Journals for the CdA Womens Center

Journals for the CdA Womens Center

This week we tackled a project that has been on our to-do list for a while now. We assembled 40 journals that we will donate to the local Women's Center. The purpose behind these journals was give the residents of the shelter something of their own. We have both been in situations where we felt helpless and as if nothing in this world was ours. We know these little books may only be a small token for these women to have, but the importance of having something that is yours and only yours goes beyond what words can even explain. It is our hope that these journals will be used as an outlet of expression.

The front cover reads, "In this journal keep your thoughts, your hopes, your dreams, and all your wishes. They are yours and no one can take them from you."

We printed each of the covers, filled them with 20 full pages of lined paper that we also printed, added the cover text, some ribbon, a place for the journals owner to write their name, and used the Cinch to bind them all. 

All of our Cinch binding was donated by our friend at Underground Scrapbook. This project would have been a lot more difficult with our her help.

If you would like any of the templates that we designed for these books please shoot us and email and we will be glad to share them with you. I just am not sure how to upload .pdf links on here.

Tata for now!

Check back next week for something new...

Tutu Dress Costume

Tutu Dress Costume

 

First off I just want to apologize for posting this week’s entry late. Life has been pretty crazy around here for a while!

Anyway! This week we decided to tackle making our daughters Halloween costumes. We discussed a few different ideas a couple weeks ago and finally decided on tinker bell and Minni Mouse. I must say these turned out ADORABLE!!

Our concept for the costumes was to create tutu dresses and then embellish them to fit the characters we were trying to portray.

What we used:

Elastic (1 inch seems to be the best for our liking. We cut 2 pieces for each dress. We measured our girls around their chest and took 4 inches off that to make sure the dresses would fit right. 15” for 18”-24months & 18in for 3t-4t. Make sure you measure your child as each little princess is unique.)

Tulle (NOT PICTURED. Just pick whatever color is appropriate for the costume. We used about 8 yrds for a dress that fits 18-24 months and 11 yrds for a 3t-4t size. **We bought our tulle on the bolt vs. the spool and cut it ourselves.)

Core Board (Cut a 6in wide piece to wrap your tulle around for cutting and use the rest to hold the elastic bands while you tie the dress.)

Tape

Measuring you kid can quite amusing

First we cut our elastic and hot glued the ends together. We used a high temp glue gun and have found that it works much better than the low temp ones. You could also safety pin or sew the bands together.

We them cut our tulle in 6 in wide strips. We left it the length it was on bolt because we figured we would just trim it up if we needed to. We tapped one end of tulle to a piece of the core board that we had cut down to 6 inches. We then wrapped about half of your tulle, roughly 5 yards, around the board then cut straight up the long sides of the core board. We LOVE this method. Between the two of us we have made several tutus and have always just laid the tulle out on a table and eyeballed it. This is a much more precise and accurate way of cutting tulle.

Next we stretched both pieces of elastic over our core board and spread them apart about 4” to leave room for the chest part of the dress. Remember to measure your little one to make sure you aren’t making the chest area to short or too long.  

Each piece of tulle was tied on one at a time just so we didn’t accidently mess them up. We then folded a piece of tulle in half and slip knotted it over the top piece of elastic. For the bottom piece of elastic, we threaded the tulle under the elastic and tied a knot to secure the tulle to the elastic. Repeat until finished!!

**Keep in mind the tighter you tie the tulle the bigger your elastic band will become. This could potentially make your dress be too big. If this does happen just take a few pieces of tulle off until it fits the way you want. You could also shorten the elastic band if you’d like.

For Minni Mouse we needed to trim the dress to be a little shorter. We simply decided to straighten out the dress and wrap a rubber band around the bottom of the skirt and cut off the excess. This seemed to work just fine; although, we did have to go through and straighten a few pieces out afterward. 

Next we decided to embellish our dresses to make them fit each character. For tinker bell, we knotted each piece of tulle at the bottom and glued rhinestones all over it. We also made sure that little miss had pretty fairy wings to go along with her adorable little fairy costume. We also made a head band that matched the forest fairy look. We took a plastic head and wrapped brown ribbon around it and then hot glued leaves and rhinestones onto it.

