Felt Shamrocks

I had an idea to make shamrock flowers to decorate my table on Saturday (St. Patrick's Day dinner) so googled for some examples...didn't really find anything I liked but saw a few felt shamrocks and thought they'd be cute at everyone's place setting. I followed the directions I found here, but changed them a bit by tweaking the shape to get them how I wanted them to look, but they still weren't perfect - the centers looked a little rough and I could see the glue...what to put in the middle tho? Aha - how about a shiny lucky penny?

You need 4 leaves, see picture for the shape - they are about 2" square and sort of shaped like a tooth (do they look like teeth to you? or maybe a heart with the bottom notched?) and then a thin strip for the stem.

Pinch the bottom notches together and glue. I started with Elmers but that was taking too long to dry so I ended up getting the hot glue gun out and then they were done pretty much instantly.

 Glue 2 of the leaves together, repeat. Then put the stem in between and glue all pieces together.

 These look fine like this, but I finished them by hot gluing a shiny penny to the middle. These are so quick and easy to make that I'm making a few more so everyone at the table can have one! I'm thinking I'll place one on top of a napkin on everyone's plate before dinner.

one year ago: green tassel earrings
two years ago: leprechaun coloring page

St. Patrick's Day Paper Shamrock Wreath

Super easy quick craft for St. Patrick's Day - you could pin this up somewhere, make into a card and send to someone, use as decoration for a party, prop in the windowsill, make a few of them and put at everyone's place setting for your corned beef dinner...really it's just a little thing that can be used numerous ways. Have fun!

I punched out little hearts from white, darker green, and silver glitter paper (all from Stampin' Up but use whatever you have!). Lightly trace a circle on lighter green paper, lay out the hearts in patterns that look like overlapping shamrocks and glue down on the circle so it looks like a wreath. Mine ended up being 4 leaf clovers more than shamrocks cuz I messed up on the placement and it was lopsided! Whatever, it's still cute ;) Embellish if you want with sequins, I added a little ribbon because it was just laying lonely on my craft desk and caught my eye. Sometimes it's hard to say "enough is enough" and I just keep adding things!

Sending this to Ronda for her seasonal display table, we'll see how she uses it!

Beaded Bauble Ring

St. Patrick's Day is right around the corner - heart stuff from Valentine's Day is put away and now it's time for all things green, shamrocked, and lucky :)

Was inspired by a green beaded ring I saw here, mine is way different of course but that's what I think crafting and inspiration should be...get ideas and then make them your own! Plus I didn't have the inspiration picture or directions with me when playing in the craft room and I just winged it hahaha.

This is super simple - twist some sort of heavy weight jewelry wire around something that is the size of the ring you want. (Remember when Janis and I tried to make wire wrapped rings, click here for that post, and they didn't turn out so good? Well I bought a ring sizer tool thing back then so I used that for this ring). I used 20 gauge copper wire for this ring since that's what I have on hand. Wrap the wire around a few times, I did 8 or 9, beginning and ending at the same place. Twist the two ends around to hold, thread a bead on each end and then loop the wire ends under the beads so they don't poke you and you can't see them. Then take a long piece of thinner gauge wire, wrap one end in between the two beads to hold it, string a couple beads on and wrap around wherever looks good to you. Make sure the beads stay on the top of the ring and aren't underneath the band, and don't pull too tight or the ring will get smaller. Keep wrapping and adding a couple beads at a time until it looks how you want, cut off the wire you aren't using and twist the end around and underneath the beads so it doesn't poke you and you can't see it - that's sort of a no-brainer I know, why would you leave the ends sticking up or out to poke yourself? Just start wrapping and these instructions will make sense I think! Give me a holler if you can't figure out what I did and need some help :)

I used green beads so I'll have green jewelry for St. Paddy's Day, make yours whatever color you want!

wrap wire around something that's the size you want the ring, then twist the ends around each other to hold

put a bead on each end and then wrap the end under the bead to hide it and hold the bead in place. 

wrap thinner wire between the two beads, add a couple beads and continue wrapping around the ring placing the beads where they look best. don't pull too tight or the ring will get smaller. 

side view

what the back looks like...obviously ;)

Shamrock Garland

Brooke must have been busy this week, I didn't get any of her awesome kid craft videos to share with you today...so instead I've decided to channel her and come up with my own craft that I think she'll approve of - naturally by asking myself "what would Brooke do?" I had to use the hot glue gun! And yep I burned my thumb - she seems to be better at being careful than I am!

I had a left over package of foam shamrocks from making the wreath the other day (see here for that project) and some twine, and of course the hot glue and thought a quick garland to hang from a door would be cute.

That is literally all I did, glued shamrocks back to back (making sure the stems matched up) every few inches on a long piece of twine. Stuck up one of those little Command removable hook things to the top of the door and looped the top of the garland string around it.