Locket Love (P.S. An Awesome Give-away!)

Ok so I have a slight necklace obsession. And by slight I mean that it's a big problem. I have gone a little necklace crazy in that last little while. I get my lockets from the Hobby Lobby because they are a lot cheaper there and I can find them on sale.

Here is my "squishy" necklace. This is what Steven calls me, long story about how that came around! :)

I use a glass glue to glue the papers onto each side of the glass. I tried not gluing them on to save some time, but they kept sliding around and they just didn't look as nice.

This is my cowboy concert necklace! We went to the Brad Paisley concert for my birthday, and I felt it was highly necessary to have a special necklace!

As you may know, I'm a Disney freak. And "Up" is one of my favorite movies!

This was my offical birthday necklace! I thought I was pretty clever with this one :)

For the back of this one, I just glued a bunch of glitter to the paper. The first day I wore it, I was covered in glitter. I would definitely recommend spraying it with a gloss after you do the glitter!

This one is harder to see because it's so light, but it is my Valentine necklace. It says, "Keep Calm and Love On". If you go to google images, there are so many that you can use!

And this was my official mermaid crown! How incredible is that? My awesome cousins/best friends threw me a Little Mermaid party! More pictures are to come about this, because it was INCREDIBLE!!

So for the big give-away news!! I am going to be a guest blogger for the Wood Connection and I am so excited!!! I will be over at the Wood Connection on February 20th showing off a St. Patrick's door hang.

They gave me a $25 gift certificate to give away on my blog!!

 So here's the plan! I want all my followers to submit a picture of their St. Patrick's decorations by the end of February and I will pick a winner to get the gift certificate. The decoration must be made by you and I will pick the winner based on the creativity and just plain cuteness of the project. Email the picture and your name and email to: shieldedhome@gmail.com

So you have 1 month! Get crafting!!

Learning is the Hard Part

Remember that way cool sewing machine that my amazing husband got me for Christmas? Well I have been trying it out. At first when I was starting off with a few pieces of material, I thought it was so dang easy. Well, I think I bit off more than I could chew....

I wanted to make a baby blanket. But not just a normal baby blanket, but a really really cute one! For who? No one really. I just wanted to do it. Well it was a nightmare. There was puckering and un-evenness everywhere that I could see. So many times I wanted to scrap it and never look at the thing again. But I kept thinking, there always has to be a first right? I just wanted to get the first one done and over with. 

Once I decided that I had basically destroyed the thing anyway, I started to experiment with it. I actually learned a lot. It's hard because all of the other crafts always have come so easy to me. If I want to make something, it's simply a matter of just making it (if that makes sense at all). But with fabric I have to think ahead and really put some thought into it. 

My goal for the year is to make three blankets a month and at the end of the year, I will give them to the Christmas Box House or another organization of the like. That way I will get to practice my sewing skills and be doing something good at the same time. Although, I'm going to do more simply blankets first so that the kids don't want to cry when they see the horrible sewing job. :)

So did I throw it away? I came so close, but no. I have to have something to show how much progress I made, right? Learning is definitely the hardest part. 

Girls Crafting Night

It was a ladies craft night! I was so excited about this for so long. These are my best pals from my master esthetics class. We have kept in touch for a while now, and I love them to death! 

So here is the craft that I came up with for craft night. I wanted to do something with Valentines Day but also something where we could work with wood. I came up with these Valentine Card Blocks. 

Here's the ladies working on their projects!

Look how cute they turned out! Aren't they all so adorable??

On one side she did Valentines, and on the other she did the lyrics to their song. She did that side more neutral colors so that she could keep it up all year long. We did all of these letters with my Cricut, which you all know that I LOVE!

Didn't they all turn out so great! We used the wood blocks from the Wood Connection and we also used the Wood Connection's texture cream on the pictures. For everything else we used modge-podge and plain old rubber cement. The velum with the lyrics turned out really cute on all of the blocks. Randi glued hers down, but the rest of us nailed the paper on with these cool nails that I got at Home Depot. 

