The Tooth Fairy

I've been meaning to write this post for awhile now and since Simone lost her second tooth yesterday morning I figured it was time. But first let me go back a bit and start at the beginning....

Awhile back on Pinterest I found some really cute ideas on things you could do to make the visit from the Tooth Fairy extra special. The first and foremost "The Tooth Fairy Door." If you search Tooth Fairy Door on Pinterest you will find tons of ideas on how to do it and ways to paint and decorate them. So when Simone's first tooth started wiggling back in October I knew I needed to get busy. I hit my local craft store and picked up a door, door knobs and a door knocker from the dollhouse section. I figured it would take a good few weeks until the tooth fell out so I wasn't in a huge hurry.....

Prior to painting we had to attach the molding around the edge of the door and the pieces that came in our kit weren't cut to the right size so my husband had to do some trimming. He glued it in place and I took care of the painting. I picked up some craft paint and wished I had used something a bit better quality. The coverage isn't the best and I did add a clear coat at the end to try to make it a bit more finished.

Many of the samples on Pinterest had the door installed so it would not open and I saw a few posts where some had turned their door so it would open. I thought that was super cute and decided to give that a try. Now this means you have to paint both sides of the door and more of the interior but I think it was worth the extra time except that like I said above I thought I had all the time in the world to get this done. Of course I did not because the tooth fell out the day before I was leaving on a trip and the door wasn't done. It was a mad dash getting it all ready for that evening and a total team effort with my husband. We still had to finish the assembly of the door pieces and add the backing and install the handles and door knocker.

To decorate the inside I cut a piece of plain chipboard and covered it with white paper and added a piece of Dear Lizzy cloud vellum on top, just enough to add a bit to the magic.

Gluing on the door knobs was easy I just used a bit of hot glue. The door knocker was trickier, in order for it to be movable it had to stick out from the door. After a few failed attempts I ended up cutting a tiny piece of foam tape and so far that's worked just fine.

We attached the whole piece directly to her wall using some command double stick squares. I made sure she had cleared off a space on top of the bookshelf that sits right next to her bed so we could put all this together with minimal disturbance while she was sleeping.

One of the other super cute ideas I had seen on Pinterest was to have the tooth fairy leave a receipt. This had to happen and luckily I was partially prepared and had downloaded a font called Fake Receipt and easily made a replicate of the Pinterest one in Photoshop Elements.

Here is my version of the receipt that I made sized 3x4 (sized for scrapbooking of course).

I found some really thin paper in a journal I had on hand and just tore pieces out and cut it down to 4x6 and just printed the receipt with my home printer. I cut the width down to size and then tore the top and bottom edges against a ruler so it looked more legit.

We also wanted to leave a letter for Simone since this was her first tooth and we had to explain the door in some way. I found a cute poem on Pinterest and used part of it to start our letter, the rest we made up ourselves and poets we are not.

I also purchased this cute set of cut files from the Silhouette Store and we used the cute little pillow box for Simone to leave her tooth in that you can see in a photo above.

Here she is the morning after when she found all her stuff. I had asked for some suggestions and tips on the Studio Calico boards and a few suggested the gold dollar coins which we decided to do. My husband picked up a few to have on hand as needed and she will get one per tooth.

The other day when it was clear that tooth number two was on its way out I cut out all of the pillow boxes so they would be ready to go and I also printed and cut some of the cute little certificate cards that came in the set.

The cards were designed so that each tooth could be cut if you wanted to which I did and backed them with some blue glitter paper. My plan is to make her a little mini album with the photos of her as the teeth come out, the receipts the tooth fairy leaves behind and these cards so its all in one place. I did modify the certificates a bit first from the original that came in the set. I changed the size and deleted some parts I didn't need and made the teeth a bit larger. I print and cut the cards fist via the Silhouette and then run the cards thru my printer after they are cut to add the text.

It's pretty exciting stuff losing your teeth and boy is she excited that number two is finally out. She can't wait for the tooth fairy to come visit again, luckily this time it will be a lot less last minute.

Holiday Decor projects

Last Christmas I had all kinds of ideas for fun things to make and many of them never happened so this year I started early to make sure at least some of them happened.

A few months back I found a super cute idea on Pinterest to make your own mini marquee lights from paper and really wanted to do it until I found this while browsing Target.com recently.

 

They are large (12" high) metal letters with lights and are ready to hang if you so desire.  They also have Believe and Noel. I would have loved to get the Believe since that was the word I had in mind for the paper version but because these are large I didn't have enough room on my mantle to put it with the other items I have planned. 

 

I happily found it in stock at my store despite their online stock checker saying it was out of stock.

 

 

At only $19.99 I thought it was a bargain since I didn't have to make and assemble it myself.  It comes with a super cute woodgrain look but I was hoping for something a bit more shiny.

