She's Here!

Our sweet little Laney decided to make an earlier debut!  She arrived on February 1... four and a half weeks early.

Laney Elizabeth Tucker

February 1, 2013

5 lbs. 14 oz.

19 inches

We are adjusting to life as a family of five.  My brain is functioning at half mast and I've got some sweet dark circles under my eyes, but these are some precious times.   Our friend Amy Free helped us capture some of the early memories.

We've got our hands full, that's for sure... (reference the application of a jack hammer on Kyle's head in the picture below!)  Our hands are full and so are our hearts... big and full and about to bust, God is so very, very good!!

3 Easy DIY Baby Gifts

1. Easy Embroidery

Embroidery projects are so easy and rewarding. (A great couch project for when you're on bed rest, just sayin'.)  You don't need to know any fancy stitches to make a beautiful piece that you'll admire in your nursery for years to come.  I used this pattern from Amy Bindel.  It is no longer on her blog, so you'll need to print it from the pin if you're interested in using it.  Really you can use any drawing, just trace it lightly with a pencil on to your fabric and stitch over your markings.  

I have a lot of great resources on my Sewing Pinterest page for free embroidery designs and basic stitches.  Have fun with it, throw the embroidery rules to the wind and just stick that needle in the fabric and get started, I promise you'll thank me.

2. Baby Booties
Are you totally sick of my gray felt and pink bows yet?  I can't walk up the stairs a bunch, so I've got to squeeze every bit of creativity out of the supplies I have within reach.  I promise, there's only one more project I want to show you with my 68 cent sheets of felt, but I'll wait until Laney is born to reveal that one! :)  On to the current project... baby booties!

I used Tao of Craft's Modern Baby Bootie Tutorial to make these, but I did it with felt.  If I made these again I would definitely double up the felt to make it more sturdy or use leather like my Little Man Shoes from forever ago, remember those?!

3. Paci Clip

These are just the easiest to make, and don't you love this ruffly ribbon?!  Tutorial here.

How to Make Felt Hair Bows that Stick!

Finally, a hair bow that will stay in your little girl's hair when she doesn't have any!

I don't think I finally got hair until I was about 2 or 3 years old.  I'm sure my mom fielded a bunch of "How old is your son?" questions, and I'm anticipating the same for my little girl.  Since she's not here yet (anticipated c-section birthday on Feb. 25) you'll have to settle for me as a model. 

I did a bunch of research on which clips were the best and the secret trick to making the hair bows stay in.  You'll never guess what it is!  Drawer liner!

Let's get started!

You'll need:

• Felt bow (made using this template and tutorial)
• Sheet of felt
• Metal hair clip (similar style can be found here)
• Non-slip drawer liner (like this)
• Glue Gun
• Scissors

Have I told you before that I'm not very girly?  I'm not in to ballerinas and tutus and tulle.  No thanks.  When I was little I had a Mr. T lunch box.  Yes, the huge guy from the A-Team who didn't like to fly on airplanes and wore about 10 lbs of gold chains around his neck, yeah him.  I was obsessed.  Anyway, I inherited these hair clips and cut off the tulle so I could re-use the perfectly good clip underneath.  You could also buy the metal clips at Sally's Beauty Supply or I've even seen them at Michael's.

Once I freed my hair clip from all that ick I was ready to get started.  

Cut a strip of felt that's as wide as your clip and long enough to wrap around starting where my thumb is and continuing around the whole top portion of the clip.  It's key not to have any felt on the bottom of your clip because you want that part of the clip to be in contact with the hair directly.  Glue that down.  Be sure to open your clip so that you don't glue the clip closed.

Round off any excess felt.

Next, cut a piece of drawer liner that's as wide as your clip and as long as the inside top portion of your clip (remember we want to keep the entire bottom part of the clip clear of anything.)

 Trim off the excess shelf liner.

 It will look like this when you're done.

 Finally, hot glue your bow to the top of the clip and you're done!

Repeat until you're sick of making them or until your thumbs can't take any more hot glue gun burns, which ever comes first.

If you'd rather make these using grosgrain ribbon, Make It and Love It has an awesome tutorial and some sticky sweet baby pictures here.

Now you moms of girls will have to tell me how you like these.  Bonus points if you can remember any other characters from the A-Team!  I love it when a plan comes together!

How to Make An Elephant Doorstop (that's too cute for the floor!)

Can I show you how to make an elephant doorstop that's bursting with so much cuteness you won't want to put it on the floor?

The plan for this sweet thing was to have her hold my little girl Laney's door open, but the thought of kicking it out of the way every time I wanted to close the door made me change my mind... Miss. Elephant is now safely perched on top of Shel Silverstein on the bookshelf and far away from our feet.  Are you relieved?  I am.

