Giant Origami Flower

Want to see what happens when you have a little time, okay a lot of time on your hands and a bunch of extra scrapbook paper??

This thing turned out to be even bigger than a basket ball! I have it hanging in my craft room so that I can admire my work every time I am crafting. I am so full of it! Okay it's the truth I do find myself staring at it sometimes. Each petal of the flower is 1 piece of 12x12 paper so ya it took a lot of paper. If you are like me and hoard scrap booking supplies this just might be the craft for you. Just make sure you have lots of glue sticks on hand.

I made a smaller one too.

For this one I cut 12x12 sheets of paper into four 6x6 squares.

For the life of me I cannot find the instructions for this in my craft room, I guess
I am not as organized as I thought. I picked up the instructions a few years ago
from a local scrap booking store in Salt Lake City.
After doing a little searching on the web I found a video on Shine from Yahoo
that shows how to make each individual flower you can view it here.
In the video they used tape to hold the flower petals together.
 On mine I used hot glue because I did not want to have the whole thing fall apart
 before I was done making it. In the video they make one flower so
 if you are going to make a ball you will need to make 12 flowers and then
glue them together creating a flower ball. Don't forget to glue
a ribbon in the center if you want to be able to hang your giant flower.



 

Mother's Day Gifts

It's almost Mother's Day! It's time to get my crafting on... I needed a little inspiration so I stopped by Michaels Craft store a few day's ago. I ended up finding so many idea's it was hard to choose just one. I do have a passion for making soap so I grabbed a few soap supplies and some super cute paper while I was there. Then headed home to create a Mother's Day gift.

  I decided to make lavender oatmeal and apple heart soap. They turned out really cute and I am so excited to give them to my Mother!!

Supplies needed:

clear glycerin soap (Michaels)
white glycerin or goats milk soap (Michaels)
fragrance for soap (Michaels)
soap coloring
large plastic or glass measuring cup
tin foil
bread loaf pan or loaf sized container
mixing spoon
cheese grater
cutting board
knife
a small spray bottle filled with rubbing alcohol
oats- if you are going to make lavender oatmeal soap, I chose to use quick oats instead of regular because I wanted my oats to be a little smaller

**Michaels also carries soap making kits with all the soap supplies needed in them**

Start out by forming a piece of tin foil into a square by pinching the foil to create sides. I learned this on YouTube, super handy trick!
Place cut blocks of clear glycerin in a large measuring cup. Put the measuring cup into the microwave and microwave soap in 30 second increments, stirring every 30 seconds until the soap blocks are melted. Next stir in your color and fragrance, pour melted soap into foil form.

You want to wait until the soap is hard enough to form into a heart. Keep you eye on it because it hardens really fast. I had to re-melt mine a second time because I waited too long. Once it is firm enough to handle but still warm and flexible remove the foil. Trim a little off each end so that it fit's  into your form. Keep the extra soap that you trim off for later. Roll each end into the center to form a heart shape. Make sure that your finished heart is not taller than your form. Set aside.

Next get your cheese grater out and start shredding soap. I shredded a bar of white glycerin and the remaining soap that I trimmed off before I made my heart.

Next melt almost a whole container of white glycerin depending on the size of your form. I stacked cut bars of glycerin in my container to get an idea of how much I would need, don't forget to take in account the space that the heart will take up. To much is better than not enough. Pour a small amount of melted soap into the bottom of your form and place the heart into your form and hold in place until it stays by itself. Make sure your soap is not too hot or it will melt your heart and make a mess. Once your heart will stay in place spritz it with the alcohol to help the soaps stick together. Then fill the rest of your form until the heart is totally covered in soap. Make sure to pour your soap slowly so that it has a chance to fill the inside of the heart. Gently tap the container once it is full.

Spritz the top of the soap with alcohol again. Now sprinkle your soap shavings on top and gently press them into the melted soap so that they will stick when the soap cools.

Wait a few hours or even over night before removing soap log from form. If you used a plastic container gently pull sides of container away from soap, next turn the container upside down and put your hand underneath the container to catch the soap. Gently shake out the soap. If you are using a bread loaf pan run a knife around the edges before you turn it over and shake out the soap. It does help to put your soap into the freezer for a few minutes before trying to remove it from it's container. Some of the shaving from the top will fall off, that's normal.

Now you are ready to cut your soap, yea! Put your soap on a cutting board, trim off a small amount of each end first. Next cut bars into your desired thickness.

I had to take lots of pictures of my pretty soap when I was done, I am so proud of it! 

Here is the Lavender Oatmeal soap:)

  For this soap I used goats milk soap. I made 2 layers, one white and one purple. Make sure to spray the soap with alcohol between layers. I also added lavender fragrance, which smells really good. Sprinkle and press oats on to the top of the soap log before it cools.

