The new favorite Christmas ornament

This year I thought it would be a good idea to make another original Christmas ornament for the tree but this time with an image of Ella. I thought about doing something with photography but then I decided to make her silhouette.

I took a picture of Ella and used Photoshop to vectorize it and turn it into a silhouette.

I printed the silhouette on the computer and cut out the shape to make the stencil, then using the screen printing technique I transferred the image applying red paint on a sheet of white felt.

I cut out circles of the white felt with the red silhouette for the front and green empty circles to sew on the back.

And finally I sewed the two parts together with a red thick string to hang it on the tree. 

I only made four but I wished I'd made more. The good thing about screen printing is that with one stencil you can make many more things of one design. I kept the stencil to make some more of these ornaments for the tree.

A school's fall project

Now for fall, there's a pumpkin decorating contest at Ella's school. The contest consists in decorating pumpkins as storybook characters. Ella and I thought we could participate in this one. We just needed to buy the pumpkin and the rest of the materials were already at home.

Painting the pumpkin.

As always, I look for a low budget project with a nice looking result. Here is our pumpkin.

Our storybook character is Junie B. Jones.

Ella had been reading books about this funny character lately and we thought it was a good idea to make her our pumpkin. 

Ella and her Junie B. Jones pumpkin.

Great week

Last week was great. It was Ella's 6th birthday, my mom and my sister came to visit us, I made a photo session for CathyCat products with my beautiful sister and I started making some new products for CathyCat designs, lets see how that goes. 

While my sister was here I took the opportunity to take ourselves a "Now and then" picture. I remember seeing this idea in a picture book at the bookstore and I always wanted to do it. 

I loved this idea and now I want to do  it with other pictures we have. 

Here's a picture of Ella on her birthday.

She loved the crown I made for her.

Trying the crayon heart project

Ella and I made a crayon project that is all around the Internet, I found full instructions here in this blog. They made this project for Valentines day but we made it because we wanted to do something with all those hard to hold old broken crayons.  

We loved the result of an easy and fun project. You can color with the hearts and they are easy to hold and many different colors will come out of just one heart.

Mouse pad makeover

I sometimes wonder why black is the predominant color in technological gadgets and accessories. There should always be a variety of colors to choose from for these things. Nonetheless most people don't mind this. Ramon was using this black mouse pad for his new computer (which is black too) and one day while staring at it my idea light bulb turned on.  

I took that fabric I used for making the inspiration board and cut a square, then glued it with Mod Podge. That's it. Too bad I can't paint the computer. 

Don't forget to leave margin to glue the edges too!

Mini plant pots

I love small things; small houses, small cars, so you can imagine my reaction when I found these planters at the craft store. I had seen them before online but never live. 

I filled them up with dirt and took some cuttings from two of my succulents which I later stuck in the dirt. 

Let's just hope they grow! 

DIY Shadow Puppets

A few days ago we were at the book store and we saw some shadow puppets for sale. There were different characters made of black paper and mounted on a wooden stick. Honestly the first thing that came to my mind was to buy it for Ella's nighttime story, but then I thought it twice and said, hey! I can do these at home for no cost! 

Fortunately I had some reeds from an old oil diffuser. Perfect for the shadow puppet's stick. They even still have some scent left. 

I chose a dark color from my stock card papers to make the silhouette and then started drawing the characters. 

Then I cut out the different characters and put a tape square on the back with the stick. 

Against the light they're just like the shadow puppets from the store and Zerooo dollars spent!!! Yooho!

Dr. Ella

Grandma Amelia gave Ella a play doctors kit. This is something that she really loves and plays with all the time. The only thing she was missing is the doctor's coat. So we made one with one of Ramon's old shirts.

I found a red ribbon that supposedly had no use. 

Dad's old shirt + old red ribbon= DIY Dr.'s gown.