Silhouette Portraits--LOVE!

Seriously, I have been wanting to make these since my kids were BABIES!  I don't know why it took me so long or how it kept getting put on the back burner, but I guess now I need to just be happy that I finally made them. And I'm SO happy with how they turned out and they look exactly like each of my girls (that is the purpose, right?)  I read tons of blogs and things online on how to turn a photo into a silhouette, but most Photoshop tutorials were way beyond my expertise and knowledge. So I set out to figure it out myself.

I still operate Photoshop Elements 6.0-Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!  I'm sure the newer versions have all kinds of new doohickies, but I'm happy with this one.

I took a profile picture of each of my girls against a blank wall.  I then opened the photo in PSE and converted each to black & white. This made it much easier to accomplish what I was about to do.  I then selected the Paint Bucket tool and and used the dropper to match the background color and filled it in to cover any shadows I had.  Then I selected the Paint Bucket tool again and picked black as my main color and began filling in the profiles of my girls.  This definitely took some patience and time since it would sometimes fill in the background or areas I didn't want black so I had to undo it.  But this worked pretty well!
Now, print your photo out onto cardstock. Mine looked like this after I cut around the silhouette:

See? Don't they look like little people?? I'm in LOVE!
I then took those cuts and traced them onto actual black cardstock and cut them out with the smallest scissors I have to preserve every detail (hair, eyelashes, it's all there!)
I had picked up a couple frames on clearance at Michael's but wanted them to be black as well, so I took a can of spray paint to them. Ten minutes later, Whala!!

I adhered the black cardstock cuts onto another new sheet of white cardstock, placed them in their new frames and this is what I have:

I really am SO happy with them! My 3 yr old is on the right and even though I took their pictures in the exact same spot, exact same spacing, you can see how much chubbier her face is than my 4 1/2 yr old. These reflect them PERFECTLY and I'm so happy to have them done!
I hope I've been able to explain the Photoshop actions I used. I'm still learning myself but I'm amazed at its capabilities!
Now go take some profile pics of your little ones before another day passes and they change some more. Doesn't it go by way too fast? :-(

Frayed Fabric Covered Flip Flops

I really hate that I'm not able to devote more time to my blog.  With a toddler and almost 5 yr old, I feel like I'm stretched to the limits.  I decided to do something to INCLUDE my kids this time so I could take pictures and craft at the same time. Win, win!  I've seen these for years now, and my oldest daughter is so into flip flops this year that I thought she would just love them.  Soooo, today we're going to make fabric covered flip flops.  I found cheap pink flip flops at Dollar Tree for $1 each so that was the easy part. I have a huge fabric collection so both girls were able to just pick out what they wanted to use from that so essentially this craft only cost me $2! :-)

Supplies Needed:
     Flip flops of your choice
     1 or more coordinating fabrics
     Ribbon if you choose to put a bow on top (I have ribbon pictured on each but only used one)

First I had to figure out what size I wanted my strips to be. I ended up decided on 1" wide strips. Take your fabric and make a 1-2" cut on the selvage edge to eliminate anything uneven. I've already used this fabric so I only had to remove a small strip. 

You can see that I marked out 1", 2", 3", etc on my fabric.  To be honest, I cut WAY too many strips to start with. I ended up with a huge pile of strips left at the end of this project.. (I'm going to just save them in case any fall off of their flip flops) By the 2nd pair, I realized I only needed to tear 2-1" strips the length of the fabric and had just enough. So, after you've marked your fabric, you're just going to grab hold of one end and tear a strip all the way down to the bottom.

 My 4 yr old was super thrilled that she was finally able to help do something (even though this was the ONLY step they could really help with)

  After we tore the strips I had to decide how much "fringe" I wanted. I played around with 4-5" and my oldest said she wanted "Lots" of "ruffles" so I ended up going with 5" pieces on hers. Cut your long strips into the size you want until you have this:

The rest is easy (though a little time consuming). Tie the strips into a knot around the strap of the flip flop until you've covered as much as you want of it.

I only tied each strip once, tightly, all across and scrunched them together until we had this:

I ended up cutting a few strips of the green ribbon and adding it into the flip flops on the right to add some more color.  I picked the color fabrics for my youngest daughter's and they remind me of watermelon (pink and green).  I also ended up only cutting her fabric into 4" strips so they weren't swallowing her feet! LOL
Now, both pairs took me about 2 hrs from start to finish. Not too bad. My oldest daughter can't get enough of her new shoes and wants to wear them with EVERYTHING! <3  My youngest? Says they hurt her feet and could care less about them. Yup, they're sisters and complete opposites!

