I love feathers!

So I've had these ostrich feathers lying around my house for months trying to figure out what I wanted to do with them. Then on one of those afternoons when I'm aimlessly surfing the net I came across a yahoo video on how to make feather facilitators or a feather headpiece. EUREKA! That's what I was going to do with my feathers and here's what I came up with.

I was surprised at how easy the were to make. Basically it takes a feather, a small piece of felt, a hair clip and some kind of embellishment, I used a rhinestone button.

You take the feather and clip about 2/3 off. You only really use the very top tip, depending on how big you want your hairpiece. You the hot glue the feather to the small piece of felt. I arranged two feathers to make it a little bit more fluffy. On the reverse side of the felt you hot glue your hair clip. Please note to glue it correctly (I glued it on wrong 2 times in a row, lololol). The hair clip must be kind of sideways , going up so you can clip in into your hair in an upward motion. The final step is the embellishment. I took a rhinestone button and cut off the loop in the back. You then hot glue the button at the bottom of your feathers hiding the ends.

Here are pictures of what the back looks like.

I really love how these turned out...you might even see them on sale in my Etsy shop soon!

Happy Crafty 4th of July!

So it's that time of the year to celebrate our Great Nation's birthday, and what better way to celebrate it than with some great crafts (provided you do them indoors, under air conditioned conditions or else you might passout.)

The Disney Family website is always full of great ideas that the kids love it because all the crafts involve Disney Characters. All their projects come with step-by-step instructions and downloadable templates. Check out their 4th of July section! Just click here Disney Family.com

Another great craft resource is of course, Martha Stewart. There you can not only find instructions to easy crafts, but they have recipes, activities, etiqutte FAQ's and even some historical info on the 4th July. Click here to visit Martha Stewart.com

My Etsy

Ok,so it seams everytime I post a blog I begin by apologizing for not posting more often. Reality is I have a full time job, 3...actually 4 kids if you count my husband, I'm a Girl Scout Leader to my daughter's troop, have one dog and, oh, did I mention my full time job that always seems to follow my home! So I'm not apoligizing anymore...just thank God that I do have a life and I"m not clogging up your email with posts ever five minutes (I reserve that for my FB friends, lololol).

Now to the post of the day, My Etsy.

As I surfed the net one day I came to find http://www.etsy.com/. It's a network of crafters and artists who produce handmade goods and just by clicking on a few pages I fell in love with everything on there. I decided I had to be a part of this, so I signed up about 3 months ago. Now back to that having a life part...only in the past few days have I been able to focus, organize and get my shop up and running. As a favor, I ask you visit my shop, http://www.sinfullycrafty.etsy.com/ and let me know what you think! Critique the pics, my sale prices, descriptions,everything...it's the only way I'll know what needs improvement.

As a thank you I made this poster for someone who requested it, but they never came thru, so I'm sharing it with you guys. You can have it printed and framed just click on the picture below and then right click on the image and then click save as and save it to your computer.

And just for your info...the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie is my favorite of all time!

My first love

Today I've decided to open up a little and tell you about my first love...no not the high school guy that stood me up for Prom (he's definitly not on my list!) or my wonderful husband who deals with my crafty craziness everyday. This love goes back a long time ago to when I was a five year old little girl just wanting to do what her father loved to do....taking pictures.

I remember my dad having a Mamiya, dual lens camera which to me was fascinating because you had to look down into the camera to take pictures. He would often let me hold the camera, with his help because it was heavy, and "waste" film taking pictures of people, places & things. This is to be a love affair that will last the rest of my life....or at least up to now that I sit here writing this.

Needless to say that I moved on to attend a High School that specialized in Photography, studied it in College and have often made ends meet with it. Now I've decided to share some of my pictures with you and please, by all means, let me know what you think. And yes! I still have my dad's camera, although these pictures were taken with my Canon Rebel 35mm.

This series of pictures I took on my trip to England & Ireland. They feature Stonehendge, The Tower of London, Tower Bridge and the Cememtery in Glendalough. Want a copy of one of them, just stop by my Etsy shop.

Spa Party Invitations

With the Sex in the City movie coming out this weekend, I am feeling particularly girly. I went into my work files and found my favorite girly project I have worked on so far.

These are Spa Party Purse invites I made for one of my best friends daughters. I love the way they came out, very contemporary girly. To create these I made a pattern of the purse using photoshop. I then cut the purse pattern out using 2-sided scrapbook paper from Martha Stewart that I found at Walmart (I loved this paper because there's a different pattern on each side).

For the inside I again used photoshop to create the frame and added the wording. I printed it on plain white cardstock paper (although thinking about it now I should have used full sheet label paper, it would have been a lot easier to place inside), I cut out the frame and glued it to the inside. Then I punched 2 holes on the front flap of the purse and tied a little black bow.

Now to the not so fun stuff...I'm still trying to figure out this blog thing, so as soon as I figure out how to post the template for this project I will, I PROMISE! In the meantime....don't have the time to put this together, you can buy them made from my etsy shop.

Girl Scout Swaps

For Mother's Day Weekend my Girl Scout Troop (I'm a proud leader) decided they wanted to go to the Girl Scout Thanks-a-Lot event at the Nick Hotel in Orlando. I was very nervous as this was our troop's first trip and my girls really have not interacted with other Girl Scouts out of our City.

