To create my Dr. Seuss inspired trees I had to dye cotton balls. It got me thinking, there are a ton of household items that you can dye. Here is my quick tutorial on dyeing cotton balls plus 9 10 other household items (meaning things you can pick up at the grocery store).
1. How to Dye Cotton Balls
Supplies:
Rubbing alcohol, food coloring, cotton balls (duh), and a plastic baggy. Gloves and newsprint are a nice bonus.
Steps:
Throw cotton balls into a baggy with a few drops of food coloring (I was trying for a turquoise in the middle picture… Needed way more blue) and a splash of alcohol. Remove the air from the baggy and squish the cotton balls around until the are evenly colored. Pour them out on a newspaper to dry. When dry you can fluff the cotton which will reveal the white making the colors much lighter. You can see the final product on my Dr. Seuss inspired tree centerpiece.
My youngest son turned 1 last week. I’d love to say I had it all together, realized that Dr. Seuss’ 100th birthday was occurring and picked the perfect theme for Conlan’s First Birthday. Alas, I would be lying… I wanted a Dr. Seuss themed birthday for McClain’s first (two years ago) and ordered the licensed plates, napkins, etc. The decorations came exactly one day after his party and were promptly shoved in the basement. I got my Dr. Seuss theme on the second go-around.
To complement the purchased party items I made a few decorations. Some Seussian-like trees for the wrapped box centerpiece and hand-dyed crepe paper ruffles.
While, I imagine that very few people will need to recreate the trees I think I may just give a run-down on how to make them next week. It might be fun to do something whimsical like that for Christmas.
Balloons and Streamers! Can’t have a birthday without them.
The guests (adults and kids alike) enjoyed the balloons. They made great decorations in the colors of red, white, turquoise, and yellow & doubled as entertainment. Everyone seemed to enjoy the basic snacks and of course a color themed cake. Conlan, seemed to enjoy all the extra attention.
Okay… Maybe Conlan enjoyed the balloons more. Oddly, he was not smiles about the cake.
While, the Dr. Seuss theme looked great and added nice color pops to the family photos (yes, I keep my friends off my blog) I did manage to miss getting one awesome picture. The cake smash! Why? Because Conlan was totally NOT about it. He stuck one hand in, and looked at me to wipe it off. Patrick gave him a taste of the icing, and he promptly made a face like it tasted horrible. Clearly he is missing some important sweet-tooth gene I should have passed to him. Anyway, enjoy one more photo of decoration details and scroll down for the connected tutorials.
The following is a quick and easy tutorial on creating faux cherry blossoms from crepe paper. I have followed the rather tedious tutorials on making different crepe flowers before. Yes, they look lovely… But with two small children underfoot I will sacrifice a bit of my accurate-compulsive tendencies artistic integrity to make a final arrangement that beautifies my space. And doesn’t take 30 damn hrs to painstakingly cut tiny petals. So read on for Quick and Easy Cherry Blossoms:
Supplies (For some reason I always want to type ingredients here…)
Shown: Glue Gun with glue sticks (don’t run out!)
Crepe Paper
Scissors
Floral wire that matches your branches (this is optional)
Not Shown: Branches
Spray Paint
Step 1
Take your crepe paper and accordion fold it up. In this picture I am using two shades of hand dyed crepe paper (You can see the tutorial here). I make it as thick as I can still cut because I hate cutting. Cutting, to me, is just a process to get through before the fun begins in crafting. So thicker = less cuts.
I know you are surprised, but I am also one of those people that will die carrying in 4,000 bags of groceries instead of making two trips. So go ahead fold that puppy up thick!
Step 2
Cut out a circle-like shape. Trust me here, no need to go get a compass. As long as it ends up kinda rounded you are all good. I thought about using a circle punch (might have given up trying to find it in the basement) but I like the more organic shape in the end.
That lovely variegation is why I go to the trouble to hand dye my crepe paper. But for even quick and easier methods just go buy a couple shades of pink.
Step 3
Here is where the magic happens! Take your petals to the bedroom… Just Kidding! The magic I am discussing is what makes crepe paper so nice for creating organic items like flowers. Pull lightly on the outer edges of the petals. The crepe will stretch a bit and ruffle; making for a more realistic looking shape.
