Tiny Roses

tiny felt roses
My grand daughter, Leah, spent the day with us yesterday while part of the family gathered to watch the car races. She loves having what she calls a shing dig and she loves serving munchies. That is,for the most part, finger foods.Not really a sit down meal, but things you can pick up with you fingers and walk around with while you eat.We manage to compile plenty of munchies which she carried, one bowl at a time,out to Pop's  "pouting room" (the garage) where the rest were anxiously waiting to watch the race.She loves serving folks,too.When she had a free minute, she was sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, making jewelry for some of her little friends at school. She had made herself a bracelet last week, with beads she found in my craft room, and some of her friends gave her orders for one of their own.I think she had about 4 requests, but only got 2 completed this weekend. The other two will have to wait another week, at least. I had made up a few little tags the day or so before, so I let her use a couple of them. I showed her how to type up the words to go on the tag s in a pretty font.She wrote....This bracelet was made for you by Leah Painter 2012.....then we shrank the words and printed them out in a pretty red font,cut them tiny and glued them on the name tags I had made earlier.

Leah's tags for her home made bracelets.Sorry. I failed to get a picture of the little bracelets.

I can hardly wait to  hear the reaction she got from her friends on the bracelets. I told her she might be a "trend setter" in her school. I also explained to her that her friends could ,hopefully,persuade their parents to take them to Walmart or Michael's and buy them some beads to make more jewelry for themselves and their friends.Leah agreed with me on the fact that many parents don't spend enough quality time with their kids teaching them such things as this.Leah never knew about the beads until now and she is 11. It's a great past time for little girls her age.Something they can wear and show off to their friends.Leah made hers in blue and white. She loves the Kentucky Wildcats. Another friend likes Louisville so her bracelet was in red.
The following day, I took the time to work with the tiny roses for some future tags. I decided to make them from felt, although there are multiple materials one could use to create all type of flowers. I have pictured the different steps I used to make the roses.

cut the felt in narrow strips

notch the tiny strips on one side and round off the corners on the ends

run a tiny line of glue along the strip and roll up like a jelly roll then set it aside to dry

cut your green felt into tiny squares rounding each one off in the shape of a leaf.Put a tiny dab of glue on one end and pinch the leaf together on that one end.When the leaf dries, glue one or two onto the tiny rose. Now they are ready to attach to your project. In this case ,my tags.Use your imagination as to what else would look pretty with the rose.Baby's breath, a ribbon,some lace,etc.Let your imagination run wild.

Tags,Tags,Tags

I love making tags. I have cut out lots of free hand tags and I have ordered a tag punch off E-bay.Although I enjoy making tags from both methods, I think I prefer the more personal touch with the home made, hand cut tags. 

The tags cut with the punch are nice and uniform, and I do like them, but part of the joy for me is in the mixing and matching of the pretty paper and fabrics on my home made tags. I am not neat and orderly and organized in my crafting, like many of the bloggers I read. My crafting is more of a hap hazard, hit and miss nature.I'll try anything once,maybe twice. If I enjoy a particular craft, I will use it again. If not, I'm done with it, for the most part.

The bottom picture is some of the tags I made today for my hand made items. I have no plan as to what I will do with all of the crafts I have made and accumulated, but they will have pretty tags,no matter where they end up..

I enjoy making the pretty tags as much, if not more, than making the item it is used on.Go figure!

Another Landfill Save

This project started out as an attempt at a Primitive project, but quickly turned into more of an Americana project.The shelves where I keep my partially used cans of paint, were not lighted good,plus the caps were missing on many, so you know the rest of the story.The color of paint I thought I was using turned out to be blue instead of black.No need to get bent out of shape over the color. I just proceeded to make an Americana pencil holder of sorts.A great project I can use to keep little ones involved on Monday.They will be out of school, so they will be coming for a visit.I'm hoping it will hold their interest for a few minutes anyway.

The only supplies needed was (1) a can.

 I recycle all cans,so there are several clean ones in the holding bin.

(2) A piece of pretty paper of their choosing,I have loads of pretty paper.

(3)a strip of fabric of their choosing of which I have loads.

(4)glue and I have several bottles of glue.

(5)Lettering of their choosing

Not such a hard project.It's just a matter of keeping them at it, until it's finished. That's the hard part.
Leah is 11 and John is 7, and neither of them likes to work at any one project for very long.Hopefully, I can hold their attention until the cans are completed.Maybe if I offer to post their can pictures, they will do a better job.