Hello!

Hello everyone! Sorry this is not a crafting post, I just felt like I wanted to give a little shout out to all of our peeps out there since we have all but disappeared lately. And, unfortunately, there has not really been much crafting going on here at all! Bummer, I know. So what have I been up to? This.

Yes that is my couch. I'd like to say that it usually looks better than that, but in all honesty, it is usually much worse. I mean, only one to managed to make it's way into the picture! I lived there for about 5 days, starting last Wednesday. That is the day that the kidney infection officially set in. Have you ever had one? They suck sooooo bad! I went into the doc on Thursday and was put on antibiotics, and pain meds. They helped a lot with the pain and all the other junk that goes along with a kidney infection (UTI, blood in the urine, yadda yadda yadda) but they didn't help with the puking that decided to set in. I puked up every single thing that I was able to get down, which wasn't much. 2 pieces of toast on Thursday, 4 saltines and a cup of milk on Friday, and 4 more saltines on Saturday. By the time Saturday night came around I found myself at the urgent care on IV's. I was back in on Sunday morning for more and finally by Monday morning I was feeling better! Wahoo! Well for a minute. Urgent care wanted me back on Monday morning and thought it would be better to be safe then sorry and decided to give me a shot of the antibiotics they had been giving me through the IV's. So then I ended up here.

Why you might ask? Because they give you that antibiotic shot in your butt. SOOOO painful!!!! I can just imagine the coversation the doctor had who invented giving shots in the butt.

DOC: Hey nurse, I'm bored so I have this great idea.

NURSE: Alright doc, what is it.

DOC:  It's like this, when you go give that guy his antibiotic shot, you should do it in his butt!

NURSE: Ok doc, but why?

DOC: Because that way, we can laugh every time he has to sit funny, and have a good laugh when we get to watch him walk out like a goon!

NURSE: Good one, doc, good one.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that they had that conversation. So because of that funny doctor, I have reparked myself in my living room, only this time I'm on the recliner, sitting on a heating pad, doing a whole lot of nothing at all. Good times. So here's to feeling better, and possibly starting a brotherhood of all of those who have had a shot in the butt, because until you've had one, it is impossible to understand.

Family Home Evening Chart

Hello everyone! Well here is my first post of the year.  Didn't Sammy do such a great job on her Prairie Princess skirt and accessories? And those Conversation Hearts are so adorable.

Here is my first crafty thing really that I've made this year! A magnetic Family Home Evening chart.  I've been searching the internet high and low for the past few weeks for some ideas, but finally decided to just come up with my own!

I had some other pictures I wanted to share, but unfortunately my memory card in my camera decided to call it quits and I lost all of those pictures--so all I have is the final product:

It was very simple and quick to make, and the best part--it totaled less than $10, including some supplies I had on hand!  Here is what I did:

Supplies--

1 small magnetic board (I got an 8.5x11 from WalMart for under $3)
Cardstock
ModgePodge
Printer
Cute magnets (These square magnets were also from Wal-Mart, for around $5 I believe)

I made the actual design in Photoshop.  If you would like to download and print for yourself, click on the picture below to view full size and save to your computer!

After I printed the design onto thick cardstock,  I trimmed the sides so that it would fit inside the frame.  Then I used a layer of ModgePodge to adhere it to the magnetic board.  I didn't use ModgePodge on the front of the design, just the back--I have found that it will make the ink run if you try to use it on paper you printed on your personal printer.  Another option I just thought of for this, you could totally send the design as an 8x10 to your photo print shop--that way you can use ModgePodge on the front for a little more durability.  For the last part,  I printed out all of our names on the same thick cardstock.  After trimming the name strips, I was done!

Let me know if you use this design or if you have a cute Family Home Evening chart that you have designed! We would love to feature it if you do--send a picture of it to paisleyandmeblog (at) hotmail (dot) com. 


Thanks for stopping by!


-Ruth


(Design credits:  Tag shape from Pixels and Ice Cream, fonts from Kevin and Amanda)

Conversation Heart Frames

This was a fun little project that I whipped up last night. It's not actually what I was planning on doing (I'll get that one up later) but this idea popped into my head and I just had to get them done! Welcome to the

Conversation Heart Frames

{for V-Day}

So to start out, cut a heart pattern out of some card stock (easy-peasy)

Next take 3 different fabrics and cut squares large enough to fit your heart. Apply some Heat-n-Bond to the wrong side of all pieces.

Now flip those babies over and trace your heart pattern onto the back

and cut the suckers out.

Next I cut off a long strip of a canvas drop cloth and ironed the hearts onto it in a row, leaving enough space in between each heart that I can cut them apart and fit them into an 8x8 frame.

Then cut in between each one and sew the hearts down. I did a zig-zag stitch at less than a 1 length and at a 5 width and went all the way around each one.

Then I took my 8x8 frames, taped the canvases down around the cardboard on the inside and placed them inside.

When that was done, I cut out the words SWAK, LOVE, and KISS ME out of vinyl and applied them to the glass on the outside of the frame and that is it!

Super easy, and a really cute, fun, Valentines decoration that you can vary to fit any scheme you want!

