{Tutorial} Birthday Party DIY + TEMPLATE!

My family went on our annual Beach Vacation last week and it completely wore us out.  (Why do vacations do that? Just make you exhausted instead of re-energizing you??)

This is the beach where we were - totally beautiful?! Seriously - BEAUTIFUL!

Anyway, we came home on a Saturday, and baby sweet niece's birthday was the following Sunday.  And she wanted a Hello Kitty party. And we had not planned on this.

Knowing her full-scale party would be the next Saturday and it was rainbow themed, I figured I could make a run to the local dollar store and turn their supplies into Hello Kitty supplies with a little work.

I purchased:
2 accordion tissue flower decorations
1 pack of (3) hanging flower decorations
1 piece of posterboard
1 bunch of bright pink carnations
1 pk of (8) party hats
1 pk of party plates
1 pk of party napkins
1 set of HK sugar cupcake toppers
*** See Template at the bottom of the post! ***

Sweet Niece sporting her HK Party Hat!

The plain but brightly colored party hats came from Wal-Mart. Less than $2 I think. I made a template of a small HK head first, then a bow template.  I laid the bow where I thought it looked best and then made another template that included the edges of the bow on her right ear.  This will give you a place to color your bow and not have to glue a bow on.  It will be part of your template for each HK head.  I place the template face down on the backside of the posterboard, traced and cut it out. Then I used my bow template to lightly sketch in my bow on the front side so I could then color it in with markers.  Add some black ovals for eyes, a yellow oval for a nose (I outlined my nose in orange) and a few whiskers on each side and you are done! 

Once the marker dried, I put rubber cement on the back of the HK heads and on the front of the party hats, let it dry and then press together.  Dried rubber cement is one heck of a hold, so don't think you'll be pulling it off and re-positioning it - oh no, my friend. It's stuck. 

The hats are what people have loved the most. 

These decorations were from the Dollar Tree.  The blue and green tissue flowers were a dollar each. The three posterboard flowers with tinsel and dangling decorations were all three for a dollar.  So that's a total of three dollars hanging up there (no bad!!). 

The tissue decorations came with a flower you were supposed to put in the middle with a cardboard stick that would run in the middle of this poof thing. But I didn't want a flower - I wanted a HK head. Once again, using posterboard I made a larger HK head template, traced and cut.  Colored.  Used a drinking straw that I cut about an inch down the length in four places to splay out like four arms.  I taped this to the back of the HK head, leaving about 2 inches sticking up and one inch taped to the head.  The sticking up part went into the center of the tissue decoration, which let the HK head be flush against the tissue flower.  I have a feeling this isn't making sense, let me take a pic and show you really quick. 

Does that make more sense now? This nub sticking up will go in the middle of the tissue decoration. 

 The flat flowers had pictures of flowers drawn onto them.  That was so easy to cover up by gluing an HK head right over, making sure I covered up all the flower petals.  The dangling butterflies and lady bugs matched the plates and napkins I picked up at the dollar store, so I left those on.  

I did try to make a mask with white felt, glued to a party hat, but it didn't start low enough down her face.  She ended up looking like a cat unicorn. Cute idea, but not executed well. So that decor was a party #fail. But I still like this cute picture. :) 

Lastly, I used another drinking straw and two HK heads, glued together back to back with the straw in the middle to go inside the flower arrangement.  I found the carnations in bright pink, pink, and white for $5 at Wal-Mart. Mom snipped a few flowers from her yard that perfectly match and added to it (Daisies, Queen Anne's Lace and Cone Flowers).  Sweet Niece enjoyed spotting HK in the middle of the flowers. :) 

I didn't take a pic of the store bought cupcakes and the sugar cupcake toppers, but that wrapped up the HK madness. She loved it, I loved making her happy, and there was just enough HK to make it feel like we planned it all that way. :)  Hope this might spark some ideas for your own DIY birthday! :)

OK - Because I know folks want a template for Hello Kitty heads and bows, I'm including one here!  Feel free to download this picture, and do with it what you will.  I left the nose and bow uncolored for you to fill it in.  Or, use the bow image for a little "Pin the bow on the kitty."  Feel free to share what you make with me - I would love to see it (and feature it here!)  beth.covington at gmail.com 

{Tutorial} Buttons & Burlap Heart

My weekend project to help decorate my house for Valentine's Day! Very simple, quick, and cute idea for those of you with tons of buttons lying about the house.  Let's dive in and I'll tell you how to make your own!

