St. Patrick's Day Projects Round Up

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Here's a quick round up of my St. Pat's Day projects of the past(from top left): 

Lucky Wreath, Leprechaun Pants, Embellished Frames, Button Covered Earrings, Scrappy No-Sew Flower 

I guess I could have maybe written this post earlier in the month, so you could actually make some of these great projects, but, well, shew. My life is too cray right now. Yep. Cray. As in cray cray. :) Report cards, grad school assignments, tutoring a student twice a week, grad school assignments, the distraction of beautiful weather, grad school assignments...see a pattern? I promise that once I'm done (in APRIL!!!), I will be better. Promise. I hope to have some good things for you this week...maybe an outfit post like I had discussed the possibility of here? We'll see. 

Hope you have a happy weekend!! Go have a green beer for me. 

I'll be on the couch, typing away. 

A Leprechaun Came to Visit Today

Twas the night before St. Patrick's Day 

when the tiny Leprechaun pants were born. Just a little sparkly green fabric, some gold ric rack and trim and boom. Leprechaun pants the size of your hand. :)

Then, on St. Patrick's Day that leprechaun came to visit our kindergarten classroom. 

And here's the story.

Once upon a time, all the kindergarteners were decked out in green and excited to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. We had heard leprechauns were sneaky and thought there might be some around because of the special day that it was. We'd been looking for them everywhere. We wanted to catch one so we could get him to show us where his gold was!

Just in case he came, we set traps like this one all over our room...

See the gold at the top of the ladder? There's more in the box so when he climbs to the top, he'll see the gold, jump in and then won't be able to get out!

We made signs that we taped to the windows and to our door saying: 

FREE GOLD!

Come on in! Gold inside!

Leprechauns welcome here!

When we came back from music, the room was a mess! Desks were turned over, chairs were everywhere, and there were green footprints on all the tables and walls. 

Alas, there were no leprechauns in any of the traps...

but we did find these.

He got away, but he lost his pants! 

Maybe he heard us coming down the hall and was in such a hurry that they got caught in the window.

There's some of the gold he dropped and his footprints going to the window.

He must have climbed up the pipes to get out. 

He wrote us a note saying that we couldn't trick him and better luck next year. 

At least we got some of his gold. And now he's running around in his underwear.

The End.

I have a video of my kids' reaction to it all. It is truly priceless. They were hysterical.

Here's a great book to read if you're planning to do this.

We read it and afterward, we had great discussions on how to build leprechaun traps, how to outsmart the leprechaun, and how to get his gold! They were really thinking! It was so fun. 

Earlier in the week we wrote about what we would do if we found the leprechaun's gold and made fruit loop rainbows.

They took awhile to make, but they turned out really cute.

You can find the Fruit Loop Rainbow Template here if you want to make them with your kiddos!

Linking to the parties on my sidebar! 

Framed and Embellished St. Patrick's Day Printables

Don't you LOVE all those St. Pat's Day printables out there?! Aren't some of them SO cute! I thought so, too, and since I have a few Irish-lovin' friends, I thought I'd make some little surprises for them.

Hey Irish-lovin' friends who might be reading this, you probably haven't received your package yet, so sorry for ruining the surprise and that it's almost St. Patrick's Day and you don't have it yet. You all probably already know I do things last minute. :)

I got some bronz-ish picture frames on sale at Wal-Mart for $3 each for the 5x7s and $4 for the 8x10s. I probably could have found some cheaper at a thrift store, but I wanted to get these done before St. Pat's and didn't have time for thrifting on the day I was shopping.

I tried spray painting them white, but it wouldn't cover the frames. I'm thinking it was either just too cold outside for the paint to stick or they needed to be primed first... which I didn't do.

So then I just got some acrylic paint and put a couple coats on each frame. Then I used painted on a coat of gloss mod podge to make them shine a little. I made some flowers with fabric I already had and hot glued them on. Done! 

