Valentine's Day Crafts

I chose a box of cheap valentines from Target for my classmates this year so sadly, no homemade valentines for Mommy to help me with. At least she got to satisfy her crafting bug with Colin's. They were super easy and fun to make!

Colin had a little Valentine's party at preschool and was excited to show off his projects. He was even more excited to eat all the candy he received.

As for me, I was just happy to find a surprise note in my lunchbox.

DIY Hair Clips

Kaitlyn is almost always seen wearing some type of bow clip in her hair. They are a necessity for keeping her long bangs out of her eyes. We've been through dozens of hair clips but I am always struggling to find the perfect one that a) stays put in her hair, b) matches her outfit, and c) does not cost too much. After browsing Etsy for some overpriced hair clips, I realized that they really can't be that hard to make, and I could probably do it myself for really cheap. So after an internet search and a few purchases, I can now show off my own DIY hair clips!

Here is what you need: metal alligator clips, ribbon, and a hot glue gun. The metal double-prong clips (I found mine on eBay) work best for gluing on the ribbon, and also stay put in fine toddler hair very well.

I scored this giant pack of grosgrain ribbon from HomeGoods for ten bucks. So many colors!

The steps are simple. First, cut a piece of ribbon about twice the length of the clip.

Then, using the hot glue gun apply a dot of glue to one end of the ribbon and stick it on the underside of the clip. This was actually my first time using a glue gun and I went trigger happy. So addictive!

Keep applying hot glue to the ribbon and wrap it around the clip so that the entire top half of the clip is covered. Some clips I've used also have the bottom half covered with the ribbon, but they don't stay in Kaitlyn's hair as easily.

Now to make a bow for the clip, cut three pieces of ribbon about three inches long. Tie a knot with one of the ribbon pieces. With the other two pieces, make a loop and glue the ends together. 

Add a dot of glue to the inside of each loop and pinch the centers of the loops together. Then, stack the two loops on top of each other in a flat 'X' and glue those two pieces together.

Finally, take the ribbon with the knot and after placing a dot of glue behind the knot, place it in the center of the X.  Turn the bow over and glue each end to the back. You may have to trim off any excess ribbon.

You just made a bow without actually tying a bow. Pretty cool trick huh?  Thank you, internet. You can now glue the bow to the top of the hair clip and you are done!

There are so many options on what you can do with these. I made a few hair clips with bows and some others with a single-loop bow. Some I decorated with old buttons, but most of them I just left plain until I can think of other ways to decorate them.

I made all of these over two nights and now Kaitlyn has a great stash of hair clips to match with any outfit, with more to come!

How to Make a Balloon Wreath

Here is a quick and easy project if you ever feel the desire to craft something!

I saw a picture of a balloon wreath on Pinterest awhile back and was looking for a good reason to make one. Kaitlyn's birthday party was a perfect excuse! This project was so simple and only took me a little over two hours. If you do a Google search on balloon wreaths you will find a million tutorials out there, but since I took pictures along the way I decided to write one myself.

You just need three items: a straw wreath (I used an 18"); floral pins; and a ton of balloons (like 250+).

Here is the wreath I used, bought from Michael's (and a slice of birthday cake). All of the tutorials I read say to keep the plastic wrap on it, so the straw doesn't start falling out.

I bought bags of balloons from Party City and Target. I probably spent about $40 on balloons - I'm sure it can be a lot cheaper but I was particular about the colors.

Ready to start pinning. It's easy. Just stick a pin through a balloon, then stick it into the wreath. Repeat about 250 times. I spaced each balloon about 1 inch apart (you can always go back later and add more balloons to fill any gaps).

Alternatively, you can use these U-shaped floral pins and fold the balloon under the pin. I meant to do this, but was only able to find one pack of 50 at Jo-Ann. These pins take a bit more effort to stick into the wreath, but the benefit is that you're not poking any holes in the balloons, so you can re-use them if you ever needed to.

Work your way around the balloon. You only need to worry about covering the front and sides of the wreath, since no one will see the back side. Every now and then I stopped to fluff up the balloons to cover any gaps and hide the pinheads, or to stick in additional balloons to fill the gaps.

Halfway done!

And the finished product. I strung some ribbon through the wreath to hang a sign, then used one of those U-shaped floral pins to hang the wreath on a nail in the tree.

I told you it was easy. Look out for this balloon wreath at future birthday parties!

k-a-i-t-l-y-n

I am excited to write about one of my first craft projects! When I was fixing up Kaitlyn's room, I really wanted some nursery letters spelling out her name on the wall. But the only letters I really liked were the wooden ones from PB Kids, and I was too cheap to pay $10/letter. Michael's had wooden letters for about $3/letter, but I didn't like the font. With not a lot of other options, I decided to channel my inner Martha Stewart and do it myself!

Since I don't have one of those jigsaw wood cutters, I thought about cutting out some cardboard and painting them, but then I got inspired by a piece of flat styrofoam I found among all our packaging materials in the garage. I bought a new clean piece at Michael's and got to work. I didn't really know what I was doing so made the steps up along the way - at least I took a few photos to document the process!

Step 1: In MS Word, type out the letters you need in your desired font. Increase the font size to 750, so there's one letter on each page. Print out and using scissors, cut each letter out.

Step 2: Attach letters to the styrofoam piece (I used push pins) and with a pen, trace each letter out.

Step 3: Using a styrofoam cutter, carefully follow the pen lines and cut out each letter. I didn't even know styrofoam cutters existed but after some googling on how to cut styrofoam I discovered I could buy one at Michael's for twenty bucks. It was so easy and actually fun to use.

Step 4: Cover the letters with paper mache. Since the styrofoam is porous, it would have been really hard to paint the letters, so I had to figure out a way to coat them so they could easily be painted. I used scraps of tissue paper and Mod Podge (thinned out with water) and covered each letter with two coats. This was the most grueling, time-consuming part of the project and it took me a whole week to get all the letters completely covered. The tissue kept sticking to my fingers instead of to the styrofoam, and it was so hard to get it to stick to those little corners and curves. Also I had to wait overnight for the glue to dry in between coats. In the end though, after everything had dried, I had some solid pieces of paper mache'd styrofoam ready to be painted.

Step 6: Paint the letters. Easy and fun. I used acrylic paint in an ivory color. The project could have easily just ended here. But then I decided that just ivory was too plain and wanted to add to it even more.

Step 7: Decorate. I stenciled each letter on the back of a piece of scrapbook paper, then cut the paper out and glued it onto the letters.

The whole project from start to finish probably took me about 3 weeks, but that's because I also had my hands full with Kaitlyn and could only work on it in small pieces at a time. If I had all the free time in the world I probably could have finished it in 2 days. Here is a cost breakdown and how it compares to $70 for PB Kids letters:

Styrofoam piece: $5

Styrofoam cutter*: $12 ($20 with 40% coupon from Michael's!)

Bottle of mod podge: $5

Acrylic paint: $2

Foam/paint brushes: $3

Scrapbook paper: $0 (leftover from another project)

Total cost: $27

For under $30, I can't complain and I'm very pleased with the result. Here it is in action:

I guess I have been productive during my maternity leave. And there you have it. DIY nursery letters!

* Not counting the second styrofoam cutter I bought because I got too excited with the first one and broke it after the first use. Including the second cutter, the total project cost was actually $39.