What you need:

--Burlap Canvas - I purchase a two-pack of flat 8" x 8" burlap canvas board at Hobby Lobby for $5. This however, means it can't be hung unless you glue a ribbon hanger on it, so I'm using an easel.
--Paper to draw a template heart
--Scissors to cut out the template
--Pencil to trace on the canvas
--Buttons. I used tons of red and pink together. Old and new, too.
--Hot glue (I used high temp, but it did singe my fingers a bit!)

Since my canvas was 8x8, I used a sheet of 8x8 paper, folded in half, to make a heart template that would fit well in the middle of my canvas.  Cut it out, make sure you love it and then trace it in the center of your canvas very lightly.  I just eye-balled the center but you can get OCD and measure if you need to do so.

Thankfully, I had sorted out pink and red buttons from my piles, but Sweet Niece #2 helped mix them all back up... but get your buttons together and get an idea of what works by laying it out first on your canvas.  I promptly messed up my layout as I was gluing, but it still came out ok.   Then, grab those buttons with the tabs on the back because they fit in all the bare cracks well and start gluing a second layer.  If you see burlap peeking through, glue more buttons on top.

It really takes NO time at all to finish this! And hot glue dries so fast, it's set and ready to decorate your house as soon as you are done! I watched TV and glued like nuts and finished in about an hour. Not bad for such a cute project.

Hope you enjoy! If you try it, send me a pic, I'd love to see! B_covington (at) yahoo.com  Thanks ya'll!

One More Fru Fru Pumpkin

It took me long enough to find the perfect pumpkin to make a Fru Fru Pumpkin for my house, but I finally saw it in a bin at the grocery store.  Huge fat pumpkins, so cute and so cheap! I fished around until I found the cutest of the "patch" and here it is.

I used the same materials as the pumpkin for my office (see it here) but added the cream lace.  I love the combo of burlap and lace, raffia and leaves, the blues and oranges - I  LOVE AUTUMN! And so there you have it.  My fru fru pumpkin for the year.  I regret I didn't do this on a fake pumpkin to have it for several years because I do love this combo of materials. *sigh*

Sooooo... what are you doing to decorate for Autumn?? Wanna share? I'd love to see!

The 2014 Fru Fru Pumpkin Reveal!

Each year, I make a "Fru Fru" pumpkin for the office and when it's time to send it on its way, I undecorate it and toss it into the back of the flower bed.  Finally, it took root and came back this year! So exciting!

Let me catch you up on the progression of this pumpkin - the plant (which for the longest time we had NO idea what was growing in this flower bed), then the pumpkin started showing up but was dangling outside of the flower bed!! We moved it into the bed and it really ripened quickly.  The bottom two pics were taken with 24 hours of each other. 

So back to the fru fru pumpkin - I hit Hobby Lobby last night (man, I love that store) and picked out what I wanted to do this year. And I'm in love with it. It cost considerably more than the dollar store finds I usually use in making these pumpkins, but it was SO WORTH IT when you see the difference. (By the way, I did a post earlier all about making Fru Fru Pumpkins, feel free to check it out for other ideas!)

TA DA!! I love the chevron and the blue/orange/burgundy combo.  The rustic colors and burlap just bring the look up a few notches compared to the dollar store glitter ribbon I've been using.  

This is last year's pumpkin with all items coming from the dollar store.  So this in total (not including the hot glue and stick pins) cost about $8-9 and will last several months. It will carry you through the entire fall season.  

I also did one a little tamer last year, still using dollar store items.  I bought a dish towel at the dollar store and ripped it into strips, fraying the edges for a more rustic look.  The fabric was too floppy on its on, so I used wide packaging tape along the back of one strip to form the bow shape.  I really liked this one, too. 

For today, I'm enjoying our new pumpkin in blue.  :)  AND I have enough decor left over to do another one for my house and I can't WAIT! We even have another pumpkin in our flower bed, so I may get two pumpkins for free! :)  If so, I'll show you how that one turns out, too. 

