That's a WHAT?!?!?!

I had seen a mortar board (graduation cap) made out of a dollar bill on the internet. I even went as far as finding the creator and emailed them. I was directed to OrigamiUSA Source to buy the book that the directions were published in. (Did you know that they have origami conventions and books FULL of instructions written by these master folders!?) Anyway, I happily paid the money for 2003 Origami Collection and waited. I was so excited to get it because I had planned to give little dollar bill mortarboards to our Class of 2008 friends. I mean really...how cool would that be?!?! to give a bill folded in the shape of a graduation cap!!!! I was greatly disappointed when I couldn't figure out the directions in the book. I do not think it was because they were poorly written. On the contrary, they were very well written - but for someone with experience in paper folding...which I do not have! After many tries, folds and manipulations of the bill, somehow (through a small miracle, actually!) in the end, it turned out to look like what I had initially seen, although not the way in the book.

After researching origami a bit, I think I could become quite addicted to it. It is wild what they can make out of a dollar bill or a piece of paper!! Now that I have the book, I hope to learn how to make some other stuff. It has instructions to over 100 designs made by the best folders in the world. I only ended up giving one graduation cap but he LOVED it!- (by the time I figured out a way to make it work, everyone was graduated! ha ha)Now to figure out how to make the camera! I already know exactly who I am giving it to!

Fun Colored Pencil Technique

I wanted to send a thank-you to some special friends for a great time we spent together at the beach. We just came home yesterday though and I hadn't gotten any pics developed yet so I did the next best thing. I had been wanting to do something with this technique for a while and it was the perfect opportunity. I printed one of the photos onto regular copy paper and then colored some of the picture, mounted it and in about 10 minutes got a pretty happenin' card. Kal Barteski taught this technique - she is an AMAZING artist!
It is not hard at all and I do agree that Prismacolor pencils are the absolute best! The color is creamy and smooth. (sounds like ice cream!) But it really is. Try some of her techniques - anyone can do it and the end result is way cool!

Graduation Party

I carried over the theme of the graduation symbol for the party. I used it as hanging decor with large 12 inch circles, used some left over invite circles to write what each food item was, 1 inch symbols on tags for the party favors, and also made him some thank you notes with it too. (I'll post those later)

(some of Nelson's friends in the basement)

We made these fabulous little cupcake pops for the party favors. (I forgot to take a picture when we had them piled up on a tiered stand so I gathered the leftovers for this pic. )I came across her blog a few months ago and LOVED them. I was just waiting for an opportunity to make them. They were a bit time consuming but so worth it! I got SO many compliments on them and people said they were the best thing they ever put in their mouth! I must admit, they were quite tasty. ;)

Special thanks to my SIL, Mandi, who helped tons with food preparation, my bro, J, who helped me get our exterior ready and my sweet mom and dad who helped with a whole bunch of other stuff! I couldn't have done it without them!

Nelson had a great party and now we're on to the next stage in his life (deep breath....) College.

Graduation Invitations

As I told you, in the previous post, our kids went to Beach Camp. So I am taking a couple of minutes to post some new stuff.

Our son is now a high school graduate and I wanted to share how his party invitations came about.

First, I found this AWESOME graduation symbol at http://www.shutterstock.com/. I knew I wanted the invitation round, but was thinking about doing it larger and packaging it in a CD envelope. Before I got around to making it the size of a CD envelope, I found some chipboard coasters at Michael's on clearance. Gotta love that! From the looks of them, you can tell why they were on clearance! They have fruit all over them and are not the prettiest.
So I adjusted the file to the diameter of the coaster and printed 4 to a page. I cut them out with a circle cutter and mod podged them to one side of the coaster. I copied the file and removed the symbol and replaced it with text for the party invite. I cut those out and mod podged them to the other side of the coaster. I sanded the edges to distress them a bit and to smooth down the edges.

They ended up round just like I wanted and how cool to have a "token" type invite! Another benefit of having the smaller-than-a-CD size was that I just put them in with the announcement and mailed them together instead of the square envelope that would have cost us extra postage!

Swimsuit Dilemma

Ok, so we have 2 teenage daughters - both of which are wonderful! (most days! :) and in getting them ready to go to Beach Camp, with the student ministry at church, we have been on the search for the perfect one-piece swimsuit... hence, the title "Swimsuit Dilemma". We found many but most either didn't fit properly or were too revealing. Usually finding that because they were too revealing was causing "the not fitting properly"! We finally found one that was almost acceptable. In seeing it on my youngest, I thought we could make it work with a little adjustment.

We went straight to Hobby Lobby and I bought some ribbon that I thought would work. It wasn't wide enough so I sewed three strips together to make the inset. ***Tip: I put Fray-Check on the cut ends before sewing them. That stuff is fabulous!

I pinned the inset that I had made from the ribbon to the correct position and handstitched it in. (Clarification: Actually, my mom dropped by about that time and she handstitched it in!)

It didn't take long at all to make a revealing swimsuit turn into a modest swimsuit.
On another note, my other daughter also had an issue with the swimsuit that she was taking. It, too, was too low cut. I tried the ribbon thing for her too (different ribbon of course!) but it didn't look right. We ended up stitching up the opening about 2 1/2 inches. It solved the problem.

Remember when looking for clothes, household decor or whatever else you might be on the prowl for that you can change it. You don't have to wear it as you bought it or display it as the store had it!