For the event, the Girls had to take swaps to trade with the other Girl Scouts...so in comes crafty leader to come up with something.

We decided to make little flamingo swaps since our troop is based in Hialeah, Florida and Hialeah is known for it's famous racetrack which is also a flamingo sanctuary. We found flamingo beads we strung on a pin and from the bottom we hung a little tag that said our troop's info.

Needless to say that the girls loved the swaps. They all sat around a table and put them together without complaining. I think they did a fantastic job!

Happy Mother's Day

In the spirit of Mother's Day I thought it was only fair to post the lovely gift my 6 year old son Javy gave to me today. It's a Daisy made with a toilet paper roll, how clever! Guess I'm not the only crafty person in the family.

Happy Mother's Day!

Hannah Montana Party Favors / Scrapbook Pal Design Team Entry

Hello everyone!

Please excuse me as I'm still getting a handle on how this blog thing works. I promise to post on a more regular schedule. Now on to today's craft...

For my daughter's 7th Birthday she wanted a Hannah Montana themed Birthday Party, so we did what every parent would do and rented a recording studio for her and her friends to be rock stars for the day. We found the perfect place at Rockstar Recording Studio in Ft. Lauderdale. The owners were great and the girls recorded several Hannah Montana songs, each getting a cd of the recording.  Since everything was handled by the recording studio I felt a little out of my element because I was not up until midnight making bags, decorations, favors, piñatas, etc. I had even ordered the Hannah Montana cricut cartridge and I had no use for it!

So what's a crafty lady to do? The day before the party I went to Walmart and found this awesome metallic paper, I went home, started playing around with my cricut and decided to make favor bags for all the girls to take their cd's home in.

Here's what I came up with....

I used the Cricut Plantin Schoolbook cartridge to make the bag on various colored cardstock papers. Then using the Hannah Montana Cricut Cartridge and Design Studio I cut out the Hannah Monatana silhouette on the metallic paper. Cutting the HM logo was a little trickier because it's actually the whole named spelled out. Using Design Studio I was able to hide the rest of the letters leaving the HM only. I glued everthing into place, added some tissue paper and  voila...we had party favors!

P.S. Still learning how to use this blog thing, so if you want the cut files please email me. Don't have a Cricut but want the bags, go to my Etsy site.

Teacher Bouquet

So it's finally time to show off some of my work! Here is a centerpiece I made for an event involving the principals of local schools. I will admit it's not an original idea (I copied it from a picture I saw online), but I did put my own spin on it.

1. I used an empty water bottle to create the vase. Just cut the top off with a scissor, about 1/3 down.

2. Next you'll need a rubber band and a bunch of pencils (I used about 30 per centerpiece). Place the rubber band around the outside of the water bottle and start to place pencils inside, between the rubber band and the water bottle. The pencils tend to go sideways..I liked the effect so I left them that way. I didn't find a need to glue any of them down. (in the original idea all the pencils went straight up)

3. Take a wide ribbon and tie it around the water bottle on top of the rubber band. Tie a big bow.

4. Fill water bottle with water and place the flowers inside. Voila! you have a gift any teacher will love, especially since they can use the pencils after the flowers die.

Cricut

First of all...sorry for the delay since my last post. I was trying to figure out how to get people to sign on to the blog using only their email and the internet gods finally answered my prayer late, late last night. We're up and running now! Please spread the word.

Now to the topic of the day...Cricut! I love my cricut!! If you don't know what a cricut is, you obviously get enough sleep and do not watch infomercials. For those insomniacs that know exactly what I'm talking about and yes, it is as great as it seems. The cricut is a personal cutting machine that cuts out shapes and fonts from hundreds of cartridges. It is a must for all scrapbookers, teachers, scout leaders, moms, etc. It does way to many cool things to explain here.From time to time I'll feature projects I did on the cricut, but in the meantime feel free to check out their website and informercial and get aquainted with the cricut.
http://www.cricut.com/

Do U Shutterfly?

So let's get right down to business. Everyone that know me knows I LOVE Shutterfly. When my friends approach me about doing something for them that involves pictures my first question always is...do you Shutterfly?

Shutterfly, in my opinion, is the easiest way to share & archive pictures. I can't emphasize enough how easy it is to share pictures. As the official unofficial photographer to everyone that I know I hated having to take pictures, edit them, upload them, burn them on CD, and then get my friends to pick up the cd or add delivery person to my to do list fo rthe day. (Again, I'm a WORKING mother of 3 small children and time is really a luxury) With shutterfly, I just have to upload the pictures, click the ones I like and share in an email to everyone. If the recipients have a Shutterfly account all they do is save to their account. No more CD's staying in my car for months until I was able to deliver them.

Now, Shutterfly is not only for archiving & sharing pictures...it does sooo much more. But for now I just encourage you to creat a Shutterfly account and begin uploading your pictures. I'll be posting helpful hints and sharing all the other wonderful things you can do with Shutterfly in future posts.

http://www.shutterfly.com/

Welcome!

This is officially my first post on the internet! Wooo Hooo! I plan to share everything I know about being crafty. I also plan to share some of my favorite websites that I hope they will inspire you to create something wonderful.