Ya'll have a lovely hump day! Thanks for joining me in my crazy fru fru pumpkin excitement!

{Tutorial} Pinned It Did It - LOVE Canvas + Toddler Art

I have finally finished this project that I've been working on for a while now.  Here is a former post where I was in the middle of it - and it includes the inspiration pin where I got the initial idea.  I cannot possibly tell you how much I LOVE this artwork! It's so special to me and makes me glow every time I see it. I'd call that a serious #success!

Let's start from the beginning of the project and you can see how easy it is for you to do with your own toddler. :)

WHAT YOU NEED: 
4 cheap canvases - I used 8 x 10 that came in 2-pks
4 cheap acrylic paints (you can really use whatever number you'd like)
small paint brushes for the lettering
computer/printer to print letters
Scissors to cut letters out
pencil to trace letters onto canvas
1 enthusiastic toddler

As I tell you how I did it, I'll give you advice on what I'd do different.  The inspiration photo had the word LOVE taped out on one large canvas.  I wanted four individual ones AND I wanted more definition in the font than tape would allow, so I decided to come back after the toddler painting and paint on my letters.

I let Sweet Niece #2, who is barely 2-years-old, enjoy finger painting the canvases.  She would call out which color she'd want and I'd squeeze it directly on a canvas and she'd smear like crazy.  What happened, however, is she over smeared and I have large patches of brown/grey.  I think if I did a redo, I'd leave out the orange OR only use one color per canvas.  It didn't really matter to me, though, she had fun and it still turned out cute.

I pulled this picture above into a photo editing program to see what it would look like with letters painted on top, to get an idea of fonts and colors.  This is what I ended up with to work from:

Using this as a guide, I found a font that was very similar and printed single letters that would fit in the 8 x 10 canvas.  I cut them out and traced them very lightly onto the canvas.  Thankfully, I have smaller brushes and was able to do a decent job of keeping everything neat while painting the letters (see photos at the end for the actual letters on canvas.  Remember the one above is typed on with a computer program).  As I was doing this, I kept thinking Cricut letters would probably work just as well. I did measure the distance from the top of the canvas to keep everything even. I eyeballed to get them centered from the sides.

I used the original four colors of acrylic paint and thought by adding black, I could achieve this slightly darker color that would stand out from the background.  THAT DID NOT WORK.  Every time I would end up with a grey color that blocked all the pretty color out... not good. Like a Grey Pink, Grey Green - not a darker version of the original color.

This looks like DUSTY ROSE, not my favorite color! 

See what I mean about the grey colors in this pink and the green above it? It didn't really darken it like I was thinking it would do.  So instead I used a base that was darker than the original, then added some of the original color to it - like hunter green and added the lime color to it.  That seemed to work out perfectly!  In the photo below, I used the top green, and the bottom three colors of blue, pink/red, and orange.

By making them several shades darker than the background, you could really see the letters.  This pink below wasn't quite dark enough - I ended up going back over it with the darker pink/red and I liked it much better.

Original pink 

Darker pink  Don't you think it looks better?

So here are the side-by-side views.  The left I typed onto of the photo just to get an idea of what it would look like.  The right I painted on after tracing the letters to the canvas.  Not bad! 

And here is the finished product on my wall in my bedroom! LLLLLOOOOOVVVVEEEE it!!! Having my baby sweet niece's artwork as the background makes this so precious to me.  I think I may do another smaller version of this for Christmas gifts this year... what do you think?

I hope you'll try it and please share with me! You can email me at b_covington@yahoo.com. I'd love to see your own masterpiece! :)

Pinned It Did It - Felt Hearts!

When I saw this on Pintrest, I knew what I wanted to do with all this left over felt I had from the felt food I made for my niece this Christmas. I wanted to make felt hearts to share with those crafty people in my life that I love dearly.




I had another pin of all these brown felt hearts but it seems I deleted it.  Oh well.  WAIT! I found the website  it's actually on the same page as the red ones above:

check out the entire blog post here.  she rocks. 

