Wonderful Wednesday Craft Night

Morgan and I are doing another Craft Night, so...

You're invited to Wonderful Wednesday Craft Night!

Who: Anyone local. If we don't know you personally, you'll have to prove you're a real person before we'll give you my address. :)
Where: My house
When: Wednesday, September 29th
from 7pm 'til whenever

Please bring a snack food to share.

We will be doing the following crafts:
Family Home Evening boards
Family, What Matters Most boards
Spooky boards
Homemade Air Freshener
12 inch Tiles and
The Stockings Were Hung boards

Just click on the names to see more information about and prices for each of the projects. Email me (allthingscreativeaz(at)gmail(dot)com) and I'll send you the order form. All orders and money need to be in by September 17th so Morgan and I can get everything ready for craft night. We hope to see you there!

Vinyl Signs

We are also going to be doing a couple different vinyl signs.

The first is "Family, What Matters Most." The vinyl pictured is beige/black. Other vinyl colors available are red, brown, light gray, dark gray and white. Paint colors we will have available are black, chocolate brown, antique white and the green pictured below. If you would like another paint color, please bring it that night.


We will also be doing this "Spooky" board with 2 options. You can choose to do the board double sided (it will look the same on both sides) or only one sided to hang on a wall. Your board will look just like the one pictured; orange paint with a black glaze and black and white vinyl.

12 inch Tiles

We will also be doing some 12 inch tiles. These are great on a side table or on the kitchen counter! I love them. We will have 5 options:

Available vinyl colors are red, blue, black, chocolate brown, beige, light gray, dark gray and white. We will pick tiles that will look good with the vinyl color choice.

Homemade Air Freshener

We will be doing homemade air freshener for Craft Night. I previously posted about it here.

Ingredients

After it's made.

Once it's cooled in the fridge.

Numbers

I was at the Dollar Tree the other day looking for something and I saw these "canvas" coloring things. They are 8 in. square and I grabbed 6 of them thinking I could use them for something. A few days later, I went back and grabbed 4 more for this project.

I picked all Lightning McQueen ones just in case my boys ended up using them instead of me (it was that or Disney Princesses). Here they all are waiting for my first step:

Next, I picked out my scrapbook paper. I bought a stack at Joann's a few months ago and these all came from it. I also laid them out so I could see the order and know what numbers go with which colors.
Because you could see Lightning McQueen through some of my papers, I painted two quick coats of white paint over the black stuff. I didn't cover it completely, just enough to not notice through my paper.
Next, I painted the sides with burnt umber craft paint. It took 3 coats for good coverage and I sealed it with an acrylic varnish. Here they are all drying.


I cut my 12x12 scrapbook paper down to 8 inches and used my Cricut cutting mats to cut out my numbers on my vinyl cutter. If you use an actual vinyl cutter (not a craft cutter, like the Cricut) I recommend cutting each number twice to really get it cut all the way through. I liked that better than increasing the cutting pressure.

Here's all my papers laid out and ready for mod podge last night.
I mod podged scrapbook paper down and just used stick glue to glue the numbers to the page. If I had it to do over again, I would just have used mod podge the whole way. Also, I learned after my first one to use very little mod podge and rub it down quickly so the paper wouldn't soak up the glue and get all wrinkly.
Here they are drying earlier today.

I borrowed a laser level from a friend (thanks Morgan!) to hang them tonight. Sorry about the poor lighting, I was just too excited and wanted to post this. They don't take up as much space as I wanted, but I still really like them. Not bad for $10, right?

I know I said that my next Loft project would be the toy bins and I'm working on them. I've gotten 4 finished and I only have 10 more to go. What with Kindergarten starting and all this week, I took a break from sewing. I'm hoping to get them finished early next week. Until then, here's a sneak peak at my first bin and Son #3.

Flower Pens

With my oldest in Kindergarten and my youngest taking a nap, my second son is bored. So, Thursday, we pulled out some silk Gerber daisies I bought at Hobby Lobby last fall and turned them into flower pens.

I looked up a few tutorials online (I googled it) and didn't like what I found. All the tutorials said to use the stem of the flower, but my flowers had all fallen off the stems! So, I stuck some floral wire where the stem was supposed to be, twisted it around the end and hot glued it in place.

