Halloween Costume Adventures!

Hopefully everyone out there had a fantastic and fun Halloween--I know I sure did! I thought I would blog about some awesome crafty Halloween costumes that I saw and helped with yesterday. The first one was my friend Jessica, from Sweet Athena:

She dressed up as the Bee Girl from the Blind Melon music video for their song "No Rain". Here's the original Bee Girl, in case you don't know what I'm talking about:

Didn't she do a great job crafting her costume??? I loved it!

Next is my other friend Jessica, who went as the Easter Bunny:

She made her ears and belly out of felt, and I made her a cute pom pom tail!

And now here's my costume! I decided to go as a kind of Mash-Up of different Lady Gaga songs. For her song "Just Dance" I wore a tutu dress and sparkly ballet slippers. For "Poker Face" I attached a poker hand to my sunglasses. For "Love Game" I created a 'disco stick' out of a Christmas Ornament. I also wore my camera around my neck for "Paparazzi". It was a fun costume to put together and I really like how it turned out!

Here I am with my wonderful husband, who came as Mrs. Doubtfire!

I can't believe that it's November already! I've got to get back to work making Christmas presents!

Crafty Present Adventures!

I gave my friend her crafty present yesterday, so I can finally blog about it here! Remember the Facebook gifts that I blogged about in August? Well, it turns out that I forgot about someone! I felt so bad that I kinda went overboard with this crafty gift. Once I started making fun crafty things I couldn't stop! So here are all the different parts to her present:

First I covered some colored pencils in dictionary pages that had their different colors on them.

This was my first time trying this, and I love how they turned out!

I also covered some more pencils in security envelope liners. I love how they look. I definitely want to continue making these!

I was going to stop there, but then I decided to make a pad of paper to go with the pencils. I took some pages from an old daily calendar and tried a new way of making a pad of paper. This pad will allow each of the pages to rip away quickly and easily!

For the back of the pad I used some cardboard from the packaging for my husband's Kindle. The letters were done in a gloss coating, so they only show up in the light. I love how it looks!

Again, I was going to stop there, but then I got another fun idea. The last time that this friend was over to my house she commented on how my paper butterflies would look really cute as hairpieces. So I decided to do just that!

I like how you can see the word "Introduction" going through this butterfly

And the butterfly with the feathers and netting looked great in her hair!

So this would have been a logical place to stop, right? But then I wanted to make some kind of bag to put everything into. So I went through my fabric scraps and found part of one of my husband's old shirts that I had previously used to make a skirt out of.

I used the existing buttons as the closure for the bag, and then re-stitched the pocket to the front of the bag.

The pocket was just perfect to put the pencils in!

I had so much fun putting together all of these little crafty gifts! Sometimes having a reason to craft is the best way to get inspiration. Right now I'm going to focus on putting together Christmas presents, which I probably won't blog about here until after they have been received. But I'm sure I'll have enough side crafty projects to keep this blog updated between now and January!

Paper Star Extreme Adventures!

I have been so busy lately that when I find time to get some crafting done I can't find the time to blog about it! This last weekend I folded up a ton of these origami stars--I can't stop!

There are dozens of them around our house, it's fabulous! Right now I'm working on a crafty present for a friend, which I will reveal after they have received it. I'm pretty excited about it!

Adventures in Blog Features!

There is nothing like being featured in someone else's blog to make you realize how long it has been since you have posted! Today my wonderful friends over at Sweet Athena featured me on their craft blog, which made me all warm and fuzzy inside. You should definitely go check out their blog, they make amazing jewelry, headpieces, and even cheese!

Now that the school year is fully underway I find myself having less and less time for crafting. But with the Holiday season just around the corner I am going to have to get myself in gear soon! So here are a few projects that I did recently in what little spare time I had:

I love this little flower that I made out of book pages! It's very similar to this hairpiece that I made earlier, but with a slightly different shape. I can't wait to wear it in my hair!

On a whim I decided to make this strand of butterflies to put in my classroom. I made them out of book pages as well, and really like how they turned out!

Very simple, but very cute.

And this picture is just to prove that yes, I do wear my creations out in public! I recently wore one of my paper flower hairclips to a family bbq, and my family members loved it! Here I am chatting it up with my amazing Grandma, who is a major fan of all my crafting adventures :)

And finally, a little teaser. I am currently working on crafting together a Halloween costume. I don't want to reveal what it is just yet, but it will incorporate what you see in the picture above...

