Fabric Memory Game

In September I had a little girl's birthday party to attend and really wanted to try making this fabric memory matching game on pinterest. It turns out it was so easy and turned out adorable. I made a 20 piece memory game. What I did was this:

• Cut out 40 2 inch squares of cream felt. One for the back and one for the front. I learned that you need a thicker piece of felt because otherwise it will be see-through.



• In the front pieces of the felt I cut out a 1.25 inch square in the middle using an exacto knife.



• Cut 20 pieces of 1.5 fabric ( I used quilters squares because they already came in a coordinating pack) - 2 of each pattern



• Put the back felt, patterned fabric, and front felt (with window in the middle) together.



• Sew them up on the inside of the window and outer edges.

So much more fun than a memory card game and would look great displayed on a shelf.

Elf on a Shelf

Two elves came in the mail to visit us from the north pole today, Monty and Jingle. We opened them outside and after a bit of confusion Luke was excited. Our first order of business is to make them a bed to sleep in.

Pierce's portrait

After having people over on Halloween and looking at our house with a critical eye, I realized that we don't have many pictures of Pierce around. Granted he's just a little guy and hasn't had time for too many photo opts but I decided he needed to make an imprint on our home decor.

On a side note, when Luke was about 18 months old I made a graphic inspired painting of him for David's office. When I visited his office the other day and saw the painting I realized he needed one of Pierce too. David fell in love with the picture of Pierce in the Spartan football crocheted hat so I knew that was the one. I altered my original photo in Photoshop, printed it out, traced it to save time (shhh don't tell my students) and then painted it in.

Here is the original photo:



And my painted one:


Since I had the left over printout that showed me what colors I used (and since I have been on such a photo transfer kick lately) I decided to make one for the house. I put green underneath as it was just a color I happened to have. The bottom picture of the transfer was much more distressed. Probably because I wasn't patient enough to really let it dry. I painted over the face with some watered down paint to help it stand out a little. Happy accidents as they say. I love the finished product!

Bookshelf redo

Before....


After...

Putting Pinterest to Practice

For this project I decided to merge two pins on pinterest. One being the photo transfer on 11x14 canvas with vinyl letter stickers and antiqued stain. The other being this sweet photograph with caption. I used a picture of Luke and his first time at the beach playing in the sand.

Vintage Style Photo Transfers

At the Round Top antique show last month I came upon a vendor that had tents and tents of antique toys and games. Since I dont really have a use for buckets of this stuff and also because its not cheap, I decided to use my camera to capture the images and use them as image transfers on canvases for the play room. So here are the five pictures I decided to use. The dice photo is my favorite.

Once I painted canvases and transferred the photos, this is what they looked like

Here is Luke and his first hunting weapon my Dad was so proud to purchase. What you are looking at is a gun that shoots this fan on a string and kills insects (mosquitoes, flies, spiders). Savage. I pretend like its dumb but secretly I might just have to use this.