Buying art can be expensive, but if you have a picture frame and scrapbook paper you can create fun affordable art.

This is a personalized piece by creating my name using the alphabet instructions. Great for a baby’s room! The possibilities are endless though with origami-club.com’s great diagram or animated instructions. You could make flowers or animals or even landscapes.

How to make it?

The frame is a 6 3/4 x 4 3/4 from Ikea. The letters were made from 2 x 2 squares. After making the letters I taped them to the background to hold them in place and put the frame back togehter.

I once gave a friend a birthday card that said, “A fun party is one where you leave with your underwear on your head, but a GREAT party is when you leave with someone ELSE’S!” Ok, so this tip isn’t about underwear but it is about parties and head-wear.

This was a last minute addition to my little girls birthday decorations. It didn’t even occur to me to have a birthday hat for her until the afternoon of her birthday. Luckily I had everything on hand to whip one up!

Here’s the lowdown:

1. Cut a half circle out of 12×12 cardstock. The half circles radius should be at least 6 inches.

2. Roll into a cone and mark the front center and where the edge overlaps.

3. Use a pencil to write/draw a message on the front where you marked the center. In my case I made a big 1 and BIRTHDAY underneath. I added a little glitter to the number to make it stand out.

4. While waiting for the glitter to dry, make the topping ribbons. Two types of ribbon in various colors will add a lot of interest to the hat. Cut about 6 strips into 4 inch lengths. Tie in the middle and then tape the tails to the inside center so that it will stick out of the point.

5. Use glue or double sided tape to hold the hat together. Place a heavy object inside the hat, with the glue/taped side down to secure.

6. Punch two holes on the sides for securing the hat on the wearer. I used ribbon but think elastic would have been a better choice.  Attach the string through the holes.

7. Using double sided tape, tape a 1/2 inch width ribbon to the rim of the hat.

These would make great New Years Eve hats too!

One summer I worked in the Wrap and Send department of what was then Dayton’s (now Macy’s). It was a fun job because one of my best friends worked there along with a handful of other high school students. What was better then hanging out with friends and wrapping presents in pretty paper?

While I already knew how to wrap gifts (my mom use to make my sister and I do all the holiday gift wrapping!) I did learn a few great tips to make the gift look spectacular. With the upcoming holidays here are some tips to make your presents pop:

Instead of taping the paper closed in the middle of the bottom of the box, tape it to the edge. Its one step to fold the paper over and tape.

Then after wrapping the gift define the edges by running pinched fingers along the sides. This gives the gifted a “finished” look.

A little ribbon goes a long way! Make a bow first and then tie it on with a second piece. By making the bow first you don’t have to wrestle with the ends to make them face the right way. Ribbon with wire works best since you can shape it and “curl” the tails.

A few weeks ago I posted about some party theme ideas I found. In the end I decided to go with a color theme of pink and green and to save the more specific themes until our little one was older.

The color theme came about when I was making the invitations. I turned to scrapblog.com to create it because I knew it would give me the stickers I needed and the freedom to create the invitation I envisioned. Scrapblog offers printing but I had some cardstock already and decided to print the invitations at home.

After that it all came together….

From top to bottom:

The “happy 1st birthday” banner was  home-made using scrapbook paper, cardstock, and paper string. Look for a tutorial in our craft tip of the week soon!

The scrapbook pages were displayed on a wall and featured a lot of our baby’s firsts and milestones.

I wanted to share with our guests the monthly photos I took so that they could see how much she had changed. Each month had two photos tied together with ribbon and pinned up with a clothespin decorated with flower punch-outs.

No party is complete without a birthday hat! There will also be a tutorial for this in the craft tip of the week soon as well.

We started the party in the birthday shirt and tutu, which were a huge hit. The front is our little one’s first initial with a little crown – for being the little princess! The back of the shirt says, “I’m one!” with a large one underneath. The onesie was made using photoshop and iron-on sheets. The tutu was bought from Trinity’s Tutus on Etsy.

It was a lot of fun making many of the decorations and celebrating our little one’s first birthday with family and friends. I think she really enjoyed it too!

