Filed under: crafty stuff
i’ve been such a blog slacker lately. here’s why:
**photo disclaimer: all of these pictures were taken with my small camera at night. i realize the quality leaves much to be desired, but i really didn’t want to wait another day to do this post…turns out i never got it done last night anyway**
i’ve been up until at least midnight every night this week. one night i was up sewing until 2:30 in the morning. ryan thinks i’m crazy, but i hate to be interrupted when i’m working on this stuff so i really can’t do it during the day. plus, i screwed up several times and the ended up taking me alot longer than it should’ve. made new bedroom curtains. the ones we had before had been there for over 3 years and i had never hemmed the bottoms. it was either this or buy expensive wood blinds.
here’s a close-up of the fabric (in the picture above it kinda looks like blue christmas trees). i also made dark denim accent pillow for the bed, but ryan was in the bed when i took these pictures, so you’ll just have to imagine it.
next up is the living room. made new curtains and FINALLY (6 months later) got some photos into these frames. the pictures are from our family session with rebekah hood. it was so hard to find good vertical shots that’d be good in b&w, but i like what i chose. they make me happy.
i didn’t make the new pillow covers. i tried, but like i said earlier, i screwed up. went to target yesterday and they had these pillows for $9 each. you can’t take off the covers, but the ones that were removeable were like $20. i figure i’ll take them to the laundry mat every few months. they are super soft and harper hasn’t stopped playing with them since we brought them home. she’s made a bed on the floor like 5 times, a gymnastics mat, and a bed for baby jesus with them.
here’s a close-up of what’s in the frames (agian, the quality of these is terrible, and in NO way shows the amazing-ness of rebekah, but i didn’t want to use my flash)
here’s a close-up of the new curtains. i love this fabric. it’s called terrarium. i think i’m in an orange phase. the ones i took down were orange corduroy. i loved them, but they were just too “heavy” for summer.
we got new fixtures for all our sinks the weekend of harper’s birthday (over a month ago). ryan finally had time to put one of them in. i love it. i think it makes the whole bathroom look new again. (pay no attention to the dork in the mirror.)
i really am going to get back to my normal bloggy self. 
however, the main reason for the title of this post is: my friend kathleen just posted a show about Fox’s new show, “GLEE”. i too am super duper excited about it. the previews give me chills… i’ll be sure to do a post after i watch the preview episode next week. i’d probably pay to watch it. i’m that excited.
anyway, one of the things i worked on last week was mother’s day gifts. i never really want to spend a great deal of money for mother’s day, but i want the gift to be sentimental. for me, this usually means making something. this year, i wanted to give the mothers some of the photos from our family photo session in january. i went to michael’s with really no plan (dangerous, especially when i have both kids with me). i found these cool blank journals and decided that was the route i was going. i got the supplies, went home and got to work. i tried so hard to remember to take a picture of every step, but like i’ve said before, i hardly EVER finish a task all in one sitting, so it was hard to remember to take a picture every time i sat down. below i will post pictures and tell you step by step how i made the journals, in case you’re interested.
the blank journal
twisted the plastic-coated wire out of the holes so that i had two seperate flat pieces of cardboard to work with (this also allowed me to determine the number of pages in the album without ripping them out).
coated the front of each piece evenly with mod podge, then laid a pre-measured piece of scrapbook paper on each (the paper overlapped the cardboard on every side by about 1/2 inch). rub the paper so that you get rid of any wrinkles or air pockets.
next, i sanded the edges until the overlapped portions fell off (i used sandpaper, but you can also use a nail file). you could easily cut the paper to match exactly and then you could skip this step, but i like the antiqued look that the sanding gives the edges.
next, i used my paper piercer to poke through the holes that had been covered with the mod-podged paper. i wiggled the piercer around in each hole to open it up as big as it would go. (pardon my horribly neglected nail polish. i promise that today it is long gone.)
next, i gathered what i’d planned to use for embellishment and figured out what my layouts would be. i got the scrapbook paper and little flowers on sale and michaels. had the dark brown paper, corner-rounder, and beads at home. the paper that says “family” on it is just some of the blank journal paper that i put through my printer.
after i embellished the front, i mod-podged two more pieces of paper to the insides of the front and back. we all signed the one in the back and i wrote a mother’s day message. forgot to take a picture. next, i twisted the wire back through all the paper and the holes. this the probably the hardest part of the whole project…very tricky.
here is the finished product, although i am so annoyed with myself because i forgot to take a picture after i put the pictures in it. i used photo corners (that i’ve had in my craft closet for like 5 years) as opposed to glue, so that if any of the moms wanted to take pictures out and frame them or stick them in their wallet or something that they didn’t have to rip out the page or something.
i made three different ones and my intention was to take a picture of them all together. ugh.
