Easy Snowball Snowman Holiday Ornaments Pattern

Check out this darling Christmas Ornament that my friend Darlene made for me! It is really easy to make and you only need a few supplies to make them. If you are an adult, you could use a glue gun to save time...if a child is making them, then you will want to use craft glue.

Snowball Snowman Ornaments

1 1/2" diameter styrofoam white ball
(2) 1" diameter pom-poms (for ear muffs)
2 1/2" long piece of a pipecleaner (for headband)
(2) 1/4" diameter wiggle eyes
1/2" long piece of orange pipecleaner (nose)
1/2" wide by 5" long piece of red fleece or red ribbon (for scarf)
String for hanging
Black Marker
Scissors
Glue (see note above)

Use the photo for placement of all items. Start by gluding the pipecleaner headband and the pom-pom ear muffs. Then glue on the eys and nose and use the marker to make 'coal' dots for his mouth. Finally, glue on your ribbon for his scarf. Finish up by attaching a hanging string to the top of the ball.

These can be used as Christmas Tree Ornaments, Package Toppers or hang off a knob or peg.

Happy Crafting!

FREE Crochet Candy Cane Ornament Pattern

A friend of mine made me this cute crochet candy cane ornament a few months ago and I think its adoreable. It would be great as a holiday package topper, on your Christmas tree or you could hang it off a holiday garland.

After looking online, I found a similar free pattern to make these crochet candy canes over on the Planet June crochet site. You basically just need a pipecleaner, white and red yarns.

I think this is an excellent little project to use up some of your scrap yarns and more importantly, they work up super quickly.

Happy Crocheting,
Shelly

Scrapbooking - 2 Easy Amusement Park Layouts

Last month my hubby took our grand daughter to one of the amusement parks on the boardwalk at the Jersey Shore and Little G had a great time riding the carousel horses! We got some fabulous photo's of the 2 of them together on the carousel and I just knew I had to scrapbook a few of them! The following layouts were done in the 12x12" format. Scrapbooking doesn't have to be hard and elaborate as you can see with both layouts...simple, fast and inexpensive can be just as nice!

First Page: (layout shown above)

Color Inspiration - Gia was wearing orange and pappy was wearing blue. I decided to go with blue, orange and yellow as my color scheme.

My background is a simple piece of sky blue 12x12 piece of scrapbooking paper. I used 4 photo's in the layout. I cropped 3 of them slightly and used some orange colored frames that I had and glued them onto my page. Two of the photos in the horizontal position and one is vertical. I then cropped down a 4th photo until it measured 2" by 2" in size and put that in the bottom corner of the vertical frame. I attached an orange fiber bow to the bottom corner of the top left photo along with 4 tiny silvertoned eyelets in each corn of the frame to add some definition. 4 tiny little white word stickers finish off the right hand side of the frame. On the top right corner of the page, I cut a rectangle that measures 1" by 4" and rounded the corners from dark pink paper that had a mini white floral print. I attached it to the page using a dark pink brad. On top of that I applied a square shaped block that has a preprinted SMILE word on it along with a round ball sticker at the top. The top of the vertical picture is a 3-dimenional lime green flower embellishment with a rhinestone center. Under the photo I wrote on the frame both of their names. Under that photo is another rectangle in a dark pink print and on top of it us a fatter rectangle that says "CUTIE" on it. To the side of that is a 3-dimensional orange & yellow flower embellishment. I think the page turned out nicely, I would of never thought about combining blue and orange together in a layout until now.

Second Page:

Color Inspiration - Colors on the carousel horse.

I call this a super quick and easy page. I used a piece of cranberry colored paper for my background. I then cut off 6" from a piece of sky blue paper and ran that sky blue piece of paper down the center of the page. I had a piece of plaid paper in a cranberry, pink and pale yellow color and I cut off 5 1/2" from that and ran that down the center of the page on top of the sky blue paper. I cropped my 2 photos, rounded their corners and mounted them onto pale orange paper. I cropped again leaving a 1/8" border around the edges and rounded the corners. I glued them onto my plaid strip in the center. Sticking out slightly from the bottom photo is a left over amusement park ticket that I misted with archival mist spray to make it scrapbook safe. I used my Cricut to cut out my letters which spell out "Riding With My Pappy" from dark blue paper and ran those down the sides of my layout. I then wrote my journaling under each photo.

