Craftiness (aka temporary insanity)

I believe in self-awareness, so let me just put it out there that I am not the craftiest schmuck on the block.  I am probably not the least, but am certainly not the most.

For some reason though, I caught the crafty bug last month and went hog wild (for me).  Honestly, it must have been a full moon because the day that I went crafty was the same day that Myra flashed her boobies during story time.

All of that being said though, I am SUPER excited about how my projects turned out!

1. Sesame Street Gift Bags

Yes!  This is totally how they turned out; it not a picture stolen from Google images.  Promise.  

I am not going to lie, I am pretty proud of these.  They were a ton of work, but were relatively easy and cheap.  I bought 2 packs of 13 gift bags from Michael's and used construction paper to cut out the pieces for the faces.  I used double sided tape to adhere everything and VOILA!  Many hours and many f-bombs later, we had these amazing gift bags.  

I thought they looked pretty good, but I was the most excited when Moosey could immediately tell who they were.

2. Mistle"toes"

I saw this idea on Pinterest and decided to go for it.  Like I said, full moon.  Honestly this one took us many takes because toddler feet are fat and wiggly, but we finally got two awesome ones (one for each set of grandparents) and one decent one (for us).

How cute is that?!  Look at those adorable little toes.  :)

For this, I bought canvases (Michael's sells a 2 pack, which came out to be around $3.50 total after my coupon).  I also bought sponge brushes and acrylic paint.  I put the dots on, let it dry, and then we did the challenging part of putting on the footprints.

We did 6 canvases to get the 3 that we kept, so it truly wasn't easy.  The problem is that you can't instruct a 2 year old to keep their feet totally still and expect her to listen / understand.  Even with me holding her and Josh holding the canvas, she would slide her feet and curl her toes a bit.  Alas, though, we got three good ones!

After the feet dried, I used a Sharpie Paint Pen to draw the bows and we used a staple gun to adhere the ribbon.  All in all, relatively easy, very cheap, and super cute!

3. Ornaments 

This one is super simple and not really creative at all, BUT I did let my almost 2 year old (at the time) use acrylic paints on my dining room table, so that, in and of itself, deserves a shout out (or a slap in the face - what was I thinking?!).

The frames drying.

This is what my dining room table looked like after the frame

painting.  There is still some residual paint.  Oops.

We bought the plaster frame ornaments from Michael's and used the above-mentioned acrylic paints to paint them.  I used a Sharpie paint pen to write the year on each one (not pictured) and I ordered a bunch of wallet sized photos from her Christmas photo shoot and am going to put one in each frame.  Boom!  Easiest and cutest gift / keepsake ever.

A tip that I recently learned online.  You can use packaging tape to "laminate" photos for projects like this.  Genius, right?!?  I love the internet.

And that, my friends, is what we have been up to this month!  Why?  I have no idea.  I am just wondering if motherhood is like Girl Scouts.  Do I get a badge or something that will designate me as having been crafty (so that it doesn't have to happen again)??

My little artist.  :)