Hope you've enjoyed my little summer craft. Now go make yourself a pair!

Gotta have my morning coffee drink

So, I'm not an "ordinary" coffee drinker.  Meaning, I'm not a big fan of hot coffee.  I'll drink it if it's the only thing there (or if I've moved into an igloo for a bit and I'm freezing) but it's not my first choice.  Now, mention some sort of iced coffee drink and you've got my complete attention!!  It originally started with my love of French Vanilla iced coffee from Dunkin' Donuts, but once I moved further south, there were no D&D's to be found. Very.Sad.Day.

I was left to substitute my coffee addiction with iced coffee from McDonald's which, in my opinion, not even the same ballpark! But it would do.  A blended, on ice drink, would make me even happier.  Before you mention Starbucks, I will add that while I love my coffee drinks, I don't want to feel like I'm drinking sludge.  I need some sweetener in there too.

A friend introduced me to this recipe for my own blended coffee drink at home some 5-6 years ago and I've been making it ever since.  And, everyone that I give the recipe to loves it.  So I thought I'd share it here with you as well.  You may find that you'll need to tweek it to your own liking, but as I write this, to me it's *PERFECTION*!! 

You'll need:

2 teaspoons instant coffee

2 cups of 2% milk

2 sweet 'n low packets (or other sweetener)

1 packet of hot chocolate

(this could obviously be made a little healthier if you substitute lowfat milk & lowfat hot chocolate but I stand by my perfected recipe!) lol

I pour the milk into my blender, add all of the dry ingredients to it, put in as much ice as you want and blend that baby up!  

Pour into a pretty insulated cup w/ a straw and you're on your way! (this recipe will make 2 servings) 

I couldn't live without this recipe.  I need my drinks to be ice, ice cold and this does the trick for me.  I also like mine a bit more on the coffee side, than the chocolate side, so I add a bit more instant coffee to mine.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I do! Happy drinking!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

I really am such a night owl. It's now 1:44 am and I just finished my little Sophie's St. Patrick's Day shirt.  I wanted to applique a simple shamrock onto a white tee for her.  I bought a brand new shirt to use for this project, but it occurred to me that I've held onto several tees that have gotten a spot on them (I despise stains on my kids' clothes) and I was able to find one with a small spot in the middle, easily hidden by the applique. Yay!! Win, win.  I get to recycle a shirt and she still gets the new one.
I decided I wanted the shape to be around 6".  I cut a block of fabric and ironed it onto a piece of Heat 'n Bond.  I then turned to my Cricut and SCAL2 for this one and stuck the Heat 'n Bond directly to my Cricut mat.  The SCAL2 shapes library has a shamrock (clover) in it so, keeping proportions, I set my size height to 6.50". which gave me a width of 5.779".  Once it was done cutting, I was able to peel my applique directly off the mat and iron it onto my shirt.
This was only my 2nd time doing an applique and I think it came out much better than the 1st! LOL  It's not perfect, and I can see where I made a mistake, but really, she won't care.  She's just going to be happy that Momma made her a special shirt!

Hope everyone has a Happy St. Patrick's Day!!  I can't wait to smell my corned beef & cabbage cooking up in the crock pot later (even though my hubby hates it).  The girls & I love it and hey, ti's only once a year!

Our Big Monkey Luau is here!

My daughter's 3rd birthday was just this past weekend and I'm so happy with how everything turned out.  I just wanted to share some pictures with you.  I think we ended up with  more of a Luau than a MONKEY Luau like I originally planned, but everything was so pretty and girly that I couldn't be happier (and the birthday girl was loving it too!).

I made everything myself.  The dessert table contained banana cupcakes with chocolate frosting, mini monkey breads, "monkey kisses" (hershey kisses melted on top of pretzels topped with an M&M), chocolate covered pretzels, chocolate cupcakes with buttercream frosting, coconut cup "drink" cake pops, and white chocolate covered Oreos topped with fondant bananas from this Etsy shop.  Um, AMAZING!! They look so real with little speckles on them and everything:

I found these adorable monkey drinking cups on Amazon for the kids to use and I glued a hibiscus flower to their ear so they'd fit the theme.

These are the cake pops I made. They were very time consuming.  I got a new Babycakes Cake Pop maker around Christmas and decided to try it out for this party. Total FLOP! I don't know if you need to practice with this thing, or what, but they weren't even coming out looking circular, and were completely dry. So then I had to go back to the regular way of making cake pops and ended up adding too much cream cheese frosting for the amount of cake I had left.  I could only dip a few in chocolate before having to stick them back in the freezer. Ugh! But I'm happy with the end result!  I originally found these on 365 Cake Pops and just knew I had to  make them.