I think both layouts are cute and both are VERY different from one another.

Happy Scrapbooking!

Scrapbooking - Must Have Supplies For Those Learning To Scrapbook

Are you looking to get into Scrapbooking? If you have never scrapbooked your family's precious photographs, now is the time to get started. Preserving your photographs now will ensure that generations to come will be able to enjoy them. When it comes to purchasing supplies, I will admit...it is an investment! You can buy inexpensive or expensive supplies, that is entirely up to you.

If you are just getting involved in this craft and hobby, here are the products I recommend to all beginners.

Scrapbook: I like the 12x12 size but you can purchase 8x8 or 6x6 sizes too.
Plastic Page Protectors - To fit inside your scrapbook.
Scissors - you will want an ergonomic pair that is made specifically for paper
Decorative Edge Scissors - You can pick up these type of scissors for about a $1.00 a pair
Self Healing Cutting Mat with Exacto Knife for cropping photo's and cutting your paper
Clear Metal Edge Ruler
Adhesives - 2 sided tape, glue dots and glue sticks
Paper - Solid and printed paper and card stock (tip: watch craft store sales ads and pick them up for 4 sheets for $1.00 when on sale).
Brads and Eyelets (You will need an eyelet setter), Buttons and Charms (to decorate your pages).
Ribbons, Lace and Fibers
Stapler with Colored Staples
Stickers and Embellishments to decorate your pages.
Corner Rounder (not a necessity but I like rounded corners on my photographs).
Ink Pads with Rubber and/or Clear Stamps
Chalks with Applicators (pastels, brights and neutrals).
Archival Mist Spray (to preserve items that you want to add to your scrapbook that are not acid and lignin free).

If you want to save time and money, you can purchase scrapbooking kits that will contain everything that you will need. You can usually find complete kits at the craft stores for $30.00 - $50.00 which are great for beginner scrapbookers.

Once you invest in the supplies you need, they will last for a very long time if properly cared for. To save money, watch your local retail store's sale ads as a lot of these craft stores will include 30-40% off coupons in their sales circulars. Use these coupons to purchase your higher priced supplies. Most importantly, scrapbooking is not rocket science! Every person has their own style, you can make simple pages or spend hours making elaborate pages. Take your time and your "particular" style will come to you! Have fun and enjoy your new found craft!

Shelly Hill is a mother and grandmother living in Pennsylvania who has been scrapbooking for the past 10 years. 

Trash To Treasure Project - Play Makeup For Little Girls!

My little grand daughter sits and watches her mommy put her makeup on every day...then when she is around me, she gets to see it all over again. While I am applying my makeup, I usually hand her a few things to hold or play with to keep her busy. I had just finished up using all of my pressed powder in my CoverGirl compact and handed it to her. She loved opening and shutting the compact! Next...she wanted to "apply" some powder to her face too. So....here is what I did.

I washed and dried my old compact. I then got out some pink craft felt. I used the compact as a template and traced a circle onto my pink felt. I used scissors, cut the circle out and had to trim it down a little more to fit into the well of the compact. I used my white tacky glue and put a thin layer of glue into the empty well and placed the craft felt on top. I left it dry for 2 hours. I then went to the dollar store and purchased some of those wedge makeup sponges and a new powder puff.

Note: You will want to make sure that the mirror is safely secured in the lid of the compact. If not, remove it and use some good strong glue to place it back inside or remove it and replace it with some aluminum foil to give the appearance of a mirror.

My little grand daughter now has her own "faux" face powder to play with and I saved an old plastic compact from reaching the landfill. Gotta love Trash to Treasure craft projects!

Shelly

Scrapbooking - Easy Beach Theme'd 12x12 Layouts For Your Scrapbook

When I scrapbook vacation photo's, I prefer to scrapbook in the 12x12" format because I really like to add a lot of photo's, stickers and embellishments to my pages. With that being said, your pages don't have to be time consuming nor expensive.

I did these 2 layouts a few days ago and they are of my little grand daughter playing at an oceanfront beach playground...she loved the toddler swings! I decided to make my own backgrounds which I will explain next.

