Quick and Easy Flower Hairclips

I came up with some simple flower hairclips/pins for my sister's Stagette party a few weeks ago. I wanted all the girls to wear something so people would know we were all together, but didn't want to spend the money on t-shirts. So I bought big hot pink flowers from the dollar store and went to work!

All you need is:

•  flowers
• hairclips or pins or both
• sticky gems
•  glue gun & glue sticks

Look for flowers with a bunch of petal layers for best results!

First I took the plastic parts (stems and centers) off the flowers till I was left with just the big petals. Each of my flowers had about 6 petal pieces ranging from large to small, and I put each deconsturcted flower aside seperatly so as not to mix up the petals.

Once all the plastic was off I just went to town with the glue gun! I ran a bead of glue around the hole in the center (where the plastic stems was) of each petal as I layered them back together.

Once all the petal layers are glued back together add a sticky gem to the center and set aside to harden. I think buttons or smaller flowers would make cute centers too! I found with all the layers of fabric flowers it took the glue a good 5 mins to cool and harden.

Once they were hardened I glued hairclips (I used snap clips just because thats all I could find, but any style hairclips would work) or pins to the back and called them done! Just a note- with the snap clips I only glued the larger end to the very center of the flowers so the rest was free to flex as it clipped. I totally forgot to take a picture of the backs, sorry!

And , voila! Cute and easy flowery hairclips! 

 

and pins!

I would post a picture of them in action at the stagette but I couldn't find one that wouldn't embarass my sister if she ever came across it! I'll save those for the wedding slideshow :)

Happy (late!) Mothers Day to me!

When my husband asked me what I wanted for Mothers Day the first thing that popped into my mind was FABRIC! I live in a smallish city, and besides a few expensive quilting stores with a very limited selection, the only fabric store is a (very small) Fabricland. Now while I have found some fun fabric there it tends to be pricey, and I never seem to find exactly what I went there for. Ideally I would drive 3 hours to my old hometown and visit my favourite hole in the wall store (Skyline Fabrics in northeast Calgary) but with 2 kids, dogs, and veggie planting season I can't see that happening. So I begged my husband to buy me fabric online as my Mothers Day gift. No shopping for him, I get exactly what I want, it all works out!

Well today I came home from taking my boy to preschool to find my parcel waiting!! Yay!  I of course grabbed my camera to document my first online fabric experience!

I ordered from Fabric Depot in the states.

And here are the beauties!

Clearly some of these will be used for kids stuff. But I really want to make a cute summer top out of the black with rainbow stars cotton.

Here's one more look!

So pretty! I love fabric! I was like a kid in a candy store opening the package!

And you know what? My sweet husband still surprised me with another gift on Mothers Day! I had been out of town that weekend for my sister's bridal shower, and my awesome husband went out and braved the mall with the kids to find me this beautiful locket!

Isn't it pretty? That's a real shamrock in there! Perfect to put pictures of my two March babies in! I love it!

Car play mat - done!

Here's the little car play mat I just finally finished for my sweet boy! I've seen these all over blog land lately but I didn't actually follow any tutorials, I put my own spin on it. For one thing I made mine alot bigger than most of the car rolls that I've come across. And then I added the interactive element.

Axel loves parking lots. So much so that after watching him park his cars along the couch arms, the tv stand,  and the table( really anywhere that he could line them up) I took an old frozen pizza box from my recycling pile and drew lines on it to make a parking lot. And he still plays with that old pizza box 6 months later. I'm not sure why I spend money on toys....

But I digress. I knew I needed a parking lot on this play mat. So the playmat ended up alot bigger. I started with a remnant of green cotton (that sorta looks like grass!) which happened to be about 17" by 20", so that dictated my size. I put 6 large (3.5") pockets across the bottom, big enough for trucks to fit in.

My favourite part is this apple tree.

Wait a minute.....

Yep. Those are removable velcro accessories. Flowers, apples, bushes and a toadstool.

I may have gotten a little carried away.....

I handstiched these out of eco-felt. Then used fabric glue to add velcro to the back. I started off sewing the velcro on by hand but I decided I really hate sewing velcro :)

And then it folds in thirds, with vecro accessories either still attached or in a pocket.

And then wraps up into a cute little package to take on the go!

I can't wait to see the look on Axel's face when he opens this! This is joining the pony farm (from my last post) as little suprises to keep my punks happy during my sisters wedding ceremony this summer! My husband and I will both be standing up in the wedding party so I will have these play mats waiting up on the front pew for the kids once they finish their walk down the aisle as ring bearer and flower girl!

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