My Nephew's Baby Shower

Good morning! Today I'm sharing the only photos I took of my nephew's baby shower. I had this whole rant written about everything that went wrong with the shower, and all the things about it that made me disappointed, but because the day of the shower was the beginning of my 100 Happy Days, I've decided to focus on the parts of it that make me happy.

For some reason, I feel like banners aren't complete without rosette clusters. This was a tough one for me because it didn't turn out how I hoped it would, however, everyone still loved it. (I doubt they'd complain to my face anyways). I had Jon help me lay it out on the floor and figure out where we wanted to put each rosette.

We kind of had a navy/baby blue/black/white theme going on. I had this adorable mustache/bow punch I picked up a while back at Michael's and thought it would be perfect to make little clothes pins (for that game where you can't say baby). They were so cute! Luckily my mom had a ton of clothes pins on hand!

I made a bunch of these onesies. I cut them out with the Silhouette, and had my mom glue the blue trim pieces and mustaches down. This one was a little of a last minute thing. I printed what I wanted to say out on printer paper, and placed this card on top of what I'd just printed (where I wanted it to print on the card) and taped it down with washitape and printed straight onto this card.

This is something that frustrated me a little. I designed these in Microsoft Word, and printed them on sticker paper. Unfortunately, my circle punch refused to cleanly punch through the sticker paper, and so I ended up having to cut a few of them out by hand, and some of the borders didn't end up perfectly straight (oh well).

Here's the stickers on the little Jell-o shot containers. They look fine. At the top you can see the bow/mustache punch I used.

Here's the head table. This is where Carla, and the kids were supposed to sit, and I believe her mom, and my mom were also supposed to sit there, but they ended up at another table, and so Carla had her friend (the only friend that showed up) sit with her. I could have probably made the tissue paper pom poms, but because I was in a time crunch, and I haven't made any that size, I bought these from a local store.

This is my favorite thing ever. When Emmett was born, someone asked about nicknames for him, and Carla said they'd probably just call him "Em&Em". Being the creative person I am, I figured M&M's would make an adorable party favor, and so I made up this adorable sign so that it made sense to everyone else as well. (I thought it was rather funny to be honest).

Trying to switch up the angles I take my photos, and to show how many M&M's there were on the table. You can imagine how much willpower it took for me not to eat all of these before the shower started (not that many people took them anyways).

Of course I had to take a close up of this banner. It's just so pretty, and I kept it so I can use it again for other things. I made sure the "It's a boy" part was removable so that I could use this for a birthday if I wanted.

This picture is super grainy, but it was a little dark over in this corner. I put the gift table to the right of the head table for quick access when it came time for her to open them.

This is the set up I had just outside the door to the "party". I put the info about the games and the sheets for them, and the guestbook here.

I neatly stacked all the clothes pins in this little box (the lid has an owl on it), and put the instructions for the games in a frame and set it in the lid.

I put out a pen, and the little onesies that I turned into a little guestbook on the table beside it. Two additional games were placed above it.

My mom brought this little box to put the onesies in, once they'd put their well wishes on them. At the last minute I put a little picture frame with a photo of Emmett in it, in front of this.

Thanks for coming by to see the last minute and quick decorations I made for my nephews baby shower. If I'd had more time, I have so many ideas in my head that I wanted to do, but given this was all at the last minute, I think it all turned out pretty well! The food was good, the cupcakes were adorable, and Emmett got a bunch of new clothes!

Have a great day!
-Alexandria

Rosettes & Happy Birthday Banner

My mother was born on Canada day, a very long time ago. Someone usually offers to take her out, or BBQ dinner for the whole family. This year, Jon and I decided that we would host everyone at our house. We made an amazing dinner and I baked a pink lemonade cake (cupcakes here), I made some decorations that I shared on Instagram, and today I'm going to share here.

This was the sneak peek of the banner I shared on Instagram. I cut 2.5" circles out of teal cardstock using my silhouette. Then I created 2.5" circles with letters in the centre, and cut those out of white cardstock and glued them to the teal coloured ones. After this photo was taken, I punched holes in the middle on either side of each letter and tied them together with some string. I saved the letters that were cut out of the white, and used them for another project for the party.

I also shared this sneak peek of my stack of rosettes I had half assembled. In total I made 21 rosettes, though only 14 of them were shared in this photo.

I laid out the rosettes on the floor of my crafroom and started gluing them together. The floor is the only place I have the space for all of them. I made them all the same size to save myself some time, but making them in different sizes does add more visual interest.

I shared this photo on Instagram as well. It's possibly my most favourite picture I've ever taken of anything crafty. It was taken mostly to show the patterned paper I used for the rosettes, but it is so gorgeous I just want to frame it and hang it in my craftroom.

Here's the finished product. You can't really tell, but there's string going from the top right and top left corners. Its the only thing holding this up. I tied the happy birthday banner to that string so I can take it off and put up a different banner, or use only the happy birthday banner, or put it with a different set of rosettes. The only issue I have now, is where I'm going to store these rosettes when they're not in use.

Remember those letters I saved? I hot glued them to toothpicks and used them to decorate the cake. I threw them out afterwards because they had icing all over them in the end, but the cake looked amazing with the candles lit behind it (unfortunately I don't have a photo). 

I have a feeling I'll be hosting more parties at my house, perhaps a surprise baby shower for my sister-in-law, and my brother. Who knows, but this party was awesome! And a great excuse to use my crafty abilities. I'll share the card I made my mom in a later post when I share my cards from the Studio Calico Camelot kit.

