Tag Archives: handmade gift ideas

Loving Lately

If you follow me on Instagram, you already know that I was beyond excited yesterday when I received my first UmbaBox. I may have even been squealing and dancing a jig in our driveway when Tom got it out of the mailbox.

And I was not disappointed! Check out my swag:

4-leaf clover pin by Neogranny / pom-pom flower by Love and Marshmallows / ceramic vase by Material Good

On Saturday, Tom & I were at IKEA, where I totally made a scene in the art section over this print: a Keri Herer for IKEA for $3. Yes, that’s three dollars. Holy Affordable Awesomeness, Batman!

If you haven’t seen her stuff, check out her Etsy shop. It’s full of creativity and gorgeousness.

What are you in love with this week?

Chalk Art Notebooks

I’ve been at it again! Still loving the chalk-art look, on any surface or in any medium I can muster 🙂

I used paint pens to create this one. I’d love to play around with different colors and combinations of paint pens – I think the effect could be really cool!

I used a black pencil for these; I liked the contrast with the bright washi tape.

Now that I’ve got the hang of the lettering down a bit better, I want to play with embellishing the space, with flourishes or ribbons or things like that. Have you tried chalk art lettering? Any tips to share? I’ve yet to try it on an actual chalkboard, haha!

Sharing this post at:

DIY Washi Tape Notebooks

Washi tape seems to be the hottest thing in crafting right now. So I recently bought a few rolls to see what the fuss was all about. I don’t know if I’m hooked, but I’m definitely having fun coming up with crafts and ideas to use it! I’ve seen a few “dressed up notebooks” around Pinterest and Etsy lately, so I thought I’d try my hand at creating my own washi tape notebooks!

I found sets of 3 Moleskine kraft journals on Amazon for a pretty good price. I chose the kraft covers because I thought the tape would adhere best to this surface, and because the fun tape colors and patterns really pop against the neutral kraft paper! I especially love how the purples and blues look! These are my favorite combos.

Molly was my “photo assistant” for the day. Here, she wants you to see how cute these miniature rolls of washi tape are!

Are you a washi-fan or a washi-foe? What sort of cool washi-projects have you done? I’d love to know/see pictures!

Looking for more simple crafts and gift ideas? Try these easy silver-rimmed bowls (perfect for jewelry, lip balms and small trinkets) or a set of beautiful gilded votives that can be made in minutes!

I’m linking up to:

A Hoot of a Handmade Gift

I originally wanted to post these for the Dare to DIY: Give Homemade challenge, but I didn’t want the recipients to see them before they received their gifts!

I saw a pin on Pinterest a while back for homemade fabric owls, and I thought they were cute as can be. So, with some major help from my mom, I decided to give them a go. We had some challenges figuring out how to create the pattern (the images from the original blog post were difficult to read), but after some trial, error, and image enlarging, we got them to be the size we wanted! We followed the rest of the blog tutorial to put them together.

Linking this project up to:

Dare to DIY: Give Homemade

I’m reaching back into the “archives” for this week’s Dare to DIY: give homemade challenge.

Over the summer, I pinned this jewelry DIY from the Martha Stewart blog as a way to keep myself occupied during our 12+ hour drive to Florida. I made two necklaces, and nearly lost all of the wooden beads in the car when we made a sudden stop.

All you need is some plastic lanyard lacing (remember all those summer camp crafts??) and beads. You could probably use silk cord or ribbon, and other types of beads. I just went off of the instructions on the MS blog.

I ended up improvising a bit when I had trouble looping the two strands back through the lacing.

I had fun playing with the color combos and dreaming up outfits that my new neon necklaces would go with.

Check out the Dare to DIY hostesses: Two Twenty One, Decor and the Dog, Maybe Matilda, and Newly Woodwards. And check out more handmade gift ideas here!