For The Background: You will need 2 sheets of light blue 12x12 scrapbooking paper, 1/4 sheet of 12x12 paper in a dark blue, 1/4 sheet of 12x12 paper in white and 1 full sheet of tan (sand) colored paper in the 12x12 size. I tore my tan paper into thirds, I tore my white paper into a 1 1/4" by 12" sized strip and I tore my dark blue paper into a 1 1/4" by 12" strip. You will want to use a glue stick and glue the upper torn edge of the white paper to the dark blue paper leaving some of the dark blue torn edge sticking out from the torn white edge of paper. You will want to apply some glue to the upper 1" edge of your torn tan (sand) paper and attach that to the white paper. This is layering 3 torn pieces of paper together. I did this to give the appearance of beach sand, white bubbles from the surf and then the darker blue is the water. (see photo). You will then want to apply glue to the entire backside of this and attach it to the bottom of your light blue piece of paper.

Page One: I used my Cricut to cut out the title "Away We Go!" from dark blue paper and glued it to the top of my page. I then cropped 4 photo's, rounded their corners, used glue dots to attach them to dark blue paper and then rounded the corners again. I placed 3 of these photo's right under my title. I left a 1/8" border around each photo. For the 4th photo, I cropped it, rounded the corners, glued it to dark blue paper, trimmed it to a 1/4" border, rounded the corners again and glued it to the middle bottom of my page. I then had some seashell stickers that I had in a dusty blue, tan and dusty orange color and glued them onto the "sandy" areas of my page. I love seeing handwriting on pages, so I wrote some words under each of the photo's. I feel it's important to let folks see your handwriting style. Pretty simple! This page took me about 35-40 minutes to make.

Page Two: The background is made just like page one using the same exact papers so that the 2 page spread will match/coordinate. I used 2 photo's for this layout, cropped them down, rounded the corners, glued them onto dark blue paper, cropped again with a 1/4" border, rounded the corners again and glued them onto my page. (see photo for placement). I rubbed on a sea-shell border to the bottom of the page. I had a sticker that says "Crazy Days of Summer" which I applied under the bottom photo. I had two 3-D embellishments, one of a sandcastle (I applied chalk to it to give it more definition) and one of a sun (with red button glued onto the center) that I applied to the bottom right of the page. I added a sea gull sticker to that to give a little beach scene. The upper right top of the page has a golden sun in the corner and a sailboat sticker. Under the top left photo I applied Glitter Stickers that say "Fun In The Sun" which I think are adorable...I must get more glitter stickers! This page took me about 35 minutes to make.

As you can see...you can make simple, attractive, inexpensive pages that don't take a lot of time to make. I think the 2 pages turned out great!


Happy Scrapbooking!

FREE Crochet Thanksgiving Turkey Refrigerator Magnet Pattern

Can you believe that Thanksgiving is almost here? There is no better time than now to get busy with your Thanksgiving Holiday Crafting! A few weeks ago I found this easy and quick crochet pattern over on the Bevs Country Cottage Web Site to make this cute Turkey refrigerator magnet.

I was able to make 3 of them in less than 1 hour and then spent another 15 minutes hiding my yarn ends, gluing on the wiggle eyes and the magnet strip on the back. I then left them dry for 1 hour and they were ready to go onto the front of my refrigerator.

Bev used a size F crochet hook but you can use a smaller one to make him a little smaller as he measures about 5" wide by 4" high. I think next time when I make a few, I will use a smaller hook.

You can find additional free Thanksgiving Craft Patterns here on my blog!

Happy Crocheting!

Handcrafted Jeweled Christmas Tree Ball Shaped Ornaments

As some of my readers know, I have been participating in an online Christmas Tree ornament swap group for the past few months. Each month we make different holiday tree ornaments and then send them to one another...I love this swap group!

Anyway, one of the ladies in our ornament swap group made these adoreable Christmas Tree jeweled ball ornaments which I think are so pretty so I wanted to share them with my blog readers today.

It looks like she took a 3 1/2" diameter styrofoam ball and covered it in red craft felt. She then trimmed the ball with silver rick rack and silver/clear flat-back plastic gems all along the sides of the ball. On the top and bottom of the ball, she attached these round clear faceted plastic gems with a stick pin & glue.

I think these ornaments have a lot of possibilities when it comes to decorating them and I can't wait to make a few of these myself.

Happy Crafting!

Shelly