Category Archives: DIY

DIY IRON ON TRANSFER T-SHIRT

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Hello everybody!  I hope you guys are well.  My heart is still quite heavy regarding the tragedy that occurred in Newtown, Connecticut.  I’m a mother of a kindergartener.  I don’t know what I would do.  I do wish everyone love, support, patience, and peace.

I wanted to share with you something that I’ve done as a gift for my father for years now.  The other day he wore a shirt that I had personalized for him using iron on transfer paper and fabric markers.  I made that shirt a looooong time ago and I was so surprised to see that he still had it and that it still looked great.  My mom mentioned to me that he loves wearing the shirts that I make for him, especially the ones with his grand-daughter’s pictures.  She said, “those are his favorite because he gets to show everyone his grandkids!”  Love it!

Here’s my process:

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I purchased my iron on transfers and t-shirt at A.C. Moore.  The shirt was on sale for $2.99 and with a store coupon, I was able to get the transfers for half off.

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Choose and print out your picture.  For this particular brand, I had to print my image as a REVERSE IMAGE.

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You’ll need an iron and I use this piece of wood, specifically for my t-shirts so I just store it away when I’m done, along with a pillowcase.  I place the pillowcase on top of the wood so I can have a hard but smooth surface.  I always do the transfers on the floor so I can press down on the iron.

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Cut out your design or image and place it on your t-shirt right side up so you can see exactly how it’s going to look.

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Flip over the paper and center it once again.  I usually like to place the image one finger long down from the neck.

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PrintWorks instructions: “Iron transfer with firm pressure in a straight, non-stop motion top to bottom and side to side.  Keep iron moving at all times to prevent scorching.”  Make sure your corners are ironed down.

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Let your t-shirt cool off completely (this part is hard for me because I’m so impatient).  Then carefully peel away the transfer’s backing.

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I LOVE IT and I hope my dad loves it too.

I hope you guys enjoy this gift and crafting idea.

Take good care.

Until next time…

Storing Picture Perfect Jigsaw Puzzles

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Hello everybody!  I hope you guys are well.  My daughters love jigsaw puzzles and they have a lot of them, but I don’t have enough room for all the boxes.  Here’s my solution:

I put each individual puzzle into a Ziploc bag (sandwich size) and cut out the picture of the completed puzzle that’s usually on the front of the box and tape it onto the front of the bag.  I then take a picture of all the puzzles together, print on regular copier paper and tape onto the front of a big box that’s going to store them.

    

This puzzle set has small pictures of the completed puzzle on the back of the storage box, but I wanted to place a bigger picture of the puzzles on the front of the lid so I took a picture, added their names, printed it out and taped it on the lid.  Now my daughters can see it clearly.  Thanks for looking and I hope you like this idea.

Stay alert, stay alive.

Until next time…

DIY Thanksgiving banner

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Hello everybody!  I hope you guys are well.  Here’s a DIY Thanksgiving banner that I came up with.

I used Microsoft Word, a leaf template, cardstock, a wide Thanksgiving print ribbon, and paper clips to make my banner.

A simple, but meaningful banner.

I affixed the leaves onto the ribbon using the paper clips and the ribbon is held by blue painter’s tape, which I love to use because it holds things up and doesn’t damage surfaces.  I hope you like this idea.

Stay alert, stay alive.

Until next time…

DIY: MEET OUR TURKEY

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Hello everybody!  I hope you guys are well.  Remember our Halloween door monster.  If you don’t, then here’s a reminder:

I wanted to continue this door decoration idea right into Thanksgiving so our adorable monster has had a major transformation.

Meet Gobble Gobble Mercado!

I think I love him more than my daughters do.  Oh well, he’s simply adorable and I had a blast doing this.  I kept the eyes from the monster and printed out the hat, beak and feet.  I used party streamer paper and found two red strings for the wattle.  I hope this turkey brought a smile to your face.

Stay alert, stay alive.

Until next time…

DIY PIZZA BAGELS

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Hello everybody!  I hope you guys are well.  About a month ago, my silly daughter came home from school a little bit annoyed with the fact that students that day were able to eat pizza because of the school lunch and she couldn’t because she had her lunch already from home.  My daughter loves pizza and she declared that she wanted pizza as a lunch option.  Well, she didn’t use those words exactly, but simply put SHE WANTED PIZZA.  My mission then was thinking of a way to pack “pizza” in her lunch box.  First thought I had was go online and search, but then I remembered those frozen pizza bagels you see on TV.  I didn’t want to go buy them though for three reasons: I wanted to make them myself, I wanted to save money, and I wanted to make them healthier.  This is what I came up with:

I used mini whole wheat bagels, marinara sauce, and shredded mozzarella cheese.  I placed the bagels in my oven at 375 degrees for eight to ten minutes.  I cut them in half so I can easily fit them into a sandwich container, but I can only fit two bagels even though you see three.  Needless to say my daughter is very happy with these pizza bagels and that makes me happy as well.  I also include fruits, veggies, small dessert and water in her lunch bag.  I hope you guys like my take on this.  Enjoy!

Stay alert, stay alive.

