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!

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Scrappy No-Sew Flower Tutorial

You may have seen this sweet little flower on my St. Pat's wreath here, and again on my framed printables here.

Now you get to make one too-without even having to find your needle! You will need to heat up the old glue gun.

Step 1: Gather materials.

fun fabric (I used cotton, but it might be cool with others, too!)-about a 1/4 yd or so. 

scissors

hot glue

pears or other embellishments for middle of flower.

Step 2: Cut spiral

Cut a large circle out of your fabric and then cut it into a spiral. Start on the outside and just keep cutting around until you get to the middle. Leave a little circle of fabric to start your flower on.

Step 3: Fold, fold, fold, scrunch, glue.

Starting at the "middle of the spiral" after the circle of fabric you left, fold your fabric like a fan (4-5 folds) and put hot glue on the bottom of your folds and place on circle of fabric.  Hold for a few seconds until it dries completely or the folds will come undone. 

Repeat all the way around in a circle formation to make a flower shape. Once you complete the

first row, you will begin gluing the folds ("ruffles") to the backs of the previous ruffles. Be sure to glue the new ones about half-way down the back of the previous row so the ruffles stay bouncy and not too stiff. I  made 3 rows.

Once all the fabric is folded and glued and your flower is of a desired size, cut off any excess fabric not used if necessary. You can also trim up some of the ruffles if they are uneven.

Warning: Be careful in this step! I burned my fingers a few times on the glue! Just watch where your hands are going.

Step 4: Re-make the middle if necessary.

 Somehow, when I make these I usually mess up the middle of the flower as I'm making the second and third layers to where it's flat and lifeless. If yours looks like that, too, or it just needs a little something more, make a quick tiny version of the flower and simply glue it in the middle of the flower you just made.

Step 5: Add embellishments.

Glue embellishments to the middle. I always think I'll use something else besides pearls, but they are just so pretty I can't help but use them.

I also made a burlap one with only 2 layers of ruffles instead of 3.

Step 6:Display it or wear it!

Attach your flower to a wreath to spring-ify your door.

Add it to a frame.

Attach your flower to a sweater.

or your purse.

What will you do with yours?

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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. :)

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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! :)

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