Lovebird Ladybird

MERRY HAPPY

Here's hoping that you have a fabulous Christmas and an exciting 2010!

XOXO
kelsie

Library Display - Winter

Here's the winter book display I did in the children's area this year. It is lovingly influenced by Mr. Keats' "The Snowy Day" and was made 100% better by the donation of the 3-D snowflakes AKA "floaters" made by my pal/co-worker Devon Damonte!

I reused the background from my fall display and it turned out to be a happy accident. If you look at the cover of "The Snowy Day" the color of the sky is almost this exact shade of purple. Sweet!

cheap & easy! hip holiday decor #2 - Paper Wreath

This is not my original idea, so I'm going to skip the instructional and provide you with a link! The Red Thread has a great tutorial for constructing this paper wreath and once you get the basic idea, you'll be good to go!

The only difference between the wreath I made and The Red Thread's is that I used index cards for my leaves, while she used wrapping paper. After making mine I can tell you that wrapping paper would probably be MUCH more malleable than the index cards were. But really, you can make this out of any paper you desire. Vellum would be RAD.

To finish it off I glued a chunk of an old necklace to the top and place a paper bow on top of it.

Have fun!

cheap & easy hip holiday decor #1 - make your own fabric banner

Okay, I decided to make this a short running series of posts with ideas and how-to's for decorating your home on the cheap and making it look rad! Today's idea is a banner I made the other day with a line out of a zine (I Hate This Part of Texas) that I loved and it seemed to fit the holiday theme as well:

 
I made this baby totally out of scraps and didn't even bother to sew it. To make your own-

1. Figure out a phrase or word for your banner (or use this one!)

2. Tally up how many letters there are and cut out your triangles accordingly. I did not measure mine- everything is eyeballed. I prefer the imperfection, but do it however works for you!

3. Find a font that you like (I used dafont.com) and then type in your phrase in your text editor or in the preview screen on the site.

4. Lay each triangle on top of your monitor and trace one letter onto each piece of fabric very lightly with a pencil. You don't want to damaged your screen doing this.(I used an old pillowcase for my fabric and thus it was see-through. You might decide on a darker color and then this trick won't work for you.)

5. Trace over each letter with a black sharpie. (Not on your monitor!)  Regular old sharpie is fine- just make sure it has a semi-fine tip if you have any thin lines.

6. Instead of getting ribbon I made my own by cutting thin strips of fabric. If you have ribbon around, that's great. I didn't, so I just worked with what I had.

7. Lay your letters out in order. Sew, or in my case, glue your ribbon or "ribbon" along the top of each set of triangles. I used some liquid stitch.

8. Hang that baby up! I added some lights I had laying around and there you are! A fabulous, cheap and rad holiday masterpiece.

xo -kelsie

this is our french lesson

I started working on this wall display/ongoing french lesson in my house. I'm totally loving it:

I'm slowing adding more french words below the items and hoping that some of these things don't fall off the wall! Many of them are pretty much MacGuyvered onto that wall. I want to make another one of these on another wall of my house and in another color scheme. I'm thinking pink! Woo!

Sunday AM picture book extravaganza!

It's that time again- Sunday morning! Wake up and check out a couple of the prettiest, most lala-lovely picture books that I've come across in the past couple weeks and then have yourself a fabulous rest of your weekend!

xo - kelsie

1. A Book Of Sleep by Sung Na

2. Boris and the Wrong Shadow by Leigh Hodgkinson

3. Summertime Waltz by Nina Payne. Illus. by Gabi Swiatkowska