So I picked up several colors of red, pink, cream, brown, and tan. And several shades of embroidery thread in all those colors, too.  I have tons of buttons - old buttons, new buttons, craft buttons, oh-la-la button - so I didn't need to buy those.  Then I sat down at got to work.

Basically, I took a piece of card stock, folded it in half, cut it into a half-heart and made myself a heart shaped template. It's about the size of my palm. I kept refolding and trimming until I was happy.

Then it was just a matter of holding the template on top of the felt and being still as I tried to cut. It was a hot mess to tell you the truth, but it's ok, I like the rustic look. Which is good because I can't sew all that great, either.  I looked up different stitches on You Tube to teach myself.

So I wanted to do three for each person, with each of the three different. Some had smaller hearts overlapping, or one larger contrasting heart - buttons or just one button, the stitching helped make some stand out a little more... I really looked at the example above and went with it.

I made one set for myself - black, gray and cream.  Here is mine on my vanity in my bedroom.  The photo is of my great-grandmother and me (I live in her old house).  My hearts are in a special place! :)

See some of the other groupings below! :)

I also made a set for my preteen niece, who is all about owls and mustaches - hers are larger. I found printed felt at Hobby Lobby.  The mustache I just made myself and stitched it on.  Please ignore the very wrinkled tshirt I'm using as a backdrop!

My boss liked them so much she's giving them to her friends this Valentine's and found these cute buckets to put them in!  What do you think?

Ok, just a few more before I sign off -

Hope this possibly inspires you to try your own! It's lots of fun and folks really enjoyed receiving them in the mail. Feel free to share your creations with me! I'd love to see them.  And join me on facebook at www.facebook.com/pressedclovers.


Easy to Pin!

{Tutorial} Sock Hop Party! + Template

Ya'll know I have two blogs - a personal one and this - the Pressed Clovers one.  I like to put all my fun crafty things here, so if you are looking for fun crafty things, you can just keep scrolling through the pages and won't be bogged down with photos from my family and friends.

This post is THE MOST visited post on my personal blog.  The Sock Hop Party. When my sister and I wanted to do this theme we knew we had a lot of space to cover and not a lot of money.  With lots of online research for ideas, this is what we came up with, which was very budget friendly.  I hope you can use it for your own party and please share your ideas with me! Well do it again one day and I'd love to have your feedback and input. :)

Enjoy the Sock Hop Party and have a great weekend!

Sock Hop Party Ideas

When my sister and I decided to decorate for my Mom's 60th birthday party, we really wanted to do the "Sock Hop" theme.  We were, however, flat broke and couldn't spend insane amounts of money on decorations. Therefore, a little creativity came into play. :)

After searching and Pinning my ideas and thoughts, I came up with centerpieces, a birthday sign and a focal point for very little money.  Work - yes. But I can handle work.

** NOTE ** please use these idesa and abuse these ideas! I'm loading them here for you to steal and improve and enjoy! This way YOU aren't starting from scratch like I did! :)

1)  The centerpieces.  I found this picture online of records stacked up with a dancing couple on top. Loved it!


Surely I can re-create this, right?  Indeed, I can. And I did. I used one real record, purchased at a thrift store, for each centerpiece. If I would have had more time, I'm sure I could have stacked.

But anyway, I covered the labels using circles that I cut out from blue poster board. I used superglue to attach the circles to the records.

I also used spray glue and gold glitter to jazz it up, but that was a mess, smelly and a pain. I don't recommend it.

The templates for the people are below. I used their people for a guideline and tweaked it into what I liked just a bit better. Each person took up one piece of 8.5" x 11" paper.  Then I traced it onto a flat box top to use as a template, placing their hands close together, like they were holding hands.  My template piece combined the two people into one solid piece, joined at the hands.  When you print these out and cut them out, you will need to flip one over, so they are facing.  I could get three couples out of one piece of black poster board, thanks to the sticker that I couldn't remove on each piece (otherwise, I could have gotten four). GRRRrrr....

A little note about black poster board - when you cut it, depending on how you cut, there is a white outline on one side of the poster board. This didn't bother me, however, if you are a perfectionist, I'm giving you forewarning.

