I don’t really think of preteen/teen crafts, so I thought I’d share what they made for those of you that have older kids. The basic idea is to attach a washer to a stretchy necklace. Once you have that base you can create all kinds of things to attach to the washer using magnets.

Here are most of their supplies, I am not sure where they got them all.

Step 1: To make the necklace base you just tie a washer to the stretchy bands.

Step 2: Fill the pop bottle caps with a little Mod Podge and start layering stuff in it. The girls used paper, stickers and drew with markers. You could use all kinds of things. Once they ran out of pop bottle caps I cut Starbucks sleeves into circles and they glued stuff to those too.

Step 3: Attach magnets to the back of the pop bottle lids or Starbucks sleeves. The magnets below have a sticker back. You can also use smaller, stronger magnets for a better hold. Just glue them on.

I made some chocolate chip cookies for our little crafting party. All the boys had been upstairs playing Legos, but magically appeared as soon as the cookies were set on the table. They had radar noses detecting the smell. As soon as they finished eating, they disappeared upstairs again.

The necklaces on the left are the bottle caps, the ones on the right are made from the coffee sleeves.

And just so you know…there will be lots of baby appearances on the blog in the coming days.

Here we are on day 2. We only saw each other briefly, but I think she likes me. If she doesn’t like cooking with her mom, she can come craft with me.

It used to make me sad how seeing a newborn makes your own baby seem so grown up suddenly. I’m good with my girl not being a newborn. It is going to be fun to have another baby in the family and it is going to be fun watching my sweet little girl grow.

Isn’t it amazing how pictures can tell a story….so that is part of my story of meeting my sister’s firstborn. I love her.

Janine – I’d do one for my days as in Girl Guides! I still have my cute old badges!

Expressions Vinyl winner is:

Taylor – “sweet nothings” It’s corny but my husband and I like to whisper it to each other. It makes us laugh!

Remember you can use the code “SYCAMORE” at both shops when you check out to get a 10% discount.

If you missed last week’s post, scroll down for ideas on how you can use products from both shops.

1. The bright square cards you all asked about yesterday are a Charley Harper Memory game. They were a gift and I have debated long and hard what to do with them…I am pretty stoked with the end result, but you have to wait for it. Yeah, I am making you wait a lot today! You can buy the game here.

2. Have you visited the Sweetest Occasion? If you are a bride to be or planning any type of party, consider this your warning INSPIRATION OVERLOAD. I could spend all day looking through posts and dreaming of parties to host. Yesterday my sister’s shower was featured, which was fun since we had a big baby day.

3. And this worked out nicely…since I have no brain cells left to share a normal post you can visit CafeMom for a little tour of my home today. I’ve heard it said that the spoken word has power, so I tried that out in the question about my personal creative space.

And by the way, I do read every comment. I don’t always have time to respond to each question and comment, but know that I read them all. Sometimes 4 little people just come before answering blog questions…which is the way it should be. Thanks for understanding that. Thank you to all of you that leave comments….they make me very happy and a play a big motivator for me to blog.  Thank you. A more rested me will be back tomorrow….with a little of this action:

I told her I have given birth 4 times, that totally gives me enough street credit to deliver her baby. Lesley opted to wait for her doctor. I totally could have done it. I have used ‘totally’ way too many times in this post, I guess I like revert to like the 80s when I am sleep deprived. Like totally.

I believe there is such a thing as too many Legos. 4 out of 4 boys in this house disagree.

My dad built the boys an amazing model airplane for their room. It is so light it can hang from the ceiling with two push pins. I told him my boys are perfectly mild mannered all the time and such a delicate model would be fine in the room of 2, 4 & 6 year old boys. So he hung it in the corner.

My boys NEVER wrestle. They NEVER throw balls or hard objects inside. They NEVER have pillow fights in their room. They are NEVER rowdy inside. They are NEVER anything but still and calm. However, since they do have friends that aren’t of the same behavior my dad built a plexi-glass shield to protect the model. He is smart like that

“Little girl what are you doing on mommy’s ladder?”