(In case you're wondering, the photographer who took my picture is Briston Photography. She is amazing!)

Thanks girls for such a fun craft and all the smiles and laughter! I can't wait til our couponing class and sewing class! Woot woot!!

Sooo excited!!

Have you guys all heard of the Wood Connection? If you haven't already checked it out, you totally need to!! It has the cutest wood crafts that you can totally make your own. You might have seen some of my previous posts about Wood Connection here and here and here. And guess what??


Drum roll please....


They have asked me to be a guest blogger! Woot woot! I will be blogging for them on February 20th on their blog here. So make sure you check back to this blog and their blog that day for some fun March crafts! (March will be here before you know it!)
They also have an awesome give-away going on right now. They are trying to reach 4, 000 fans, and once they do they are going to do a big give-away. Check it out!

My goal for this year is to get 50 fans before the end of 2012! Do you think I can make it? :) Help me out and follow my blog!

Primary Boards

It's a new year and that means a new primary class! I wanted a little more structure this year so I made a few boards to help us out. Visuals are a great way for the kids to feel like they know what is going on.

One of the goals this year is for the kids to know the Articles of Faith. Our class is younger, so I'm not expecting them to memorize all of them. But I thought that we could make a chart so that we know what articles to practice what sundays. Then we can read them as a class and go over what each one means.

A goal that I made for our class is that they would all bring their scriptures every Sunday. I made this chart and told them that every time they bring their scriptures they get to put a sticker on the chart. Once they get to five stickers, they get a treat. At first, we will take them to the library to borrow some scriptures so that they get used to the idea.

This next one is more for me than the kids. I have learned in school that the most a child can focus on any one subject is 10 minutes. Knowing this, it helped me set up my schedule for our class room. I did the time both ways, hoping that this would reinforce what they learn in school about telling time.

They were really easy to make. I had some cardboard that I used for the backing. After I glued on the paper I took packing tape and went all over the board so that it would be "laminated". Hopefully these will really help give the class the structure that I'm looking for!

Busy, Busy Week!

How was everyone's New Year's? I have to say, I think this is probably one of my favorite New Year's ever! We had dinner over at our apartment with our cousins. I took down all of my Christmas decorations and put up gold and silver snowflakes. It was so pretty that I don't want to take it all down!

Everyone dressed up fancy for the party. Doesn't Steven look handsome?

My cousin Amy made all of us these broches. Aren't they adorable? She is so darn crafty, I can't even believe it! All of ours looked a little different. She made Steven's too.

Amy also had this incredible idea. She made jars for each of us and also papers for all of us to fill out. We each had one paper for each cousin. We filled out the paper then put it in their bottle. Then when we have a bad day, we can break the bottle and read our cute notes. How adorable is she! The only problem is that I don't know if I can wait for a bad day to open my bottle! :)

This past week I have been scrapbooking like crazy!! My goal for last year was to have my first baby book scarpbooked. Well, I was almost done with it and had the perfect lay out in order to finish it before New Years. Then life happened and Steven and I got the deathly flu. Seriously, we have never been that sick! It took us out for a full week. Needless to say, I didn't get the last pages done before New Years. But I figured one week late isn't too bad, right? It's finally done though, and now I can pass it off to my mom so she can write in it.

To make the lady with the stroller I used my amazing Cricut! And the adorable bear below was traced using my light box that Steven made me. Isn't it cute?

I also traced the little house for this page using my light box. I just find cute pictures on google, print them off and then trace them on my light box. It works really well!

So another goal I had for last year was to figure out what I can do with these cameras.. They were my grandpa's cameras and I was the lucky one to get them! It would be super cool if I could use them, but I'm sure that they are probably way too old. Anyone have any clue whether I could find film to use with these? Or should they just be for looks??? Help!

I think the one below is my favorite!

And for all you camera lovers, what in the world is that thing???