Maddy's Pillow



Maddy is so creative! She found this idea on line and did such a beautiful job of it first time!

 

 

She is full of creative ideas for her bedroom. This year is going to be exciting - I'll keep a camera handy:)

Bleach painted shoes!

Maddy and I found this craft idea on the amazing Alisa Burke's blog (link here!). I was really thrilled with how mine came out!

 

It was really simple. I bought some imitation TOMS at the local drugstore...

...and doodled on them with a paintbrush dipped in bleach...

 

 

I love them!!

 

Christmas Gifts!!

I actually managed to finish the gifts for the family in time for Christmas! Now they have all been received I can share some of the things that I made :)

A pair of wine bottle lamps for Rita with personalized labels...

An embellished purse for Eileen...

A personalized advent calendar house for Jen, Rich and Mya...

Inspired by the fabulous Etta - "Curious Specimen" ornaments of Gregory and Declan...

And a personalized family wall hanging for Pete and family made from their favorite words and colors...

The responses were so great - I felt like a million dollars! It was really difficult to get them all done in time since we moved house and I started a new job after I had gotten started...but I'm so glad I stuck it out. Think I'll do it again next year. I may need to get started now ;)

Donna Downey's 'Beloved' class

It's been over a month since my Inspired retreat so I was really ready to try creating in a group setting again. Turns out Donna Downey herself (Donna's site here) was doing some classes at The Villages so I signed up for 'Beloved' - her six hour multi media scrapbooking class. Not only is she brilliant but Donna is so amazing friendly. I took Mike, Maddy and Nana to meet her too:).

During class Donna was able to answer tons of questions that I've had since I started trying out her style of work and she chatted with us all day. She has a really quick sense of humor and had us all laughing even when things didn't go exactly as planned:).

I didn't quite get done during class but worked most of the night when I got home to finish up so that my new precious book didn't join the huge pile of half-done projects in the garage ;). I'm really thrilled with how it came out in the end!

Thank you for everything Donna - you are such an inspiration!

The Roswell Incident...

I had a special surprise in the mail today. The girls I met at Inspired had decorated one of the canvases I left behind with personal messages and sent to me in the mail! It totally made my day - how sweet! Here are my 'hugs on a canvas'...Thank you ladies:)

Valentine's Swap (continued...)

My parcel made it all the way to the Netherlands and she loved it! Phew! Here's what I made and my recipient's blog entry (Click here). Thank you Lisa  for organizing such a great swap...when's the next one?:)

P.S. I was inspired by Donna Downey and used her products to make this - she is my she-ro! (Donna's site)

Maddy's Big Cat Bedroom

I finally managed to finish up Maddy's Big Cat Rescue bedroom with a picture arrangement of her favorite rescued cats to match her new bunting! It was actually a lot more of a finicky and problematic project than I ever imagined so here's how I did it in case you ever decide to try something similar:)

Firstly I took some old pictures and frames and laid them out on the floor. From there I was able to figure out which size frames to buy to fill in any gaps to give a nice, balanced display. Then I bought some mats and wrote down all of the photo sizes that I would need to fill the frames. I bought photos in varying sizes of Maddy's favorite cats directly from the Big Cat Rescue website http://www.bigcatrescue.org/ and sent them online for printing to be picked up at the local pharmacy in an hour.

While I was waiting for the photos to be printed, I bought frames and a handful of spray paints to match the bunting fabrics and pull everything together. My first problem was the fact that some of the spray paints I bought were glossy which looked rubbish and detracted from the photos so I had to repeat this step:(.

After I had spray painted the frames, I ran into trouble for the second time when I realized that I hadn't figured out what orientation (portrait or landscape) the photos needed to be! So I laid out the pictures one more time and took a photo to use for reference later to be able to match back up the correct photos, frames and mats. I reordered some more photos and then had to wait for 3 days since problem number three happened when the pharmacy photo printer went out of service :(.

I covered each mat with ironed fabric left over from the bunting project and used fabric glue to keep the fabric stretched out enough to minimize any ripples.

 
 
 
 
 

Then I used my reference photo as a guide to hang the pictures. Phew!
 

I'm thrilled with the results and now Maddy has a themed bedroom that can be transformed into whatever she is 'into' next by simply changing the bedding, bunting and photos. I would really prefer that she sticks with this for a while though...it just won't look the same with Justin Bieber pictures:).

Union Jack picture

I made this picture from Maddy's old baby clothes. I can remember how she looked in every single outfit whenever I look at it! I started an American flag from shades of blue but it's ended up in the half-finished box for now...:)