D.I.Y. Birthday Banner

Hello again! To continue our D.I.Y. projects, today we will show you how to make your own Birthday banner. As we wrote in our last post our niece is turning 1 this weekend and we are very excited and happy for this special occasion that we decided to help out my brother and make a couple of the decorations. We already showed you how to make Birthday crowns since our niece is having a princess pink theme. It's Banner Time!!!So for this project you will need the following:

1. Cardstock paper (in 2 colors)          5.Rubber cement glue
2.1 sheet of white poster board           6.Glue gun & glue
3. Ribbon (in desired color)                 7.Scissors
4. Glitter                                               8.Tweezers

So in order to begin this project start with the color scheme that your going for. Ours was centered around the color pink. The second thing is decide how big you want your letters to appear on the banner. Our letters were 3 1/2 inches. Now if you don't have the money to buy letter stencils you can do what we did which was make our own. First we went to our handy dandy computer and used the PowerPoint program to make letters to the desired size we wanted. It'll take you a couple of letters at a time to print based on how big you decide to make your letters and we used a light shade so we didn't end up using a lot of ink to print our letters.

 

 

The next step we did before putting glitter on the letters was to first cut them out after printing them. Then pasted them on the white poster board to make the letters more sturdy since regular paper is lightweight.

 

 

 After we let the letters dry for a bit (about 20min.) we cut out the letters once more. Once you have all the letters cut out the fun and messy part begins. The Glitter!($2.99 @Michaels) We once again used the rubber cement on the letters and covered each letter completely in glitter. We grabbed our tweezers and shook out the access glitter then put the letters on a sheet of paper.(*The tweezers are easier to move the letters since you might have glue on your hands!)  Do all the letters and leave them on the sheet of paper overnight, just to make sure the rubber cement sticks with the glitter on the letter.

 

 



 

Now to make the background for your letter. We decided to make a simple flower. We used to different shades of pink of cardstock paper (8for $1 @Michaels) to go with our nieces pink theme. Make sure you count exactly how many you will need or use before you begin. Also its always a good idea to make an extra 2 of each. Just in case you make a mistake you have a back-up. Remember we are new to this too! So it's okay if you make a mistake. For the bud of the flower we used the lid of a condiment from our house which was a 1/2 an inch larger then our letters. We outlined on the opposite side of the paper since no one person can cut a traced line perfectly. You won't be able to see the traced line in the front. I found a pretty simply design of a flower which was about an inch larger than our bud. Trace the same way on the opposite side of the paper, and we were lucky to get 2 flowers from 1 sheet of cardstock paper. So in the end you will have three parts of your banner before you put the flower together. 1.the letter, 2.the bud, and 3.the flower.

 

 

So now comes more FUN! Putting it together!

 

Think of it as a puzzle. First using your rubber cement glue the bud to each of the flowers. Let them dry for at least 20 mins. Yes that long just to make sure it does fall off when you add the letters. Remember the glitter adds weight to the letters. Then using your handy dandy tweezers grab a letter and this time using your glue gun (Cause you really want these suckers to stick!) put some glue to the back and quickly place the letter on your flower. Carefully with the tweezers put some pressure to the letter onto the flower to make sure they stick. Then leave the flowers on a clean surface. We put ours on the floor and left them overnight. I say wait about an hour before you hang them. You don't have to leave them overnight as we did. It's just we did ours in the evening and honestly, we were tired.

 







 
So next we used regular wrapping ribbon I had in my collection of ribbons. (f.y.i. I like wrapping gifts in ribbon instead of putting an already made bow. I have a lot of ribbon!) First decide how you want each letter position before gluing each one on your ribbon. Use your hot glue gun and add dots to the back of each flower then quickly add to the ribbon. (Sorry this part might hurt!) Using your fingers press the flower with the ribbon so the glue spreads a bit and sticks. This might burn a little so sorry. I have burnt tips if that makes y'all feel a littler better. Have fun with this though and let your imagination run wild on how you want your banner to look like. And this is a preview on how it looks.