 

We removed all of the outer clear bulb covers and left the lights in place, we didn't think the plugs for the lights would come out easily enough so we opted to leave them in.  We just wrapped painters tape around each snug up to the metal base and pinched it closed at the top. I also removed the metal rings at the top of the letters with a pair of pliers. I knew I wasn't hanging mine so carefully and with a bit of force and wiggling they came off no problem.

 

 

As far as the paint choices, here is what we used;

 





The Metalcast primer my husband had on hand for another project but it ended up being a really great primer for both of the projects we did.  The white Ultra Cover was okay, it cracked and came out of the can a bit yucky but it could have just been our bad can.  It didn't matter too much in the end since we covered it up with the glitter spray which hid everything well.  The top coat was just to seal the glitter in so it doesn't go everywhere.  He ended up doing two coats of the primer, three thin coats of the white, several coats of the glitter until it looked the way I wanted it too and one coat of the sealer.

Here's how it looks all done and lit up, the white is pretty much covered but it definitely helped to cover the brown up first before applying the glitter. You could probably skip the paint step and just go with a white metal primer instead.

 

Because the won't stand on their own, especially the J and the O my husband took a piece of wood he had on hand and cut a little angled channel in the top and the letters sit down in that just great on their own.  He's painting it white for me to blend in with our mantle and as soon as it's dry I'll add a photo of it.

For my second project, I had found this super cool paper mache deer head at my local JoAnn's a month or so ago when I was there for something else.  It's labeled Craft Essentials item 1279-7577 and it's a nice size about 16" from the bottom to the top of the antlers.  It was $14.99 and with all the other seasonal Christmas crafts at the front of the store.

I thought this would be great painted gold so this is what we used;

The same Metcalcast primer and this Gold Foil paint.  He did two coats of the primer and two coats of the foil paint and this is how it turned out.

 



It's like it was dipped in gold and I love it!  I'm not sure how this paint will work on its own but in combination with the primer it was amazing!  We decided not to seal it so it wouldn't dull the look of the piece.

 

I look forward to adding both of these items to my Christmas décor that will go up in the next few days.

Valentine's Day prep

We're fast approaching the 14th and we've been having some fun getting ready for Valentine's Day.  I love everything about this month, I love the heart shaped candy, I love all the pink and red hearts, and I love all the love themed clothing, I mean how can you go wrong with this stuff.

Simone of course loves it all just as much which is awesome so when we decided to make our own Valentine's for her school friends she was totally on board. There are so many awesome ideas on Pinterest for cute little treats that don't involve candy and we decided to go with the one with the cute crazy straws. It was fun tracking down the supplies and I found these cute straws at Target in the party section, I'm finding a lot of good items in that section lately and these straws were only $3.00 for a dozen.  The original idea for this little gift was just the crazy straw and the card slipped on it but I decided to add in a single serve drink mix too.  I found the single serve drinks mixes and the heart cellophane bags at my dollar store.  I picked up the heart doily's at Joann's and made the sentiment card myself and cut it out with my Cameo.

It was all hands on deck for the assembly and Simone had fun for about 15 minutes. She did a great job attaching the little heart cards I made to the doily's and stuffing all the straws and drink mixes into the bags but by then she was bored and abandoned the project.

I used my tiny attacher to adhere the twisty ties that came with the cellophane bags to the cards.

Here they are all done.  I think they came out super cute and I hope the kids like them. 

Simone has also been asking to make Valentine cookies since mid January so we finally set out to do some baking this past Saturday.  We decided to make some cookies and she also asked to make rice crispy treats.  We decided to make them pink and found these giant strawberry and vanilla marshmallows at our grocery store.

She did a good job mixing and didn't let anything burn.

You might guess who was in charge of sprinkle distribution....

For the cookies I wanted to try something new and found this yummy recipe online for Dark Chocolate Sugar Cookies.  The dough was super easy to make and I followed the suggestion to use the Hershey Special Dark cocoa powder.  The dough was amazing, so silky and smooth, and when you rolled it out it was heaven.  Here they are cut and ready to bake.

Someone wanted more sprinkles so I decided to melt some semi sweet morsels and dipped the top bit of each cookie, some got sprinkles and then I let them harden in the fridge.  I hope you try them because these cookies are delicious!

I hope you have a great Valentine's Day!



I've been Pinned!

I was looking at my blog stats the other day, particularly the referring URL's which tells me if someone visited my blog and the site they came to it from.  I was surprised to see that some folks had linked over from Pinterest.  I did some further digging and found the following pins of images from my blog.

Not a ton by any means but its always exciting to see that someone likes what you are doing. 

I also saw some pins from the Studio Calico gallery but I couldn't figure out how to isolate just those.

Thank you if you liked what I've done so much that you thought it warranted a pin.  I would love to spread some love around, so if you have a blog yourself please list it below in the comments, I would love to see what you are doing too and perhaps pin a few images!