“You need to climb back down.”

Why do kids like to pull down folded laundry? Why does my daughter like to pull it all down, find some boy underwear then hide it on the bookcases in the house? If you come to my house and you see boy underwear in a random, sneaky location…it’s her fault.

Enjoying her aunt & uncle’s carrots…which are planted in their flowerbed. Great idea.

A few projects to feed my project addiction. I’ll post pics when the projects are done…which will take me a few weeks, the average person a few minutes.

Her 2 year old brother decided she needed a snack, so he fixed it for her himself. He is a becoming such a thoughtful, protective little guy.

She is a huge fan of the vacuum. She tries to ride it while I am sweeping. Weird child.

Happy Monday. How was your weekend?

Step 1: Gather a bunch of random supplies. Most of these are from Lemon Poppy Shoppe…since I am doing a giveaway there this week I thought it would be nice to have some ideas of how you can use scrapbooking supplies if you aren’t a scrapbooker. (I’ve heard people refer to themselves as a “Scrapper”…is that the new term? I’m Scrappy, but not a Scrapper.) I would also like to know when scrapbooking supplies began including such amazing ribbons? I have been in the dark for far too long.

Step 2: Pick a ribbon to be your base. Cut it long enough to fold over a bit on the top and bottom, fold and hot glue the ends over

Step 3: Hot glue ribbon to plain hair clips

Step 4: Pick out random pieces to make the look you want. I used 2 types of ribbon, crochet flower, and a bit of a feather.

Step 5: Hot glue all the pieces together and then glue it all to the hair clip

Step 6: Make a cute little card to hold the clips if you are giving them as a gift. I used scrap cardboard, a paint chip, part of a paper doily, masking tape, and stamps.

Step 7: Admire your girlie clips.

This is kind of what it would like in FireCracker’s hair…she doesn’t have enough for it to stay in place where it should go…you get the idea.

The boys were in goof ball moods.

The last time (May 09) they modeled her hair stuff, she hadn’t been born yet….Big Brother looking like Chunk from The Goonies…but in a bow.

The Lemon Poppy Shoppe and Expressions Vinyl giveaways end tonight. Scroll down to Monday and Tuesdays posts to enter. Just to give you an idea of what Lemon Poppy Shoppe has, here are some of the goodies I got there:

Step 1: Big Brother picked out a bright blue shirt and I wanted to tone it down just a bit. Before I began the design portion of this project I soaked the shirt in bleach water for a bit. It didn’t do a whole lot, but it did take the edge off the brightness.

Step 2: Pick your design. If you have a CriCut machine it can perfectly cut vinyl…so yeah for those of you that own them and boo for those of us that don’t. In my head I wanted something similar to Chris’ old boy scout t-shirts…just a simple graphic. At first I was going to use the road sign graphic for camping, but then I went okie.

Step 3: Decide how big you want the graphic to be

Step 4: Cut out a pattern for your graphic

Step 5: Flip your graphic over and trace it on the vinyl portion of the heat transfer paper. The paper has two sides, one is very glossy and one is more matte. The matte side will be the one to adhere to the shirt, the glossy side will be the one that touches your iron. You will now use an exacto knife to cut out the design. You want to only cut the vinyl layer, not the glossy base.

Step 6: Using your exacto knife remove all the excess vinyl so you are left just with your design

Step 7: Flip the graphic over so the vinyl is touching the fabric and the glossy side is up

Step 8: On a medium, no steam setting use firm pressure to iron on the design.

Step 9: Peel off the glossy top. The discoloration on this shirt is water from leaning over to pet a stingray. You know…normal stuff for an okie.

Step 10: Attempt to get your 4 year old to pose in his new shirt (which he LOVES). I purposely let him wear it to the Aquarium with his cousins…thinking I would for sure get a great candid shot of him in it. I tried.

In unrelated news, his sister loved the aquarium. She looked tiny in the shark tunnel and she tried her best to catch a shrimp.

