A Birthday Wish....

I wish I could take credit for every great craft I've ever seen and re-created...

The wish letters are one of my favorite creations I've made.

Last year one of my great clients/friends told me about a cute idea she had seen and wondered

if I could duplicate something similar to it. 

The font used is a popular font I knew of right away!

  You see I have a thing for fonts....

When most of my little business is cutting out Custom Names for people,

you could say I stare at a lot of fonts.....all of the time......

The font used for wish is called storybook, and the cupcake was perfect for this!

Our friend Angela from Secrets of A Super Mommy

ordered some of these fun letters from me and decorated them up herself.  She added clips to hold very cute pictures of her kids and birthday memorabilia.  Love them!

She did a really cute spotlight over at her blog- so make sure to drop by and visit!
 She also did a fun highlight of the Birthday Banners we sisters prepped and sewed together for their craft group!  Angela made the banner oh so cute!

 She has great ideas and traditions to share!  Make sure to head over and check Angela's blog out!

Now that we Crafty Sisters are "out there" in blogland, sharing the fun stuff~ we are lucky to get to do together, it makes us all the more aware of giving credit to all the great people who have inspired us and hoping that we are shown the same courtesy.

So to give credit where it is due, thank you to this unknown wonderful person,

who's creativity inspired us and all of you!

Thanks to Angela's great post we've had a great response for these letters,

if you are interested in some you can contact us directly through our email

or visit Nicole's Sweet Pickle Design Shop on Etsy.

Day #5~The Grand Finale of Eggs~Cabbage Dyed Eggs!

I hope this is worthy of the Grand Finale of Eggs ~

inspired by Martha Stewart. 

We tried her natural dye technique using boiled red cabbage. 

And man, did my house STINK last night!

  Just imagine the smells of boiled cabbage, boiled eggs, and vinegar~all in one!  My kids about died! :)

Just so you know, I did try some of the boiled red cabbage, and with salt- it really isn't that bad!

 

It's worth the stink...because the color of the eggs is fantastic! Way more beautiful than any artificial dye!

We placed our blown out cabbage dyed eggs into a glass dome with a little scenery we made ~ that was inspired by Williams and Sonoma.  We saw their glass jars on their website and we knew we wanted to try making them! 

 

 To dye the eggs, first cut and boil the cabbage in two quarts of water for about 30 minutes.

After draining and removing the boiled cabbage, you are left with the most beautiful bluish/purple color!

Martha said to add 4 TB. salt and 4 TB. vinegar.  Add your eggs.  I dyed both boiled and blown eggs.  To get the rich dark blue color, you have to soak overnight!

We used an 8" grapevine wreath for the nest.  

We went into my backyard to gather most of the twigs.  All of my shrubs are budding and are so pretty! I know that after a week the buds will wither away, but hey- we can enjoy it now!

 

We added a few fake flowers

 and

one blue butterfly.

We twisted and wrapped, and wove.  I think I know how a bird feels after making this! :)

I also splurged on this glass dome!

  Hobby Lobby had all glassware 50% off, I couldn't resist!

And there you go....5 Days of Inspired by Martha... Eggs!

Phew,

we are tired!

I think  it's time for a very long vacation from EGGS!!! 

DIY day at A Soft Place To Land

Met Monday at Between Naps On The Porch

Make Your Monday at Twice Remembered

Transformation Thursday at The Shabby Chic Cottage

Day #4 Easy Beaded Eggs

     Today we were wishing we had unlimited helping hands like Martha,

to blow out, dye and hinge all the lovely eggs our hearts desired.....

Yeah, right.......soooooooo anyway

this morning we were going to attempt to do some of Martha's Fancy Eggs

when we stumbled upon these Fancy strung beads at

 our favorite store Hobby Lobby!

24 Feet of Loveliness for $1.99 and then 50% off!

Big Plastic Eggs .67 cents then 50% off!

How could we resist!

Who doesn't love a cheap and super EASY Easter Egg Project???

They came in shades of Clear, Pink and Silver.

It takes about 12 feet to do one of the bigger size plastic eggs.

With the handy glue gun in hand we went to work.....   It doesn't get any easier than this.

Glue + Strand = StuckThey look so cute nestled into the Rhubarb.

So 6 "Fancy" Eggs for a grand total of $3.31 + tax!!!

Extra bonus is they won't actually break when the kids play with them!

Don't forget to check in tomorrow for our Grand Finale!

Day #5 will be worth the wait!

