Cute Felt Anniversary Card!

Here is an easy tutorial on how to make physical felt cards for your loved ones, for any occasion! 

You can hang it on a wall, and it would make an adorable addition to any room. 

December 7th was Dave and I's 7th anniversary!  I was 15 when we got together, and he was 16.  He's the best thing that has ever happened to me! 

Our mutual favorite animal [or one of our favorites] is the manatee.  They have no natural enemies and our quite fast.  They also are very intelligent.  

You will need:

• A lot of different kinds of felt, mostly bits and pieces, with one to two solid pieces for a background
• Glue, hot glue or fabric/tacky glue
• Paint or puff paint for details

All in all this card will end up being $3 to $4

I looked up some different cartoon manatees to get a basic shape.

I needed pieces of gray for the manatees themselves.

I chose to use a pretty blue for the background color. I glued two sheets together to make them more sturdy.

I chose to use felt in the color "Silver Grey" for my manatees.

I traced a basic shape onto the felt.

Here it is with my hand for sizing purposes.  I realized that it looks quite small on its own, but they are actually larger.

I then cut out the manatee from the sheet of felt with some fabric scissors.  

I decided to make the marked side of the manatee the back side.  I needed two manatees cut.

I then traced it right side up, to make two different facing manatees.

I cut out little fins similar to the shape and size of my tracing.  I think they are just adorable.

Here is a close up of the manatees.  I made them hold hands! Then I cut out a little mouth for the manatees.

I made the girl manatee, the one on the right side, have a smaller mouth than the male manatee.

This is what they look like with both their mouths, a little zoomed out.  

I decided to make the girl manatee look a little girlier and cut out two hearts and a circle out of pink felt.  I put the points of the heart together, and put the circle on top of the points.  I often fuss over the shape of bows, but thought this was simple and cute, and fitting, as well.

Oh, I just think they are so cute! I used hot glue to affix all these pieces, but you could use fabric or tacky glue as well.

You can see that they are hearts and a circle in this picture.  

Then I decided to add pennant flags to the top.  I cut out 16 triangles and glued them to the top.  Five for happy and eleven for anniversary.  

I overlapped them a bit, as shown in this picture.  I wrote "happy anniversary" in puff paint on them, but I do not have a picture of it yet.  

Then I started making food items for the side, to make it a true manatee party.  I cut a tan circle out, as well as a smaller yellow circle, and five little red circles.  This, is a half pepperoni, half cheese pizza.  I made this because I am vegetarian and Dave and I always make our pizzas like this.

Then I decided to make a cheese quesadilla.  I cut a cream circle and a yellow half circle.  

I folded the cream circle over the yellow circle and glued it all down.

After cutting out the red circles, I noticed that a perfect little bow tie had been made.  I decided it was perfect for DaveO manatee. :]

Here is a little cupcake I made, with a cherry on top.

These are the broken down parts of the cupcake.

I then decided to make a burrito, after our love of Chipotle. 

Here is what my card looked like at this point. 

I folded in two sides of the circle, and rolled it up, then glued it down.

This is what it looked like finished. 

I then glued that down.  

This picture may be more clear.

I then added little puff paint eyes for the manatees, where they were shown in my tracing.  I don't have a picture of them after I put them on, but I will put one up soon!

There are all kinds of details and options in making felt cards like this.

Thanks so much for reading!

♥Riley

P.S.  I'd love to see your interpretations! :]

Simplest Tutorial Ever! Felt Snowman!

Here is the felt snowman I made and put on my ugly Christmas vest!

This will be the easiest and shortest tutorial I ever make!

For this craft I used:

• One piece white felt, 25-33 cents depending on your local craft store
• Tiny bit of black felt, 25-33 cents
• Little piece of orange felt, 25-33 cents
• Glue
• Scissors

You could also use black and orange paint, instead of felt.

The total for this craft is 75 cents to $1, or 25 to 33 cents if you use paint.

 You need three circle or oval shapes for the body, two large black circles for eyes, and a carrot nose.  I then used four tiny black circles for a mouth and three different sized black circles for his buttons.  

I considered making a hat for him, but loved him too much without it.  

Glue them all together! I used tacky glue and put the white circles together first.  Then I put him under a couple of books overnight to let him stick together right.  

See? Quickest and easiest craft ever!

♥ Riley

P.S.  I'd love to see your interpretation of this craft if you made one! Please send me them to look at :]

Decoden Style Phone Cases! : Christmas Cookie!

My new obsession: Decoden!!

Or old obsession, rather, but I just recently started to try it myself!

I decided to make a holiday phone case using Decoden styled decorations.

All in all this craft was a little more expensive than most of the others I show on my blog, but it's really fun and the result is amazing!

