Preparing for the Big Game...

What big game, you ask? A hockey game. :D

From a previous post, you now know that I'm a fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins, and they're coming to play our home team this year! *happy dance* It's this Saturday. It seems like it was just yesterday that my brother and I were counting down the months until November 1st. :P It was the beginning of July when we found out that the Pens would be coming here. With them being in the Eastern Conference, and us being in the Western, they'll only come here once during the season, if that. Unless we're one of the three Western teams that they play twice next year, they won't be coming here at all next season. So this is a big event for us. :)

So I decided to "Pensify" (a new word I created :D) my camera bag that I'll be taking to the game.

I found some cute little penguin beads at the store, and decided that I could do some neat things with them. So I got a few, and then headed toward the letter beads. I used one of the penguins in the key chain with the letters. End result:

(My favorite player is Sidney Crosby, and he's #87 :D)

The things on the side are neat little things I made with some of my home-made beads. (Have you noticed that I have no idea what to call some of these things? )

And the other three penguins I made into neat little chains:

I also bought some gold hockey player and goalie charms and hung them on the side of the bag, and used a couple as zipper pulls (I guess I didn't take pictures of those, because I can't find any! ).

My favorite are these cute little guys that I made out of clay.

I hung them on some leather cord like I did all of the other things and put them on the side of my bag:

Aren't they cute?? :D

I'll probably make a couple more key chains with player names on them after I visit the bead store again. I only had enough money to buy the stuff for one this time. :)

Lastly is a thing I made on my bead loom. I plan to make another one after I buy a bigger loom. :P I didn't have enough space to do this very well...so it looks a little stretched. I took a picture of the Pens' logo and copied it onto graph paper, and then made it out of seed beads on my loom. :)

Craft Project!

Ok, I'm just barely getting this posted today (didn't you know that that would be the case? :P)...

My sister and I made some really neat envelopes using magazine and calendar pages. I got this idea from one that some beads I bought were put into. They're very easy to make. :)

Personally, I will be using them to put my jewelry into that I sell, rather than using bags.

The majority of the envelopes are from regular magazine pages, so they are thin. Not something you would want to send through the mail. But some of them are made from thicker pages, like from magazine covers and calendar pages. (There's something you can do with old calendars!) We had a couple of old ones with floral pictures on them that we used.

Here's a pattern for making them that I made! :D You can print this up, cut it out, and then just trace around the edge onto whatever paper you want to use...then follow the instructions on the pattern. ;)

Click here for full size.

Don't ask me why you can't click the image this time...I still haven't figured it out myself...

You can change the pattern to fit the pictures that you want to use. If you've got one where the main part of the picture doesn't end up in the center, just adjust the pattern to fit it. ;) I've done it with a few. Also, we've made smaller ones so that we could use pictures that didn't take up the majority of a page. :)

If any of you decide to try this, I'd love to see pictures! :D

Bathroom Makeover

We put up new wallpaper in out basement's bathroom on Sunday, and on Monday my sister and I redecorated it. I decided that an ocean theme would be nice. :) So we made a couple of wall hangings using paper ribbon and seashells that I collected on the beach when I went to Florida in '98. :D

Being fond of jigsaw puzzles, we have covered a couple of walls in our basement with puzzles that we have completed and glued. :P One of them was an ocean view with a lighthouse on it that matched the colors in the bathroom well, so I 'jazzed' it up with some paper ribbon and hung it on the wall. The other thing in the photo (I have no clue what to call it :P A fan? A broom? LOL) is something that Mom thought looked nice in there.

Lastly, I put some more of my Florida shells in a basket to set in there, and hung a framed picture of a stream (though it's not the ocean, it's still water. :P Mom chose it.) with a Bible verse on it that we took from an old calendar. :)

It looks so nice! It's a shame that it's the boys' bathroom! :P Mom said that we could decorate ours now, if we want to...so I guess we'll be working on that soon! :)