And here you can see what I meant by only needs to be kinda circular. Such an amazing cutting job.
Step 4
Take your super-technical-amazing-implement, in this case a pen and wrap the petal around the bottom to make a cup shape. You may have done the exact same thing on a pencil eraser as a kid to make tissue paper crafts. I couldn’t find a regular pencil in the house so a pen worked just as well.
Step 5
Technically at this point you are done. The flowers look pretty just laid on objects. You can see inspiration by clicking here. However, to fully assemble a branch you will need, well… A branch. For mine I used some old maple limbs from the yard that I spray painted white. Since they didn’t have a lot of small limbs I made extra places to glue the flowers with matching white floral wire. Again you can see the final result here. Simply use a tiny dab of hot glue and stick on a flower.
Notes:
To make thicker flowers that look fully open try gluing two smaller flowers together. Also for tight buds twist the petals tightly together around the pen. I was able to make 40 or so flowers in less than half an hour. It is always a race to see who will finish first. Me with the craft or Conlan with his nap, so, I know this one was quick and easy. I hope you all enjoyed.
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Spring is heralded by the appearance of flowers, singing of birds, and greening of everything. While it isn’t quite Spring-time I am beyond ready for a little bit of growth. To celebrate the coming season change I worked on creating faux cherry blossoms and branches from old maple limbs and hand-dyed crepe paper.
Flowers? Check. Green? Check. Now if it was really Spring.
The tutorial for creating these blossoms is quick and easy. The mantel itself, just required stealing borrowing a few rocks from the garden and moss from the neighbors shady backyard. Don’t worry I’ll put them all back very soon. Well at least the moss. The rocks are probably getting moved to a new position in the garden anyway.
The quick and easy crepe paper blossom tutorial leaves out the visual steps of spray painting branches white and hot gluing the blossoms down. Mostly because I really hope everyone can read the can of spray paint and use a glue gun… If not then I suggest you run, not walk, away from the rest of the tutorials. Anyway, here are a few more details. Make sure to check out the how-to for creating your own blossoms.
Creating a thick tissue paper fringed garland add a lot of texture to my Spring Photo Wall. As an added bonus one single sheet of tissue paper will give you 4-6 feet of garland depending on how puffy you want to make it. The picture below shows a single sheet of yellow tissue paper turned into the piece of garland:
If anyone has a shorter name for this project please speak up!
Supplies
Tissue paper
Scissors
Sewing Machine
Step 1
Cut a single sheet of tissue paper into thirds down the long side of the paper. Because I am lazy I folded mine in half to cut as you can see in the photo. After cutting the paper into thirds fold each third down the long/lengthwise side. This makes cutting the fringe much easier.
I know that is a lot of folding cutting instructions… But basically make each piece as long as possible.
Step 2
This is either the very easy or very time consuming part of the project. Cutting the fringe. I stacked all three pieces that were folded in half to cut the fringe. Sure that is six layers… But six layers of tissue paper is still pretty easy to cut. You might not I have some awesome fringe scissors in the photos. You can cut them one at a time, but for 12 dollars fringe scissors are awesome. You’ll see that I left a lot of room in the middle. I’ll explain why in the final step.
I’m just going to call these scissors of awesomeness.
Step 3
Unfold the tissue paper till each piece is flat and lay it on the sewing machine with the fringe on either side. For more detailed directions on gathering you can see the post on making Easy Crepe Paper Ruffles. But basically if you have a long stitch length and mess with the thread tension the tissue paper will gather itself a but to make the fringe fluffy and thick. When you get to the end of the first sheet just overlap about an inch and keep going sewing to make as long as a garland as you need. And then you are done!
I’m lazy so sometimes a little of the fringe gets sewn in the middle. Trust me it doesn’t ruin the effect.
Notes
Sometimes when I was sewing really fast the feeder teeth would rip a little hole in the tissue. It isn’t noticeable once the garland is done. The thick fringe hides any lazy mistakes imperfections.
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Supplies:
