Bird's Nest Necklace

Aren't these sweet?

  A while back my mom found them on one of the blogs she reads with a link to this tutorial.  These are so cute that we had to try it.  We've had a lot of fun with them.  The site my mom first saw used silver wire for the nest, which was really pretty, but we found this brown wire and aside from the fact that brown is my favorite color, it seemed very appropriate for a birds nest.   

They were so fun to make it was almost a shame that they came together so quickly! But that was probably part of what made it so fun!

T-Shirt Makeover

So this morning I decided I needed to make something.  So I decided to re-do a t-shirt.  I went to Goodwill to get one that I didn't mind ruining, in case it didn't work out...  It often doesn't work out.  But I'm pretty happy with the results this time! 
Before: 

After: 

I made a ribbon casing on the front with two buttonholes in the middle -- we won't go into how using the buttonholer on the sewing machine worked out.  Let's just say I'm pretty happy with my handmade buttonholes.  :-)  I put some ribbon through the casing, sewed it on and it was all done.  I may have to try this again sometime!

scrapbook

So this is my first real scrapbook -- the first one of an event.  I'm on my second One Little Word album, but that's a different sort of thing.  I love seeing other people's scrapbooks and always think that I'd like to have scrapbooks of my things, but it seemed overwhelming to try.  Then I signed up for this class on Big Picture Classes.  Finish Line Scrapbooking by Stacy Julian.  You just sort of throw it all together, in a good way, and it makes a great album!  Here's a couple of my pages:

This is out visiting my friend walking on a lake! I live where it never gets cold enough to freeze a lake enough to walk on it.  There were actually cars further out on the ice.  Crazy stuff! 

There are ways to make the album prettier, but I wanted to get mine done fast.  And I did!  I got it done in a day.  (And I didn't spend all day doing it.)  I am quite happy with it and I enjoyed it enough to look forward to doing another one. 

Notebooks

I guess we've neglected to say Happy New Year to everyone.  So, I hope you're all having a great 2012 so far!  I feel like we're a lot further into the year already, so it's always a surprise when I see the date.  And I don't feel bad for not having accomplished more already.  I don't need to get a month's worth of stuff done in 12 days!
Anyway, on to the project. These are some notebooks I made in December. I thought they turned out very nicely, if I do say so myself, and thought they'd be fun on the blog. :-)

I've always thought it would be fun to make a notebook, but somehow overwhelming to think about. But my friend sent me a link to a handmade one a few months ago and after a while I finally decided to try it out. I had all these notebooks that I bought for piano lessons, but can't use because after a couple of weeks, the pages start falling out. -- if you buy 5 cent notebooks at Walmart, be sure they're spiral bound. It makes all the difference -- We had planned to donate them, but hadn't gotten to it yet when I decided they'd be perfect. I could just cut them down to the size I wanted. So I got out our trusty paper cutter and went to work. In case you're wondering what great paper cutter I had that would cut all that paper together, I don't. I'm not sure, but it might be older than me and won't do more than a few pieces at a time. But it works.  I added decorative scrapbooking paper, which is what really makes these fun. I just cut a bunch to the right size and randomly stuck them into the notebook paper. I'm not good with random, but I worked hard at it. :-)

The covers I made out of cardboard. It was hard to get the holes into the cardboard with the hole punch, but with help, they all got punched.  I covered them with scrapbook paper and stickers on some of them.  Some of them I thought looked nice just plain.  I joined it all together with scrapbook rings and there you have a notebook. :-) 

 I wanted to make a cover for them.  The cover is actually how all this got started.  I was looking through a magazine and found these cute book covers, but I wanted these for a gift and I didn't know what book to cover and give, so eventually I came up with the notebooks.  I ended up using some wide eyelet (my brilliant mother's idea), I folded it over and right sides together, I sewed up the bottom and two sides.  I sewed a button to one side and a loop of ribbon to the other and there's a very nice cover.  Very simple.

My most recent project: 

Favors for the piano recital I'm having in a week. A friend of mine gave me the idea and another friend gave me the Lifesavers.

 I wrapped Lifesavers rolls in sheet music.  I really like it since they look like scrolls of music.  And when you open them, the Lifesavers look like whole notes. All very musical, you see. 

It was really easy too, which is very nice.  I just cut some sheet music in to 3 1/2" x 3 1/2" squares and used a glue stick to glue the paper over the labels.  Then a tied a ribbon around them, which looks pretty and helps hold the paper while the glue dries.