The long tabs are where you will bend the paper and glue it to the record. (This is where the glitter caused havoc, making my people not want to stick to the record.) I also used superglue for this. I spread their legs apart a ways to help steady them on the record.  I also tied a piece of pink ribbon around her ponytail for cuteness.  My picture is on this page... one that I didn't glitter. I do recommend waiting until you get to your location to do this, because it is very hard to travel with these.

Don't make fun of my shoes and say it looks like a drunken monkey did it. I couldn't see their feet on the example, so ... yeah. Just make yours look better, ok?

I also used this same template and a projector to make life-sized people.  Instead of carting the fridge box everywhere, I taped wrapping paper to the wall with the white side up and copied the people onto that as a template. The girl requires two strips of wrapping paper because of her skirt. Then we traced it onto the cardboard and used an exacto knife to cut. When it got dull, we used an old bread knife, which worked pretty good!  Instead of tabs on their feet, I just made them into a large rectangle at the very bottom, so I could glue/tape a box to the bottom for steadiness.  It worked great. We did have to put a brick in one box, but that was pretty much it. For the girl, just to make sure she was ok, I used a piece of cheap pipe from Lowe's and taped it up her back. This was cheaper than dowel rods.  I also bought some yard sticks for .69, but didn't end up using them. Of course, you need to spray paint your people.  I also used a scarf to tie around her ponytail. Here is the entire focal point section below.

The checkerboard backdrop was purchased at Party City, 40 feet for $20.  I didn't use all of it. (The green you see is a chalkboard - our event was held at an old school/now community center). The "records" were huge pieces of round cardboard that I got from work. But with some spray paint and labels from poster board added, they made a great decoration. Superglue didn't work well for paper-to-paper, so hot glue and spray glue was used. The Rock and Roll sign was part of a set of "Scene Setters" at Party City, which included a huge jukebox, 2 guitars (which I didn't use) and the Rock and Roll sign.  The jukebox is at the far side of the stage, but I didn't get a picture of it. Sorry!

For the Happy Birthday banner, I did buy a "make it yourself" type of banner at Party City, so I would have the vinyl background and sticker letters.  Then I used black poster board to make records and orange paper for the labels, so Mom's name would stand out.  So it wasn't quite as cool at my original idea (see below) but it was an acceptable substitute on short time.  Another thing that you want to finish assembling at your venue.

The original idea...



My substitution

I found this great decoration idea somewhere that was a clock/record that had this "Rock Around the Clock" theme. I had to have it. But not at that price.  So, with another piece of round cardboard, I tried to be creative and do a shortcut. I glued a black plastic tablecloth to the circle.  Just don't do that. It's wrinkly and messy.  Spray paint instead. Oh well, live and learn.  However, I found these record plates at Party City on sale!!! Small ones and big ones, which was perfect! More blue poster board and some hot glue and we have our very own Rock Around the Clock theme!  Again - finish it at the venue. This was a very last minute thing, so make yours look better, ok?

Their clock

My clock

In honor of mom, we did a photo collage of pictures throughout the years.  Added a record from poster board from the top with the words, "Barbara's Greatest Hits" on the label.  This cardboard came to our office with posters inside, so it was a solid back and the two sides folded to meet in the front. Perfect - it would stand on its own. You can get these display boards at Wal-Mart, too.  I glued a themed tablecloth from Party City to the cardboard and made the border from black poster board.  We glued each photo to black or blue paper to make it stand out on the background. This is what people loved - photos of mom from baby to 60!  I'm so glad we did this.  Thankfully, I had already scanned in many of her baby pictures and 20's pictures for another project and could just print them at Walgreens for quick pick up. 

For the tables, the venue had white paper tablecloths and we just used cheap plastic ones for the dollar store, cut into diamond shapes, to add some color.  Add the centerpieces and you are good to go! We later added the smaller records (45's) to each side.  The kids loved them - they had never seen records!!

I really hope this helps someone have a great party - at least using this as a jumping off point.  We had a great time, add some oldies music on an ipod with some decent speakers and my Mom and her family danced half the night!!! It was great!

If you do use any of these ideas, or if you have some great ones of your own, PLEASE SHARE some pictures or just the ideas themselves!! I'd love to see in case I ever do this again! :) Thanks!!