Ribbon Sculpture Hair Accessories: Ariel, the Little Mermaid

I guess the thing to do when you have a little girl, is to put lots of bows and ribbons in her hair?  I'm not a girl-y girl, and honestly, my munchkin has never really let me put that kind of stuff in her hair, until recently.  

do you like my model?!

For a friends bday party, I decided to try my hand at Ribbon Sculpture.  Every holiday, animal, cartoon character - it seems someone out there has made it out of ribbons.  Just look on Pinterest!

A few months back, I found a tutorial for many of the Disney Princesses.  So in addition to an Arial coloring book and some Princess temp tattoos, I made a hair clip and a headband.

I had all the ribbon on hand, and all I had to purchase was some headbands and alligator clips.

Once I figured out what I was doing, the whole process was pretty easy.  I think I got country Ariel done in 30 minutes or so :)

I'm definitely going to try making the other princesses and some Christmas ones, too!  Update:  Check out the other princess here!

Happy Crafting!

Handmade Halloween: M&M costumes for the whole family!

That's right.  For Halloween this year, I dressed up our family of three as M&Ms.  The little one, who's initials are MM, was a green M&M.  

Momma was a bag of plain M&M's.

And the Dadda was a bag of peanut M&Ms.

Now, if we had a second child, especially if it was a boy, he would have been a red M&M.  Not sure if I would have made him a peanut M&M, since oval is a little harder to accomplish than a circle.

Costumes were simple to make.  The bags are basically pillowcases with arm holes and pocket holes (yes, these are very important to get to your camera and wallet!)  The candy costume is a simple circle with stabilizer sandwiched between two layers.  If i were to do it again, i would make the parts around her side elastic for easier off and on.

The above is the font I used for the lettering.  For the bags, I blew the M up to the max I could fit on a 8.5x11 sheet of paper.  The & s I blew up the same %.  The M on the candy was smaller, I just eye-balled it based on the circle.

Word to the wise:  use iron on transfer for the letters.  Both the letters and the white that goes on behind it...it will make your life SO much easier.  I ironed on random pieces to hold them in place while sewing them on, and it's not worth it.  The iron on stuff will hold long enough for you to get several uses out of the costumes :)  and save you the hassle of sewing!

I'd say it took me a total of 4 hours to sew the three costumes, and another hour or so to get all the letters cut out.  I bought waay too much fabric for these (i'm an over-estimator, for sure!) and spent less than $20 for the three.

Hopefully, I can convince my family to put their costumes back on for a photo op of all three of us together :)

Happy Creating!

See the whole family here.