Hanging Paper Flowers

I found today's craft on Martha Stewart's website. For less than $10 and less than a half hour, you can make 10 of these decorations! They are great for any room, or special occasions such as a wedding or baby shower. Here are the supplies needed:

5 Paper Bags, Scissors, Twine and Double-Sided Tape

I chose brown paper bags and twine because they are very inexpensive in addition to the fact that my bedroom wall is lined with brown butcher paper, so it matches my theme. If you wanted to make these flowers in a different color, you can easily purchase colored paper gift bags. At Rite Aid they were about 50 cents a bag, so still cheap. I know that Martha Stewart already has a pretty extensive how-to, but I thought I would write my own as well :)

The first step is to fold the five bag's bottom in half. Once that is done, cut off all of the bottoms. Cut one bag into a petal shape, then use this bag as a guide and cut all of the others to be the same size/shape. Once all five bags resemble flower petals, take a hole punch, and punch a hole at the bottom center of each bag. You want the hole to be fairly close to the bottom of the bags, but be sure not to have it too close to the bottom in case of tearing (because it is only paper afterall). Once the bags have been hole punched, thread a piece of twine (or yarn) through the holes and tie it loosely. Also during this step, take double-sided tape to tape the 5 bags together. You should use two strips per bags. The strips of tape should be placed as shown above (bottom left picture). Once the bags are taped together, tape the top bag to the bottom bag by opening the bags around the string. 

That's it! The result is a paper flower ready to be hung. I will try to upload another picture soon so that you can see it in scale. They turn out to be a bit larger than a frisbee. I hope you try this one out. It is very very simple and as I mentioned before, you will have enough supplies to make ten :)

Valentine's Day Round-Up

Welcome to my blog, dedicating to becoming more like Martha Stewart! I have been wanting to start a blog about baking, etc. for awhile now, so I decided that Valentine's Day is the perfect holiday for my launch! I love Valentine's Day because it is a holiday all about love and kindness. This year was no exception to that.

After looking around at various blogs and websites, I decided on these crafts to make:

This first craft is from Martha Stewart's website. While it was originally just for valentines, I wanted to mail mine so I looked into the size requirements for the postal service (which is 5x3.5" in case you were curious) and tailored my hearts to meet that size. Because I used dark paper for the outside, I added smaller paper and lines for the address labels. These were addictive to make. Once I started, I wanted to keep going! I made sure to save my heart template so I can make a lot more next year :)

The next craft I did was also from Martha Stewart's website for see-through valentines. It was very fun and easy to make. Simply take wax paper, cut out the desired shape and sew together! I don't own a sewing machine, so I hand stitched mine with embroidery thread. I also decided to make another one from a see-through candy bag. Though I like the look of the candy bag heart better, the wax paper heart is great because you can easily tear it apart to get to the candy!

For my card to my valentine, I chose a paisley printed paper whose color scheme is Valentine's-esque, but still fairly masculine. I used some silver sticker letters that I have had for years to spell out "love" and the heart at the top is actually a fastener for the card. I hand stitched the heart to the inside of the card and cut a slit in the front so that the heart can be slipped through to close it. I also hand stitched a little pattern at the bottom for more of a personal touch. 

Normally, I am more of a baker, but my kitchen is currently in disarray, so I did not do any extravagant cakes or cupcakes. I did, however, make some sugar cookies using a recipe from the Food Network. For the frosting I chose to make two different kinds: royal icing and buttercream. The recipe for the royal icing I used is from my Confetti Cakes Cookbook (love!), and the buttercream frosting can be found here at the i am baker blog. Because I don't have an electric beater, making royal icing is always a bit of a pain, but a with a bit of muscle (or a lot of muscle) it is well worth it. The cookies were decorated by my boyfriend and I as a Valentine's Day activity. It was a fun and yummy way to end the great day.