For Minni Mouse we added sleeves. These are just ribbons that we measured over the little princess’ shoulders and then slip knotted 6 in pieces of tulle on to it. We ( and when I saw we I mean Gina did this cause I can’t stand how they feel, it kinda weirds me out) also hot glued white pom balls all over the skirt to give it a polka dot effect. We added a ribbon sash around the center and made little ears out of stiffened felt to complete the ensemble.

 And our finished products...TADA!!!

If you live in a climate similar to ours where it is more than likely snowing or just really cold on Halloween remember to wrap your little ones up so they are warm under their costumes. Be safe and have a great holiday!!!

Painted Candle/Candy Tray

Painted Candle/Candy Tray

 This week we decided to tackle a project we saw here. The one we saw was just a simple black tray with black candles and candy corn. While we loved the look and simplicity, we decided to take it a step farther.

First we gathered our supplies.

Mod Podge

Paint (We used acrylic paint that we found at Michael’s for $0.89 each. DO NOT SPRAY PAINT CANDLES OR ANYTHING THAT WILL BE CLOSE TO AN OPEN FLAME)

Paint Brush (We used foam brushes that we bought at Michaels for $0.05 each)

Candles (We used 3 for each tray, one tall pillar candle and two shorter candles.)

Tray (We found trays at the Dollar Store.)

Candy Corn or other candy of your liking

Glitter (Everything needs a little sparkle!!)

Ribbon (NOT PICTURED)

Glue Gun (NOT PICTURED)

Any other decoration you want to use. (NOT PICTURED. We used a silk leaf and a 3-d skull sticker.)

 

After we got all of our supplies together, we discussed a few different themes that we wanted to try and finally decided on fall and Halloween.

Paint your candles or just buy ones that are the right color and skip this step. If you do decide to paint them it will probably take a few coats to get the color right. Our candles took 3 coats each till we liked how they looked.

***Be careful not to paint the wick. If you do you will need to pull some of the paint back to make your candle burn right.

Let them dry…this takes time. You can speed it up by using a hair dryer or even a heat gun. Just be careful not to melt your candle or bubble your paint. If you are texting while you are using a heat gun you may get distracted and cause your paint to bubble a little. In case this happens don’t worry just peel the paint off and touch that spot up.

While you are letting your candles dry, paint your tray. Skip this step if you have a tray in the color you like. Again you can speed up the drying process with a heat gun or hair dryer.

Decorate your candles!! This was the most fun/messiest part of the whole project. We took our small candles and let mod podge run down the sides to create an upward drip effect then we covered the glue in glitter.

***When using glitter, make sure to have a piece of paper or something to catch your excess glitter. This will make clean up a breeze.

For our large candles we wrapped ribbon around them and hot glued it in place. We also added theme appropriate elements; these are hot glued on to keep them in place.

 

(Make sure you hold your finished candle up and pronounce its beauty to the whole world.) 

Once everything has dried completely, arrange your candle on your tray. Once your candles are placed how you like them, sprinkle your candy around them on to the tray. Make sure you eat a few just to make sure they are as yummy as they look.

We hope you enjoyed this week’s project. Check in next week to see how we make tutu dresses for our daughters’ Halloween costumes.

Meet 2 Crafty Mommas

Hello! 

We are 2 Crafty Mommas! We are Gina and Kati. We are avid and passionate crafters. We are best friends and the mothers of wonderful children. Our husbands are very supportive of everything we do in life even if at times we ask them to do really ridiculous stuff i.e..."Honey I need you to hold this while I hot glue it and probably your fingers too."

We are on am mission to enrich as many people's lives as we possibly can with our craftiness. Each month we will dedicate our time to a different organization and create things that will hopefully spread a little cheer.

This month our efforts will be centered around creating things for our Local Women's Center. The reason we chose the Women's center was because we feel that our crafts give us happiness. We know that the women in the Women's center are there because of a horrible experience and could use even a sliver of happiness to show them that there is still joy in the world.

Stay tuned for projects we create this month and in the future!!

Kati & Gina

P.S....New blog posts are tentatively planned to be posted on Sundays!