Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Gettin' my craft on.

***I added some how to's for this project below, based on the questions! Hope it helps!

Keep linking to the party here ladies! I may have to take down Mr. Linky in a few days and just put up the links -- the linky is causing major issues with my site. Either way, you'll be able to keep linking up! (Anyone out there happen to be a computer expert by the way? I would lurve you forever.)

Anyhoo, my mind has been absolutely swimming with projects to do around the house lately, so I have had no desire to work on anything crafty. I have about five gifts I need to get done, but nada...nothin'...

I have even driven right past Hobby Lobby about five times in the past few weeks with no urge to walk in. (I know! What is wrong with me?!) My crafting mojo needed a major kick in the pants. For some reason today, Hob Lob was pulling me in...I couldn't resist it:
I have three girlfriends who all had baby girls within a week of each other, so I've been trying to think of personalized gifts to give them all. I had the egg sign above from the dollar store, and today I got paper, ribbon and itty bitty flowers to make an adorable sign for one of the new arrivals.

The paper wasn't big enough to cover the whole plaque, so I just placed the paper diagonally so it would fit over most of it. I spray painted the sides and the corners, then used my spray adhesive to add the paper:
I found a font and color on the computer that worked and printed out baby girl's name:
Getting there...it needed some bling:
I hot glued them on:
Added some chocolate brown ribbon, and voila!:
Caaaauute!! Isn't her name adorable? Colleen, I hope you love it! (Katie and Steph, yours are coming soon!)

I forgot to show you all my latest favorite Goodwill find!! It is FAB. You've probably seen it in some of my recent pics. And it is waaaaaay more than I usually spend there, even on furniture:
It was $24.99 -- I told you it was a lot! I actually saw it, admired it, cackled at the price and said out loud, "There is NO WAY someone is paying that much for this!" and left it there. Then I got home and couldn't get it out of my mind. I got back in the car, sure it would be gone...but it was there. (With a beam of light shining down on it.) I got it. Love it.

Join me later this week -- I'm going to share every. single. little. thing. I know about paint. I know you are waiting with baited breath.

***Here is what I do to get my words to work for each project --
1. In Word, make sure the paper layout is set to Landscape (horizontally) -- go to File, Page Setup, Paper Size to do this.
2. Make sure your margins are as small as possible. Again, go to File, Page Setup, Margins and lower the sides, top and bottom to 0.3 or so.
3. Once you find the font and size, you can change the kerning or leading, or how much you want to stretch the words vertically or horizontally. Go to Format, Font, Character Spacing. To move the letters out or in, go to Spacing, and adjust the pt. size to what you want. To move the lines of words closer or further apart, go to Position, and raise or lower the pts. to where you want them.
4. I only use the fonts I have on Word, but there are a ton of free sites you can search to find more!

I use all of these tools each time I do a project like this! My picture may be misleading, the plaque is only about 16 by 3.5 inches. I hope that helps!
 
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