Operation Homemade Play-doh

To be honest... I've always been quite terrified of the mess that homemade ANYTHING creates, especially when I include my young assistants. However, today I decided to OVERCOME my FEAR and actually CONQUER the MISSION.

We started with some basic ingredients that we found online for a homemade playdoh recipe. Unfortunately, the proportion sizes made the project fail misserably! So we CREATED OUR OWN -

What you'll need:

4 cups FLOUR

1 cup SALT

1/4 cup CORNSTARCH

2 cups WATER

FOOD COLORING

(I've seen some recipe's online call for Cream of Tartar, but I didn't find it necessary, so I didn't use it. Although, I'm sure it could be added without a significant difference.)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Mix all of the ingredients together until it thickens and becomes difficult to stir.

2. Take a handful out of the bowl and kneed with some extra flour, this will help the dough from being soo sticky. Once you've done that throw your portion into a ziplock bag with three-four drops of the food coloring of your choice. Seal, then twist the top (making the bag extra secure so dough doesn't squeeze out the top). SQUEEZE your bag, attempting to distribute the dye throughout the dough. 3. Resist the urge to clean up the mess your child is about to make. (This part was VERY DIFFICULT for me). Take the dough out of the bag (even if the color isn't completely distributed, it's okay, because as your child plays with the dough it will spread out more evenly). Add a little flour if the dough is still sticky.. and let your child CREATE their favorite DINOSOUR, ICE CREAM CONE, or PET SNAKE. Once they are finished, roll it into a ball, place it back in a ziplock bag, so it will be ready to enjoy next time without the mess of the FLOUR!

Dragonfly Hairpins

I am attempting my first tutorial, so if you get lost or confused don't hesitate to leave a comment below and I'll do my best to answer any questions you may have.

Believe it or not, Dragonfly Hairpins has been a craft in our family for over a decade. I remember obsessing over them and making a ton of them. They are simple enough I would recommend this craft for ages 8+.Things you need:
- Crafting Wire
- Seed Beads
- Bobby Pins
- Pliers

The crafting wire can be found in the jewelry section of most department stores and it must be small enough to fit through a seed bead.

First wrap the wire tightly around the bobby pin, at least a couple times, to secure the wire to the top. The best way to avoid sharp little parts poking you while creating and wearing the hairpin, use a set of needle nose pliers to pinch closely to the double coil you've created at the top. If you don't have a pair of needle nose pliers, borrow some pliers from your handy man. Here comes the fun part, start stringing beads.. Depending on how big you want your dragonfly the more you use, the larger it will be. Be careful about going too large though, because every time you go to wear the hair pin, you may have to reshape the wings. I typically use anywhere from 15-20 beads for each wing.
After you have your beads on the wire, you're ready to make your first dragonfly wing. All you have to do is loop the wire around the top part of the bobby pin, making sure that you keep all the beads on one side and don't let them slide through the middle. Secure your wire by wrapping around the top portion again, then you're ready to begin your second dragonfly wing.
Repeat the steps above, stringing the same number of beads onto the wire. When you're ready thread through to the top of bobby pin and loop around again to secure it.
When creating your bottom set of wings, you want to make them slightly smaller so use approximately 5 beads less. For example, if you used 20 beads for your top set of wings, you should only use 15 for your bottom set.

Don't stress if it doesn't look perfect, afterwards you can always reshape it.

You're almost finished! Now string one bead and wrap the wire around the top part of the bobby pin, string another bead and wrap around again. Don't forget to pull the wire tight, but be careful not to break it!
Once you've reached the bottom, without beads, wrap the wire tightly around the top part of the bobby pin. Don't forget to use pliers to pinch the wire closely to the bobby pin. After making a couple of these you can begin experimenting with different designs (flowers, butterflies, etc.). They are perfect for hot dates or random days and best of all you can make them to color coordinate with your wardrobe! I hope you enjoyed my first tutorial!

Custom Designed T-Shirts

Just finished custom designing T-Shirts for a client! They turned out AwEsOmE!
GET YOURS TODAY! $12 for one or $20 for two (not including shipping and handling). You choose the photo and words and I'll work closely with you to develop a design you like.

Hello kitty Invitations

Here is another invitation that I recently created. The theme was Hello Kitty, I photoshoped the picture and custom designed the invitation.
Get your custom made birthday party inviations today. Only $30 for 20! Printed on glossy cardstock for a professional look with durability.

Flyers for YOUR Event

I've been working on more invitations and flyers.

I created this flyer for the Sealston Elementary PTA to be distrubuted and displayed throughout the community, benefiting the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

The other flyer I created was for Papa John's cards that the SMTCCAC, Inc. Head Start Policy Council is selling to benefit parents within the program. We are hoping that if we raise enough money we can encourage parents to attend Conferences on behalf of the program.

I've also been busy with Hello Kitty invitations for a young lady's birthday party. With more publicity, work is starting to pick up, and I'm learning everything that it takes to operate my own business. Thank you for your continued support!

Mario Birthday Party Invitations

I was recently informed that I didn't post my son's awesome invitations that I made for his birthday. So I'm posting them now! :)
My son is obsessed with Mario, so what is more fitting than Mario Birthday Party invitations in the form of a ticket!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day Countdown

My oldest is always asking how far away something is and attempts to keep track in his head day by day. His birthday is on the 13th of this month and I know he'll have a hard enough time keeping track of that. So I thought I'd come up with something a bit more interesting that he can have fun with and keep track of the days until St. Patty's Day!

I found a Shamrock Pattern online, that has three different sizes, one for each of my kids. Printed it out, cut out the shamrocks, and traced them onto different shades of green contact paper. I cut out 17 of each side and covered both sides with contact paper (for extra durability).
It seemed like it took forever and really made me want a die cut machine. Maybe if I had one of those my hands wouldn't hurt so bad and cutting out 51 of these little things wouldn't have been so intimidating half way through the project.

Now each day, STARTING TODAY, until March 17th, I will hide a little shamrock somewhere around the house for the kiddos to find them. Since they are younger, I will tell them which room it will be hidden in. Once they have found it we will hang it somewhere around the house for decoration. On the final day (St. Patrick's Day), I plan to hide the last shamrock with some chocolate gold coins to help celebrate the holiday.

iSpy Bag

Sorry I've been MIA for soo long. My kiddos have definitely been wondering where there mom went and I know my husband misses me. With only three more classes to finish until I graduate with my Bachelors in Criminal Justice, things are getting intense, and I keep trying to find a corner to hide. I can't wait until all is said and done!

In the meantime, I wanted to share with you my first ever custom made iSpy bag. I saw these on etsy and thought they were the coolest thing! So I used some scrap materials, bought some cute beads with objects and letters, and three months later............Finally Finished It..

TA DA!!!

While I was making it, my son was flipping out because it wasn't a Mario fireball. This boy has been OBSESSED with Mario! However, once I finished it he played with it for about an hour searching for the letters in his name. Now my daughter is jealous she doesn't have one. Maybe within the next couple months I'll get around to making a butterfly one for her.