Printables I used:

• St. Patrick's Day Subway Art Printable found at Lolly Jane
• Quatrefoil Shamrock Printable found at Be Different Act Normal, originally blogged at Crafts and Sutch
• Lucky with Shamrock Printable found at Madigan Made

And here's several more I saw just the other day and love: 

• More Subway Art at A Little Lovely
• "Keep Calm and Shamrock On" prints at Two Twenty One
• More Quatrefoil Shamrock art at Anything But Perfect
• "There's Nothing More Obnoxious than Other People's Luck" print at Less Cake More Frosting

Stay tuned this week for a tutorial on this Scrappy-No-Sew Flower. :)

If you like what you see on my blog, don't forget to become a follower! Once I reach 100+ followers, I'm doing a Miss Lovie Jewelry Giveaway!

We're almost there!!!

Linking this post to these fab parties

Covered Button Earrings for St. Patty's Day

Are you getting ready for St. Patty's Day? 

You've already got your green outfit picked out, don't you? No? Oh, you're like me and are searching your closet the morning of St. Patty's Day for that green cardigan you know you saw the other day...

Well, if you go ahead and make some of these earrings, you won't have to worry about that cardigan. No one said how much green you actually had to wear not to get pinched. Little green button earrings should definitely suffice. :)

I've seen the covered button earrings a lot lately and was dying to make some. Since I had some St. Pat's day fabric already that I needed to use, I decided now was the perfect time.

To make these, I used this great tutorial as well as the basic instructions on the back of the button covering kit. It is seriously super crazy easy. 10 minutes maybe to actually make one pair-probably less-once you have all your materials together: 
button covering kit, fabric, scissors, hot glue, earring posts and backs.

You'll definitely need a button covering kit. Go ahead and grab some extra buttons, too, because you'll love these so much, you'll want to make a ton.

source

I used two sizes. (See picture of my earrings above.) The small ones are 5/8in wide and my larger ones were 3/4 in wide. The 5/8in seem to be the perfect size unless you just want big ones. 

Get some fun fabric. The more detailed, smaller print, the better. Look through your scrap stash-you're bound to have something perfect.  

Like the instructions on the kit suggests, if the fabric is too thin, use a liner-I used two layers of the same fabric. I found it was much easier to get the back pushed into the button if there was only one layer of fabric, however. If you can find fabric that's thick enough so the silver doesn't show through and you can use one layer, it will work better. 

I just love that sparkly dot green fabric. It screams St. Patrick's Day to me.

With fabric like this green stripe, be careful in placing the fabric on the button so it comes out the way you want it to. I re-positioned my fabric on these a few times.

These look almost more blue than they do green, but I still love them. The fabric I used for these was perfect. It had different designs everywhere making possibilities endless. I could have made 4 more pairs that would have been different than these! 

Ok so these aren't covered button earrings, but they were fun to make, too. They're just mini rosettes with posts glued on the back. 

Feel free to make fun of that goofy picture of me.

If you already have a green feather boa and a green sequin top hat ready for the 17th and feel that earrings may be just too over the top, you can, of course, forgo the St. Patrick's Day theme all together and just make some super cute earrings in any fabric of your choice.

If I had bought more buttons to cover, I would have made a bunch more.

LOVE these. They're my fave.

They don't match that grey sweater, but it's cool.

These feel like summer. Now if only the weather would do the same...

The button covering kits are seriously $2 or $3 so this project really is pretty cheap, especially if you use fabric you already had-like I did! :)

Linking to these awesome parties

and

Be sure to click around my blog and if you like what you see, become a follower! When I reach 100 followers I'm doing a Miss Lovie Jewelry Giveaway!

We're down to single digits now....Hopefully the giveaway can start this week!

A Few Polka Dots, A Lotta Pearls, Burlap, Flowers, and Some Luck!

I'm so excited to post this wreath tutorial. 

I had a lot of fun making it! 

Not into green or St. Patty's Day? It's cool, because this wreath is interchangeable. YESSS! 