She also liked the turtles. I will say the Oklahoma portion of the Aquarium was a great reminder why I don’t swim in lakes.

Alligator Gar. No thank you.

My brother-in-law noodles. No thank you. I totally stole this picture off my sister’s blog…here is the post of what she made with that catfish. She cooks. I craft.

(Noodling means he stuck his hand in a hole in a dirty lake and pulled that fish out bare handed by sticking his arm down its throat. Seriously. SERIOUSLY)

Some of the cousins. I have 4 nephews and 4 neices on Chris side. They are a fun bunch.

FireCracker kept up with the big girls just fine.

And on our way towards the car I finally got him to semi cooperate. My design isn’t for everyone, you could do all kinds of crazy things with yours…in 15 minutes or less.

The heat transfer vinyl is from Expressions Vinyl…the $25.00 giveaway ends tomorrow. Scroll down to Tuesday’s post to enter.

For those of you with a CriCut, here is a great video tutorial.

The word is out today…I am joining the ranks of Design Aglow as a contributor. I will be doing a monthly diy post on the Design Aglow blog using their products. I have been using Design Aglow products for a couple of years now, so it is really exciting to be a part of something I am already a fan of. Each month I will do an exclusive post there, but I’ll let you know here so you can check it out. It is a bit intimidating over there….all the contributors are rockstars of the photography industry…and then there is me. My first post went up today. Here is a peek at it. So far all those photography rockstars have been kind in their comments…which lets me breathe a sigh of relief!

UPDATE: For those a bit confused…Design Aglow is primarily targeted to professional photographers. Photographers can find resources, products and inspiration to propel their businesses forward. Most of the products I use from Design Aglow are templates, actions or files used in Photoshop. For instance, Design Aglow sells templates for birth announcements (which professional photographers use and sell to clients). I might take one of those announcement designs and turn it into a t-shirt. You do not need to be a professional photographer to purchase any of their products, but for most of their products you do need to own and have basic Photoshop knowledge. This is a summary taken from the Design Aglow site:

“From information and products directed at professional wedding and portrait photographers, to Photoshop actions, templates, fresh marketing materials, album design and seminars for the boutique wedding and portrait studio, Design Aglow is the marriage of art with a collection of resources for the cutting edge contemporary photography studio.”

Step 1: Get your bottle

Step 2: Clean your bottle

Step 3: Wrap several layers of masking tape around it, trim tape with an exacto knife

Step 4: Add a band of scrapbooking paper, use double sided tape on one end to hold it together

Step 5: Add another layer of tape to keep the paper secure

Step 6: Add some cute ribbon trim. I used a paper trim and held it in place with double sided tape

Step 7: Add a thinner piece of trim and tie in a knot

Step 8: Find some pretty flowers

And you have one cutely re-purposed syrup bottle…and one that matches my blog background (thanks again  Katie Daisy)

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I have been asked A LOT about how I get pictures with me in them, in focus and using the self timer. Well it is all about my focus button. The default focus button on your camera is your shutter button. This means you press it half way down to focus and all the way down to take the picture. Having one button serve two functions can be annoying at times. Have you ever tried to focus on something but your camera goes back and forth and just won’t focus where you want AND take the picture? One solution to this is to change the focus button on your camera. I can’t tell you have to do this for all your cameras, but you should be able to do a Google Search to find directions. In camera terms in it involves changing your “AF” button. On most of the canon models you can find it in your Menu under Custom Functions. I believe it is Custom Function 4. It should say “Shutter/AE lock button”. I use option 3 “AE/AF, no AE lock”

I will say there are differing opinions on using back button focus. I love it and will never go back. It does take a little while to get used to it. Try it out, do some Google Searches and you can find all kinds of discussion boards about the pros and cons…and better descriptions of all the AE/AF options. This only works on manual modes. If you are an automatic shooter it won’t work.