This was the birthday girl's special seat.  She gets to be right up in front of everyone so we can be sure to get lots of pictures.  We are definitely a picture taking family!

Here's the centerpieces I made for all the main tables. I painted cardboard tubes brown and made them look like palm trees, and cut Hula monkeys on my Cricut to hang from the branches.  They're stuck in a yellow metal bucket I found at the Dollar Store.

Here's what the entire room looked like set up.  We hung paper lanterns from the ceiling in coordinating colors.

I also set up a small area as a Photo Booth.  Oh my gosh, the kids LOVED it!  I won't share those pictures since they're not my children but they had a blast. I found tons of printable props online that I mounted to cardboard and glued sticks to.  SO much fun.  Our little area:

I made this special outfit for my little princess.  She calls it her toot toot (tutu). I know, so sweet, right?

One last view of the dessert table.

I so enjoy throwing these parties for my girls.  My husband thinks I go overboard, but, what does he know?? LOL

Monkey Canvas

Still working on more Monkey Party items.  I have so many ideas I saved from the internet that I wanted to use.  I wanted something substantial to put over the dessert table and I came across this picture that inspired me:

I decided to take some pictures of my daughter in an adorable monkey suit my sister let me borrow, and mount them to stretched canvas to place over the table.  It really was an easy task and I had it done in under an hour I'd say.

Supplies you'll need:
Photos you want to use
Stretched canvas in the same size as your photos (I used 11x14 pictures)
Modge Podge
Foam brush, bowl/container to pour Modge Podge into

The first step is to coat your bare canvas with the Modge Podge using a foam brush. I was fairy liberal in my use, because I wanted to make sure the photo stuck well. I placed my photo on top of the canvas and smoothed it out with my hand and made sure it was evenly lined up on all sides. Let that dry completely. (mine took about 15-20 minutes)
Then you need to put another layer of Modge Podge directly on top of your photo.  I tried to put a thick enough layer on to cover it all, but without leaving a lot of "lines" with the brush. It's going to look pretty cloudy to begin with but trust me, it will dry clear.

After it's dry (again, maybe 1/2 hr or so), you'll have a beautiful canvas picture to hang, without the price tag of an actual canvas photo. I made 2 pictures this size and it cost me about $10 to make it. (I printed my photos online using a discount code, bought the Modge Podge at Michael's using a 50% off coupon and got 2 canvas' in a pkg for $5) I can't wait to hang them up at her party!!

Next will be to make a bunting to stretch above the photos just like my first inspiration picture.

Monkey See, Monkey Do...

Today's post is about making cupcake toppers for our upcoming monkey luau party for our daughter's 3rd birthday.  I try to decide well in advance what the theme of their next party is going to be so that I have plenty of time to research ideas and pick things up as I go, rather than a huge expense all at once.  This years party inspiration started when I found this party line:

And yes, it was 50% off at the time too--Yippee!!  A friend mentioned it had a luau feel to it and I loved it so much I decided to go with it! So, Monkey Luau it is! =)

I only have one month until the big day so I started a couple days ago making things.  First up, cupcake toppers.  I rely on my trusty Cricut and SVG files for these.  First I had to decide what size I wanted them to be. I believe I went with 3" (keeping proportions) and cut those out, as well as their coordinating bellies, faces & ears.

This is what they looked like after they were cut. Please ignore my nasty Cricut mat, it's really on its last leg, but I'm making sure it's gets well used because, well, I'm cheap thrifty like that!
Next I had to piece them together.  Now this was the tedious part. Usually for small things like this I use my small Xyron machine, but for some reason it's MIA. Boo!  The only other thing I had on hand was a scrapbook gel glue. A little messy, but worked well enough.  Here they are after I attached those bellies and such:

I planned on then just adding mouths by hand & wiggly eyes, but they just looked so BORING to me! Hmmm, what did they need? I KNOW!!! HULA SKIRTS! What's a luau without grass skirts, right?  And boy, I thought the last step was tedious, this was even worse. LOL  I set my Cricut to cut out 1" wide trapezoids and then I had to hand cut fringe onto them to look like skirts. Boy, Martha Stewart had a great idea when she came out with fringe scissors. But alas, since I don't have any, I got to hand cut 24 mini grass skirts.  I then added a paper flower to the monkeys ear and WHALA!!!

 So, what do you think??  Apparently my daughter is in love with them because every time she sees them she runs and hugs me and says, "Thank you Mommy! Thank you for my monkeys!!"