Upcycled Bunny Face

This weekend, I was shopping at Goodwill and they had a bunch of Easter decorations out and when I saw this, I knew it would be the perfect thing to upcycle and hang in my entryway!

I taped the wire and spray painted it, but it didn't fully cover the paint underneath, so I painted with white acrylic paint and that worked great.  I sanded the edges for a rustic feel.

I painted the tiny wooden heart pink and cut up the floral stems and played with what I liked together.

Then I hot glued everything on and I LOVED how it turned out!

Family Photo Book for Toddlers

My nephew Kellan, who will be 2 years old in March, loves seeing pictures of his family, so I decided to make him a family photo book of his own for Christmas!

I visualized a brightly colored book - just like other kids books.  So I researched the idea of "green screen".  I use Corel Paint Shop Pro and I found a tutorial about using the "color changing tool" - instructions.  

Then I planned ahead and bought some green poster board at Dollar Tree.  When all my family was at my house for Thanksgiving Eve, I took a picture of each of them in front of the green poster board.  Then I wrote out my plan for the color layout of the book.

In the editing software I cropped to square (since I knew I wanted an 8x8 book) and changed the color of each picture.  

Kellan

Hadley

Henry

Lance

Me (Lyndi)

Josh

Gia

For the inside layout, I put each picture on a page by itself and on the opposite page, I put the name of each person.

The finished product was so fun and colorful and the perfect size for a toddler.  Kellan loved it!

Unicorn Face Wall

I wanted to share a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into making a unicorn face wall, because when I made this one, I had a lot of questions that I couldn't find answered by people who had created them.  I used this tutorial by The Sway and their free templates to make my flowers and this tutoria by Ash and Crafts for the leaves..  TIP #1: YES, you need 9 sheets of 8.5x11 cardstock for each flower. That includes the petals and the centers.  If you want to make your centers a different color, you would need 16 sheets of the petal color and 2 sheets of the center color.  

Each leaf is made from a half sheet of cardstock, so decide how many leaves you want.  I freehanded the ears.  I couldn't find an eyelash template, so I created one, which I'll share with you below.  I cut it out of 8.5x11 black cardstock and then put it together with glue dots.  

Unicorn Eyelash Template

For the unicorn horn, I considered several different materials, but ended up using gold posterboard found at Hobby Lobby.  So a final materials list (if you are creating the exact same thing I had) is:

18 pieces of light pink 8.5x11 cardstock 

9 pieces darker pink 8.5x11 cardstock

3 pieces green 8.5x11 cardstock

2 pieces black 8.5x11 cardstock

1 piece white 8.5x11 cardstock

1 piece lightest pink 8.5x11 cardstock

1 gold posterboard

TIP #2: HOW TO HANG THE PAPER FLOWERS.  I was going to a venue that I had never even seen before and I would only have 30 minutes to get everything for the party set up.  So I knew I needed to plan ahead how I would hang the flowers, which are really large and really fragile.  So here's what I did.  I got out my drill and a small drill bit and drilled through the center part in the back.  Then I put a floral wire through the holes and twisted it pretty tight to make a hanging loop.  Then I bought command hooks (since it's a venue, I knew I couldn't use nails or tacks).  I don't think it's a perfect method, because as you can see, the center flower leaned forward more than I wanted, but it was the best I could come up with.  

I loved how it turned out - it was the perfect focal point for a 6 year old unicorn birthday party!!