Here is a play by play on how it works. The back focus button only works when you are in the manual shooting modes (Av, Tv, M, P, S, A). Here is what my camera did on fully automatic when I tried to focus on the area of the table I would be standing. It wanted to focus on my son’s hand moving in front of the camera…and the picture is DARK.

This shot is using manual settings, the back button focus and the self timer.

In order to get in self timer shots, I set up the picture and focus on an object that is the same distance from the camera as I will be.

Once I have everything set up, I use the self timer again and I step into the picture. Depending on my aperture setting, I am careful not to change the distance I am from the camera compared to the object I focused on.

Another great aspect of back button focusing is your camera doesn’t jump around when you try to focus. I can still focus on exactly what I want using automatic lens focus (with manual camera settings). It can be so annoying when your focus and shutter are the same button!

In this picture, the camera is set on automatic mode. I was trying to focus on my son, but the camera kept jumping to focus on the crayons in the back.

Here I used the back button focus to capture the crayons without the annoying lens jumping. Using the back button focus is kind of like using MF on your lens…only it is AF on your lens with more control.

And here I focused on Big Brother.

Don’t forget the Lemon Poppy Shoppe (where I got the ribbon for this craft) and Expressions Vinyl giveaways are still going on (enter on Monday & Tuesday’s posts)

So there you go..a simple diy and back button focusing. Today I changed your lives.

Enjoy!

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I know chalkboards are a bit of a craze right now, but I couldn’t help myself with this. If you are unlike me and can’t imagine painting your walls with chalkboard paint, you might fancy a vinyl chalkboard. I am sure most of you have seen the vinyl companies out there that provide all kids of custom graphics and text for your walls and other surfaces. Did you know you can buy sheets of vinyl? Did you know you can buy sheets of chalkboard vinyl? I had a sheet of it and it was OVERWHELMING trying to decide on something to make. I settled for a simple chalkboard for the kitchen fridge.

Supplies:

1 sheet of chalkboard vinyl

Exacto Knife

Letter decals

scissors

cup (if you want rounded edges)

Cute masking tape (to tape it if you aren’t ready to apply it to the surface)

Chalkboard Marker

Step 1: Use a cup to trace rounded corners

Step 2: Cut the rounded corners

Step 3: Apply letter decals to create the words you want permanently on your chalkboard

Now you can apply it to your surface for a very simple, clean chalkboard. You can quit at this point if you want….or you could customize it a bit more.

Optional Steps:

Step 4: Using an Exacto Knife (that is very sharp) cut out the design of your choice. I just cut as I went. If you wanted to you could draw out a design first, probably a better idea to do that!

Step 5: Adhere the vinyl to your surface. This can be tricky as you don’t want a bunch of air bubbles. I used a pad of index cards (because it was rigid and nearby) to help SLOWLY smooth the surface as I applied the vinyl to the fridge. Remember I cut out shapes at the bottom, so part of my chalkboard is now missing. Don’t rub the rigid surface over your letter decals, it will mess them up.

Step 6: Continue to trim out your design, throwing away excess pieces of vinyl.

Step 7: SLOWLY apply the rest of your design to your surface

Step 8: Write away with a Chalk Marker

Ta Da

Vinyl can be used on just about anything. There is even heat transfer vinyl you can use on fabric. If you have a CriCut machine (which I don’t, but wish I did) you can use vinyl sheets on it to create all kinds of perfectly cut letters and graphics. So my second giveaway for DIY Week is a gift certificate for you get some vinyl of your own!

Giveaway Details:

Prize is one $25.00 gift certificate to Expressions Vinyl

One winner chosen at random

One entry per person

Contest ends Friday, July 23 9:30pm US Central

To enter: In the comment section tell me an expression that you like, love, hate or are confused by (keep it PG rated or your comment will be deleted!)

(For example: “Oh Tay”…how my 2 year old says “Okay”…I love to hear it.)

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Expressions Vinyl is also offering a 10% off coupon for all my readers. Use the code SYCAMORE when you check out.