How-To: Fabric Hearts Bookmark

I made this little fabric bookmark for Jeremy's Valentine's Day gift. (We're going very low tech this year.) It only took about 2 hours so it's totally do-able for quick after-work or afternoon project. Plus it's super cute so just make one, ok? :)

Materials: fabric (any colors), contrasting (or coordinating) thread, scissors, pinking shears, paper for your templates, stick pins, a needle, an iron, and a sewing machine.

First, cut six squares out of the fabric that you chose for your hearts. Stack three squares, all right side up.

Next, cut out a heart template. Take a small piece of paper approximately the size of the heart you'd like to make. Fold the paper in half. Draw half a heart shape on one side of the folded paper. Make sure that when you unfold the paper you'll have a whole heart not two halves! Cut out the heart template. Place it on top of the three squares and secure it with a stick pin.

Using your pinking shears to cut down on fray, cut around your heart template to make three identical fabric hearts.

Next, take your heart template and cut an even smaller heart out of the center. This will be the template for the small heart. Repeat the above steps for the small heart.

Now, find the fabric you'd like as the base of your bookmark. Fold the fabric right side to right side. Lay out your hearts on the fabric so you get an idea of how large you'd like your bookmark to be. There should be enough fabric all the way around your hearts (at least a 1/4 inch) for seams. (FYI: I left a 1/2 inch all the way around so, in addition to the seam allowance, my hearts had a little 1/4 inch border.) Cut out your bookmark panels.

Separate your two bookmark panels. Arrange your hearts on one fabric panel (the bookmark front) to your liking. Pin your hearts and, using your sewing machine, sew a straight line from the top of the panel to the bottom, vertically down the center of each heart, anchoring everything in place. (I'm sorry there is no picture of this step. To get an idea of what this looks like, jump two pictures ahead.)

Next, place the other fabric rectangle right side down on top of your bookmark front. Line up your edges and pin down the left, right and top sides. Sew, leaving the bottom open for turning.

Once the three sides are sewn, turn your bookmark inside out and press with a hot iron. Make sure to poke the corners out to get your bookmark as square as possible.

Turn the bottom of the bookmark inside a 1/4 inch and press, leaving a nice straight edge.

Blind stitch the bottom edges together. Click here for a blind stitch tutorial.

For added detail I zig-zag stitched around my completed bookmark in the same thread color as my center seam.

Enjoy endless (cute!) hours of reading!

How-To: Postcard Calendar Journal

In the beginning of December I was looking at Design*Sponge and was smitten with this lovely calendar. Each day you write a little blurb about what you did - like a mini journal entry. This continues through the years and the life of the calendar. It seems like a real keepsake :)

On New Years Eve we were invited to a party and thought that this would make a perfect host/Christmas gift. It was pretty easy to make. You can make it too if you follow the tutorial here.

We bought most of the paper supplies at Walmart so we saved money there. We picked up the mega-index cards there - 2 packs of 100 - and the paper cutter. The date stamper and ink pad came from an office supply store (Walmart only had the self inking). The postcards (50 cents each) and enamel container ($6) came from a local antique store.

Jeremy cut all of the index cards in half with the paper cutter. He cut about 5 at a time, running the blade back and forth over the cards 2 or 3 times. The postcards didn't need to be cut. They were actually about a half inch smaller than the halved index cards.

When it was time to start stamping dates (remember, no year!), I began at Dec 31. That way I didn't have to reverse-sort every card in the set when I finished. That saved some time.

Also after I inked the stamp with the date, I put the index card on top of some scrap paper. Since I couldn't avoid inking the year on the stamp I just let that portion of the stamp hang over the right edge of the card. The scrap paper worked perfect for catching all of those "2011"s :)

The cards fit perfectly into the enamel container and were finished off with a little holiday ribbon.

See Ashley's full calendar tutorial on Design*Sponge.

How-To: Magnetic Menu

Jeremy and I have been talking about planning out weekly menus for a few weeks now. Taking pencil to paper just never seemed to work out - either we'd forget to make the list before the grocery store or we'd sit at the kitchen table thinking about what we knew how to make over and over every week. I decided it was time to simplify and here you have it, Ladies and Gentlemen - the Magnetic Menu!

Materials: printer, contact paper, scissors, and magnetic tape.

First, pick a font for your menu items. DaFont is a great place to go for free ones. I chose Stinky Kitty and Lullaby. Type a list of all of the meals you make - fancy, basic, for special occasions, whatever! Don't forget to also type out the days of the week.

Next, cut out all of the meals.

Cut a piece of contact paper large enough to fit all of your items. Peel the backing off the contact paper, lay it sticky side up on the table, and stick your menu to it, either face up or down. I arranged the items in rows so they are easy to cut out.

