Wow what a fall!!!

Sorry for being lost for so long, I promise to do better. 

We moved and got settled and the house we moved to ended up in foreclosure so we are moving again.

I also have become addicted to Pinterest,  If you have not found this sight you have got to check it out!  It is an amazing reminder of how many creative and talented folks there are in this world. 

While on Pinterest I found this cool idea for a cute girls Christmas Dress. Empire Waist Santa Dress

Well I was highly disappointed when I went to the webpage and it was neither a tutorial or for sale. 
Since Bethany had an appointment with Santa to get pictures taken today and I was on my usual own time management schedule and had not gotten it taken care of sooner, I had to put on my middle of the night artistic person hat and create it myself. 

The worst part about it was that Bethany was not home, so I had to use her waistband of a pair of jeans to guesstimate her size, but alas that did not work.  I am sorry not to have pictures of the step by step, but I was just struggling to get it made.

I began by measuring out some strips of 6 in tulle.  I used 100 yards for her dress and it seemed to be just right.  The length will depend on the height of your child.  Roughly double the length from chest to knee and add 1.5 inches. 

I then sewed to ends of 1/2 inch elastic the length that I estimated her chest size to be. ( this is where I screwed up). 

I tied two strands of tulle together to the elastic at the middle and continued the whole way around til all the tulle was tied on. 

I was wanting to give her a little more modesty so I sewed together two beautiful red Christmas napkins and created a tube that I placed inside the tulle and folded it over the top and sewed the elastic with the tulle ties inside. 

I added a fur trim and then couldn't find the perfect Santa Belt, so back to the creative board.  I found a black and silver belt at a thrift shop and with a little gold paint...Voila!  Santa's Belt.  She loved the dress, except for when it fell down exposing her chest to Santa.  But I promised her we would fix the size and add a ribbon to help it stay up.  But she couldn't decide if she was a ballerina or santa...The whole way to the portrait studio, she was showing split personalities.  LOL

  I hope I have inspired you to do some midnight crafting too.

String Art

We are now getting semi-settled in our new home and the decorating has begun.  My daughter has decided that she would like to decorate with princesses and butterflies.  Our budget and bank account has been stretched very thin by the move and unemployment.  But kids don't always fully understand this complication.  So I was trying to think of a craft that would occupy Bethany and give her something to decorate her room with that would not cost a lot.  I decided to check the bits and pieces bin at Home Depot to see if there was anything that I could use that would inspire me. 

I found 3 roughly square pieces of hardwood and 1 rectangle.  I also found a foot long piece of dowel rod.  I asked the worker what they would charge for it since it was not tagged.  He told me he would give me all five pieces for 0.51 cents.  WOOHOO!

I remembered reading somewhere on the net about someone doing a string art project.  So I bought a glidden paint tester in pink.  Bethany at just 3 almost 4 years, sat patiently sanding her board. 

Did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself....Then she sat on the garage floor and painted.  I love the Glidden tester because of the built in paint brush, but she did have a little trouble gripping it.

Mike (DH) watched Bethany and I hammering the nails into the poplar and OF COURSE said I can make that easier.  So he broke out the drill and started all the nail holes along the outline of the butterfly outline that we had chosen.

We then hammered the nails the rest of the way into the holes.

Turned out pretty good if I say so myself...

The next step was to take some crochet thread and weave back and forth between the nails.  I will admit this was tougher than I thought it would be for me, let alone my three year old, partly because we chose to put the nail holes so closely together to maintain the butterfly shape.  I may try it again with a simpler shape like a star and see how that works...

We finished it out by painting and decorating the word love across the top to fill the empty space and I didn't like the way the body of the butterfly turned our so I filled the body in with some beads and am really happy with the outcome.  We wrote our names and date on the back and will hang it in her room to remember our first week in the new house. 

If you try this out or have done it before in other shapes, please leave me a note in comments, still have three more boards to try out!!!  Also please stop back to check out some of the other projects that we bought the makings for that we will be making over the next few weeks!!!

Linking up at:

Craft Envy Saturday Spotlight

Local Fun for Kids