Family Photo Collage Shadow Box

This project is a few years old but one of my favorites. I wanted to do something different for my mom on mother's day. (BACK STORY) My maternal grandmother passed away when my mother was 12 and a few years after her death my grandpa remarried. After my grandpa pasted away my mom's stepmother gave her a box of old photos of her real mother and of her family. Inside the box was an old locket that was my real grandmother's it had picture of my grandparents when they were in high school. My mom left the pictures in the box and put the jewelry away in her jewelry box and that was it. So i decided I wanted to do a photo collage for my mom using some of the pictures and display the locket in it. I scanned and printed out all the photos so I didn't ruin any of them and used some scrapbook decorations and glued them all into a shadowbox. I figured the safety pin was a cute way to display the locket so it had some movement and could be removed at anytime. The copied pictures from the inside of the locket underneath it cut into a heart like the locket. I also put in pictures of my mom's stepmother since she was part of her life for so many years. My mother adores it and was very happy that the locket could be displayed in some way with out being ruined from wear.



If you look closely you can see my Grandmother signed the pic of herself in the bottom right corner.
( I love it)



I found these little gold frames and drilled a hole through each to the back of the shadow box. Then just used wire to attach them.

Baptism Dress

Ok, first off prior to even setting the baptism date I was looking online for heirloom style dresses. This is when I came upon Baby Beau and Belle a web site that sells the most detailed and exquisite children's outfits for special occasions. The Jessica collection baptism dress was my inspiration...I use the word inspiration because although beautiful in every sense of the word it was a lot of money for this mommie to afford. So I went to see my sweet and loving mother showed her the pictures of the Jessica dress and said look how adorable little Ellie would be in that dress. My mother looked at the price and said are you CRAZY. I then went to ask hey mom remember a few months ago when I was pregnant and had insane bouts of energy from hormones (I grouted our bathroom floor at 8 months pregnant)..well remember when we were up in the attic looking through my old baby stuff and found your unpreserved and seriously crispy wedding gown. My mother wanted to toss it out because it was obviously ruined I said save it for the lace which is still good and could be reused for something else. I then informed my mother of this idea I had to buy a cheap baptism dress and basically re create it into something heirloom looking. To my dismay my mother told me she had tossed her old wedding dress after I left that day. So I went back into the attic and found her old veil. The veil was attached to a large head piece that had lace and pearl appliques on it which happen to be in great condition. We then found a ivory baptism dress at a gently used children's clothing store for $7.00!

We removed the collar, ribbon sash and opened up the sleeves to make them more of a balloon/puffy style sleeve. My mother had some old lace and used that to make a pattern for a muffin hat. I made a trip to Jo-Anne Fabrics, purchased some ivory lace and a little bit of ivory netting for the inside of the hat. We reused the ribbon from the sash to wrap about the base of the hat. Took a final trip to Jo-Anne's to buy ribbon with lace intertwined for the waist of the dress and to go onto the hat. We then tacked the lace appliques on and VOILA Ellison's heirloom baptism dress made from her grandmother's veil. It cost me under $30.00 total!





This is not the best photo (bad backdrop) but it shows the detail of the hat up close.

Ellison and I right after her baptism.







This picture I took on a dinning room table with a black sheet for a backdrop. I uploaded it online to picnik and did some photo editing to make it look a little old fashion.

Fork & Spoon Wall Hooks

For our kitchen I decided we needed some wall hooks to hang keys and other misc items on. My solution was to go to the salvation army and come home with some spoons and forks. They were cheap enough to bend by hand. Then went to AC Moore and purchase a wood plaque. Pre drilled the holes for it to be hung on the wall. Painted the plaque black and sprayed 2 coats of polyurethane on it. (side note: after I've looked at it enough kind of wished I would have found an older looking piece of wood or done some distressing to the paint job). After the plaque was dry I nailed the spoons and forks up. Put some sinkers into the wall and was done!

My Mommy Story

This Mommy's story goes as follows:

 Young woman goes about her life is single, working full time supporting herself and spending time with friends, family and enjoying herself every minute.

Young woman and roommates do not have a functioning lawnmower so roommates talk woman into asking ex beau who lives a block away to please help. Which ex beau gladly does then young woman keeps getting phone calls at work and at home making small talk and asking to get together for a date and to hang out. Woman finally says yeah sure why not...4 months later having been shot with Cupid's arrow woman has relocated to her beau's house!

Young woman and slightly older young man are happy and in love! Except marriage didn't come next they skipped that part and got a surprise. See young woman thought she just had the stomach flu...

(note you are looking down past my belly to my basically obscured sock monkey slippers.
This was 5 months along, found out long before that but there are no pictures I was sick almost every day for 20 weeks straight!)

On my May 16th 2010 the young woman became a MOMMY to a little girl Ellison Marie

The woman could not have comprehended the amount of love she felt for this little person.

Ellie (we call her that for short) means everything to her mommy and daddy and makes them the happiest two people on the planet.

Ellie is laying on her papa's belly (My Dad) she loves him this much!

The best is yet to come raising their sweet baby and the young woman figures they are half way to their happier every after as soon as now pudgy woman loses the baby weight and can squeeze into an IVORY dress!

Ellison's Garden Nursery

First off my daughter was my inspiration for blogging!  While designing her nursery I can't even begin to tell you how many blogs I looked at for creative ideas. I wanted to secret garden/princess theme that wouldn't be too babyish , Finding colors that blended in with the burgundy colored carpet. I'm not a fan of non neutral colored carpet..but didn't have the funds to replace it at the time..so being thrifty I made it work and work well! I decided to paint a tree on the wall with the help of my very crafty mother who did the outline. I then cut out many many many leaves for the tree...a silhouette machine would have saved me a ton of pain but at the time I was unaware! http://silhouettemachine.blogspot.com/

Getting back to the leaves I cut them out of scrapbook paper and used plain white school glue to adhere the leaves to wall. After nailing up the birdhouses I thought I should bring in a few birds so went to Michael's craft store and put a tiny nail in the tree branches and clipped the birds to the nail. I added some butterflies from Michael's around the room as you can see.(I pulled out the metal clips and used some double sided craft tape to stick the butterflies up.) The curtains gave us some trouble by us I mean my mother and myself. My mommie is the greatest she is a seamstress and wants to choke me most of the time. See I have the ideas and I beg her to sew it for me. I can sew but NOT well at all and it take her a lot less time then it would if I tried to sew. For the curtains I was going to try and build a valance box but wanted to be able to take it down to wash so instead we used a hula hoop..yes I said hula hoop. We cut it in half and drilled holes though the hoop and sunk a screw in the wall wiring the hoop to it. The swag behind it was not supposed to be there but I didn't think ahead enough to realize the ceiling in my head was a lot taller than it actually is...Whoops its works though! The rose was made from wired ribbon and just tacked onto the valance top, and then hooked onto the wall.

 It has turned out to be the perfect little nest for my sweet baby!