Homecoming Week Adventures!

Whew! Homecoming Week is over! My life can now return to normal. It was an insanely busy week, but everything went really well--including my Homecoming Week costumes! Since I am the Leadership teacher and Activities Coordinator I always participate in the dress-up days, and my students really enjoy it. I thought I would share a few outfits with you here from last week. I didn't take a picture on Future Career day when I dressed up like a ballerina, or on Orange and Black day (school colors), but here are the other three days:

This was from "Would you still be my friend if I looked like this?" day. The night before I rummaged through my closet and just grabbed all of the randomest things I could find. I don't even remember when I got the sequined parrot purse--middle school maybe? And the vest is definitely from high school jazz band! The students loved my crazy outfit, and especially my hair!

I used got2b glued for the very first time, and I have to say it is amaaazing! My hair was rock solid all day long, yet it washed out really easily in the shower. I can't wait to use that stuff again!

This outfit was for Nerd Day. The glasses were the 3-D glasses we got when we went to see Coraline, and worked perfectly once I popped out the lenses. The rest of the stuff is just random pieces from my closet yet again. I thought my students would really make fun of me for my Star Trek t-shirt (it says 'live long and prosper' with a cute cartoon Spock on it) but they actually really liked it. I had a couple students ask me where I got it, and when I told them it was from the Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas they said "awesome!"

And here is the completed Harry Potter look for Celebrity Look Alike day. Most of my students immediately recognized me as a Harry Potter character (a lot thought I was Cho Chang), but some thought I was a super hero or something. One teacher thought I was Judge Judy :(

It's a huge relief to have Homecoming Week over with, but I really do love doing it every year. Can't wait for next year and for more fun dress up days!!!

Wedding Adventures!

Yesterday I attended an amazing wedding of one of my friends from high school. I had so much fun! I also got the chance to wear one of my hairpieces that I made all the way back in June. You may recall me posting about a fun-filled day where I picked cherries and made fun hairpieces with my friend Lindsey. Well, this is the same hairpiece, except that I removed it from the headband and put it on a hairclip instead. With my new haircut the headband was a big overpowering, but the hairclip worked great!

I think it really helped fancy up my hair for the wedding, especially since it is pretty much impossible to style my new haircut. I really like how it turned out!

My friend Jessica was a bridesmaid in the wedding and made a really cool hairpiece of her own! Last month we went shopping at a couple vintage stores and found this great brooch, that looked just gorgeous in her hair!

Tomorrow is the first day of Homecoming Week, so stay tuned for some posts about the various costumes I'll be wearing!

Adventures in Costume Making!

Wow, sorry that I seemed to have dropped off the planet for a while there. The beginning of a new school year is an insanely busy time, especially with Homecoming so early this year! As the Activities Director at my school I get to plan the whole shebang, so I have been extremely busy. At least this is my second year doing it so I have a much better idea of what I'm doing! But unfortunately, when you pair Homecoming preparations with teaching all of my other classes it doesn't leave much time for crafting. So imagine my excitement when I decided to combine Homecoming and Crafting together!

During Homecoming Week there is a different dress-up theme for each day. One of these days happens to be celebrity look-alike day, which really had me stumped. I don't think I look like any particular celebrity, and I don't really have any favorite celebrities that I would want to be. I thought long and hard about it, and in the end decided that I should go with what I know. And I know that I looove Harry Potter! So much so that my bachelorette party was Harry Potter themed! And while I couldn't exactly wear that outfit to school, I could use one part of it--the cape!

But after putting on the cape I decided that the tie looked just a little bit too teeny tiny for what I wanted. I mean, you couldn't really fight off Dementors with that thing. So I decided to sew my own!

Now this outfit can take on a whole posse of Dementors! (Especially with my super-awesome wand pen, also from the bachelorette party) I am so super stoked about how it turned out! I raided my craft closet and found scraps of fabric in the perfect colors for Gryffindor. I then sewed strips together for the stripes and cut out a basic tie shape. The "tie" part at the top is the leftover bits which I just kinda folded into the proper shape. Looks pretty convincing, huh?

As you can kinda see here, the crimson fabric has a nice shimmer to it which just adds a bit of "pizzaz" to the ensemble. I love it! I'll post pictures of the full costume when I wear it to school!