Crafty Adventure Presents!

Just a quick post about some of the awesome crafty presents I got this Christmas! I am really excited about all of them!

My little sister is teaching English (the language) in S. Korea for a year, so she brought me back some awesome presents. Included in these awesome presents were three rolls of hand-pressed paper that are just GORGEOUS. I don't know what I'm going to do with them yet, but it is definitely going to be something special. And she also remembered to bring me back all kinds of fun plastic bags! They are so neat.

Also pictured above are two crafty books that I received. One of my cousins gave me the Origami Jewelry book, and it is just full of really cute ideas. She has done a lot of origami herself, so it was really neat to receive this book from her. Another cousin gave me the Embellishing book, which is also full of some amazing ideas. She even told me that she had really wanted to photocopy some of the pages before she gave me the book! I can't wait to start crafting with ideas from these books!

My Grandmother knows that I love to craft, and she loves all the things that I make. So I received a big heavy present from her with a gift tag that read "To Mariko, who loves to make things. Love, Grandma." And in this big heavy present was this box of amazing crafty bits!

Now, this picture really doesn't do this amazing collection justice, because I haven't fully unpacked it yet. There is another layer of bags beneath the ones that you see, and there is just an amazing assortment of stuff in them! I've found TONS of beads, broken necklaces, brooches, watches, earrings, shells, confetti... You name it, it's probably in there. Apparently my Grandma found a huge bag of all this stuff in a thrift store! How cool is that??? I'm always looking for big bags of random stuff, but I have never found one even CLOSE to this amazing. I am sooo excited to go through everything and become inspired. She already sorted through a lot of the stuff and categorized them into little bags, which will help a lot.

I definitely had a wonderful Christmas with lots of family, and lots of fun crafty presents! But now I have to focus on New Year's Eve, which has really snuck up on me. I mentioned before that this year's New Year's Eve theme is "Dinosaur Prom". Here's a little preview of what that means...

Intrigued? I hope so! I'll be posting about it soon!!!

Christmas Present Adventures, Part 4

Here is my second post on my handmade Christmas presents! Yesterday I posted about the paper crafts that I made, and today I am going to share the food items that I made!

First, the actual edible food items. I made goody bags filled with candied cranberries and peppermint bark. I got the recipe for the candied cranberries from the website Elizabeth's Edible Experience. They turned out great! Delicious, easy to make, and very pretty. My husband loooved them! I got the peppermint bark recipe from one of my friends, on her blog Domestic Goddess Adventures! Her blog is incredible, if you haven't already, go check it out! I made both milk chocolate and dark chocolate peppermint bark, and it was sooo delicious. And again, easy to make and very pretty!

The next item was a food related item, but not exactly edible. I made personalized wine charms out of recycled bottle caps.

(The ones pictured were for an Aunt who is a rockhound). I was very happy with how they turned out, and again they are made of all UPcycled materials!

I thought that I would also share how I decided to package my collection of presents. I really wanted to get away from wrapping paper, or gift bags, and use something either recycled or reusable. I chose to use these super cute woven baskets!

Here you can see the outside of the present, with my recycled gift tags.

And here is what the inside looked like. I just kind of nestled everything in, and it turned out great! I was happy to be able to use a reusable product for my wrapping!

Well, that ends my Christmas present crafting. Tomorrow I want to share some of the awesome crafty presents that I myself received! I am super excited about them all!

And I have also been working on our Dinosaur Prom themed New Year's Eve party. I am in charge of the picture area, so I've been working on that. And I've been working on my Dinosaur Prom dress! I'll post lots of pics from the party!

Christmas Present Adventures, Part 3

Now that my husband and I are finished celebrating our 4 days of Christmas celebrations, I can finally post about what I made for presents! I gave away gift baskets filled with upcycled handmade goodies, and today I am going to cover the paper gifts!

As I hinted in an earlier post, I covered a LOT of pencils in security envelope linings. I am seriously in love with the patterns that are used, and I have to say I really like how they look wrapped around pencils!

Now, to go with the pencils I also made magnetic paper pads. Since my goal was to make everything out of recycled materials as much as possible, these paper pads were no exception!