Wanna make one?
You'll need:

• This pattern for the elephant
• This pattern for the bow
• Gray felt
• Pink felt
• Decorative scrap fabric
• Needle, embroidery thread and scissors
• Straight pins
• Plastic can gripper (that's my secret weapon!)
• Pebbles
• Stuffing

First, you'll want to print this pattern (landscape-style at 250%) and piece it together.   I always like to give credit where credit is due, but it was super hard to find out who originally created this pattern.  One source said it was from an old Family Fun magazine, so we'll go with that.

Use the pattern to cut each of your pieces out of felt.  For the ear pieces, I cut two pieces out of fabric a little larger than the pattern so that I could turn it under before stitching, and two pieces out of felt (for the backs of the ears).**

Now the fun part!  Piece the gray felt pieces together and pin them in place. Start whip stitching the elephant together (I started at the back of the elephant's heel and went up towards the butt.)  If you don't know what whip stitching is, check out this youtube video.  (You're going to thank me for the awesome music!)

One quirky thing about the elephant pattern is that it didn't include a tail pattern piece so I made up my own.  I just cut a rectangle piece of felt about an inch or so wide and about 2.5-3 inches long.  I snipped the ends of one of the short sides of the rectangle and then rolled the felt up, whip stitching the roll closed.  The picture above should help you.

The picture below is how I pieced the tail in.  You're looking at the inside of the elephant's butt.

Keep whip stitching around the rest of the elephant.  When you get to the trunk be sure to put in some stuffing WHILE you stitch it closed.  It will be super hard to get the stuffing in there if you don't do it this way.

Now for my secret weapon... pull out that freebie can gripper that you got at the fair (the flexible plastic one) and use it to grip your needle when it gets really hard to pull it through two layers of felt and the fabric on the ears.  Works perfectly doesn't it?!

**Be sure to follow my above instructions about the ear fabric.  If you cut the fabric a little larger than the felt then you'll have space to turn the fabric under before you stitch it to the ear backs (made out of felt).

One more important note... TRUST THE PATTERN!  While you're stitching, line up the pattern pieces you cut perfectly, don't start making adjustments to the pattern while you're stitching because you think it's not lining up correctly.

When you're all done stitching the elephant the underneath will have an open flap for stuffing.  Put the stuffing in first (just a bit in the bottom of the feet too) then fill in the rest of the legs and the underneath belly with pebbles for weight.  

If you're not planning on using your elephant for a door stop or a book end, just omit the pebbles and use only stuffing.

 As a finishing touch, I embellished with a pink bow using this pattern.

 Can't wait to show you the rest of Laney's room!  We're aaaaallmost done.

::My First Craft Show Mini Series:: Branding like a Pro for Cheap!

Hey My Friends, I hope you've had a wonderful weekend!  Ready for our next little chat about how to rock your first craft show?  I'm no pro, but I would love to share with you a few tips I've learned about branding so that you can make your craft show booth (and online shop) look like you spent a lot of money hiring someone to make a cohesive brand... when in reality you've spent next to nothing!

Let's get started!  If you're not already familiar with Picmonkey.com, you'll want to check it out... it's a totally free photo editing website.  You don't have to download anything on to your computer or sign up for annoying emails.  Next, read Jill's fantastic tutorial about how to make a resource like this site work for you.  Following Jill's tutorial and Picmonkey.com I was able to create all of my branding materials.

To create my logo I set up a Pinterest board and began pinning anything I liked... colors, shapes, font, feel, etc.  It was a nice way to start a daunting process, I basically just combined a lot of the ideas I liked and here's what I came up with:

I used my logo in this collage (the collage is another feature Picmonkey offers).  About two months before my show I sent my friends and family an email save the date and included the following two pictures.  (Surprisingly, I got a lot of orders even before the show started by doing this!)  I wanted those close to me to know that I was planning my first craft show and what I was going to be selling.  

Keep in mind when you're creating a brand that you want every touch a customer has with your business to include your logo or at least the "feel" you're trying to create.  Some of the places a customer might come in to contact with your brand are:

• Shipping materials
• Gift bags/packaging materials at your show
• Business card
• Enclosure cards 
• Online shop header
• Blog header
• Thank you notes
• Name tag at the show

My Etsy shop banner:

Here's my most favorite tip!  I ordered a stamp with my logo from Rubber Stamp Champ (right now they have free shipping on orders over $10!)  This is the one I bought and I upgraded to laser rubber since I knew I would be using this sucker a ton.  

I'm very pleased with the rough texture of the stamp, but if that's not the look you're going for you can always order a smaller size.  

I used the stamp on my business cards.  I bought simple business cards from vistaprint.com.  They were blank except for my blog, email and Etsy site addresses printed on the bottom corner, then I went to town stamping them.

