping by tying a knot in the end. Then, insert a straight pin through the knot. Place a dot of glue on the foam base and then insert the pin. (Sorry I forgot to take a picture of this.) Then start wrapping the yarn around the base, like this:

I put a little line of glue on the back side of the wreath to keep the yarn from unwinding. Also note that you can see the foam base peeking out from between the strands of yarn. I figured out after this picture that you need to scrunch the yarn together as you go to make sure that the strands are wound tightly together.

Here's a picture of the fully covered base. I secured the end of the yarn the same way that I began (knot, pin,  glue).

See the pin? (On the back side of course!)

Next, I started working on the felt flowers.

Most of the instructions will tell you to use glue to create the flowers. I sewed mine because I wanted them to be really well constructed since the wreath is going to be banging around on my front door. No need to be super precise with your sewing... I mostly used really messy whip stitches. Attach the flowers to the wreath with glue and more straight pins (I used 2-3 pins per flower).

Here are some more flowers. These are the websites I used to help figure out how to make the flowers.

• White Flowers
• Bigger Center Flowers
• Spiral Flowers

I did some modifications just based on how I wanted my flowers to look (i.e. more/less petals, round vs. pointed, etc.) Then I just kept going until I was satisfied with the way the flowers looked.

Finally I tied my sheer white ribbon to the top and then tied the ribbon to my wreath hook.

Here's a close-up on the finished flowers.

I hope you will find this to be helpful!

Some new inspiration

I discovered a new website today: Ikea Hackers. I'm really excited about this site, because as a semi-broke, twenty-something, I have a TON of Ikea furniture. Most of my stuff is still in pretty good condition, but there are a couple of pieces which could use a little tlc. I've got a couple of ideas from the site which I'm looking forward to trying out. So I guess for now that means projects and pictures coming soon!

Olympics Bulletin Board

This is the bulletin board I made to go along with our Olympic themed unit from Unique Learning Systems (which is awesome by the way).

I haven't made a title for the board yet, but here's the basic idea: We're going to track the US medal count on a bar graph (coloring bars in with wet-erase markers - the poster is laminated). We are also going to look up events in some of the sport categories and write their names on the smaller cards. After recording the names, we are going to find the countries on the map. So if all goes well, we will be doing math, social studies, and life skills (web searches) all with one bulletin board... Wish me luck!