I’ll admit it, I keep almost every card given to me. For awhile I didn’t know how to store them and just shoved them in a box. Then one day it dawned on me. I could use metal rings and “bind” the cards together by occasion so that whenever I wanted to look at my wedding cards or baby shower cards I could read them like a “book”.

Supplies

• Metal rings – I get the ones in the embroidery section at Michaels. They come in sets of 2.
• 3-hole punch – or any type of whole punch. The 3-hole works great because it will punch both holes at the same time and I don’t have to measure.
• Greeting cards

Instructions

Just punch the holes in the card and slip them onto the rings.

Tips

• align the hole punch at the bottom of the card so that the bottom align.
• use cardstock to divide events if you put multiple events into one “book”

My daughter is still too young for these but I thought that when the time came they would be a great way to help encourage her. The nice thing about making them is that you can write anything on them to suit the occasion. (I see “great pooper!” on one when potty training time comes along, hehe)

These also would be great for parties as place cards (minus the ribbon) or as rewards or even decoration.

1. Cut a 7/8″ strip from the 11″ side of a piece of paper.

2. Fold the paper accordion style. Make each fold about 3/4″

3. Overlap and glue or tape the ends together to form a circle. I used double sided tape. The circle won’t lie flat and the next step will fix it.

4. Cut out two circles – one 1 3/4″ in diameter, one 1 7/8″ in diameter.

5. Glue the larger circle to the back side. Place something on top to flatten (I used the rubber cement glue bottle). Wait for the glue to dry.

6. Write a message on the smaller circle before gluing it to the front. Place something on top to flatten. Wait for glue to dry.

7. For the ribbons, cut out two strips of paper 3.5″ long and 1/5″ wide. Glue to the backside. Cut the ends to form an upside-down V.

8. Adhere a pin or string to the back for wearing.

As a knitter I have tons of patterns that hope to make someday printed and organized into 3-ring binders (this was the days before Ravelry!) They were looking a bit uninspired and plain on my bookshelf.

To give them a new look I cut scrapbook paper to size and tucked it in the bind. Rather then trying to remember which color binder was which I stamped the words “PATTERNS – ADULT” and “PATTERNS – BABY” on white paper and glued it on.

Now they’re also a decorative piece on our bookshelf!

A hint for sliding in the bind- open the folder flat to give yourself more room. You can’t see it from the pic but one of them got a little bit bent while I was putting it in!

I’m a sucker for making the small things look pretty. At my old job I even decorated my pen/pencil holder (ie. a paper cup!) by drawing on it with a sharpie. Print-it-yourself calendars are often plain to look at. Why not dress them up by printing it on decorative paper?

These are the basic steps if you already have decorative paper:

Step 1: Select your paper.

Step 2: Open the calendar file.

Step 3: Load the paper into your printer. Make sure the pretty side is what will be printed on.

Step 4: Print!

If you don’t have any decorative paper- no worries! You can do what I did for the calendar in the image. I went to Canon’s Creative Park. They have free download-able scrap booking backgrounds, borders, stickers, and letters.

For October I wanted something halloween-ish and found this one with spiderwebs. I printed the paper first and then followed steps 2-4. I used Microsoft Word to print the calendar and moved it to the bottom right for aesthetics (I like white space! Plus it gives me room to add notes.)

My daughter loves toys that make the crinkly noise. She also loves to wake up before us in the mornings but we’re lucky that she will play in her crib for awhile before calling out for “ma ma ma ma.” We usually know she’s up though by the “crinkle crinkle” noises coming from the crib because I always put the soft one in before I go to bed.

She only has one soft crinkly toy and not wanting her to get bored of it I decided I’d make her one. The idea struck when I was refilling the diaper basket and was getting ready to throw away the plastic bag they come in. As I was crumpling it up it made a “crinkle” and a picture flashed in my head of a plush toy. After digging through my fabric and craft boxes I sat down at the sewing machine and made Ella the elephant!

She’s stuffed with two of the diaper bags which makes it soft as well as crinkly and perfect for an in the crib toy. I added some texture using a reverse applique for the ear, button for the eye, a knitted i-cord for the tail and stripes of ribbon on the back.

I went a little overboard on the details, but it doesn’t have to be. Sewing a silhouette of an animal and embroidered facial features would be just as fun for any baby – the important part is that it crinkles!