Place mat purses

My MIL taught me how to make these about two or three years ago. Funny how what goes around, comes around. This year for mother's day, guess what I made for her.
Yep. A placemat purse. A different placemat and with a few alterations from what the original instructions were, but still a purse. Interesting, too, how useful place mats are and for more than just a place mat. I was intending them to be used for scripture totes. My MIL likes red a lot, so the red one is for her.
And my mom likes softer colors, so this is more gentle for her.
Hope they like them. Happy Mother's Day.

Lamp shade

I hate lamp shades. They are so hard to figure out. What I've concluded about them is to never, ever buy them separately from the lamp. Or to add blue flowers. Which is the mistake that happened here. I had a perfectly good drum lamp shade. Plain, but good. Here's the problem: I always think plain is just not enough. In this case, it should have been. So, after I added the blue flowers, the shade looked a little too wedding-cake-ish. Not going to fly on the lamp. Not at all! So I had to laboriously pull (rip) each fabric flower, (which had been attached very well!), off of the shade. It left horrible pock marks of hot glue all over the shade where the flowers were attached. See here:
Poor lamp shade. It was still very useful, but I just couldn't leave the hot glue unattended. (You never should. Says so right on the hot glue label.)

So, this is how I fixed it. I know-- pretty unoriginal to just add ribbon around the edge of the shade, but I already messed it up so badly before that I just couldn't dare to hurt this poor lamp shade any more.

Nice and clean. Much better.

Place mat Pillows

Gotta love Tarjey and Pier 1. So much possibility. I made a toss pillow for my living room by taking out the side seem of this Pier 1 place mat so it was like a pillow case. Then I slipped it over a travel pillow from Target. About $7 and one straight seam later, I have a fun little pillow for anywhere.
I actually took this baby on road trip. Never had a problem finding out which pillow is mine, and super comfy and durable. Fun little idea.

Valentines for school

We had 54 valentines to give at school this year. Yes, that is just one child's list. So, this picture isn't even all of the valentine's we made. But it's a good representation.



And being on a budget, I needed something inexpensive and quick, but hopefully still cute. Don't we all need something like that? So, here's what we came up with:


Just some pretty scrapbook paper (heavy kind, so it was sturdy paper), a printer, scissors, and a lollipop. We printed words onto the 8 1/2 x 11 paper, then, by folding the paper down the center of the words, cut out completely imperfect heart shapes around the words. We got 6 to fit onto one sheet of paper.


Cut slits above and below the words and poked the sucker in.



Same idea with this one, but no hearts to cut out and it used up the scraps of the 12 x 12 paper I had cut into 8 1/2 x 11. The "o" has a center hole cut out by a hole punch. A bigger punch might've been better. But it's what we had.



My favorite one is just the heart one. Made a ton and for only $2, because I only had to buy the lollipops. SWEET!

Fun with acorns

I wanted a really inexpensive item to fill some glass cylinders I have. We had tons on great acorns on the ground at a park, so I played 'squirrel' and gathered at least 100 of those nuts.
And of course, I couldn't leave them alone. So, silver spray paint...
Red, yellow, orange, and blue acrylic paint and glitter glue...
A 'spray booth' (box)...
And some big glitter later, we had tons of decorated acorns to hang or toss anywhere, or pretend they were little people with hats. These glittered acorns ended up on our Christmas tree. Nice sparkle.