Now for packaging....

The purple and silver polka dot paper is from Michaels and do I love it! I also grabbed small white paper bags from Michaels, they are in the wrapping section.

I saw a similar idea on Pinterest and decided it would be perfect to put my soap in. 

Cut your paper in your desired size and sew 3 edges making a paper pocket. Embellish however you want! These paper pockets would also be really good for chocolate candies, hint-hint. Don't all mother's love chocolate?!?

Happy Mother's Day

I hope someone spoils you too!

Elastic Hair Band Holder

The other day I came up with this brilliant idea.... 

With 4 girls in the house I have hair band issues, hair bands EVERYWHERE.

So I grabbed a couple binder rings and threaded all our hair bands on to them, 

snap them closed and voila, problem solved.

 It is so much better than a continer where you grab for 1 band and 

end up grabbing a few or spilling them all over.

This was my solution :) and I love it!

 I should almost rename my blog being organized to keep my sanity

because that is all I do any more. Oh well being organized makes me happy too!

St. Patrick's Play Dough

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

My girls and I decided to make some super sparkly play dough for St. Patrick's.

It is really easy to make and they had lots of fun playing with it.

Here are a few fun ideas I found for St. Patrick's

You can pick up the unfinished wood for this project at 

The Wood Connection in Salt Lake City or American Fork.

I think this one is at The Wood Connection also.

I thought this was a fun little treat for St. Patrick's

Christmas Crafts

Wouldn't these little pillow boxes make an awesome advent calendar?? Of course! Time consuming though. I found them on Creative Journey of a Everyday Crafter.

 

More awesomeness from Creative Journey of a Everyday Crafter

I thought this was pretty stinkin cute too. I found this cute little box at  

The Queen's Scene. 

 

 

 This would be fun to make with my girls. Check out

There She Goes Clear Stamps

for directions.

If I had not already made my Christmas gifts for the year this would so totally be what I would make for everyone, maybe next year. You can find the directions at Gluesticks.

If my darn printer would work once in a while I would have already printed these out for my kids. I guess I am headed to Office Max to make some color copies. 

You can find this lovely print out right here at Being Creative to Keep My Sanity.

 

 

 I am loving these bottle caps. You can find the directions at Whatever.

If I can get my hands on an unfinished shutter I am so going to 

make one of these for my dining room. 

Pearls, Handcuffs, and Happy Hour 

came up with this awesome idea. Stop by her blog and check it out.

How many day's do we have left until Christmas?? 

 

Not enough to get all of the crafting in that I need to. I think I am going to

start Christmas crafting in like July next year. 

 

Btw I just wanted all of you to know I did not steal all of these ideas from Pinterest. I know you are thinking it, shame, shame. I did however add the links to my Pinterest boards, so if you want to pin them for yourself you can find them there.

I wish you all Happy Holiday's

(and hope you avoid all the winter sickness going on, I am however not so lucky)

Nichole Van Photography

 If you have never used any of Nicole Van's products you are missing out. Her website is called Flourish. The flourish web site has action packages, textures, borders and templates for Photo Shop, Light Room and PS Elements. Flourish even offers work shops which I have been dying to go to.

My personal favorite is the Color Pop Action for PS, it works wonders. It brings out the color in dull photos, it even work wonders on perfectly fine photos. The action adds that wow effect. You will find that all of her products come with very helpful instructions on how to use them, which is nice for all of those newbies like me. I had pretty much no experience using Photo Shop when I bought my first actions but with her how to videos and instructions you would never have known I started out clueless.

So if you have any sort of photographer in you you should check out Nicole Van and her actions at Flourish.

If that was not enough convincing let me show you some photos to get you pointed in the right direction. Just click on the image and you will be redirected to the Flourish website for that action.

My personal favorite the color pop

Textures

Sunshine

Boarders

Black and white with a chocolate tone

 

So if you like what you see check out Flourish for even more awesomeness!!
Check out Nicole's blog too.

Liebster Award!!

Guess what I got.... The Liebster Award!!  I was lucky enough to have Hand Made Fuzzy choose me for this awesome award.

For those of you who are not familiar with the word Liebster it means favorite or dearest in German.

The Leibster Award aims to spot light up-and-coming bloggers with less than 200 followers.

Upon receiving this Liebster Award, there are a few rules:

**1. Copy and paste the award on your blog.

**2. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.

**3. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.

**4. Have faith that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers. Here’s to hoping we can all at least win this lottery!

Here are Being Creative to keep my Sanity's 5 pick's:


            1. The Happy Scraps

            2. Remarkable Home

            3. Between U and Me

            4. Burton Avenue

            5. Not Home Alone

Thanks to all you lovely bloggers for the inspiration!!