Snowman Advent Garland

Hi everybody.

Snowmen Advent Garland

Today I have a fun project to share with all of you. It's one of those projects that you "ohh" and "ahhh" over on Pinterest.... well, I created it and I just LOVE how it turned out. My two sons are excited to see December 1st arrive so we can start using it too. :)

So I started this project by purchasing some 2" vending machine capsules. While you can go and throw a bunch of quarters at one of those .50c vending machines, my way is cheaper. :) I bought these through an Ebay listing here:

This was the ONLY Ebay store I found that lets you choose your cap colors and the listing was for 25 capsules which is exactly how many I needed for this project. Perfect, right? :) I chose 1/2 red and 1/2 green caps. The caps become the hats for the little snowpeople. 

I started off prepping all the little clear capsules by spraying them with two coats of Valspar's Plastic Primer. This helps the paint stick without peeling, cracking or flaking. If you've ever spray painted plastic that flexes (like these little guys will when you open to fill or reveal the daily surprise will), you'll know how important this step is. 

Alternatively, you can fill the little capsules with shredded white paper if you want to skip the painting all together. It's really up to you, but I had the paint on hand and I thought it would make a much nicer finished project that can be used for years to come.

Next, I added two coats of flat white Valspar spray paint. Make sure you get down to the edges. I love Valspar brand paint because it coats well and doesn't drip like the cheap kinds. :)

While all that paint is drying, you can move onto the next step.

I used my drill gun and added two holes to the top of each cap / snowman hat. I used about an 1/8" drill bit, but it really depends on the ribbon you plan to string the garland onto. If you'd like, you can just use little wire ties to add these little caps to a garland you already have. That would look super cute too. 

I used a large eyed (embroidery style) needle to string my caps onto my 5/8" satin ribbon. I just alternated the colors to form the pattern. Super easy. :)

Okay, next I added Pom-Poms (bought at Dollar Tree) to the tops using hot glue. I added a dot of glue to the center of each cap and placed the pom-pom into the glue. Avoid gluing the pom-pom onto the ribbon. If you glue the pom-pom to just the cap top, the little snowmen can be slid on the garland if need be. 

See, they sure are starting to look like little hats now. Don't you think? 

When the painted capsules are all dry, I used black Tulip puffy paint to add the little faces, two larger dots for the eyes and five little dots for the mouth. I also added the numbers to the back of the snowman heads (but forgot to take a pic, sorry).

While I painted faces, my boys were trimming out simple snowman noses from scraps of orange felt. We applied them to the faces with a little dot of hot glue. Almost done. :)

The last few steps are easy... put your prizes, candies, slips of paper with holiday activities printed on them, etc into the capsules and snap them to the lids/hats. If you need more/less room between them, slid the snowmen on the garland. 

My boys wanted jingle bells on the garland, so we added them by tying them on using a little green sheer ribbon. These little bells will slide as well.

Don't you just love this little snowman face??? So cute but so simple too.

And here is our little sting of happy snowmen. Just awaiting their special day. :)

Here is a shot of the back of our snowmen. I used the same black Tulip Puffy paint to hand-draw the numbers. If you have a die-cut machine, you could use vinyl to add the numbers, but I loved the ease of adding these while I was drawing the faces anyway.

Please feel free to share this project. I am Pinning it using Pinterest here:

And here is my Pinterest.

DIY Bigfoot Costume for a Bigfoot Fanatic!!

Hi everybody!!

My son, Owen, as bigfoot.

Today I finally have a minute to have share the costume that I created for my 8-year-old Owen. He has been into Cryptozoology for over a year and he REALLY wanted to be Sasquatch for Halloween this year. I will take this blog post to take you on our Bigfoot Costume Journey! :)

We started with an Incredible Hulk mask ($2 from Goodwill) and a Bear in the Big Blue House ($10 at a re-sale) Disney Store fur suit costume. 

First I altered the Bear Costume to fit my son. it was about 2 sizes too big, I removed the face, the bean-bag belly and bottom, and used scraps to cover the yellow chest.

Here is the fur suit after the alterations. You can also see the unaltered Hulk Mask. :) I added bulk to the hood area to give him the Bigfoot shaped head too. 

