Audrey has been invited to her first birthday party. She and I will be celebrating our little friend Claira’s first birthday at a May Day party this afternoon.
Naturally, a party means a gift which means gift wrapping … which I LOVE.
I’ve wondered from time to time if there is such a thing as a personal wrapper. If there is not, I think I’d like to invent the career.
Anyone need some gifts wrapped?
I love silhouettes. Probably because of their strong graphic nature and the fact that they are typically black & white {you know my love of all things neutral}. I made some silhouette canvases of my kids about a year ago, but now that we have a new one, I thought I’d update them and add in a fourth.
They turned out so well, that I’ve decided to add them to my list of products to sell.
$50 for a 12x12 canvas covered in french book pages with a custom silhouette of your loved one.
please email emily@jonesdesigncompany.com for more information.
And, in honor of these darling silhouettes, I’ve made some new stationery sets.
{monogram silhouette}
{name silhouette}
{medallion silhouette}
{full name silhouette}
{family silhouette}
{dots silhouette}
Each set include 12 note cards with envelopes {3.5x5} for $25
You should have seen my house today. It was a DISASTER. Which is what happens when you start cleaning out closets, taking on projects and not picking up after the family. But I’m making progress on a few of the things I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time.
Like organize my fabrics.
And ribbons.
And make a few new spring pillows:
I also moved my office downstairs to make room for a lego room {you know your children have a great love of a toy when there is a room dedicated to it}, and rearranged the living room {which meant moving furniture all over the place}.
Things are mostly put back into place downstairs {pictures to come soon}, but you should see upstairs …
I’d like to think that I am a pretty creative person. And, I guess, I am. However, most of my ideas come from someone else.
Like these shoes:
I love the burlap flower on the simple black shoes. I believe these little flowers are sold on etsy and I could have purchased a pair, but instead thought I could just make some myself.
I had some grey felt laying around and thought they’d be a cute flower for the winter. I put in a little tulle for fluff & some mini glass beads in the center.
They are attached to an alligator hair barrette covered in ribbon. A clip-on earring back would be the preferred method of attaching to a shoe, however, I do not regularly purchase clip-on earring backs and when I want to do a project, I just try to make do with what I have so that my boys do not have to accompany me to another craft store.
I also made this pair with dark grey felt.
Now, why, you might ask, am I adorning high heels when I am three weeks away from delivering a baby and should not actually be wearing them?
Because tomorrow is my baby shower and of course I want my feet to look fancy.
I saw this image the other day in a Potterybarn Kids catalog and was inspired to create my own little flower mobile for the baby’s room.
So, off I went to Michael’s and bought many many white & cream flowers.
and a Styrofoam wreath form.
I wrapped grey grosgrain around it to fully cover,
securing the ends with these little silver pins. {I have no idea where we got these pins, but they proved very helpful for this project.}
I then stripped the flowers from their stems and attached them to the wreath. I first started by using fabric glue, but quickly realized that it was much easier to pin them in.
Look closely {beyond my beautifully painted fingernails} and you can see the little silver pin.
I just kept adding more and more flowers until I was happy with how it looked.
And here it is, hanging in my kitchen.
And oh what a view the baby will have while laying in her crib .
I’m looking forward to actually putting it in the room, but believe me, I’m quite a few steps back from accessorizing with a non-mobile mobile.
While Christmas shopping at Anthropologie, my creative husband saw this scarf:
{sorry, bad photo}
We decided that rather than spend the $98 on one, I could try to recreate it.
And so I made one, then another, then another {five in all} which made wonderful gifts. I can’t promise they’ll stand up to hard use or that they could be machine washed, but they are fun and flirty and a great alternative to a regular scarf.
So, I started with this scarf from Nordstrom B.P. for $18.
1. Stitch using the longest stitch on your machine along the conveniently placed creases. Or just decide how many ruffles you’d like and stitch all the way down. Because my scarf was quite wide, I did five lines. Don’t backstitch the ends – you’ll want them free to pull the threads to gather.
It will look like this.
2. Now pull a thread along each line to gather the material. Pull the scarf to the desired ruffleness {not a word, I know}.
It will look like this.
3. Using the smallest stitch on your machine, stitch back and forth over the gather at each end of the scarf and at a few points along the line. This will hold the gather into place. Warning: this is not the easiest task and because the material is so thin, it may get caught. Just keep going and know that it does not need to be perfect.
That’s it. Here I am in all my pregnant glory wearing the beauty. Antropologie showed it just draped like this, but my sister-in-law wore hers wrapped nicely around her neck and that was pretty too.
If you make one, send me a photo … I’d love to see how it turns out.