Check out THIS POST with some tips for making the perfect rosette 

Have a great day!

-Alexandria

Rosette Wall Art

As promised last week, here's my post about my rosette wall art. I spent two days scoring, cutting, folding and gluing all of these together. Never again. I couldn't lift my arm by the time I'd finished. Even scoring on the second day was hard on my shoulder. But I've finished it and it looks beautiful!

Looking at it laying on my kitchen floor, I wish my wall was covered in wood. But this is my rosette wall art. I worked so hard on it and it didn't turn out quite how I wanted it to, but I'm still happy with it. I love the colors and patterns.

First up we have one with a more green colour. It goes beautifully with the colours of our living room. I also love the floral pattern on it.

This black and white one is the exact same as the white and black (they're just opposites). I chose them to add more contrast to the overall palette.

This is a yellow-y beige. I added this pattern to tie it all together without overpowering the other colours. IT also matches the colour of the walls in the living room.

This paper tied into the beige-y colour of the first pattern, and I needed more rosettes.

Here's the one that started it all. This is the colour of the blankets we have on the couches (they're white so we put blankets on the seats to keep them white). It's such a beautiful colour.

I also made some silver, gold & black ones for New Years Eve and hung them in our kitchen.

I made two of the one on the left, and hung the one on the right in the centre. 

This paper is silver and white, but its hard to tell unless its reflecting the light.

The small one in the centre is not reflective, but the other two are gold and white.

Here's a better picture of the gold and white catching the light. Everyone thought they were beautiful!

I'd love to see what you do with your rosettes! E-mail your photos to creationsbycoal@gmail.com

Have a great day!

-Alex

Rosette Making Tips

Tips for making the perfect rosette:

• Score all of your paper first. I decided on a couple of papers, scored them, then cut them in an assembly line fashion. That way you're not going between scoring, cutting, folding and assembling everything.
• Decide on the sizes you want your rosettes to be. You need to remember that whatever size you cut your strip of paper, you're finished rosette will be twice that size. If you want a 4" rosette, cut your strips of paper at 2" wide.
• After folding your rosette, straighten out your folds. When you fold them, sometimes the peaks of your folds don't line up, simply hold it on the table and push so they're straight across. 
• Before you glue your rosette into shape, test fit it a few times and get the paper used to being pressed down into that shape. Manipulate your paper so you know how you want it to look.
• Use a larger circle to glue the back to. No one sees the back of your rosette, so they'll never know if your 4" rosette has a 3" circle on the back to hold it into place. It also doesn't matter if your back circle is in the centre, just make sure it doesn't hang over on any of the sides.
• Roll a piece of tape and use it to stick your back circle to your work surface. This makes it easier to glue your rosette to the back circle. It won't move around, and it's easier to get it close to centre if you test fit a few times before.
• Allow the glue to set for a few minutes before moving your rosette. If the glue is still soft, there's more chance of your rosette falling apart.
• Always, always, always, use hot glue to assemble it. If you're using thinner paper you can use a tape gun to put your strips together, but always use hot glue to glue the centre together.

Most of these tips can be found in this Youtube video that helped me become more confident in my rosette making skills

Good luck with your paper rosettes! In my next post I'll show you the beautiful rosette's I made for my living room and dining room!

Have a wonderful day!

-Alex

DIY Be Merry Banner

I was going through some of my craft stuff that I've barely used and stumbled across my Close To My Heart chipboard letters. I used a couple last year on a project that still isn't finished, but figured I should use more of them. I have limited letters since I bought them from a yardsale, but I used what I had to make a Christmas banner.

I originally wanted to go with "JOY" but didn't have all the letters for it, so I looked through the few I did and realized with some creativity I could do "BE MERRY".

I love our new carpet and I did a lot of my planning for this project on my floor. I went through the letters and chose to do it this way since I had one sheet of each letter but was lucky enough to have two E's that were the same! 

At first I wanted to cover them in patterned paper and hang them on a garland above the TV. That didn't work out the way I wanted it to, so instead I made this. Don't mind the TV, I was watching the M3 Top 20 Countdown. This is just Legacy by Fefe Dobson.

We hung it on the wall using white tacks, and I attached ribbon to each of the rosettes. I'm not tall enough to get a good picture of how we hung them, but if you squint and tilt your head you can see the tacks.

I had Jon take these down so I could get better pictures of them. I attached a scalloped circle in a similar colour to each rosette to keep it together, then put the letter on top of that. Most of our decorations are red or green, so I figured they were a safe colour choice.

The large rosettes were made using three 3" strips of patterned paper. This red one is probably my favourite.

When I cut the striped paper for the little ones I definitely wasn't thinking. The pattern doesn't match up where the strips were connected. I should have cut one strip from each sheet of paper and connected those. These ones were made using two 1 1/2" strips. I used a black scalloped circle so you could see the letter from a distance.

Here's a better look at the green chevron pattern on this one.

I love this red paper so much. The pattern is just perfect, and the colour is a reddish pink.

A closer view of my mismatched pattern. Oh, and I coloured the circles black. They were off white, because I wasn't thinking and it was late when I finished these ones. 

I love Christmas so much. I'm going to spend the next few days trying to wrap presents without using bows and using minimal ribbon. Our cats like to take the bows off the gifts and play with the ornaments on the tree. So far though they've left the tree alone, I'll share a photo of that next week!

Have a wonderful weekend!

-Alex