DIY Decor

Our engagement party on Saturday was so awesome. Loving friends and family, great sunny weather, and delicious food from Sellands! We are so lucky. :) And, thanks to the Super Silhouette we had the cutest decorations ever. We wanted to share them this week with our loyal MIHM readers!

This weekend's party was full of memories we'll never forget - including all of the details, homemade by my mom! 

Stay tuned for next week's blog when we welcome our Seattle-based guest blogger Megan, to the MIHM studio! 

Super Silhouette

YOU GUYS. The craft gods have fulfilled all of our wishes and invented this thing called the Silhouette Cameo.

My Girls Team partner had heard from one of her coworkers about this amazing craft machine and thought that it would be the perfect tool to take MIHM to the next level. What exactly is this machine you ask?! Well, basically the Silhouette Cameo is an electronic cutting machine. It can cut paper, vinyl, cardstock, fabric and more! Any shape, picture, letter, number, etc. is available in the Silhouette Online Store as a template. After purchasing the template for as low as 99 cents, you can keep it forever and use it as many times as you want. Using the Silhouette you can make cards, scrapbook pages and accessories, banners, vinyl décor, etched glass and more!

 

Not following? Let me just show you the magic that is the Silhouette. This is the Silhouette Cameo. You plug this directly into your computer to access all of the templates and fonts for projects. When you know what project you want to make, you feed the paper/cardstock/fabric/etc. into this machine like you would a regular printer.

Sleek enough to leave out and small enough to store out of sight.

 

Remember when my brother graduated from college and the Girls Team made all of the party décor? Well, my parents are hosting an engagement party for Nelson and I on Saturday, so my mom thought the Silhouette would be the perfect tool to use to customize some décor for that. And the décor is SO CUTE!!



My mom started with a banner. She is making a few, some with our wedding date, and some with our initials. To start, she found the banner pattern she wanted to use in the Silhouette Online Store, then found the heart shapes and letters/numbers needed. Next she fed the paper she wanted to use through the Silhouette on a sticky pad. This pad holds the paper in place as the machine cuts it to prevent slips. Then when the cutting is finished, she peeled the shape off of the sticky pad.

Adorable heart banner, assembled with a glue stick. The Silhouette even cuts the holes at the top for the string to go through. Awesome.

Look at the precision cutting in this detailed "&" sign. Imagine how hard this would be to cut out of paper with scissors!

 

Sample banners, aren't they adorable and perfect?!

I can't wait to see them in action on Saturday.

 

My girls team partner has had some really fun ideas for this engagement party. I don't want to give them all away, but I want to share one more! My mom is creating a "music bank" (like a piggy bank) but everyone can write down a song they want to hear at the wedding and put it in the bank. Fun, right?!

 



Using the Silhouette, my mom made "coins" for people to write their song of choice on. But, there was snag! The middle parts of the "&" sign were cut out!

So, with some quick thinking, after gluing the coin with black paper in between the front and back sides, my mom and dad glued the middle pieces back in. Great save!

My dad also helped by cutting a slit into the top of this adorable, oversized mason jar which will serve as the bank. All of the coins will get dropped in here, helping to create our wedding playlist.

 

I was really excited to celebrate our engagement with our family and friends. The day in itself with be special and memorable. Now these DIY décor items my mom made are only adding to that excitement!

 

The Silhouette gives the MIHM team unlimited craft possibilities! We can't wait to try out more on the machine (and of course blog all about them). *Please note these opinions expressed about how awesome the Silhouette Cameo is are simply from the MIHM Girls Team. Unfortunately, we have yet to be paid to promote any of the products we gush about on the blog!

Crochet Coffee Sleeve

The Girls Team is on fire in the crochet business! With so much leftover yarn from our Project Linus blankets we wanted to find a few smaller projects to work on to keep improving on our crochet skills (and not let the yarn go to waste). My mom made a cute coffee cup sleeve a few weeks back, and I came to her this week to learn from the master!

Because I have so much pink yarn left, I thought this would make the perfect Valentine's Day gift for some of my friends. I stitched the base of the sleeve while my mom made the adorable hearts. This was truly a team effort! 

To make the base we followed this pattern:
-Chain 13. (I increased to 16 for a wider base.)
-Single crochet in second chain from hook. Single crochet across. 
-Turn. 
-Chain 1. Single crochet across. 
-Repeat until body measures 8 inches long. 

The base of the sleeve at 8 inches...I'm still working on loosening up my stitches. You can see in the middle I got a little too tight so the edges aren't even - they dip in a little. As I improve at crocheting, I plan to work on relaxing my stitches (and relaxing in life!)...

Once the base was complete, I used a yarn needle to stitch up the sides. 

Here's the completed base of the sleeve. You can see that it slopes a bit on the top (because of my tight stitches). It didn't bother me enough to re-do it since this was my first try, but I plan on making about 5-6 more sleeves and will attempt to fix this issue as I create the others. 

While I was working on the base of one sleeve, my mom was able to crank out 4 crochet hearts. These are adorable! I forgot to grab the pattern to post on the blog but a simple Pinterest search for heart patterns will give you many options to choose from. Seriously, these are so cute!

I used the yarn needle to secure the heart to the sleeve. This is the sleeve inside-out so you can see how the heart was tied underneath. 

The finished sleeve. How cute is this you guys?! It took about two hours to complete (but that was splitting the tasks as a team). Still, this project is perfect for what we wanted to do...continue to improve on our crochet skills and make some cute gifts in the meantime! It's nice to make something that isn't as big of a time commitment after our past few long-term blanket projects. 

The yarn allows for a bit of a stretch to fit perfectly over coffee mugs and travel mugs. We can't wait to gift these to our friends wishing them a happy Valentine's Day (and safe, cool fingers on their hot coffee mugs!).