Look What We Made: Paint Chip Easter Egg Garland

I know this is a late post, but I still wanted to post it. For Easter I had the kids make an Easter egg garland out of large paint chip cards to go on our fireplace mantel. I got the original idea from here. I think the only thing we might have done differently from this site is our paint chip cards might have been a bit larger, and we didn't double hole poke the top of the egg for threading the string through. We just loved how this came out!

The first step was to have Hubby bring home about 20 paint chip cards from the home improvement store. I asked him to pick out 10 different colored cards in pastel colors--blues, greens, pinks, yellows, oranges, purples--and then grab two cards in the colors he chose. He did a great job!

For the next step, I simply found an egg image on the computer, blew it up to the size we needed, printed two copies, the kids cut that shape out and then used it as a template to trace onto the backs of the paint chip cards. I recommend tracing on the back of the paint chip because that way when time comes to cut out the egg, if little hands can't quite cut on the line, you don't have the pencil marks showing on the front of the paint chip. After all of that, we used our hole punch and made holes at the tops of the eggs for weaving the yarn through.

Lauren tracing her egg template.

Evan cutting out his traced egg.

Hole punching time.

Didn't they turn out nice?

Once all of that work was done, we laid all of the eggs down on the floor and put them in different orders until we found the line up that we thought was the prettiest. Then we weaved some yarn in and out of the holes to link all of the eggs together. I bet if we had double hole punched the eggs like in the original tutorial I saw they probably wouldn't have flopped around so much--we could always go back and add another hole next year if we wanted to. Once the eggs were all stringed together we noticed that the paint names on the chip cards were noticeable, and we were going to have to be fine with that until Son came up with a great idea to solve the flopping around problem and hide the names on the paint chip cards--double stick tape. Brilliant!

Didn't this turn out absolutely adorable?! And it looked so nice on our mantel. (I can't believe I didn't get a pic of it on our mantel! What was I thinking--or rather I wasn't thinking, huh?)

We also displayed some other Easter items on our mantel. Daughter had some stuffed bunnies she wanted to put up there, and the kids built some cute houses from kits I picked up at Michaels.

Yes, we do know what Easter is REALLY about--Jesus rising from the dead. Because of that, I love celebrating Easter more than I do Christmas. But, there is just a part of me that also loves the secular tradition of the Easter bunny, pastel colors, egg hunts, and the season of spring that brings new life in nature after a dead season of winter. So, I love to have reminders of all of that around me at this time of year. All of this sure did puts smiles on our faces.

Look What I Made: Yoyo Christmas Trees

We decided to make some homemade Christmas presents for some people this year and one idea was yo-yo trees. I had seen a tutorial on line for this over a year ago and wanted to attempt this last year, but didn't get around to it. I started before Thanksgiving and had so much fun. I made a total of 20.

A yo-yo is a term used in quilting. It is a piece of fabric cut into a circle and then the edge is tucked under a little and stitched all around. When you have finished stitching, you take the thread string from the beginning of your stitching and the thread string from the end of your stitching and pull them so that the fabric begins to close up into a circle; this is the yo-yo. A yo-yo tree is different sized yoyos stacked on top of each other. The pictures will make much more sense than me trying to explain it to you.

The first step was using my Cricket machine and cutting circles 3", 4", 5", 6", 7", 8", 9", and 10" in diameter. The card stock I had wasn't big enough for the larger size circles, so I made those sized circles with cereal boxes. Yep, the Cricket cuts cereal boxes=awesome!

Next, layer your fabrics on top of each other until it is eye pleasing to you. I chose to use a different patterned fabric for each yo-yo, but you could easily use as little as 2 different patterned fabrics and just keep alternating them--your the artist so the choice is yours! Beginning with the top layer, trace the 3" card stock circle onto your fabric, then the second layer fabric trace the 4" card stock circle onto that, the third layer fabric trace the 5" card stock circle, etc. Then, cut out all of the circles.