My son helped by passing the tape around the pen while I stretched and stuck it in place. When we got to the end of the pen, I hot glued the flower tip to the end of the pen and wrapped that up too. We then wrapped the floral tape back down the pen to secure the flower completely.

Here's Son #2 proudly showing off our accomplishment:

I still have one yellow and two orange Gerber daisies that I think I'll turn into pens sometime too. When I get a desk in my craft room (I have one now! Yippee!) I'll get a small flower pot/vase to stick them in on my desk.

Monogramming

My oldest started Kindergarten yesterday. I spent the day before picking up all his school supplies for the year. I wanted to label everything for my son so that he wouldn't get his mixed up with someone else's. I also didn't want to put his name on it all (stranger danger!), so I decided on a monogram. I designed one that I liked in my vinyl design program and cut out a few, some to use on hard objects and some to use as stencils on all his fabric stuff (pencil case, lunch box and backpack). I think it turned out pretty cute.


I chose white for his waterbottle and lunchbox thermos because I only have white and black vinyl with a permanent adhesive. Most of my colors are the non-permanent adhesive (ie. won't damage your wall when it'd removed) kind. I used an odd color in my regular vinyl for the stencils. It bled a little on the pencil case and the vinyl didn't stick all that well to the fabrics, but enough for me to be careful about painting it. I couldn't find non-3D fabric paint at Walmart, so I just used my regular acrylic craft paint. Craft paint doesn't tend to wash out of my clothes, so I figured it was permanent enough. Unpictured is the lunchbox thermos and my son's backpack. It all turned out cute and my son knows what's his!

Vinyl Decor

I've been working on a few different things lately. Here's some of my vinyl projects.

I found the wood for this SPOOKY sign in the cut bin at Home Depot a few weeks ago and had to buy for 51 cents. After thinking about the size for a while, I decided on SPOOKY for this board. I made this particular sign for a good friend last October, but I added the spiderweb to it to fill the board a bit better.

(Sorry about the funky green background, I promise my wall is a MUCH better green in person!)

I spray painted the board orange with the leftover paint from my nightstand/end table and then glazed it with my black glaze. I really like how it turned out. I'm considering doing the vinyl on both sides so I can display it both ways in my home. We'll see.

My best friend (we've known each other since we were 13) is having her first baby this month. I wanted to make her something and she asked for a vinyl monogram and some letters to make these cute blocks. I offered to make the blocks for her and she loved that idea. It was a fun little project. I hand painted the bunny, dandelion and dragonfly (in case you didn't know what they were) on four sides of each block to match her nursery bedding. After I sealed the paint with a clear acrylic varnish, I added the vinyl. They turned out pretty good, I think, especially for free-handing it all.

I did these Be-blocks based on this talented lady's tutorial. I tried cutting out each letter and adding them individually like she did, but it was driving me nuts (I'm a little too much of a perfectionist at times), so I started over. I designed each side on my computer then cut it out. I really like how it turned out the second time around, although I think the words could be a bit bigger for the size blocks I used. My friend, Morgan suggested the colors and I loved how it turned out. They look even better in person.

After watching the Sunday morning session of General Conference this past April, I sat down at my computer and designed this sign. This is the message I came away with that morning. I absolutely love this sign and I hope to eventually get around to hanging it up in my living room.

So, that's what I've been working on for the past little while. I (as always) have a ton of stuff in the works. I'm hoping to finish a few more things soon.

Giant Game Pieces

We had Craft Night last night and it was a big success! We all had lots of fun chatting and crafting together. It was fun, but a lot of work and I'm grateful I can once again focus on things in my own home. Last night, I was able to mostly finish my PLAY ROOM giant scrabble tiles for our loft upstairs. My boys helped me finish and hang them today:I painted them two each orange, red, green and blue to match the colors of our loft (our walls are yellow). After applying the vinyl scrabble letters, I attached sawtooth hangers to the back with nails and epoxy glue so they won't fall out ever.

In the right corner of the above picture, you can also see the giant dominos I made and hung next to the window. They're perfect for the space and might be a future Craft Night project. They measure 2in x 6in x 12in and I used black vinyl for the dots and the line.

I love the way both of these projects turned out for our play room and look forward to seeing the (hopefully) next finished project - bins for our toys!