Until next time…

DIY – Updating Snowman Family Wood Plaque

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Hello everybody!  I hope you guys are well.  I recently updated a family wood plaque that was given to me as a gift when my first daughter was born.  My sweet cousin, Janice, sent me a hand painted, personalized snowman family wood plaque for Christmas 2007.  I absolutely love personalized gifts and more so when it has our family name.  After I had my second child, in 2010, I would often look at the plaque during Christmas and think, “Sophia is missing.”   I let a couple of years pass without doing anything simply because I was scared of messing up the plaque.  I got over that fear a few days ago.

This is the BEFORE picture.

I made an outline of the fourth little snow kid with pencil, in case I needed to erase.

Got my paint, which I need to buy a new one ‘cause this sucker is old, and brush.

First coat of paint

I wanted to emulate the original work so I painted that blue outline first using a toothpick and then a fine tipped brush once it dried.

Added the scarf and branch/hand with snowball

Using markers I added the eyes, nose, smile, and
name.

Final touch was the year, in which she was born, but I didn’t have a white marker and I wasn’t going to attempt to write it with paint.  I just used a black marker and my snowman family is complete!

I know that it’s not as great as the original artist, but I’m pretty happy with my touch because Sophia is not missing anymore.  I can’t wait to put it up for Christmas.

Take care all.  Until next time…

DIY DOOR MONSTER DECORATION FOR HALLOWEEN

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Hi everybody! I hope you guys are well.  I had a great surprise for my daughters yesterday.  While my oldest was at school and my youngest was taking her nap, I had time to decorate the door in our living room for Halloween.

Inspired by a pin on www.pinterest.com,

I made our own door monster.

I know he’s supposed to be scary, but I think he’s adorable.  I used blue and white party streamers for the hair, eyebrows and mouth, two disposable plates and a sharpie marker for the eyes, and tape to hold everything up.  I might add some red to our monster so he can be a Giants fan just like us!

When my daughters saw this, my oldest couldn’t stop smiling and my youngest, who’s such a character already at just 2 years old, turned around and ran screaming.  She was pretending to be scared! 🙂 She came back smiling and couldn’t stop looking at the door.  This was a quick, easy and fun decoration to do.

This morning, as my youngest was staring at the door again, I told her  “We should give him a name.”

She replied, “Monster.”

Good enough for me!

Take care all.  Until next time…

DIY PAPER HEART GARLAND

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Hello everybody!  I hope you guys are well.  I wanted to show you another pin from, you guess it, www.pinterest.com, in which I used to make a paper heart garland as part of my anniversary centerpieces.  I absolutely loved this paper idea and I knew I was going to incorporate it one way or another.  Plus I had fun doing this project.

Pin with instructions (Thank you to the creator of this)

My version using turquoise and gold speckled cardstock. I used my Cricut paper trimmer and a paper clip to close the hearts into a circle.

              I made 9 hearts in turquoise and 2 in gold, symbolizing a total of 11 years happily married and the 2 gold hearts for my daughters. 🙂

Take care all.  Until next time…

DIY Banners

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Hello everybody!  I hope you guys are well.  Today I would like to share a project with you that has endless possibilities.  I love using banners to decorate, especially for birthdays and holidays.  You can always buy pre-made ones, but I like making my own so I can personalize them specifically.  Using the shapes application on Microsoft Word, I start with a triangle shape, and make it as big as I want.  Then, regarding the theme, I look for clip art online and I copy and paste onto the middle of the triangle.  I enlarge and flip around the images to my desire and then I print on white cardstock.

To make things easier and less time consuming, I use my Cricut paper trimmer to cut out my triangles.  Then I simply punch out little holes at the top corners of the triangle and using any string, I like twine, join the triangles together and you’ll have a one of a kind banner.  I like to use painter’s tape (the blue one) to put up my banners because they’re temporary (the banners) and the tape doesn’t mess up the paint on the wall once you take it off.  I usually put it on the back of the first, middle, and last triangles.

I made this banner for my daughter’s 2nd birthday.  The theme was the cartoon from Nickelodeon, Team Umizoomi.  I went to their official website, http://www.nickjr.com, to get some ideas and found a lot of printable material for birthdays including a square banner and a poster, which was awesome.  I couldn’t copy and paste the characters on that website, so I went to AOL search and found a bunch of clip art, which I used on my pennant banner.  On the picture tool bar, I re-colored the images using the color mode to fade the pictures so the letters would pop out more, but you can still see the image of the characters in the background.  There’s really nothing available in stores with this theme, which boggles my mind because kids are absolutely crazy for this cartoon and it’s been on the air for years now, just saying.

I recently did this banner the same way as above.  I found the clip art on AOL search and you can download these cute bats, along with a couple of pennant flags, here:  http://partyplanningcenter.blogspot.com/2011/09/halloween-banners.html

I used black ribbon to bring everything together and hung it up outside my door.  I hope you like this idea.  Of course you can make the banner using squares, circles, etc.  Like I said before, endless possibilities! 🙂

Take care all.  Until next time…

Green peppers in Harrisburg, PA

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Hello everybody!  I hope you guys had a good and safe Columbus Day week-end.  My family and I spent it at Harrisburg, PA visiting family.  While there my mother-in-law showed me her green pepper plant.  It’s been about a year since I’ve started eating green peppers and I LOVE them so I was in awe to see the green peppers growing right in front of her house.  She even took a couple of them, they smelled divine, and chopped them up for dinner.  They were simply delicious.  I left inspired to grow some peppers at home, with seeds in tow provided by my mother-in-law.

Take care all.  Until next time…