Next, cut another piece of contact paper the same size as the first, pull off the backing, and stick it - sticky side down - to the first piece so that the menu is now between the two sheets of contact paper.

After running your finger over and around all items to make sure that the contact paper is good and stuck, cut everything out.

Lastly, cut strips of magnetic tape wide enough to cover the back of each item but not wide enough to be seen around the edges. For longer items I used two magnets, for shorter ones I cut the strips in half. Remove the tape from the magnet and stick it to the back side of each item.

Now you have a magnetic menu that helps you plan out your meals for the week! Don't buy excess at the grocery store - don't get in a food rut - eat healthier - save time - save money. What's not to love??

O, Christmas Tree

Our tree is a little different this year. We used to have a beach theme, living in Myrtle Beach. Most of our decorations were ocean or tropical looking. Jeremy used to hang seashells all over instead of Christmas balls. We've tamed it down this year and really LOVE how the tree looks.

Jeremy even got crafty this Christmas and made us a new garland. He took a big, circular hole punch and punched a boatload of circles. He took the circles and put two back to back (white side to white side) and fed them through the sewing machine, pair after pair. It only took him an evening to make and it looks great on the tree. It's so low-cost that if you don't like it when next Christmas rolls around you can ditch it and start again!

Here are a few close-ups. I love my sock monkey and clip-on birds!

A snowboarding dog and Scuba Santa!

Did you know he can also do the hula?

Stay tuned for more Christmas fun!

Fishing and Knitting

I worked on All You Can Eat a little bit more this weekend.

For some reason my camera isn't taking the greatest pictures lately. Maybe I should ask Santa for a new one :)

I also learned some knitting basics this weekend - my aunt and cousin taught me. Right now I'm just fooling around a little. I'm figuring out how to purl. Cyberseams on YouTube has helped me get through some problems. When most instructions are geared towards right-handed people its hard to be left-handed and follow along. Cyberseams has a ton of tutorials for lefties.

Learn to knit with me!

Today's Forcast: 100% Chance of Clouds

I've been thinking about putting a label cloud on my blog for a while now and finally decided to give it a try. Scroll down and let me know what you think!

I followed this super easy tutorial from phydeaux3. If you're completely lost as to where the "/b:skin" tag is just keep scrolling down, down, down under your Edit HTML tab. You'll pass section headings like Posts, Comments, Sidebar Content, Profile, Footer and then - bam - there it is. Just follow the directions in the how-to. If everything works smoothly you'll see the label cloud when you preview your blog. If you're unhappy with the black-and-blue color scheme you can change it buuuuuut, the link to the "RGB Color Code Chart" in the tutorial is broken. Follow this link instead where you can see RGB codes for 216 colors and even how the color will display. Perfection!

Happy clouding!

How-To: Idea Book

There are so many ideas that I have for the new house. I've been holding on to years-worth of magazines (Domino, Dwell, This Old House, etc) planning to look back at them when it comes time to work on the house. The problem is now I'm running out of space for all of the magazines. As I was attempting to tidy up the house yesterday I had a great idea. I decided to clip out all of my favorite photos and articles from my stash of magazines and put them all in one place - an organized Idea Book. (The full tutorial is also on my flickr in my How-To collection!)

Gather your thoughts by gathering your favorite pictures and inspiration is at your fingertips!

Materials: 3-ring binder, dividers w/ tabs, clear pocket binder sheets, glue, scissors, magazines, pictures, drawings, etc.

Decide how you want to organize your book. My book is for home design inspiration so my tabs reflect the rooms in my house. I chose to print out labels to use in my binder tabs. You could just as easily write out the tabs yourself. Some tabs are even formatted to run through a printer. Just remember to print out two of each label so both sides of the tab are labeled.

If you decided to print out your labels trim them up so they fit on the tab insets included with the binder dividers. Use glue or tape, whatever you have around, to stick the labels to the tabs - one on each side so you can see them no matter which way you flip through your book. I used a glue specifically for paper crafts (Elmer's Craft Bond).

Once finished your labels should look like this...

Insert your labeled tabs into the dividers - oh, so pretty.

This is an exercise in consolidation so gather up your favorite magazines, pictures, drawings, blog posts - anything you've been holding on to or frequently look to for ideas. Clip away!

Once you have all your favorites clipped out throw all those stacks of old magazines away! Aaah, isn't that liberating? After all everything you refer back to those stacks for is now in a neat little pile on the table.

The good thing about clear plastic binder pages is they're perfect for magazine articles - you can still see both sides! Bits and pieces that aren't full pages can be glued/taped/stickered to printer paper, even construction paper for more color. You can even scrapbook it up with text, photo corners, anything you want.

Now categorize your pages under the correct binder heading and voila! You're finished! At least for today. Add on when ever you feel the urge.

Here are a few pages that I made for my Home Idea book...