I don’t really have a knit or crochet finished craft to show you this week but I do have a treat to share.  I meant to post earlier in the week about our wonderfully fun weekend we had last weekend!  A group of three families we are friends with all own a “cabin” together (really it’s a house, but it’s in Northern Wisconsin).  Last weekend the women from those three families – plus a few stragglers (like Little Chick and I) drove up to have a girls’ crafting weekend!  The one requirement was that you had to come up with a craft to make and bring enough supplies so everyone could make one.  There were seven adults – so that means we did seven crafts in one weekend.  In truth, we did seven in ONE DAY!  Needless to say, it was a long day, but a highly enjoyable one!

Saturday dawned as cloudy, rainy, and windy.  The perfect fall day to stay indoors and craft!  It was fortunate that we just the right amount of people that were able to fit around the kitchen island so we could all craft together!

CRAFT #1: scarf holders (Bonnie)

It probably goes without saying that a lot of the ideas we used came from Pinterest.  This was one I hadn’t seen before.

We took plastic hangers and temporarily taped shower curtain rings in or around the hanger.  Then you just need to wrap ribbon around either covering up the tape or removing as you get to it.  The ribbon needs to be secure enough to hold the rings in place, but you want to be able to slip scarves through the rings when you are finished.  This craft used up a lot of Bonnie-just-got-married-and-have-leftover-ribbon, which is why most of it is purple 🙂

The trickiest part was figuring out how to wrap the ribbon.  As you can see, we all came up with different methods.

CRAFT #2: magnetic clips (Alexis)

This craft was brought to us by someone who will be teaching 2 and 3 year olds next year.  A great craft for our toddler and yet it was fun for everyone.  She brought clothespins, paints, glitter, rhinestones, wooden beads, buttons, and other various embellishments.  We were supposed to decorate the clothespins as we wished and then attach magnetic strips on the back.

Little Chick made two clothespins and I made three.  If you can temporarily ignore the other crafts in this picture, you can see the ones we made in the back of the picture.  I also made a couple of simple button magnets – just gluing buttons together in layers with a magnet on the back.  I don’t think those will hold much, but they’re cute decorations.

CRAFT #3: glass magnets (Brandi)

We had a couple of themes happening this year with our crafts.  One was that we made several magnets.  This craft was taking cut-out circles, painting Mod Podge on the back of glass stones to adhere the paper circles and then after they dried we attached magnets to them.  We also made some with Mod Podge dipped in glitter.  Those turned out beautifully!  They took a lot longer to dry because we put a layer of MP over the glitter to help seal it in (as glitter gets everywhere!)

Simple but oh-so-cute.

CRAFT #4: glitter candle holders (Lucy)

Our second “theme” was glitter.  We used a little on the clothespins, some on the magnets, and even more on the candle holders.  This craft was to take plain glass candle holders, paint Mod Podge on it and then dip, roll or shake glitter so it would stick.  After that dried, we added another layer of Mod Podge – again, to make sure we didn’t have glitter all over the place later.

I can’t believe I didn’t get an in-progress picture of this one, but my candle holder (the bright) one and Brandi’s are in this photo.  Brandi’s was my favorite and was done by taping off lines so the Mod Podge wouldn’t touch and then she used copper glitter.  It turned out to be a little bit of a pain to remove the tape afterwards, but with the help of a knife and careful pulling, the lines turned out sharp.

CRAFT #5: coasters (Colleen)

Our last “theme” was Mod Podge.  Boy, did we use a lot of it that day!  This craft was probably the quickest of all of them.  We used 4 1/4″ tiles from the hardware store (much cheaper than a craft store) and pre-cut 4″ felt squares.  The felt was either Mod Podged or glued to the backs.  Then we chose from a multitude of scrapbook papers, cut them to 4″ squares and Mod Podged to the front.  You then put another layer of MP over the top to protect the paper from water.  Some added another layer later by spritzing some gloss finish, but I opted not to do that.

These turned out so beautiful!  The one trick we learned (after) was to make sure you put Mod Podge on the tile and then lay the paper over it.  I put the MP on the paper and I think it got over-saturated and later wrinkled.  I have an idea to remedy that problem.  But in case you ever make these – just remember to go to the tile first.

You can use other materials other than scrapbook paper too.  Remember how I said Bonnie got married recently?  Well, they were married in Alaska.  Colleen was able to find a cardboard holder for Alaskan Amber beer, so that’s what Bonnie used for her coasters.  They turned out awesome!  She had to weight them down while they were drying in their initial gluing, but held fast.

Break time

We didn’t spend ALL our time crafting.  We had big breakfasts, one large dinner and lots of snacks.  There was also daiquiri time before dinner!

CRAFT #6: one-layer cards (me)

I may not get to make cards much anymore, but choosing my craft was a no-brainer.  I already had lots of supplies on hand for this one.  But I wanted to make it simple for everyone and easy enough that they could duplicate later if they wanted without having to purchase a ton of supplies.

One of my favorite blogs to follow is one called Simplicity.  She creates a lot of simple, but beautiful cards – many of them one-layer (no extra paper or embellishments).  She recently created a card that inspired me:

I created several templates to use in our sponging / dabbing technique:  a circle, a square, a rectangle, and an oval.  We then used those with cotton balls to create a block of color.  Then I had several large stamps like leaves, tree or swirls to overlay the colored background.  All that was needed then was a saying of some type.

Just look at how colorfully creative they got!

I think everyone ended up using the tree stamp at least one – but none of them were remotely the same card!

CRAFT #7: felt snowman (Gail)

We didn’t start our last craft until after dinner on Saturday.  By all accounts we should have been exhausted.  But for me, I think this was the most enjoyable of all the crafts we did.  One reason?  See this picture.

Look at how absorbed Little Chick is in this craft!  She was such a trooper all day long.  She was able to participate some of the time, had to nap during other parts, but she loved this one.  She’s not actually making a snowman of course – too little to play with needles.  But Colleen did cut out a snowman shape for her, and she kept dressing him up with buttons and fabric scraps.  It was awesome!

This was another Pinterest idea – in fact, we had the iPad up so we could view a picture while making them.  We had a snowman template to cut out of white felt.  Embellishments and facial features were up to us – we had buttons, embroidery thread, and cute scrap fabric.  Then we sewed and stuffed our snowman.  (I forgot to add a ribbon for hanging – oops!)

Here’s a couple that were finished (these are not mine)

I love how we all started with a basic idea for each of these projects but in the end, they were all as unique and personal as we each are!

I almost wished we had taken a picture of each craft of ours separately, but this is also fun – a group shot of everyone’s projects (some on the table next to this) with everything jumbled together.

I was amazed we were able to squeeze all of our crafts ideas into one day, but actually I’m thankful.  Little Chick and I didn’t sleep well Friday night, and Saturday wasn’t better.  So the cold that I contracted was so much worse on Sunday.  Brandi had a good 9-hour drive ahead of her so she needed to leave early on Sunday anyway.

The weather had cleared up and dawned to a beautiful fall day.

We needed to get home so someone could say, “Oh Papa!  I miss you!”

What a great ending to an amazing weekend with friends!