Quiet Book...

Oh WOW.... I have been thinking about quiet books for about a year now- but all have seemed too daunting to approach- or not as cute as I pictured in my head. This is the perfect blend- darling and pretty easy. Everyday Celebration has the cutest color book and a great tutorial! Go on over and check it out!

Butterfly Inspiration

Okay, are you thinking what I'm thinking?! This is awesome! It has all the elements I LOVE in a craft: fast, easy, cute and CHEAP! Julie over at Less-Than-Perfect Life of Bliss, made this beautiful creation for her daughter's room. Go on over to her blog to follow her great tutorial.

She found the idea at This Is Not a Rough Draft. (Whose daughter's room is amazing!)

Shamrock Frame

So here is yet another St. Patrick's Day decoration idea- and the best part of this idea is that it cost nothing!


Materials:
Frame
Paper
Stamps
Scissors
Shamrock Cut out
Ink Pad


I got my shamrock here.


Cut your paper to size, my frame was a 4x6 so that's what I did.


Center your shamrock and trace.


Stamp your word around the interior of the shamrock over and over and over.....

Wait for your ink to dry and then erase the shamrock. Then if you want stamp the same word in a different color below. Make sure to clean your stamps first- I use the cleaner from Close to my Heart- it works really well- I'm sure others work just as well.

Frame it and enjoy! You could really do this in any shape with any word- like a peace sign with your tween's name, a baseball with your little boy's name (oh cute!) the possibilities are endless!

I'm linking to: Works for Me Wednesdays ,Blue Cricket Design,

The Thrifty Home

A Soft Place to Land

Somewhat Simple Life as Lori Bloggeritaville

Craftoholics Anonymous

Shamrock LOVE

While I was aimlessly blog surfing tonight I came across a St. Patrick's Day project that stopped me in my tracks- it was simple, it was green, it was perfect- it was MADE's split pea shamrocks.

Go check them out and make about 100. I think I might try some....

Car Seat Cover

Okay, time for another tutorial. Have you seen those really cute car seat blanket/tent/canopy/whatever you want to call them? I know I have, now I don't have a little one in a baby car seat right now but I have plenty of friends with baby showers coming up. So i googled and searched and I think I pretty much every tutorial there was for these things. I took all the best of those tutorials and combined them into one that I liked best. At the end I will tell you what I would change for the next time around.


Materials"
2 yards coordinating fabric
Sew-on or Iron-on Velcro
Wonder Under
Other coordinating fabrics
Thread
Sewing Machine
Iron

Okay here we go... I wanted to put an applique on the front of my cover, if you don't skip these steps. I cut out flowers on my cricut... To cut Wonder Under on the cricut place the paper upside down on your mat to cut (this will only work with shapes- letters will be backwards if you do this).

Iron on your flowers, etc. Put your ribbon under the flowers. Then stitch around your flowers and ribbon stems.

Cut your fabric- I cut mine to 36" by 40". I really didn't want the cover to drag on the floor once it was finished. That being said I'm not sure all car seats are the same size so lay your fabric on top of yours and see where you're at size wise. I cut them at the same time so they would line up. Save your scraps- these will be our straps.

If you want your corners rounded, put a bowl down on the edge and cut around.

Then put both right sides together and stitch around the edges, leaving a small opening to use when you turn your fabric right side out. Turn your fabric right side out and then iron all your edges. Iron the space you left open to match your other edges, then top stitch around the entire cover.

Remember your scraps we saved, now its time to use the. Cut four 4" by 7" pieces- these will be your straps. I really need to recover my ironing board the cover is hideous- hilarious but gross.
Lay your pieces right sides together and then stitch around the edges once again leaving a space to turn them right side out. After that's done, I trimmed a little of the corners off to make smoother corners. Then turn them right side out and iron them flat then top stitch.
Then sew on your Velcro.
Then lay out your cover and decide where to put your straps. I fold my blanket in half then in half again to see where the middle of my blanket was then space from there. Then just stitch the straps two or three times on the machine and your all done. Now clip your loose threads and enjoy!

UPDATE: A few answers to some questions: Sewing around the flowers takes more patience than practice- although I have done a lot of applique in the past year. Just take it nice and slow and you will be just fine. The plus about this kind of applique is that if you wash the cover or just use it the flowers will fray a little covering up any mistakes you have made.

My friend I gave the cover to, has a wider car seat handle than the one I have, so you may want to add a couple of inches to the straps.

You can make your cover reversible by making an extra set of straps and repeating the process on the other side.

I'm linking to:

Keeping It Simple, DIY Showoff, Twice Remembered, Making the World Cuter, The Girl Creative, Skip to My Lou, Persimmon Perch, Tip Junkie, Somewhat Simple, Life as Lori Bloggeritaville

Giveaway winner......

CONGRATULATIONS to...... JenniferB!!! I used Random.org to generate the winning number and she was lucky number 40! Jennifer I will e-mail you and get your info.

To everyone else- THANK YOU so much for entering, we will be doing another giveaway soon so keep checking back!

Giveaway

The One Month Giveaway is now officially closed. Check back Monday to see if you won- and for more projects! Thanks to all those who entered the response was wonderful!