You will need: 

• White caulking, I chose DAP brand, Wal-Mart, Home Depot or other home goods stores ~$2-4 [here is a link I just found on Google http://www.tools4flooring.com/dap-kwik-seal-tub-tile-adhesive-caulk-p-195.html?gclid=CNHGuPSK5LsCFeZ7Qgod3k4Aew#.UsfEGPRDsg0]
• Phone case, Amazon ~$3 for a clear one like shown below
• Cake frosting tips, Michael's, Daiso, Wal-Mart, I chose a star point, ~$1-3
• Tape
• Charms/Beads/Buttons - These can be whatever you choose to use, the buttons I used were from Michael's, ~$1-4 a package, I used one package

So in total this cost me about $10, since I already had tape and a frosting tip.

Before I started with the actual decorating, I positioned the buttons I wanted onto the phone case, to get an idea.  I used all the pieces in one package of buttons from Michael's. 

Here is just about everything I needed for this craft.  Kwik Seal, a phone case, tape, a caake decorating tip, and buttons.  

The next step is to tape on the frosting tip.  Take the cap off the caulking and snip the tip off with a pair of scissors.  Then tape on the tip to the caulking with either scotch tape or duct tape.  Just make sure that it is sealed entirely.

Before I did my case I practiced a couple methods of dispersing the caulking. This is a little hard to describe without showing a person, but you squeeze the caulking out of the tube while moving the tip.  The top design on the box was squeezing it out in a swirl motion.  The middle portion is moving it around in a swirl and continuing the swirl around.  The bottom is just squeezing it out straight.  

Then I started squeezing it out onto the phone case.  I swirled on one line and then stopped.  Then, I started swirling them on the next row.  

I messed up a little bit, but it was my first attempt!  I swirled the entire case, starting from the line shown in the previous picture, down.  Then I used smaller individual squeezes for the top portion, which is why it is so pointy.  

Then I started putting on the buttons.  I liked the cookie cutter ones because they were festive and Christmassy and went along with the cake looking Decoden style.

Here you can see some holes in the design, that I filled in later by swirling the tip around.

Here is a side view of the phone case.  I ended up stamping the sides of the case with more caulking for a more finished look.

This is what the case looked like once I put on all of the buttons from the package.  It had a surprising amount of buttons in it! 

Then I squeezed some of the caulking onto the front portion of the case.  I was going to mod podge silver glitter to the front portion, but decided to just do it in the caulking.  

Here is a close up of the detail, not sure why it came out a little yellow in the picture.  I used white caulking to keep it fresh looking.

This was the snapchat I ended up sending to my friends to show the finished result.  I love the way it turned out, even with its imperfections! 

I then did a picture frame for my boyfriend's mom.  

 I used a similar style to make this frame.  This frame required two packages of buttons, one with bears and one with dogs.  

 Here is another picture of the frame in a different light.  

I used a little bit of transparent glitter, while it was still wet to make it stay. 

Thank you for reading this post! It was a lot of fun to make, and you could use it with any style or holiday. 

♥Riley 

P.S. If you try this, I'd love to see! :]

Felt Christmas Tree Decorations!

I recently passed the 1,000 pageview mark! :]  This is extremely exciting!
Thank you all for your support and interest, and remember to subscribe! :) 

For today's craft, I'm feeling Christmassy!  I've decided that I want to make some ugly Christmas sweaters/vests this year and thought I'd get started! Btw, when I say "ugly" I mean "tacky".  I love the overdecorated! 

Anyways, I thought I'd start the holidays off with a felt Christmas tree! It would be perfect for an addition to a sweater or a vest, or even on it's own, hanging on a wall! 

You will need:

• A sheet of a light colored felt, 25-33 cents at local craft stores
• A sheet of a dark colored felt, 25-33 cents at local craft stores
• Hot glue, tacky glue, or fabric glue
• Scissors
• Pen, or something to mark with

All in all, this craft will probably cost less than $1 if you have some craft supplies in your home.

You can make your tree parts any shape, but I chose to do this sort of wonky shape.  I think it's really cute.

Then I just placed my first wonky shape on to another piece of felt and outlined what I wanted it to look like.

Leave enough space on the top to glue it to the next piece.  I chose to use alternating colors, but you could use the same color or all different colors!  I thought it might be cute to use some white felt, to look like snow!

Keep repeating these steps until you have the desired size of your Christmas tree!

This is what mine looked like after I had all the parts together.  Ignore my dog in the background...

I also contemplated making it look even more wonky by making the levels look more topsy-turvy.

This is what the back looked like after I had started gluing.  I made little arrows to show where they would come together, but that's totally optional.  I tried using fabric glue but found it to be utterly useless with the felt.  I ended up using tacky glue and put heavy books on top of them.  If I were to do this craft again I would choose to use hot glue.  It seems to be very effective with felt.

This is all I had used of the two pieces of felt when I was done.

This was what my finished tree looks like! On my leg to show size.  I love my little tree.  You can decorate them any way you want to! I chose to leave it like this and glue it to my vest.

Let me know if you ended up doing this craft! I'd love to see your interpretation.

♥ Riley

P.S. Sorry for how late this post is, I have been very sick.