Airplane Banner Shirt- Free Templates!

H wore this shirt yesterday and I realized I hadn't blogged about it yet. So I did what any good blogger/ bad mother would do, and made him stand on a tall dining chair by the window so I could get some light on it for pictures. He was so confused, since he is not normally allowed to stand on those chairs, and kept yelling at himself, "Get down!" Even he knew I was being a bad influence :)

I made it for his birthday party a couple of months ago, and it was pretty much the only cute party thing that survived the crazy wind at the park that day. I kind of love it.

I've really starting to like doing applique with knit on knit. All these pieces I just cut from my stash of old t-shirts. Since the edges don't fray, you don't have to use a zig-zag stitch or anything that goes over the edge. A straight stitch does the job nicely. 

I like the way the edges kind of curl up a little too. The tee material still works with HeatnBond just as well. But since the edges can be curly, it's much easier to iron the fusible web onto a big patch of material first, then cut out your shape from that- as opposed to cutting out the shape from the material first and then trying to attach a little piece of fusible web in the exact same shape. (Does that make sense?)

The airplane banner wraps around the back and celebrates his two-ness. I'm glad I just put "2" on it and not anything that says birthday, so now he can keep wearing it all summer.

For the strings connecting the banner to the tail of the airplane, just cut 2 thin strips of the white tee and tug at the ends to make them curl up on themselves. Then stick the ends in place under the appliques when you iron them onto the shirt. Stitch around everything, and they hang out nicely. They are a little stretched out in this picture after he wore it all day, but they always tighten back up in the wash.

So here are the templates for you to download. I did not include the 2, because you can put whatever you want on your banner. Also, the plane windows are just three little squares I stuck on there. Use it for whatever, but I'd LOVE to see if you make something with it!



Airplane template -




Banner/clouds template -




Like making boy shirts? See more here. Happy Summer Boy Week!

Yellow & Black Birthday Party

We all had so much fun at Hendrix's first birthday! I'll let the pictures do the talking...

Some credits:

- I first got my inspiration for a yellow party here, which I found at Ohdeedoh.

- I got all the cupcake toppers from this free download at A Beautiful Mess. I just changed the colors and   added the phrases in photoshop.

- All of the other signs I made from these, again I used photoshop to change them.
- Do you love that font as much as I do? Download it here. Found it from Yes, Please. 

- My wonderful husband made everything for that delicious taco bar, which included choice of carnitas, ground beef, and shredded chicken. Oh yeah, AND 3 kinds of homemade salsa! 

- My beautiful mom made all those cupcakes- everyone thought I had bought them from a bakery!

- I had a "Candy Bar" full of yellow candies people could eat and kids could add to their goodie bags. I'm pretty sure this is not my original idea, but I don't remember where I've seen it before- probably several places.
- Go here to find out more about the photo booth area and how I made felt mustaches. 

- There isn't a picture of this, but I used Prudent Baby's idea for a kid's craft station. I just bought some cardboard cut-out animal shapes from Michael's ($2 for 12) and laid out crayons and stickers I already had. Really cheap and easy, and the kids loved it.
- Find out what that yellow tablecloth really is here. (H's birthday present!)

-And of course, these gorgeous pictures are all by my friend Nathan at Fyrefly Photography!

Four Things

1. I found a very cool website at work last week called Block Posters. You upload any image, choose how big you want it to be, and they create a pdf file of your image on multiple pages that you can print out. This may not sound that exciting immediately, but think about the creative possibilities!

For my job, I write children's church curriculum. There is a series coming up in April about generosity, and this is the original image I created for the logo:

This is how it looked printed out from Block Posters: 

I plan on putting it on the wall in the classrooms during the series. Of course, I just haphazardly laid it out on the floor here, but you could cut all those margins off and make it look even better. And the colors aren't really as faded as they look here, it's just the weird institutional lighting at my church.

You could do some really cool stuff with this for home decor. Look around their gallery for more ideas.



2. UO online has a lot of their apartment stuff on sale. I got a pretty new shower curtain for $9.99, and a few other cheap things for upcoming projects.



3. Free printable Marie Antoinette paper doll. Enough said.

4. Hello from Hendrix. He is really into exploring the musical intricacies of the xylophone right now... also hitting everything in sight with the mallet. 

Anti-Valentine's valentines

If you don't love love love Valentine's Day...

But you kind of secretly like it...

But you also think it's kind of commercial and useless...

But you do have a Valentine you really love and who has a twisted sense of humor like you...

You might want to print them out one or two of these subversive valentines.

(found here.)

FREE STUFF!

Mibo has put out a FREE advent calendar download! I think advent calendars rank in the most essential of holiday supplies, probably right under the tree. And this one is pretty stylish.

Go here to download yours. I think there is also a free 2010 planner download on their site. Enjoy!