All posts filed under: Celebrate.

seed paper.

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It’s Baby’s First Valentine’s Day so we put together a little something for all his baby friends. Since babies can’t indulge in your typical Valentine’s sweets, I picked a non-food Valentine’s treat: seed paper in heart confetti form so friends can watch love grow all year long. (Aww, sweetness.) I am a big fan of nature confetti – what I’m deeming as dried leaves or fallen flowers harvested from the same area where you will toss the confetti – so I am all over this biodegradable confetti! I found this seed paper from Botanical PaperWorks. It came in so many colors – I picked three colors to mix and packaged them up. Here’s how I put it all together — I gathered: Seed paper confetti (I picked hearts but you can choose other shapes or punch out different shapes from full sheets of seed paper instead) Bag/pouch (I had 4” x 6” plastic bags in my stash. You can also source something biodegradable if you want to keep with the earth-friendly theme) Tag design (I’m …

paper lanterns.

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Gearing up for Lunar New Year! I was recently asked to host a paper lantern workshop in celebration of Lunar New Year. I had never created a paper lantern before so I did some internetting to get design ideas. My friend Rebecca created a lantern template for me and you can download it here to create along. Gather materials and tools: Lantern template Printer access Red cardstock (8.5” x 11”) Gold cardstock Gold metallic marker Gold metallic embroidery floss, or similar Tassel maker (cardboard or other firm board works, too) Sewing needle with large eye Scissors (for paper and for fabric) Hot glue (can use tacky glue or other glue) Print the lantern template onto red cardstock. I like using 65lb cardstock. Cut out the lantern shapes. Use the gold metallic marker to outline each lantern. This can be done before cutting, too, if preferred. Use a craft needle to poke holes on each lantern “petal” (use the black dots on the template as a guide) and in the center of the lantern. The petal …

reindeer.

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Real talk – Santa scares me, but the reindeer are cool. Here’s a reindeer piñata idea for your Christmas celebrations. How cute would it be to create one for each of Santa’s reindeer? You will need: Cardboard Crepe streamers in reindeer colors (brown, creme, black, white) Paper in browns, black, and white Glue stick Scissors Pencil Paper scissors Masking tape or similar I used my burro template and reindeer-ified it with antlers and spots. Cut out two reindeer shapes plus strips of cardboard 2 inches in width for the perimeter. Make sure you can bend the cardboard into curvy shapes (corrugation should run across the 2 inch width). Decide where you want to place the piñata opening and start wrapping one of the shapes with the cardboard strips above the flap. Use tape to attach strips to shapes. Continue to work around the piñata until you reach the flap opening. Attach the second shape to the opposite side. Since we’re not popping this piñata open, I used packing tape to make it extra secure. Add …

christmas hello.

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Something I haven’t done in a few years because I pack my November/December with craft events and I wait until it’s too late to make it happen: creating and sending Christmas cards! I used to do it every year. These cards are four years in the making. I will now be sending Christmas cards every leap year…maybe. This year’s Christmas card timeline: Year 1: Buy the paper Year 2: Cut the paper Year 3: Assemble the paper Year 4: Write messages on the paper, address envelopes, and mail! Here’s what I used to make my cards: 12″ x 12″ double sided card stock 12″ x 12″ white card stock Twine Embellishments (I cut out reindeer images) Envelopes Paper cutter Scissors (for fabric and for paper) Bone folder Double sided foam adhesive Someone once described my cards as little booklets. I like to use 12″ x 12″ double sided cardstock (get the good heavyweight stuff!) for all of my handmade cards. They divide up into three 4″ x 6″ cards (cut two 8″ x 6″ pieces …

christmas gift packs.

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You know me – I love creating gift packs! Here’s a gift pack idea for Christmas. Gather: baskets, shredded paper filling, and locally sourced treats. What’s great about giving gifts in baskets is that the recipient can either use the basket in their home or reuse the basket to give a gift to someone else. I had a few red baskets that I was previously using for craft events but was ready to give away. Here are some tasty items I found locally! Siren protein snacks made in San Francisco. These are plant based, gluten-free, and non-GMO. Covered almonds by Feve Chocolates, also made in San Francisco. They give 5% of their profit in micro-loans to cocoa farmers. Hubby and I picked up an extra pack of the chai spiced almonds for ourselves – yum! Jamnation jams are so delightful and punny. They were my booth neighbors at the SF Etsy Indie Holiday Emporium last year and they let me try all the flavors. Wineforest Wild Foods rubs from Napa. Don’t the flavors sound exciting! …

we have a runner.