I bought quite a few cans of fabric spray paint from Joanns (I used the 40% off coupon and they were still over $6 each). I used dark brown, medium brown and black. After many layers of paint and lots of money spent, I resorted to good old spray paint. It was smellier, but with the pre-planning I did, the smell has subsided well. You can see in the first picture, I have the costume hung on a hanger, but I found the coverage was much better when I stuffed the costume with paper. The dimension helped get even coverage without folds in the fabric.

 For the mask, first I sprayed the mask a combination of browns and black. Then I used scraps of the fur suit to add the fur around the Hulk face. I then touched up the fur.

With all that wonderful spray paint, the teeth were quite brown.... So we first added some off-white acrylic paint and then added some glow-in-the-dark paint.

Onto the feet!!!  I bought these feet on Ebay. They are a little hard to come by. They are called "Funny Feet" and were perfect for this costume!! First I cut off the tops and glued them to the tops of a pair of my old shoes. Owen needed slip on shoes with these feet, and I was the only one who had a spare pair.

Here, I used E6000 glue to attach the funny feet to the tops of the slip-on shoes. In case you were wondering, I had about a week from the time I ordered these feet to when they came, so I pre-painted my shoes for this project. 

I used zip-ties (or cable ties) to hold the tops onto the shoes while the glue dried. We let these set about two days. It was super hard the wait for the next step!!

Okay, first I tried spray painting these feet... don't do that.... it doesn't work.... the paint and the silicone material these feet are made of don't get along!! So the second step was strip all that spray-paint and apply one coat of acrylic primer and three coats of brown acrylic paint. 

The next step was to apply the toenails. I painted two coats of the toenail color (we used a cream color). Then I added a very fine mist of cream spray-paint to create a dirty look. Then, I applied two coats of an acrylic sealer.

See, look pretty Squatch-y don't they?? In case you were wondering, these measure roughly a size Men's 11!! Because they are mounted up off the toe, my eight-year-old had no problems walking in them... in fact, he had no problem running and playing in them!

Here is the completed mask/hood look. On Halloween, we are going to be underpainting Owen's eye's a brown so they don't stick out as much.

Here is Owen doing the classic bigfoot stance as seen in the Bluff Creek, CA pics by Patterson/Gimlin in 1967. See those impressive feet sticking out?? They make me so happy!!

And lastly, here is the candy bag Owen will be toting all his goodies in.... and in case anyone thinks he is a monkey, bear, or Chewbacca, it says he is a BIGFOOT!!!

I used two bandannas for the bag body (measuring 11' x 14 1/2") and lined it in black cotton. I created the logo using Photoshop and printed it on iron-on paper. I then ironed it onto yellow cotton and stiched it down to the camouflage fabric before sewing it into the bag.  Owen wanted it to be reversible, so we made another yellow logo panel for the black inside layers. Lastly, we added a black nylon cross-body strap so he doesn't have to hold it while trick-or-treating.

Here are some quick "before" and "after" pics I just had to share:

And in case you were wondering, before we started this costume we were searching and searching for a diy, instructions or tutorial for a Sasquatch or Bigfoot costume and THERE WERE NONE TO BE FOUND!! So, this costume run-down is our contribution to all those other people looking for directions for creating their own Bigfoot costume. :)

Lego Mini-fig Storage

Hi everybody,

Today I have a super fun project to share that was entirely inspired by my son, Bryce. He loves his Legos and been collecting Lego Mini-Figurines (Minifigs) for about a year now. He loves those little mystery ones in the foil pack but has some more rare ones too. Anyway, he wanted a way to store his minifigs so that he can see them, but still take them down and play with the occasionally. :)

This project was inspired by an Etsy item I found, I'll include that link at the bottom of this post in case the project is a little too involved for you (or the Lego Lover in your life).  Okay, on to the project. 