Snipping Tool

Here's a quick little cool tutorial that my brother showed me the other day. When we do giveaways and pick a commenter, we like to show the comment in the winner post, as do most blogs. Now a lot of people may have already known this, but for me, anytime I wanted to do that I would have to press the PrtSc (Print Screen) button, paste it into paint or some other editing program, crop out the part of the page that I want to use, save it as a picture, then upload it onto the post. It gets the job done but is kind of a pain in the butt. Well if you have Windows Vista or newer there is a cool program called Snipping Tool that is found in the accessories when you go to all programs (same place as the calculator and paint). Now if you ever want to snip out a comment or anything else for that matter, all you have to do is have the page pulled up that you want to copy from

Then pull up the snipping tool, it will look like this

I usually just leave it as rectangle because that's usually what I need then just click and drag a rectangle around the part that you want to copy and hit the save (disk)  button on the top.

Then all you have to do is upload your newly saved pic and your done! So easy, just thought I'd share :)

Prairie Princess Headpiece

This was my last little finishing touch for the outfit. This was a pretty simple little project and took about a minute to whip up. I started with a rectangle of left-over fabric from the skirt. Mine was about 6X20", feel free to adjust the size for however large you would like the flower. Fold the rectangle over hamburger way and sew the ends together to form a loop.

Then fold the loop in half hotdog way.

No take a needle and thread and sew a large basting stitch around the open end of the loop.

When you've sewn all the way around pull the thread tight to bunch it into a flower shape.

And sew through the bunched area to secure.

And attach a bling button to the center of the flower.

Now take some Russian netting and cut a piece that is 2" longer and 2" wider than the flower. Find the middle point on the netting and tie a knot on the end of the row.

Then weave back and forth throught the row of netting

and pull the thread taut to bunch the netting.

And sew it down to the bottom middle of the flower.

From there, sew the loose edges down across the flower.

I found this cute little fray of feathers at Michaels for a couple of bucks.

Just hot glue it onto the headpiece, in-between the flower and netting. I also hot glued the button down to secure it.

To finish it off, I just hot glued the entire thing onto a thick headband, and there you go!

**Disclaimer** This headpiece is rather large and would be great for like, a wedding or a special occassion, or a photo prop, but I would probably not wear it to like, Walmart. But I suppose that is the great thing about Walmart, if you felt like wearing it there then I suppose you can, but again, I, personally, wouldn't :)

*Update*

Unfortunately we didn't make it into Crafting with the Stars this season, but it's okay, there are some pretty awesome projects that did make it in and I look forward to following along. We're kind of thinking of doing projects to go along with it anyway, just for fun :). It's probably better anyway, some exciting things have recently come up and I'm sure that it will be best not to have the added pressure. I let you know the news when I can!

Us in Action

Hello all! I thought it would be fun to share a couple of outtakes from our Prairie Princess photo shoot.

See that sign back there by the door? Can you tell what it says?

How about now?

SPITTING ON THE BOARDWALK IS PROHIBITTED!

Haha! Just so you know, don't go around spitting on boardwalks. Not cool. :P

And here I am holding up my sisters skirt in the middle of the street so I can adjust the ties for some different looks.

And again. Don't worry, this street was abandoned or else we probably wouldn't be doing that. Okay, we probably would still be doing it, but maybe I would have tried to be a little more discreet about it. Maybe. My sister is a good sport :)

And last but not least, there's this guy

Me carrying her around on my back whilst holding a large pile of blankets. The snow was extremely deep and I made her wear flats, because, well, they were cute, and sometimes beauty is pain people! Beauty is pain. Did I mention it was, like, 15 degrees at the time of this photo shoot? Like I said, my sister is a champ! Love you Ry!

Prairie Chunk Necklace

So we find out today if we made it into Crafting with the Stars! My fingers and all of my toes are crossed, we really want to make it in! So we'll let you know what we find out!

Until then, here is the tutorial for the Prairie Chunky Necklace.

Here is a pic of all of the different fabulous stuff that I used for this necklace. Every item here was purchased at Michaels, but feel free to mix it up, use what you like, find a length that works for you, and what fits your style.

I've got four different styles of chains, 2 different types of beads, some fabric strips, a flower embellishment bead, eyepins, split rings, and some jewelry pliers.

I started with the base of the necklace. I took about 7 inches of a plain chain and attached a split ring onto one end.

I attached the flower to the split ring and then added another split ring to the bottom of the flower. The fabric strip is then threaded through the bottom split ring.

I then tied the fabric strip in a bow and then looped another split ring through the bottom of the bow.

To this split ring, I attached the entire big chain and then connected it back to the small chain at the beginning.

Next I started on the bead chain. The first step is to use the eyepins in all of the beads.

Slide each bead onto the eyepin and then clip with the wire cutters and curl the end with the round pliers.

When they are all done they will look something like this:

(I realize that I am showing the incorrect amount of beads in this picture, so just squint you eyes and pretend that there are 6 round beads and 3 square beads.)

Now start attaching the beads together with the split rings like so

I used my smallest chain on this one. My pattern was chain-circle-circle-square-chain-circle-square-circle-chain-square-circle-circle-chain. HA! Does that make any kind of sense at all? No? Well here's a picture...

Then attach split rings on the ends and attach it to the flower chain at the top of the flower on one side and at the top of the big chain on the other side.

Next I took my medium size chain and measured it so it would fall in-between the two finished chains, and attached it again with split rings.

(That's Ruth trying to get out of the picture in the background. haha!)

And to finish it off I measured one more piece of medium chain to go at the top so it fell the same distance as the middle two and attached it. (Are you confused yet? Don't worry, lots of pictures!)

And that's it! I love it. I love me some bold chunky jewelry that just screams, "LOOK AT ME!". I like to dress simply and embellish with jewels and accessories, and this one is just soooo fun, right?