Day #3 ~Pop Bottle Egg Flowers

So this egg flower is reasonably close to one of Martha's ideas.  Martha made an egg flower using crepe paper. 

 We used pop, soda...or whatever you call it bottles.  The eggs looked so cute nestled in the mouth of the pop bottle-so that's what we did! 

I have seen pop bottle flowers done on several blogs this year.  Tatertots and Jello's wreath is one I can remember right away.  I can't recall exactly where I have seen the others. Nicole told me about the Anthropologie pop bottle flowers too,  and I have been saving bottles for months just so we could try it out.

  

 I googled pop bottle flowers and found an artist named Jan Pinney that made these years ago as yard art. Her's are incredible!  She used heat to melt and form the flowers.  I thought that was super cool.  I believe you are suppose to use an EMBOSSING GUN.  It is much safer.  I didn't have one at the moment, so I CAREFULLY heated the plastic over an open flame.  I'm sure that isn't the smartest idea, but if your careful- it works.  Just like the fabric flowers you singe. 

Look how the petals open up.   

We used plastic eggs for this project.  The raw eggs are too fragile. 

We drilled holes in the back of the egg and used an old stem with missing flowers to hot glue into the back of the egg.

We used some leftover primed plastic eggs and added some bright paint and polka dots.

I cut the tip of the bottle of some.  If I were to do it again I probably wouldn't cut the tip off.  

Pierce a hole and cut with scissors around the bottle.

Make sure to remove the inked date.  When you spray paint,  the ink runs all over in your paint.  I used nail polish remover and it came off really easy.

 

 For the petals, we cut lines every inch or so. Or be creative and put more detail into it!

 

We also made flowers that resemble poppies~ where we didn't  cut lines,

instead we melted the edges more until they curled.

Imagine all the possibilities you could do with these- like yard art! 

 These poppies would be neat with lights strung in each one and hung on a patio.

 

This was a fun one if you like melting things-not totally Martha, but fun!

Up next

Day 4

of Martha's Eggs,

  another fancy egg.

Stay tuned! :)

A newly launched Valentine's Day Flowers site

 www.valentinesdayflowers.com  

has really great prices for flowers.

They are even offering a coupon page for added discounts! 

Valentine's Day Flowers Coupon

And The Winner IS!!!!!!!!

One of our Fabulous Readers SUE!!!

We couldn't figure out how to get the computer random draw thingy to work

so we did it the old fashion way.

I found out my paper cutter needs a new blade....

Plus my little girl felt really special being the "official" drawerer....is that a word?

Here are all the entries....

She dives in for the winner, I told her to really dig around...

                Here she pulls the winner out and starts complaining about having to do this out in the cold and was worried the wind was going to blow the papers away....:)

Here is Sue's entry...We are so glad that you love the bunnies Sue, they are now yours to enjoy!

Thank you to everyone that entered!

It was really fun to watch and to hear so many kind words sent our way!

It was so fun we're going to have to do this on a regular basis!

THANK YOU!!!!!

p.s. Sue we need your contact info so we can pop these babies in the mail heading your way!

Just send us an email craftysistersnc@gmail.com!

Day #2 Lady Bug Eggs

Luck Be A Lady TooooooooNightttttttt.......

Sorry couldn't resist that one......

Yes, It's Day #2 of our Crazy Egg Marathon!

Martha did some really cute red little lady bug eggs that we just had to try!

We had picked up some of this paper recently hoping to have a use for it.

And yes, the colors just screamed Easter so we just had to use these colors instead!

Remember how we talk about the funny things that inspire us?

This time around I couldn't find my nifty dremel bit

so I resorted to using my drill.

Yes, I cracked a few eggs.....

But the end result was fairly good with a uniform tiny hole on each egg.

What we were feeling really good about was the brilliant idea to "hang" each egg up to dry after painting.

I've been complaining about my abundance of pipe cleaners, ya know all the ugly colors that come in the monstrous pack you have to buy just to get the 5 hot pink ones you need.....

Well we chopped them in half, one side was a handy holder stuffed into the egg,

the other bent over a glass to dangle the egg till the paint dried.

It worked sooooo great!

My only regret is freckling the eggs.  We got a little caught up in the freckling process after all the egg wreaths and I just couldn't help myself.....You could say the freckles "BUG" me....

but overall, we're pretty happy!

 P.S. Don't forget to enter our Giveaway!  The drawing closes tonight at Midnight and our lucky winner will be revealed tomorrow ASAP!!!