Wrap it up Thursday - Last Minute Mother's Day DIY

You can have all the best intentions but sometimes life gets in the way and you run out of time.  If you might not have much time before this sunday and you want to put together a little something personal, maybe an add-on to a flower arrangement or favorite candy, here are a few suggestions.

Above - I quickly printed out a couple of old photos of the girls.  They would be so sweet on a beautiful pencil or pen but I couldn't find any - so hey - they kind of dress up these plain, old pencils.  Make sure you give yourself some space above the head and below the feet for the pencil holes.

I think I would love to have my family put together a cute package like this and rent my favorite chick flicks with a magazine or two... hint, hint.

This is from Martha Stewart.

If you have a little more time - this sweet vanilla sugar packaged so beautifully would be a lovely thought.

This is a valentine's gift from Somewhere Splendid but could easily be adapted for Mother's Day.

How cute.  A card that even the least creative can add to a special gift and let the "mom" in their life feel special.

This is from How about Orange.  You could use a great color that matches your flowers or whatever gift you are including with it.

In either black and white or color, any mother's desktop would love to have a reminder of the special "child" in their life.  I will pop these onto my desk jar and smile with the memories of my little girls over the years ... and that is all a mom wants anyway.

DIY - Photo Wreath for Mother's Day

I find it hard to celebrate Mother's Day without my mom.   I can remember the first Mother's Day after I had Helana, she was just a couple months old and I was so excited.  Not because it was my first Mother's Day but because I could celebrate my mom both as a mother and as a grandmother.  She was so excited to finally be a grandma, and I finally over that last year, learned to appreciate what it takes to be a mom.  So this year, my fifth mother's day without her, I decided to do a little project that included a little bit of my mom. 

She loved linen and burlap.  I thought about burlap for this but I had all this linen and frankly I figured strips of burlap were going to make a big mess I just didn't feel like cleaning up.  I had a wreath left over from my valentine love note wreath so I thought I would do a version of that for Mother's Day.  Like the love notes - you could customize this wreath each year by adding and replacing photographs.  I just grabbed a bunch of photos from my photoshop folders - but the trick was to easily resize them to make a banner.

I used picmonkey to play around with 10 photos and added artistic frames to some and sepia tones to others.  Then I loaded those pictures into Picassa and made a grid collage with a 5:3 widescreen photo frame.  Each picture measures 2 inches wide and 1 1/4 inches deep.

I started out with an 12 inch diameter styrofoam wreath.

I wrapped the wreath in linen strips that I made from a recycled linen slipcover.

I added a little bit of twine to approximately 1/8 of the wreath or about 5 inches.

A separate piece of paper twine is the basis of the photo banner (27 inches long including ties at each end)

Once I decided on the length, I was able to lay out the photo arrangement.

Details : twine/glue gun/flower corsage

A little dovetail in each photo seemed to fit the banner and once arranged, I glue gunned the pictures in place.

The flowers are made from strips of linen (cream one made from thick, cotton ribbon)

You can find many diy's of rolled fabric flower making on-line including here. (my sparkle)

 I think my mom would have loved this wreath.  She would be so proud of her granddaughters and just amazed how much they have grown up over the past 5 years.

From Picnik to PicMonkey

Picnik is leaving in a few days and I have been stressed out wondering how I would quickly fix up pictures and create collages.  On Friday I found out via Hello Hue that some of the picnic people have started up PicMonkey.  So I began to play around with it.  It is also a dream for newbies like me.  It looks like collage is on its way for this program and that will make it almost perfect.

Helana took this picture of Ali with a new hair band.  Look at all the neat things you can do to the pictures.  The girls are really excited to play around with pics for their tumblrs. 

It let me take this birthday picture of Helana and jazz it up a little.  Very "Florida Keysie"

And a polaroid version of a picture taken by the girls, while Scott had me out on the Jet Ski screaming for dear life.  I just love Ali's expression.  Ah ... sisterly love.

I ended up playing with a few project photographs for a new blog banner.  Not quite there yet but I can't go back.  Maybe that's a good thing.

All these cool effects have me thinking of a mother's day project...hmmm...