I also used the stamp on some round printable stickers (Avery 5294).  Yes, you could just print from your computer directly on to the stickers and that would save a lot of time, but I liked the imperfect texture of the stamp, so I went that route.  Those stickers were used for my packaging, gift bags, gift wrap and my mailing materials.

And here I am modeling both a stiff smile and all of the branding in my booth.

I've said it before, but it's a good time to say again how important signage for your booth is.  Make a sign and put it up high enough that your shoppers can see it even if the booth is packed.  I made this sign by printing my logo out on computer paper, tracing the design on to freezer paper, then using the freezer paper stenciling method to print my logo on to a piece of fabric that was stretched in an embroidery hoop.  Lots of steps, but it's worth it because I'll be able to use this sign a ton.

Last but not least, my enclosure cards... I whipped up this design on picmonkey then uploaded it to either snapfish.com or shutterfly.com (I can't remember which) when they were doing their penny print deal.  I got 200 of these for $2.00 plus shipping!  Score!

I love that every one of my customers will have a pretty picture of my product along with all of my contact information if someone asks them where they got their scarf or if they decide to order another color in the future.  Oh, and to save time I stuffed one of these in each of my gift bags before the show started.

Whew!  So there are all of my branding on a dime secrets.  I'd love to hear any ideas you might have.

Shower games they'll actually enjoy playing!

One of the questions I get the most is, "How can I make the shower I'm throwing special?  Do you have any good game ideas?"

Shower games are tricky.  As a general rule I don't usually enjoy playing shower games because I've found that a lot of them are either:

A) way too time consuming (when people really just want to enjoy a fun, relaxing afternoon and then hit the road) or 

B) they are gross (like the ones that make you eat baby food or guess what candy bar is melted in the diaper... yuck!) or 

C) they are distracting (like the game where you can't say a certain word or the person who heard you say that word gets to steal your clothes pin).  Come on, that's annoying when you're trying to have a conversation with someone.

My favorite games are SUPER simple and incorporated into the unwrapping of the gifts (to keep the party moving!)  

Baby/Bridal Shower Bingo is a great game!  Each person is given an empty grid that's five squares by five squares with the center square being the free space.  Before the gifts are opened each attendee will fill the empty squares with things that that person thinks the mom/bride will open.  This can be as general ("blanket") or as specific ("engraved silver cup") as you want to be.  The hostess will need to offer up  some ideas to keep things moving because inevitably people will not be able to fill the whole grid out by themselves.  Give them a couple minutes to fill out the grid then start the opening of the gifts.  As things are opened the attendees will mark them off on their grid.  The first person with five squares in a row marked off will yell it out "BINGO" and get a (good!) prize!!  

Free printable for the grid I use is HERE.

Another great game that I've done as a bridal shower game, but that could easily be changed into a baby shower game, is "How well do you know the bride?"  Each attendee will get a sheet of paper with lots of specific questions about the bride and they will fill it out.  (Make the questions as specific and obscure as possible, it's more fun!) then the attendees are given a very short amount of time... say, two minutes to fill it out.  The key with the short amount of time is that people will put their first gut response to the question and these end up being really funny! Then the hostess reads out the answers and the attendee with the most correct responses wins a (good) prize!

Free printable with sample questions HERE.

Have you ever noticed how awkward it is for the mom/bride at some showers to carry the conversation while she's opening each gift?  "Oh, more Desitin!  Thank you, baby's butt will sure be pampered thanks to you all!"  Rather than have the shower conversation be all about the gifts I like to have the conversation focus on the sweet relationships between the people there.  One way I like to do that is to have the mom/bride choose a gift to unwrap then either have her share how she knows the gift giver or have the gift giver share how she knows (or a funny memory about) the mom/bride.  It's a sweet way to take some of the pressure off of the mom/bride to speak the whole time and the gift-givers leave with full hearts because they have learned a little more about their new mom/bride friend!

Now let's talk prizes.  Prizes are the best way to get your guests' competitive juices flowing!  Make them good, no dollar store chotchkies please!  One of my favorite prize gifts to give is a Starbucks gift card.  Have the barista give you an empty, clear plastic, grande-size frappuchino cup with a few coffee beans in the bottom of the cup.  Insert the gift card then put a little bit of tissue paper in the top with the lid and straw... great presentation for a simple gift card!

Oh, and here is a link to all of my parties with lots of shower ideas thrown in. 

Having a sit-down meal at your shower?  Here's a way you can incorporate a simple question for each person.  Give people a minute to read their questions and think about it while they get their food then as everyone is eating, go around the room and answer your question.  What a sweet way to get to know the other important people in your friend's life!

What are your thoughts on shower games?  Am I too harsh?  Maybe you're one of the weirdos that actually likes guessing what candy bar has been melted in the diaper... ugh, come on, that's just nasty!