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This Christmas is going to be Hubby and my first Christmas in our home. Usually, we travel to visit family this time of year, but since we’re all still practicing social distancing and with a tiny babe on our hands we thought it would be best to celebrate at home. It makes for some excitement though because that means we can actually put up a tree to enjoy and start some new family traditions. One thing I really wanted to add to my Christmas decor this year was a macramé table runner to keep our dining room festive throughout the season. I picked a project from the Modern Macramé book. Side note: I’m really good at purchasing craft books because they are so beautiful and then forgetting about them, ultimately never using them. Whoops. Good thing I remembered there was a table runner project in this book! I purchased this dreamy 4mm cotton string in army green for the project. This project is no joke; it requires a time commitment but I was excited to …

macrame tree.

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I did it! I made a macrame tree. I was inspired by the macrame landscape piece I recently created. I planned a pattern based on the landscape project. I had a rough idea of how I would create the tree gradient, but I totally winged it because I wasn’t sure how much cord to use for each column. I eventually figured out that each square knot would need about 7-8″ of cord (when using 4mm cord). Even if you run out though, you can use multiple pieces of the same color cord to complete the column. Materials: 1 12″ dowel 18 strands of 22″ natural cord (for the base) 9 strands of natural cord in varying lengths for the “background” (see below recipe for lengths) 9 strands of green cord in varying lengths for the tree (see below recipe for lengths) 3 strands of 24” brown/copper cord for tree trunk 1 strand 18″ natural cord (for the hanging string) Yellow felt (for star) Sewing needles Sewing thread Battery operated string of lights (optional) Fabric scissors …

first year pennants.

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Getting ready for Baby’s First Year! Over the years I’ve created baby pennants for friends. And once we found out a little of our own was on the way, I knew I wanted to make a set for myself! I usually make the pennants smaller (like this or this) and place them on dowels. This time I went a little bit bigger. I used thick felt in size 12″ x 18″ and cut out 6″ x 18″ pennants. I cut strips of white felt 1″ wide to create the side ribbons and the strip on the left side. I used Eastwood font from Da Font as inspiration. I went with black and white because babies can see the contrast, but also because we wanted to use our panda as a measure next to Bebe. Matchy, matchy! Excited to use these each month, and, while not in use, they should make cute bebe nook decor. Do you have littles? How did you commemorate their monthly milestones? Share below!

baby mama.

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Being pregnant during a pandemic has it’s perks, one of which is people cannot touch my belly (why do people do this?). I also don’t like (typical) baby showers so this whole virtual thing is definitely my jam. My Sister encouraged me to celebrate my pregnancy in some way. Since my favorite part about parties is planning them, she let me put together the invites and come up with the general feel of the event. I went for a Baby Mama Spa Night and we came up with a few select games together. Sharing my invite boxes here! I put together invite boxes with chocolate and tea for spa night snacks, ingredients for a matcha face mask for our spa night activity (I was major excited to purchase a heat sealer to create single serving matcha packs.), a string of lights for spa night ambiance, and a notecard for guests to write messages for Bebe. Invitations. I am old school when it comes to invitations. Go paper or go home. I found this design on …

halloween watercolors.

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Happy Halloween! I am fully immersing myself in all the crafting I can get my hands onto before Bebe arrives. This week I participated in two Halloween watercolor events, one with Michaels and one with Jenny Lemons! Up first: Watercolor and Ink ‘Boo’ Art with maker Jess Park and Michaels. Jess specializes in watercolor, illustration, and modern calligraphy, and she’s based in Napa, CA. For this project she demoed the most kawaii Halloween characters and showed us how to arrange them so the images would spell ‘BOO.’ First, we sketched out our block letters. Then drew in all of the characters with pencil, then waterproof pen. I’m sure as you practice this more you can go straight to pen and skip the erasing part. After cleaning up the eraser marks, we painted! Daaaa, so cute! And next: Ghostly Celestial Watercolor with artist Vica Lew and Jenny Lemons! For the third month in a row I participated in the Jenny Lemons craft night – I’m on a roll! 🙂 Vica showed us how to block out …