I attached everything (except for the pearl sprig) with velcro or pins so you can switch it out with whatever you want!
(I did not come up with that idea. I've seen it in a few places. Here's one. This is just my version!)

But really, let's get serious. Who doesn't love St. Patrick's Day? 

Leprechauns, pots of gold, green (which is a super great color), red-heads, rainbows, and, of course, green beer. 

Can you tell I'm excited?

Now on to the wreath.

Step 1: Gather your materials

Materials Needed: Straw wreath (I got mine for half off at Hobby Lobby!), various fabrics (I used different patterns of green, some white knit, green felt, and white canvas), burlap, pearls, pearl sprigs, scissors, floral wire, fabric glue (like Liquid Stitch), wire cutters, pins, and a hot glue gun (not pictured).

Step 2: Wrap your straw wreath with burlap strips.

Cut burlap fabric into 4-6 inch strips. Hot glue each piece on, wrapping and layering them around the wreath. Be sure to layer the strips evenly.

Step 3: Make some great flowers

Here are some of the different types of flowers I used.

 The scrappy no-sew flower was an experiment that turned out kinda cute. I burned myself a few times, but I didn't have to get up from my seat (see below) to go to my sewing machine and sew it so score! Flower tutorials post to come.

My advice would be to have a trash can nearby to collect all scraps and straighten and clean as you go or else you'll get this mess with a tiny spot for your butt. :)

Step 4: Attach flowers to wreath.

I wanted to make the flowers interchangeable so I glued Velcro to the backs of all the flowers and to the burlap where the flowers were going to go. (I didn't realize until I was putting the bunting on that I could have pinned these on instead and it would have been faster. However, I think the Velcro will be more secure.) I hot glued my Velcro because sometimes the sticky isn't as sticky as needed. 

If you put the velcro on the backs of the flowers and then arrange them, they'll kinda stick to the burlap so you can get a good idea where you want all the flowers to fit. 

As you get towards the top, glue on your pearl sprig. I glued on scraps of burlap on top of the sprig for extra security. My sprigs came with two branches so I bought two of them and cut one branch off of one and wired it to a full sprig to make a 3 branch sprig.

Step 5: Create Lucky Bunting

Cut out needed pieces: 5 ovals of burlap, 5 ovals of fabric slightly smaller than burlap, 5 triangles for bunting flags, and letters. I free-hand cut my letters from green fabric. No Silhouette for this girl yet (boo).

Then glue your pieces together with fabric glue.

Yay. 

I used the ribbon I planned on hanging the wreath with for this part, too. Partly because it matched, and mostly because it's what I had. Press it in half. I just eyeballed how much ribbon I'd need by holding it up to where I wanted it to go on the wreath. 

Stick the bunting flags inside the folded ribbon and pin.

Sew along the edge of the ribbon's edge with a 1/8" seam. 

Done with that part!

Pin in place. 

Fold more ribbon in half and press. Use it to tie bows. Glue the tails together with fabric glue.

Stick a pin through the back of your bow and pin it to the wreath. 

Do this on both sides and your bunting is done!

Here's my wreath hanging! Sorry about the lighting (it was rainy that day so no outside pics). 

Step 6: Attach ribbon for hanging

So remember when I hung my framed yarn and lace heart wreath on my corner hutch because I couldn't figure out how to hang it with ribbon on my door. I thought of a great trick:

Put your wreath hanger on the wreath like normal. Wrap the ribbon around it like you would but over the hook of the hanger.

Just so the ribbon won't slip, I added a tiny dot of hot glue on the back of the hanger.
Voila. Beautiful.

I love it. I don't have any flowers to exchange yet, but I plan to make some and use it as a spring wreath! Two in one! 

Enjoy! 

And Happy St. Patty's Day!

Linking to these parties and to The CSI Project 

and

You can find my St. Pat's wreath here, too!

Just Sew Sassy

and hereCreative Carissaand here!Tatertots and Jello

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