Niece's Gift

I told you all I was working on a skirt for my niece, so here it is, a mixture of a circle and circle square skirt- square over circle, with a rick rack trim because she's as girly as they come... when she wants to be. I think the rick rack on both layers brings them both together nicely and pulls out another color from the birds.

As you can see, I also made a few hair bows and a shirt to match.
I will say the colors in this photo don't quite do the pinks justice. You can see on the sleeve of the shirt how close the shirt and bird are; and you can see how the darker berry pink works with the birds on the skirt but for some reason all together it just doesn't look right in this picture.

When I make my family gifts I tend to buy something to match because I make it because I love it- and them, but I don't want it to be thought that I make it because I'm cheap (believe me, this skirt wasn't cheap). So I looked for a shirt to match this skirt, and I couldn't find ANYTHING!!! The cream base and autumn colors just aren't common for little girls. I did find one shirt that was a cute cream with a lace chest overlay, but it wasn't in her size (in any of the local stores, I checked). So as I was taking a piece of the fabric with me to every store to try and match, I finally found this plain pink at Hobby Lobby, but it was just that- plain!! So I used a little Heat N Bond to make it match!
(Here's a close up:)

And here's a close up of the bows:

A simple folded fabric flowers. She tends to prefer pig tails, so I thought I'd make one for each side.

That's all for now,
Jo!!

Fall Decor

As things are finally cooling down around here I figured it was time to get some fall crafts going.

So I threw together a few sheets of leaves for the kiddos to pain and then hung them as garland in their rooms.

(KK's and KL's beds, since they have bunk beds theirs are mixed together)

(KM's bed)

(KN's bed, with KN of course- she loves to have her picture taken)

These were super simple. I just free-handed a few pages of leaves and set them up with water colors.
The twins used a cheap store bought paint palette, because the hard paints are harder to make a mess with, the big Ks used homemade liquid water colors I wrote about a while ago but never showed how the colors turned out, for this project I thinned them out a little bit.
After they dried, I cut them out with a little margin to show were stems were painted, and then paired them with varying sized circles cut out of fall colored paper. Punched a few small holes and strung them on fishing line. 

Here's a few of my favorites:
(In order: KL, KK, KN, KM)

KL went through after painting all hers and used orange to trace the stem and veins of them all, some of them were super cool. KK played with mixing/blending the colors and tint by going over areas more than once to darken areas. 

We also colored some store bought sun-catchers with permanent markers because I didn't want to dig out the sun-catcher paint. We tried using regular markers but they rubbed off easily, so we redid them. I hung them in front of the window with fishing line but didn't take a picture. 

While I'm on, here's the skirts I made for coming niece (I was feeling the pink and gray apparently, and the baby's nursery is in elephants): 

That's all for now,
Jo!

Next on my project list is a skirt for another niece's 3rd birthday and I may add a few hair bows to match if I can find the time while the kids are home on fall break this next week. 

More Bows

I did find time to sit down and make a few bows.

Here they are:

Can you tell that I'm ready for fall?

The top one was super easy- just two 8" pieces of each color, folded in, hot glued in "flower" shape on top of a foam/felt circle base, and a button to cover the middle (it's kind of a pale yellow, the photo makes it look more off white).

The second one was inspired by a Pinterest pin that really has no destination (you know how that goes). At least is was one that was a step be step guide.

I had these two pretty ribbons that me grandmother sent me while cleaning out her crafting supplies before a move. I've wanted to use them for a while but wasn't quite sure how to but when I decided to try this pin I figured they'd work alright.

So I layered them and stitched them together for the back of the bow.
Then ran a basting stitch to help pinch the middle of the bow.

Since the back of the bow is 4", I used a 3" template to measure the white ribbon I put on front- wrapping it around 3 times.

I put a small stitch in it to hold it together and then fanned it out.

I used just a small dot of hot glue to attach the white ribbon to the gold, you have to be careful because too much glue makes it so you can't pinch the middle tight.
I then used a little florist wire to pinch the middle as tight as possible (it's the easiest method I've seen yet, because it holds it so well). Finally I finished by using the white ribbon to tie a knot (as seen in the linked pin) and hot glued it on using the ends to help hold the alligator clip on. Then a quick touch of hot glue to the ends of the alligator clip to attach it to the base of the bow.

That's all for now,
Jo!