On a completely unrelated note

Have you ever gotten a tacky gift? I'm sure you have. A few years back my best friend and I decided to celebrate the joy of tacky gifts by creating a Tacky Gift Competition. Visit here to get more information on how the competition started and its rules.

My reason for telling you this today is that it's voting time. Both she and I have purchased our tacky items and I'd like your help to determine a winner. Take a gander at the tacky beauties below and then if you're so inclined, please head to the tacky treasure website to see even more photos and place your vote.


Which is tackier? Jesus of the Sea? or Googly Eyed Fisherman with crotch protruding pole?

You decide!

Stamped Clothespins

I've got a lot of clothespins hanging around my house and I've also got a fair amount of rubber stamps. This weekend I put them both to use to create some fun stamped decorative clothespins.

Here's how I made them.
Supplies:

Rubber stamps or clear acrylic stamps
Wooden clothespins
ink pad or ink markers

I chose a variety of rubber stamps though you could easily do this with the new clear stamps as well. As you can see, even if your stamp is larger than your clothespin you can still make some pretty cool effects.

I found the easiest way to stamp the clothespin was to place the stamp rubber side up on my table and then apply the ink. I used these ink markers which are very convenient and allow me extra control over what section of my stamp gets inked. Of course a traditional ink pad would work as well.

Once you've inked your stamp in the color of your choice, simply press the paper clip down onto the stamp. I used fairly firm pressure and rocked it very slightly to make sure the design transferred to the wood.

And simple as that you've got your decorated clothespin.

I think the swirl one is my favorite.

They'd work great to clip a gift tag onto a present.

Or a gift bag.

Think how cute they would be holding closed a small bag of homemade holiday goodies! You can smack a magnet on the back and use them to clip notes on the refrigerator. Decorate lots of them and use them to clip your Christmas cards from friends and family onto a ribbon or string. The possibilities are endless.

Eat The Cookie Mother!

Another entry about food. I'm sensing a theme - but it is the holidays after all and this weekend my friends and I had our 2nd annual Baking Extravaganza. We got together and made tons and tons of goodies and then divided them up amongst ourselves to give as gifts for daycare providers, neighbors and co-workers.

Here are some of the spoils of the evening.

I focused on sugar cookies this year. I baked over 150 and my back and hands are still sore from icing them all.

The best treat of all though has got to be these chocolate mint brownie cookies. They're really good but one of the girls was quick to point out that with their lovely coat of powdered sugar they looked like the arsenic dusted cookies from the Flowers in the Attic movie. That movie freaked me out as a kid. Not so much the cruelty and death but that bathtub scene - ewww - it haunts me to this day. I'm all for family togetherness but I'm not letting my brother scrub my back in the tub okay.

Anyway, these cookies will forever be known as the "flowers in the attic cookies" within our little circle of friends.

This is for you girls:

Teeny Tiny Nanners

Okay, this post is absolutely non-craft related, but I had to share.

Look at these absolutely adorable teensie-tiny-eensie-weenie little bananas I found at the grocery store the other day.

I must admit, a little “Awww!” escaped me right there in the store when I saw them and I had to get them. They taste like regular bananas, perhaps just a tad bit sweeter. I’m not sure there is a huge demand for miniaturized fruit, but they’re cute and a great idea for school lunches since they fit in a lunch box/bag much better than a regular sized banana.

I’ve been obsessed with them for days and I started to wonder about some of their advantages over the typical larger banana. Here's what I came up with:

1. They create the perfect number of slices to top off your bowl of cereal or stack of pancakes. See that half of a banana in the background? There would be no leftovers with the mini banana to taint your fruit to cereal intake ratio!

2. They boost the egos of really tiny monkeys – now they can carry around a whole banana instead of half of one – even animals feel shame you know.

And last but certainly not least!

3. The little peels would be perfect in the circus acts of really tiny clowns.

Clothing my inner 13 year old

Who's excited for New Moon? I am, I am!

T-shirt night was a success. I churned out two t-shirts because you can never have enough of Edward right? And my friend Carrie made a *gasp* Team Jacob shirt.

We used the freezer paper method which involved some setup time cutting out letters and shapes but I think the results are much better and more lasting than an iron on. Cheaper too actually. Those iron-on things are pricey and I'm really cheap. Give me some freezer paper and a $1.49 bottle of fabric paint and I'm good to go!

Here's the one with my Edward silhouette. In hindsight I should have done him in white as the shirt is a little too dark for him to really stand out. It still looks fab though! I'm thinking I'll put him on a pillowcase next - I'm sure my husband will appreciate that.

I found a full body silhouette of Edward online and put it on this comfy green shirt. It turned out really cool and this shirt won the job of being my official New Moon movie night shirt!

"I know you don't sleep Edward, but you must be weary. Please, feel free to rest your head on my bosom!"

Ah, so juvenile, and yet so fun!

