{I Heart You}

One of my Craft Night companions, Pat, came up with a brilliantly crafty idea. She took a previous project, mentioned in the last post, and gave it a little Valentine's Day spin!

Using the cover of Martha Stewart's magazine as inspiration, she decided to make hers out of paper cupcake liners. Martha's was made from real flower carnations. Pat's can be used over and over again! Thanks for the great idea, Pat. For mine, I used four different varieties of liners all in shades of red and white.

I cut out a piece of cardboard into the shape of a heart then covered it with some cute striped fabric.  This is the back...not that anyone will ever see it, but I couldn't leave it plain brown cardboard, now could I?

I glued the edges of the fabric around and then started hot gluing the liners to the form, starting at the border.  I used the eraser side of a pencil to press into the center of the liners, then used my hand to fold the sides down onto the pencil.  I squirted some glue onto the end and again, used the pencil to press it onto the cardboard form.  The pencil saves your fingertips from getting burned too! 

Here is the finished product.  You'll have to forgive me for the quality of the photos.  I took them with my iPhone so the colors are way off.  The finished product looks more pink than red.  You can see I added a silk rose as an embellishment as well as a red polka-dotted hanger. 

As Always, Stay Cozy!
Mandy

{4th of July in January!}

If you talk to any creative type, they'll tell you that they have tons of unfinished, half-started, well-intentioned projects lying around their house.  Well, I'm no different.  Case in point...my wedding day scrapbook.  I was married for about 8 years and have been divorced for over 2.  While I don't forsee myself finishing THAT project (ha-ha!), I have the itch to finish a lot of others! 

As us homebodies do, we like to hibernate in the winter inside our little caves.  I've got plenty of time to craft now that the cold, cold winter is settled in.  So, I pulled out this project that I've had half finished since last summer.  One of the Craft Night projects at my sister's house was making wreaths out of patterned paper cupcake liners.  

Mine was a take on "stars and stripes".  I couldn't find starry ones so polka dots would have to do.  Well, I underestimated how many liners I'd need so I had to quit early.  Since I ordered them online, it wasn't like I could run to Michael's or AC Moore to grab more.  They do, however have a nice selection there, so if you're interested in doing this project, they'd be a great resource.  Months later, even after I ordered more, they just sat in their package on my craft table.  When I finally finished the wreath portion, it sat un-decorated for yet more months!! 

Finally, this past weekend, I went in my craft closet to find something and there it was....staring at me...mocking me.  "You'll never finish me."  So I grabbed it, plugged in my hot glue gun, and dug into my vintage button and ribbon collection.  One nasty hot glue gun burn later, here you have it! 

As Always, Stay Cozy!

Mandy