Erica's return to good ol'crafting...

I don't think I've done a DIY craft blog in a few months. I've been mainly focusing on craft shows (sewing pillows, pillows and more pillows!!) and throwing in some travelling on weekends when I was free :)
       But as mentioned in January, my mother is to wed this June and I am in charge of decorations. At first, she didn't know what she wanted for the wedding. Then she wanted too much. After talking it over, we settled on me making the table centerpieces and a couple of other small items. The "couple other small items" were super simple DIYs so they'll be featured together in next week's blog. This week, I wanted to share how I made the centerpieces.

Three out of twenty...

Flower centerpiece tutorial:

       Materials needed- emptied, washed & rinsed 14.5oz soup can

                                     fabric (I used suede)

                                     3.8in foam ball

                                     plastic flowers

                                     decorative trim

                                     scissors, wire cutters, tape measure, craft glue, hot glue gun & glue,                                                      Styrofoam glue (you probably don't really need three different types of glue)

So there's actually a lot of materials that's not pictured. I didn't realize how much I'd need when I first started doing this.

1. Measure & cut your fabric to be 9.5in long and 4.5in tall.

2. Glue one edge of the fabric to the soup can and set aside to dry.

If there's still some glue from where you peeled the label off, that's even better because you can stick your fabric to that ;)

3. Once the initially glued spot has dried, pull the fabric tight around the can and glue again to the middle of the can.

4. Lastly, wrap the remaining fabric all the way around the can and glue the edges of the fabric pieces together to meet. Set aside and let the glue completely dry.

5. Add on any trim, ribbon or decorative items to your can.

6. Glue the Styrofoam ball to the top of the soup can. 

       I used hot glue for this but you can probably use whatever type of glue you want. Now looking back on it, hot glue was a bad idea because it dried so quickly.

7. Cut the flowers and leaves off of the stem. Leave about 2 inches of the stem on the flower --this is what you will poke into the Styrofoam ball. I tried doing this with scissors but was more successful when I used wire cutters.

Wes actually did this step for me.

8. Stab those flowers into the Styrofoam balls!!
       I used an assortment of flowers and leaves. If I had taken a flower arrangement class, I would probably have a better idea of what flowers match and go well together. But since I haven't taken any classes on arrangements, I just did what I thought looked pretty.

I started with putting all of the large flowers in the ball. Then I added the smaller flowers. Lastly, I used the leaves to cover up any extra space. The goal is to cover the entire Styrofoam ball with flowers. If the flowers don't stick, put a dot of Styrofoam glue at the tip of the stem before poking it in.

Craft night at Courtney's!

My friend Courtney is having her wedding DIY style.  She is making it all... her invitations, her centerpieces and her wedding favors. She had a few impromptu craft nights that I couldn't make it to but I did still get to participate in a little crafting. : ) It wasn't really a "craft night"; pretty much I needed to charge my phone and instead of sitting around doing nothing for an hour, I decided that we should craft.

Our task was the table centerpieces. They are super easy and cheap to make. Courtney estimated they're about $6/centerpiece and we made 20 in a little over an hour. Courtney said she saw some centerpieces with marbles online and knew that's what she wanted. (The rest of the design were her ideas.) But she didn't want to buy vases. So inspiration struck and she used old juice containers. This girl recycles -- no wonder we're friends!

Wedding centerpiece tutorial:
              Materials needed - juice container, ribbon, box cutter, marbles, hot glue, scissors and flowers

This isn't quite all the materials but I LOVE this hot glue gun. It works so well!! I want it!!

1. Cut the top half off the juice bottle, remove the label and clean. The bottom half now should look like a vase.

2. Add marbles. Courtney used about half a bag of decorative marbles per vase. After we finished our project, we decided it might be a good idea to put sand at the bottom of the vase and then add the marbles so it looks a little more filled.

3. While the hot glue gun is heating up, measure and cut the ribbon. Stick the end of the ribbon to the sticky part of the bottle where the label was. Then you won't have to hold it in place as much when you measure. 

4. Put a dab of hot glue in the center of the bottle and glue the flower stem into the bottle.  Hold in place until the glue is dried.

 Courtney bought bouquets of silk flowers and cut them into individual stems. Its a little extra work but it was more cost-efficient than buying individual stems.

5. Glue the ribbon around the bottle.

They look really nice when they're done and you get the satisfaction of knowing that you made them. This doesn't have to be a two person craft but it goes faster if it is. Courtney did the ribbon measuring and held the flowers in place while they dried. And I got to do all of the gluing (mostly because I was in love with her hot glue gun).  

I want to thank Courtney for letting me be a part of her wedding and helping me with this tutorial. 

Erica is making headbands!! (pt.2)

Continued from last week...

Yeah, I totally craft in my jammies. Ain't no dress code for bloggin'!

    Oh and I totally swapped Emma's headband for mine. The more I looked at hers, the more I kept thinking it wasn't her style. I really think the braided one suits her better. And now... Rachel, Elizabeth and I all have matching flower ones. The HCR department can be totes stylin' together! Hahaha.

Tutorial #3.

This one goes to a friend I've known for over 15 years. (they have song dedications...can I make craft dedications?) That's literally half my lifetime and a record in friendship for me. I'm not saying I don't keep in touch with people--because I try!-- but its SO HARD when friends move away for work or family or get overly consumed with said work and said family. But Lacey and I still manage to see each other about twice a month. And for that, I love her dearly.

Pearls headband tutorial:

Materials needed- elastic, cloth (I used two fabrics only because I wanted to incorporate some of the peacock cloth), string of pearls--mine is fake plastic costume jewelry, hot glue, scissors, and a  ruler

a. Cut a strip of cloth 15 inches long and 1 inch wide. I mainly chose those measurements because that's how wide my elastic is. Fold the cloth in half length wise and hot glue together. Now, glue each end to an end of your elastic. Headband made. Prettiness to come...

If I knew that all a headband was is a piece of cloth glued to some elastic, I would have 1. saved so much money my teenage years and 2. made so much money in my young adulthood making and selling these things!

b. Wind the string of pearls into small circles on your fabric. Glue down the pearls once you have the size of circle you want. I made a few of these.
c. Cut the pearl circles out of your cloth. I cut on the edge of the circle for the ones on my white cloth but left a border on my peacock ones since I wanted the pattern to show.

d. Glue the pearl circles into any arrangement on your headband from step A. And there you have it!

You can skip step A and just glue these to an existing headband. Which brings me to...

Tutorial #4.

I love letters! I think getting a letter in the mail is one of the best things EVER. I have one friend from college who still writes. Dominique and I don't write much nowadays, but I'll send out a letter every few months and she'll send me a card every now and then. Instead of just a card for her birthday, I decided to also include this headband (and some other gifties...none that I made, though, so who cares what they are? LOL).

Re-purposed headband tutorial:

      Materials needed - old headband, a flower adornment, cloth, felt, scissors and hot glue. I wanted to use the rest of my peacock patterned cloth. I thought it would be a good idea to use some in each headband to tie them all together as one themed project.

a. Get an old headband you no longer use...or one that you do still use but want to spruce up before the next time you wear it. Measure the felt the exact length of the headband (minus the elastic part) and hot glue it onto the headband.
b. Draw leaves onto the cloth and cut out. I did 10 leaves. I freehanded mine but if I had to do it over again, I would have found a pattern or drawn them out first. I wasted a lot of cloth on the ones I messed up and I couldn't quite get them all the same size.

c. Arrange the leaves into the pattern that you want, then remove and hot glue them on (hoping that you had memorized the pattern. Haha!) Then glue the flower to the center of your leaf cluster. Voila!