 

Remember, make sure you give yourself time to do these projects. They are suppose to be fun and bring out the creativity in you. If it becomes stressful or feels like a job or chore, Mmmm.... Maybe this is not for you. Good look and we always love hearing from you. Until next time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 







D.I.Y. Birthday Crowns

So this Saturday is our nieces' first birthday. Yay! And as every little girl in the world her theme is princesses. Specifically Cinderella. So Erika and I decided to volunteer to decorate for her party. I have to admit that at first we were so excited and had so many ideas going through our heads. Then the next day reality hit. Holy crap it's a lot of work! So I want to begin by writing that yes you can save a lot of  $$$  But it is a lot of work and takes patience especially for first timers  as ourselves. So think about that before you begin. I do love the people that do it though because you put your heart into making it one of a kind. So today in a series of D.I.Y. posts we will be posting, to follow the theme of princesses we are making paper crown party hats.
 

To begin we bought 4 sheets of large poster paper. 2 in blue and 2 in gold. We bought them at .99 cents each at Micheals craft store. The template for the crown we borrowed (*wink *wink) from our local Burger King. Thank you. It was the easiest design and we chose this because it also has slits on one side so any child can adjust the size of the crown. We bough these cute sparkling foam stickers at .79 cents each to add a little sparkle to the girls crowns and a silver marker to write and outline for the boys crowns.

 

Step 1: Trace the outline of the crowns on the poster . We managed to make four crowns out of one poster each. So we had sixteen crowns in total. Two extra from what we were told are expected at the party. Always make sure how many you need before you begin your projects or at least an estimate.







Step 2: Cut out the crowns and this is where you are going to need a little patience and a steady hand. Also a good pair of sharp scissors come in handy too. Remember we were able to get 4 crowns out of each poster board.

Step 3: This is the tricky part. Cut slits into the newly cut crown so the crown can be adjusted based on who wears it. Be careful. There is a tool to make this easier, but we used a regular box cutter we had and overlapped the crown we used to trace. The slits were already cut so we just used those slits as a guide. Also put something underneath so you won't damage any furnishings.

Step 4:This is where it gets fun start outlining the blue crown. You can make any designs you like. Just make sure you have a clean space and an open area to draw and move your hand swiftly and with ease. Remember once you made a mistake on this silver on blue crown its going to be hard to fix or erase.

And that's it! These are our finished outlined crowns. I Just wrote My 1st Birthday on each. I'm sorry I didn't photograph my nephews crown. His crown says "Big Brother" It's great because you can customize each one or have with the name of each child on each one . The possibilities are endless!










   

Now for the girls crowns we wanted to keep it simple since the paper was already a pretty gold color. We just added the sparkling foam stickers to accent each crown. We used the same marker to write the same as we did for the boys crowns and easy to do. At the bottom are to pics of me and how they would look like on. Sorry didn't have any make-up and my hair. (Never mind) Back to the crowns. So here are our ideas on how to make easy crowns and use them for party hats. More importantly we hope they help you save some money. In total for this project we spent about  $6.00 dollars! Now I don't know about you, but I think that's pretty great! Until next time!

              

 

 

 

Books, Books, and More Books!!!

Happy Sunday Everyone! I hope everyone is doing well today. As you all know my cousin and I live in Chicago and we would like to show you another great place that we love! Now personally I would like to say that I Veronica am a book NERD! I love me some books. What's great about this place is that it appeals to all. They sell cd's, dvd's, magazines, gift items, cards, and even vinyl! And all for about half the price you would pay in regular retail store. I would like to thank my friend Alex for introducing me to this hidden gem. Now to end the suspense. I am talking about....(drum-roll please!)  Half Priced Books!

The company has a couple of locations. This store is hidden in a little corner of the shopping mall at the Village Crossing shopping center in Skokie. But that doesn't stop people from finding and shopping in this little corner store. For more information check out their website at http://www.hpb.com/.

I like looking for dvds here not only because they are at a great price, but also you find your favorite and might I add popular movies and shows. They are also start to carry more Blu-rays. They have a variety of categories which include musicals, documentaries, and westerns to name a few. All the staff at this store is friendly and more importantly knowledgeable of what they have in stock and what is popular and give great recommendations on books! It does get busy so I usually go early in the morning on weekends or midday on weekdays.  

Find your favorite and current bestsellers. Especially teen books! We all know how some of our favorite series can put a hole in our wallet, but can't get enough. This store is for you. If your a first-timer make sure you give yourself enough time to look around because a girl can literally get lost in the rows and rows of books. Read a little, shop a little, buy a book tonight!!! Until next time. Happy shopping!