Embracing my inner 13 year old

I’m almost ashamed to admit it, but I’m a Twilighter. I know, it’s so incredibly juvenile, and trust me, I had no intention of ever becoming a Twilight fan. I went quite some time refusing to have anything to do with it. I mocked it, I turned my nose up at it and then I finally broke down and rented out the movie just to see what the fuss was about and . . . the acting was completely horrid and the storyline seemed less than stellar.

However, there was Robert Pattinson's incredibly square jaw to consider (I may have watched the rental more than once to study the beauty of that man’s face) and I figured there had to be more to the storyline that possibly just didn’t translate to the movie. So I borrowed the books from a friend and the rest is history.

So here I am, along with my other twenty and thirty-something friends anticipating the upcoming New Moon movie like a bunch of giddy schoolgirls. We decided we needed a physical marker of our obsession and what better thing than Twilight t-shirts!

Now, we might be pathetic grown women obsessing over fictional characters and actors who make the cover of Teen People, but we’re not so pathetic that we want to be seen in our nearest Hot Topic picking out generic Twilight shirts.

So since we’ve all got a crafty streak we’ve decided to make our own t-shirts. We’ve got big plans and since we’re not actually constructing them until next week I can’t show you the finished products. However, I wanted to share something I have planned for my shirt in case anyone else out there has a similar Edward fascination.

I give you the Edward silhouette.

Silhouette’s are big nowadays and I’ll admit that along with fictional vampires they are another one of my current obsessions. So I decided to do one of Edward (R. Patz).

I think it’s fitting since Edward is an immortal romantic type of guy and silhouettes invoke that old fashioned romantic feel. And I’m hoping it will be a cool sophisticated design for my T. I’ll show you the finished product next week and you can make your own judgment.

I created it by combing the web for some profile shots of Robert and tracing the outline of his chiseled features. I used this photo for his face and then had to find another one for the hair and meld them together, but I thought it came out pretty well.

I’m going to paint him on my T using the freezer paper method. I got to thinking that he’d be great on other things as well like on a pillowcase, or at the end of a simple scarf, or if you’re really obsessed you could frame him and put him on your wall, use him to make invitations to the Twilight party you throw when New Moon comes out on video – whatever! I just couldn’t keep him for myself.

So feel free to right click on the picture(s) above and save it to your files to do with as you will. All I ask is that if you use him that you share what you made. I’d love to see it! Shoot me an email (pinandpaper@q.com) or whatever.

A Glitter Public Service Announcement

I’m always looking for fun easy craft stuff to do with my kids and since I work full time and have a lot of other stuff going on in my life, I’ve often found Martha Stewart’s little pre-packaged craft projects are just the thing.

So when I saw this glitter butterfly card kit the other day in the clearance bin I went for it. I mean I knew glitter was a slightly dangerous option with the age of my children but I felt I could keep it contained.
I think you all know how this story is going to end but indulge me anyway.

Right off the bat my two year old grabs the open glitter container and while I’m trying to show her how to gently shake it over her butterfly she resists my help and tries to jerk her hand out of mine, therein dousing her brother and half of the kitchen table in the finest most proliferate glitter imaginable. Do you see it - do you see how teeny tiny that stuff is?

The next few seconds were a sparkly blur in my mind but I may have lost my normal calm motherly demeanor for just a moment and possibly yelled at her because the next thing I know she’s sobbing and running off to her room while I’m dusting her brother off with a broom. So I’m shouting soothing statements that hopefully she can hear over the sound of her own sobbing while simultaneously trying to corral the glitter into a manageable pile.

However, this glitter is so super fine that when I try to slide if off the table and into the waiting dustpan it literally oozes into every minor wood grain of my table creating an uncanny gold leaf effect. It’s also on the floor of course and when I try to sweep it up it pools in the grout lines.

So I sweep up as much as I can, the youngest returns to the table and we proceed with the craft because why not. I mean at this point we’re already sparkling like overly sequined showgirls on the Vegas strip.

They each complete their butterfly and I send them directly to the tub. This is when I discover the trail of glitter that followed my 2 yr. old during her tantrum; a shining, sparkling trail throughout my entire house. It’s on the floor, the rug, the couches the walls. It’s like Tinkerbell spontaneously combusted in the middle of a stiff breeze.

So while the kids are in the tub I break out the Dyson and use every attachment that baby came with to eradicate the glitter on the various surfaces of my house. I got most of it but this is glitter we’re talking about here – the herpes of the crafting world. That’s what my friend always calls it, because once you get glitter you can’t get rid of it, and it pops up randomly for the rest of your life. And sure enough when I woke up the next morning after thoroughly showering and looked in the mirror, there was a tiny fleck of glitter under my right eye.

And that’s just the beginning. I see tiny sparkly flecks still in the carpet. I’m confident that glitter particles will be cropping up randomly until I die. I had to tell my husband that he’d been exposed, it was embarrassing and degrading.

So let this little story be a lesson to you folks. Don’t make the same mistakes I made. Don’t make yourself susceptible to the insidious infections disease that is – glitter. The only way to be 100% safe is through abstinence!