Birdhouses with Birds

I made these birdhouses to decorate my craft room.  First, I bought these yellow birdhouses at Ross for about $15 each.  Then I put some fake flowers and fake little vines that I got at Micheals for a huge discount. 

On my Cameo Silhouette, I cut out two birds (from the standard free library that comes with the software) and then also cut mirror images of them.

I glued them wrong sides together to make 2 birds.

I used some string to hang the birds from the top of the cages.  They will flutter around when the ac comes on.

Sewing Stuff

So, I'm taking this rather expensive class on how to make a bag with my friend.  It's a really complicated Amy Butler Weekender Bag and I have purchased over $100 worth of materials I have never heard of before (to be fair, some of these materials were actually repurchases of stuff that I messed up the first time, so the bag shouldn't actually be that expensive if you decide to make it yourself, since you are probably not too impatient to read patterns correctly, like I frequently am). 

Last Monday, I will admit, my friend and I were not the class superstars.  We didn't complete our sewing homework on time and the teacher had to repeat and re-model each step for me about seven times.  You might say that this caused me to gain a better sense of empathy for those students in my own classroom who also love to make me insane struggle to understand. 

Anyway, this week, I am going in strong and determined not to be the *cringe* "slow kid."  For starters, I have completed my sewing homework (fortunately, the teacher only trusted us to complete the very simplest task imaginable so I did it in, like, 5 minutes) and then organized everything into labeled plastic baggies.  But here's the real kicker--I went to a sewing class with my mom a couple of weeks ago and I noticed that the hardcore people all had these really awesome (and almost wholly unnecessary) handmade sewing accessories.  So I found some patterns from a few places and made my own things and you better believe I am going to look like da business when I come strolling in with, like, six bags of handmade sewing accessories.  "Yeah, check out this portable quilted thread catcher.  It's for catching threads.  This whole giant bag is only for catching threads.  You may think it's unnecessary, but that's only because you may not sew very much.  If you were a hardcore sewer seamstress like me, you would definitely need this thread catcher.  That's right, I am awesome."

Presidential Pictures

My kids did some reports on the presidents of the United States and I thought it is always a great idea for us to brush up on our American history, so here are some pics:

 

Valentine's Day Decor

Taylor got me a Cameo Silhouette for Christmas and I have been making stuff with it nonstop.  I have been spending way too much time looking at cute things more creative people have been doing on Pinterest, and I started to think that maybe I could do some of that, too.  So here are my latest attempts to decorate for Valentine's Day.

I made the "be mine" thing really easily.  I took an old frame I had and covered the picture inside with some scrap paper.  Then I cut out the letters using some yellowed pages from a book I bought at the thrift store.  Unfortunately, the book is all about renal physiology, so the words "excretion" and "urine" appear all over my final product, dampening the intended romantic effect.  Not my strongest work.  I made those little flowers using pages from that aforementioned gem of a book and the tutorial located here.

The hearts picture was made with hearts cut from pages of, you guessed it, good ol' Renal Physiology.  I folded them in half and hot glued them down the center to some old canvas I had so they looked kinda fluttery. 

I realize that Valentine's Day was a long time ago.  I had written this a few weeks ago, but couldn't figure out how to turn my pictures sideways so that this post didn't look so silly.  But I never did figure out how to do that and so now this post still looks silly AND is untimely.  But I worked semi-hard on it and we all know how terrible I am at posting things so I decided to just post it anyway.