The idea actually came about when there was a mistake made with one of my photocopy orders at school. I was left with a whole stack of colored paper, printed on one side. So I simply photocopied lines on the other side and cut them up! I used leftover invitations from my wedding for the backing, and used some magnetic strips that I had stashed away.

I bound the pages together using clear Silicone, and it worked great! The pages are held together well, but also tear away really easily. The overall effect was very cute, and I was very pleased with how they turned out.

And then finally, I gave out lots of paper star ornaments!

My house has been filled with these stars for months now, I had so much fun folding them! And they looked just darling hanging in a tree.

Tomorrow I will share the food related pieces that I made! I hope that everyone had a wonderful time with the Holidays, and are looking forward to a Happy New Year!

Christmas Present Adventures, Part 2

This morning I literally woke up at 4am, with this craft project buzzing around in my brain. I have been wanted to craft something personal for my Mom and my Grandma for Christmas, and this was the perfect solution!

I took two wooden frames and covered them in pages from a dictionary. I chose words specific for my Mom and Grandma such as 'love', 'family', 'tradition', and so on.

I also included a few pictures from the dictionary on my Grandma's frame (the larger one).

I love how they turned out! I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier! Now I'm off to print off some pictures to put in these frames, wrap them up, and I am all set for Christmas!

Christmas Present Adventures, Part 1

I have been busy busy busy lately putting together my Christmas presents for everyone. But I am so excited about some of these presents that I couldn't wait until after Christmas to blog about them! So here is a little preview of a few things that I have been working on:

These are the gift tags that I made for the presents. I had a beautiful 2009 Calendar that I wanted to use somehow, and then I thought I would cut out cute little bird shapes from the pages! I'm going to write on the wings to mark who the presents are for.

Now, the first actual present that I'm going to share with you is something that I made for the sons of my two cousins. Each are about 4 years old.

I got the idea for this present from the awesome blog Collecting the Moments...One by One that I subscribe to. I thought it would be great for Noah and Lucas!

One thing that I did add to the project was crafting a box for the boys to store their chalk! I found these wooden hinged boxes at Michaels and painted them. I also found the wood letters at Michaels, and thought it would be a cute way to personalize them!

When you open the chalk box, you can see the little eraser that I made for each of the boys. I simply folded over some felt scraps that I had and sewed some lines to create texture for easier erasing. It works great! I glued a little piece of velcro in the lid so that the eraser would stay in place. I love it!

That's all for now, I don't want to ruin any surprises for people who read this blog! But here's a little taste of what's to come...

Adventures in 1920s Costume Making!

This past weekend I attended a 1920s themed Murder Mystery party! This was something that my group of friends has wanted to do for a long time, and it was SO much fun! My character was "Madame MeMe", and I owned several nightclubs with my husband. My character information instructed me to dress 'flashy yet classy', so I did my best to sew a costume that fit that description. I was on a very limited time schedule, so I wasn't able to do quite as much as I would like. But I was still pleased with how it turned out!

The skirt is made of a super soft, furry fabric that looked really neat next to the shimmery red fabric. I used the leftover furry fabric as a stole, which added to the 'classy' aspect. The drop-waist dress was really easy to make--I basically used a t-shirt of mine as a pattern!

It was a really fun and quick costume, and a fantastic party! My next sewing project is going to be a little bit more intricate, so wish me luck! It's for a New Year's Eve party, so I'll be blogging about it soon!

Adventures in Earring Reconstruction!

Wow, I can't believe it's been almost a month since I last updated! I promise that I have been very busy with little craft projects, but I'm keeping them a secret until after Christmas :) However, there was one project that I was inspired to make last night and I just had to share with the rest of you!

I call this post 'earring reconstruction' but really I should name it earring DEstruction! My inspiration came about last night as I was going through my overly crowded jewelry box. I have never really sorted through my jewelry box, and I have so many earrings that I never wear anymore. As I was gathering up these earrings, I started to think about how I could tear them apart to make new earrings. Then, for some reason, I was reminded about these paper beads that I played with this past summer. So I decided to combine the two! I was so excited to try this that I put off my big stack of grading and just dived right in!

I created these paper beads out of various colors of paper, and then created the individual earrings out of the beads and the bits and pieces from the earrings I tore apart. I looove how these turned out, so much better than I originally imagined! I will definitely be giving these out as Christmas presents, so if you get one--act surprised!