Friday, March 23, 2012

Hand embroidered spring dress



When I scheduled photos with Courtney Vickers (see the right of my blog for examples of her work!) I started making Laci a dress right away. I've been so involved with adding my hand embroidered pieces to my handbags that I was anxious to see how it looked on a dress. I stitched it onto the bust portion of the dress......now I'm working on embroidering a much larger section for her next dress because I enjoy it so much. If you are interested in embroidery check out fabric designer goddess Anna Maria Horner's blog (http://annamariahorner.blogspot.com/) and search through her posts for her incredibly gorgeous work!!!

Scalloped Easter dress


Laci and I had several conversations on how her Easter dress would look this year ;). We compromised on this one- I picked the shape of the top and the scalloped edge (super fun to sew by the way!) and she got "twirly and very long". She also chose her fabrics which is something I just love to see her decide on. I have another Easter dress for her that I'm almost done with....don't know why she would ever need two but I got too engrossed in the idea so I made it anyways ;). Hope you all enjoy your Easter!! I have a bunny bag tutorial that I'll post this weekend that combines your sewing with your child's cute drawing.
xo,
holly

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Mario Kart birthday party!

My oldest is 7!! Every time I look at him I melt....he is such a sweet young man. He loves racing, hot wheels, NASCAR, Mario Kart, ANYTHING that has to do with racing. So each year we basically repeat the same theme and I was grasping for new ideas this year ;). Thank heavens Mario Kart has super adorable "weapons" so I ran with the idea to incorporate them.



I found a great template of the Wii remote on a party blog to use as an invite. We folded them up and slipped his invitation inside. He really liked passing these out ;).


I was so excited to find a cookie cutter that makes a track! I had a cloud and star cutter already and used a tiny paintbrush in gel food coloring to paint on the details.
It took a few layers but I was finally able to paint this Mario on a plastic jar that we used for our M&M guessing game.
I have a lot of plaster cast (it's similar to paper mache) and used it to create these little squids "inking" the table. I cut card stock for the tentacles and painted over it all to cover the seams.
Martha Stewart's sugar cookie recipe is always the best!! I use gel food coloring only to get these wonderful colors.
King Boo lanterns- so easy! I drew King Boo with a sharpie on dollar store lanterns (I did his face on both sides because they never stopped turning) and then cut his crown out of gold scrapbook paper. The cake was time consuming but simple. I made drawings of the weapons and then cut them to use as templates. I then cut the fondant using the templates with an x-acto knife. Again, I painted on the smile and eyes with black gel food coloring and a very tiny paint brush.

Making this party was so much fun because of how excited Ryan was about it all. His ideas merged with mine and it turned out really cute! I adore his little friends and he seemed to have the time of his life...which is all I could hope for!
xo-
holly