You'll need the following supplies:

- a shadow box, either store bought, or thrift-store find like we did ($2 each @ Value Village)

- Spray paint for your frame - if it was a thrift store find or you'd like to change the color

- the backer for your frame (or wood, cut to fit, if needed)

- Spray paint for the backer board

- 2x2 Legos in the color of your choice (we used 42 of these found on Ebay)

- Saw-tooth picture frame hangers

Since we found our 16" x 20" frames for $2 at Value Village, we needed spray paint to make them match the room they are going to be living in. In my son's case, we are painting his room right now, and he is WAY into orange, so we went with an orange backer, orange Legos and a black frame. Three coats of black paint and the frames were good to go. :)

We cut our 1/4" birch plywood to fit the inside of our frames and sprayed them with Island Orange by Valspar. Here, Bryce is modeling how well it matches his orange shirt. :)

Next, we used painters tape to attach the template we made for the Lego placement. I used an Exacto Knife to cut all the rectangles out so I can glue the Legos into place with the template attached. It worked out perfectly. Yeah! :)

If you'd like to download my template, it will be added to the bottom of this post.

Here you can see how I placed the Legos on their side into the template holes.

See, they went in perfectly. So easy.

Here is the backer board, all the Legos in place... gotta love that shiny finish too.

And this is the backer board mounted inside the newly painted black frame....

.... and loaded up with Bryce's favorite Lego minifigs. I have most of the supplies to assemble a second frame for Bryce's collection. I just have to get ahold of some more orange 2x2 Legos.

I just love how the Legos blend in to create the effect of the minifigs floating in the frame. Just perfect. 

Here is the Etsy store that inspired us to create our own minifig storage frame. 

Miss Iris Creations on Etsy

This one is wonderful and all, but for $25.99 plus $12.00 shipping (for a total of $37.99), I knew I could do better. Our frame cost us only $13.50 to built... and ours store 42 minifigs while the Etsy one stores 28.

And last but not least, here is my template for the Lego placement on a 16"x20" backer board. It can easily be altered for a smaller frame too. 

To save the template, click on it to open it in full size, then just right click to save it. 

Or you can download it using 4Shared (free file sharing)

Just print the file onto multiple sheets and then assemble to become a full size template. The directions will print directly on the template.

Enjoy! Please feel free to link to this page to share your creations too. I'd love to see them. :)

Framed Scrabble Board

 Thanks for stopping by the Things I LOVE Blog Hop featuring the Thankful Thursday Design Team!

If you came from Sharon's Blog (Simply Sweet by Sharon) you are in the right place.

If you just came across this hop and would like to start from the beginning, please go back to Jenny's blog (Crazy About Cricut).

Today, my two boys are sharing a fun and easy project for your kids to help create!

We made this Framed Scrabble Board for my Mother-in-Law, Sue. Including my kids, she has eight grandchildren! We really wanted to make one for my hubby's grandma too, but she has 12 great-grandkids and we simply couldn't fit all the names on one scrabble board!!

For this project you'll need a scrabble board, tiles (we needed two sets of tiles so we had enough of the more frequently used letters), hot glue / glue gun, and a shadow box frame.

We hit thrift stores by the batch to try to find a scrabble board and tiles with no luck. I ended up having to buy two scrabble boards for this project. I hated having the brand new tiles and boards, I really liked the more aged look of our old board (it's dated 1942).

This is the board that came with our new games.... long story short, my boys traded me their cool old, aged Scrabble board for this shiny new one. :)

See, don't you like the age and character of the old one better? Anyway, we set out all the names we needed to include, added a couple little touches to the corners and some love too. 

Then we glued everything down with hot glue. Try to keep your spacing uniform between the letters, they don't all butt up together to fit nicely on the playing squares.

I didn't like the nice, clean, new, unused looking tiles, so I hit the letters with my heat gun. I just used my heat embossing gun, but a hair dryer might work too. This little bit of heat gave the tiles a lovely darker sheen that I just LOVE!

Next, I found the 16" x 16" shadow box frame at Craft Warehouse. Now, my board was a wonderful 14 1/4" square, but the new board I bought was not the wonderful square that my fun old board is. If you plan on making one of these fun boards, you might want to take that into consideration when choosing your board.

I glued the board to the top of the mat that came with my frame.... and wallah!! LOVE IT!!

Okay, now don't forget to comment for your chance to win Jenny's prize:

Your next stop in the blog hop is:

Heather @ Paper Junkie Designs