Googly Eyes

This might not be the most intricate page I have done, but it's definitely the most fun I've had after finishing a page! It's all because of the googly eyes! I made them out of some baby food jar lids and packaging from some scrapbook embellishments. The button 'pupils' move around whenever the page is moved and I seriously can't stop shaking the page!!

Of course I want to share all the fun I'm having! So I'm including a small tutorial at the end of the post.

But, before we get to the instructions...here are some close-ups of the page...

I used some foam adhesive to give one of the flowers a little lift.

 Close up of the googlies. hee hee!

I also used the foam adhesive on the buttons to help them stand out a bit more.

Now to the fun part...

I started with two baby food jar lids,

two small plastic packages that some brads and embellishments came in,

Aleene's clear tacky glue,

two buttons,

paper

First, I cut out two pieces of paper to fit the inside of the lid and two pieces of the packaging for the outside of the lid. This is what will hold the button inside the lid so make sure it is a tad bit bigger than the diameter of the lid.

To assemble the eyes, just glue the paper to the inside of the lid,

set the button on the paper,

put a line of tacky glue around the lip of the lid (try not to let it drip into the lid because you might end up accidently gluing your lid to the jar).

Place the plastic circle onto the lid and let the glue dry.

To cover up the lid lip, I just went around the edge of the plastic circle with a black marker. Plus this helped give some definition to the eyes. If you want to cover up the sides of the lid, a small strip of ribbon works perfect!

Finish it up by adhering the eyes to the page with some regular sized glue dots and your googlies are ready for a good shakin'!

Weaving Ribbon

One of my all time favorite sites - ScrapbookSteals.com - is gearing up for another online crop on May 21st. Usually they post challenges for us to work on during the crop, but this time they posted some challenges early! I L-O-V-E these challenges because it gives me that extra little kick in the behind to get my scrap on!

I don't need many excuses to use ribbon, so I jumped right on the ribbon challenge! I wanted to do something a little different with it though, and I thought weaving some of my American Crafts ribbon would be perfect for this layout...

I started by tracing and cutting the circles, letters, and number. Then I layed out the ribbons going in one direction on the back side of the paper and secured them using mini glue dots. *Here's a little tip - don't adhere the ribbon until you are sure of the placement...those little dots have a lot of sticky power! Once the first set of ribbons is in place, you can start weaving. I just used my fingers to pull the ribbon up and under, but tweezers would've saved a bunch of time!

Once you have all your ribbon weaved and placed where you want, go ahead and secure the ends down with some more mini glue dots.

This is what your weave should look like when you turn your paper over...

Just trim away the excess ribbon and embellish however you want. Here are some close up pics...

As you can see, the ribbon weave works great with any kind of shape.

I ended up with a 2 page layout so I could show some journaling. I used basically the same technique with the ribbon weaving on the top and bottom of the page, just with some larger American Craft ribbon.

I would love to see some of your designs using the ribbon weave technique! Just post a link in the comment section to your pictures. :)

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Crunchy? No - but maybe a little crispy.

I had never even heard of the term 'Crunchy Mom' until I started looking into using cloth diapers. I haven't seen an actual definition yet, but apparently it's someone that leads a truly natural lifestyle (homebirth, breastfeeding, co-sleeping, attachment parenting, chemical-free, cloth diapers, organic, etc). Want to know how Crunchy you are? You can take a quiz here to find out. I am 'Pretty Crispy!' but I was only a couple points away from 'Mmm! Love that whole grain crunch!' LOL

Anyway...back to why the whole 'Crunchy Mom' thing came up...

Yep...we're officially switching to cloth!! I am so tired of constantly changing diaper brands because of rashes. Hubby and I have mentioned using cloth before...but more in the 'If I had to do it, I would" context. Then the whole new Pampers scare finally pushed me over the edge! I did a bunch of research, joined a couple cloth diapering boards, and talked to the one (yep 1) person I knew in my state that uses cloth. We finally settled on a trial pack from Jillian's Drawers. They had a great variety and we can try the diapers for 21 days. If we don't like them, we can return them and we're only out $10. The picture above is everything that came in the pack. (By the way, they have awesome customer service! I realized we didn't get the sample pack of flushable liners so I sent them a quick email. They got back to me right away and had my liners in the mail that day!)

Obviously, these are not our grandmothers' diapers!! No pins or nasty rubber pants. Just lots and lots of fluffy cuteness!! Even hubby likes them! Look for more adventures in cloth diapering soon!!!

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