Thread a needle and begin sewing each circle, or yo-yo. Make sure to leave a tail at the beginning. The instructions I saw showed the yo-yo being stitched all the way around flat and then the tails pulled tight to enclose the yo-yo:

After doing a few yoyos like this, I realized I was wasting a lot of thread this way. So, I began pulling the yo-yo tight as I sewed and didn't waste as much thread:

How much thread do you need per yo-yo? I took my spool of thread and measured out enough thread for twice the diameter of each circle. For the larger yoyos, you will find that after pulling the tails and enclosing the yoyos and then cutting off your excess, that excess is long enough to use for some of your smaller yoyos on another tree:

Okay, so now you have all of your yoyos sewn. The next step is to slide them onto a dowel. You will have to cut a little snip in your yo-yo to make it slide onto the dowel. The thickness of the size dowel you want is totally up to you. I went to Michaels Arts and Crafts store and found a package of 20 dowels, I think 3/4" thick. You'll have to figure out the height to cut your dowels to based on the height of your trees--you may be making trees that are smaller (less yoyos), or taller (more yoyos). Hubby cut a dowel to the size we needed and used that as a template to cut all of the dowels the same size using his electric saw. I think with one dowel from the package, we were able to cut it into 2 or 3 pieces for the size we needed. Considering the package didn't cost very much, to be able to get 2 or 3 tree dowels from one dowel stick is very economical. You can see the dowel before it was cut in the following pics:

The next step I did was the tree topper. At Hobby Lobby I found a package of 24 different colored tiny ornament balls for 99 cents! I have seen other trees topped with buttons, or tiny wooden stars, so shop around for what you would prefer to top your tree with. Hubby worked his magic with one of his fancy tools in the garage and drilled holes into the balls so that they would sit on top of the tree. We then hot glued the balls onto the dowels.

Once the tree topper is glued on, slide your yo-yos back onto the dowel (you would have had to remove them to cut your dowel to size). Then, hot glue the dowel into whatever base you want to use. I found a package of spools at Michaels that fit my dowels perfectly. I'm sure there are all kinds of other things you can find that would make great bases. I will say that the spool may not be wide enough to fully support the tree, but if you maneuver your bottom yo-yo in a way that touches the table, or shelf, or whatever your tree is standing on, it will help your tree from tipping, which with the spools it can easily do if bumped.

I LOVE my trees!!! My church had a ladies gala last week and I decided to set up a table and try to sell some trees. I hadn't planned on doing this at all, but almost at the last minute I had so much fabric, and a lot of time to make trees, that I decided to give it a try. Out of 20 trees, I sold 9 and gave away one as a door prize. I think I want to make many more throughout the coming year and try selling them at a crafts fair or farmers market closer to next Christmas!

This tree has the traditional red, green, and white colors associated with Christmas.

This tree has some blue added into it.

This tree has some darker colors mixed together.

Look What I Made: Fleece Blanket

Aren't those fleece blankets that are simply tying together strips of the fleece fabrics together so cute? The best part--NO sewing! I've always heard they are easy to make, and they really truly are--I made one a couple of months ago to put in the play pen we leave in the TV room for my nephew to lay on. My first one and it was very, very easy. Just a little time consuming--maybe took a total of 2 hours? I split the work up into 2 days. Here is what I did...

Lauren and I went to the fabric store and found this cute dinosaur patterned fleece, and thought the plain red fleece went nicely with it. Lauren is very proud of this part because she is the one who spotted the dino print that we both fell in love with. I'm pretty sure I bought a yard of each.

The next step is to make sure each fleece fabric is the same rectangular length. They weren't quite even, so I attempted to free hand cut the fabrics into a nice rectangle. Mistake. I finally had to get out a tape measure to help me keep a straight line and I marked the lines off with a marker so I knew exactly where to cut.

There--a perfect rectangle!

The sides of my rectangle were divisible by 7, so in each corner I cut out a 7 x 7 inch square. This step makes it easier for when I go to tie my knots.

Next, I used the tape measure to mark out one inch increments along all sides for knot tying.

After the fringe pieces are cut, tie them into knots. A lot of people when they make these blankets simply take the two pieces of fabrics and tie them together like you are about to tie a shoe before the bow part. I saw a website which showed how to make these pretty knots I ended up making. You bring up the bottom end of the fringe and cross it in front of the upper part of the fringe making a hole, then bring the bottom end up from underneath the hole and pull the knot up to the top of the blanket line--like you are tying a necktie. I realize what I just said is probably clear as mud, but it makes sense in my head. Maybe the pics will help you understand better...

The kids actually enjoyed helping me tie the knots!

Here is the finished product, and here is what I think is a neat part of the experience...Before I even began this project, I knew I wanted to use it in the play pen. But, I never even thought to measure the dimensions of the play pen. Unbelievably, the blanket turned out to be the exact fit for the play pen (with maybe just a little fabric scrunching to make an exact fit). I was amazed!