Stuff I Made: Flower and Candy Leis

2011 was a busy year for the Nigg Family, between Senior Year and subsequent graduation of said senior, Jordan being the lead in his school play, lots of travel to see Europe before moving back to the States, moving from Germany to Savannah, Georgia...the list goes on!  During all those fun moments, I kept forgetting to post pics of the leis I made for the kids.  Unfortunately I didn't take step by step photos of how to make them but I thought I'd at least post the pics so you could see them and post some sort of tutorial later.  You may be asking yourself, why leis?  My dad grew up in Hawaii and the lei is a huge part of any celebration.  If you see graduation photos in Hawaii, the graduates are usually so covered with leis, you can barely see the graduate!  When my dad graduated from USF, our family came from Hawaii with a huge box of leis to put on my dad when the graduation was over and my mom handmade carnation leis for my high school graduation many moons ago, so of course I had to carry on the tradition. 

Here's George Washington aka Jordan, post school play and sans wig, showing off his candy lei.  This is super easy to make:  measure out the cellophane to the length you want the lei, lay out your candy along the length of the cellophane, roll the cellophane around the candy and tie off in between.  I use clear packaging tape to secure the end and a bunch of curling ribbon to hide the tape at the back.  My mother-in-law helped me make a boat-load of these as a farewell gift to Jordan's class at the end of the school year...she'll probably think twice about coming to visit now :)

I made three leis for Alex's high school graduation:  two from carnations and one made with dollar bills.  You can find plenty of tutorials on how to make flower leis online.  The money lei was a bit more complicated and tedious but worth it in the end.  The lei shown here has $100 worth of ones attached, which makes for a pretty long lei.

And as you can see here, the graduate is sure to love the gift!

Hopefully I'll get my act together and post some step-by-step tutorials soon. 

Alex's Room Project: Part 1

I'm new to the whole concept of  "painting a room/adding color/matching a color scheme" thing...partly because the few forays I've made in the past have been horrible but mostly because everywhere we've lived as a military family we have been verboten to paint.  The house we are currently in is RIFE with colors and we were encouraged to paint with abandon when we moved in, which evoked both a squee and a frisson of nervousness.  Well, we've officially painted one wall in the joint (in Alex's room) and it wasn't a huge success.  Not horrible, just slightly frustrating because the color we picked darkened to a shade very different from what the sample came out to when we painted a sample patch.  But you know, I'm probably the only person who will really notice so we're going to leave the wall alone for the time being.  In the meantime, I've been working on various projects with Alex to remodel her room.  Again we're limited since we're renting, with another move due in 2 years and said child will be staying in Georgia when we move so it doesn't pay to go overboard.  Anyway, I digress.  The point being, her room remodel has been an excuse for me to get crafty!!  I know, I know, when do I ever need an excuse to get crafty?!  Well, this has been crafty on a whole new level for me.  Like, home decor BIG crafty with fabric and paint and furniture remodeling kind of crafty!  So fun and so exciting!  Unfortunately I haven't taken pics of the bigger projects yet so I'll tantalize you with a small scale project that I managed to get pics of today.



  



So, here's the details:

 

The majority of my supplies were purchased at Michaels:  the 12 x 12 expresso frame, the K&Company background scrapbook paper, Making Memories trims (brown and blue), mini burlap canvas (on clearance), chipboard embossed butterfly and adhesive pearls (package in the impulse aisle for only $1.00!), Martha Stewart brown glitter, and the Recollections blue butterfly.  I also used the iTop to create the brown paper brad in the center of the paper medallion.  The rest is from various locations:  Ghent, Belgium for the cream lace trims and buttons (at a flea market notions vendor), Toom Baumarkt in Germany for the brown crochet flower, cream twine from Listmann's in Germany, and Joann Fabrics for the brown damask fabric.  You can't see it very well but the silver button in the center of the ruffled flower shows the head of Athena, Goddess of War and Wisdom, which is Alex's favorite Greek goddess.  The project was inspired by a combination of two projects featured in the latest Cricut Home Decor magazine.  I hope this inspires you to get crafty!