A girly girl party- invitations

To begin this post I was going to write all about why I'm not actually into little girls growing up before their time, the influence of the media on girls, why I really don't like Bratz dolls etc etc to justify my 6 year olds girly party but I think I'll just say that my 6 year old loves make-up- I believe its a purely innocent thing; she is just fascinated by how it makes her look different, a bit like dressing up really or having her face painted. She has no idea (I think) that woman wear make-up to make themselves look 'better' so long may that last! So when I thought of the idea of a girly girl make-up/nails party it's not coming from any sort of 'beauty' or 'spa'  or 'make-over' perspective which I do think is inappropriate for young girls, its just little girls having fun with what most little girls love, hopefully from an entirely innocent and 'dressing up' place.

I'm going to break up my blog posts for the party so I'll share my invitations in this post. I got the idea for mine after seeing  this one I saw on pinterest- I liked the idea of making the invitation look like a make-up compact.

Here's my invitation...

I do love how invitations really set the scene for a birthday party so I was really pleased how this turned out. I did the first one and then I let Amelie help me make the rest (with very close supervision ;) and she was so excited, it was really nice to make them together.

Here's the outside of the invitation- if you are into scrapbooking you could have an absolute ball making these as there are so many cool things you could use to decorate the front of the invite. I just printed out the label onto card and cut it out and glued it on but there were some really cool little frames at Spotlight which would look awesome too. 

 

Amelie loved the fuschia pink glitter bows of course while I actually thought the little pink bows looked really sweet so we did a mix.

So here's what I used to make the invites- can't believe I didn't think of getting some paint chips as they would be perfect- already the right size and all the colours you'd want (thanks Kirstine Craw for the idea on my facebook page). I bought the glitter card (which is totally awesome!) and the coloured card from Spotlight, as well as the bows, other stickers and the gem stones. Also the pink A4 pack of card, the pink envelopes and the silver card for the mirror. In the end the silver card didn't look that much like a mirror so we covered it in tin foil which looked pretty good.

My first invite I made I used this awesome card that looks just like a mirror- it pays to keep things I tell you as I just kept this from a box that had some shower gel or something in it- I knew it would come in handy!

I printed out the details of the party onto each piece of A4 card leaving a gap between the text for the mirror. Then I folded the invite in half so it would fit inside the envelopes and cut off the rest of the card from the bottom. Then I stuck on the brush that I printed out from here and cut out and stuck on the eye shadows and blushers/lip glosses/lip sticks colours.

We found these stickers at Spotlight as well ($2 for 8 sheets of them!) so we used them to decorate the envelopes and will prob use them to decorate the goodie bags as well.

So there you go- am looking forward to sharing more of my party stuff with you soon :)

Megan x

my creative space: school books

Well my big 5 year old is on to day 3 of school today and wow it has been busy! My fantasy of life getting a bit easier with one at school has been completely turned on its head... getting two, sometimes three kids out the door before the 9am drop off and back at 3 has been a real challenge for me so far! Jack's afternoon sleeps have had to completely change and I actually think I am going to have less time not more because of that! School is going great though and she is very happy so that's good and I'm sure once I get used to it all things will settle down a bit (I hope!)
Anyway, on to my creative space- this was something I did last week that was soooo enjoyable- covering school books. Yes I hear you say - how can that be enjoyable but I really did enjoy doing this- probably helped that I set my little space up with a coffee and the sky remote too!

I had been thinking about how to cover Amelie's school books for a while as I love the creative aspect of this (any excuse to get a bit crafty) and the novelty of covering school books for the first time. I was actually going to cover them in fabric after seeing these great posts from Cotton Kiwi and Ruby in the Dust.

http://cottonkiwi.blogspot.co.nz/2012/02/back-to-school-fabric-covered-exercise.html
http://rubyinthedustdolls.blogspot.co.nz/2012/02/covered.html

But then I saw some book covers on the amazing Facebook page of Fairy Dust Stationery. Toni designed and printed out her own covers for her daughters school books and folders and covered them with clear duraseal.  I thought this was such a great idea as well - duraseal is not very eco-friendly but having seen how school books get treated it does appeal to keep the books in tact and waterproof! (I used to teach kids who had books covered in wallpaper which looked really great but didn't last long- it would end up ripped and tattered really quickly.) And I loved the idea of designing covers with her name and colours and pictures that I knew Amelie would like.

But life got a bit busy and then I had a brainwave- using my stash of scrapbooking and art paper and card that I have been collecting for ever.  I keep everything for my art/card stash- invitations, cards, packaging, magazine pictures, paint sample cards...anything that catches my eye really.

So in the end I chose some of the papers and card that I knew she would like,  cut them to fit the different school books and stuck them on using a glue stick (I only covered the front of the school books). Then I covered the whole book with clear duraseal. I had 6 books to do and all up this only took me less than an hour.  I also added cute stickers to some of the books and the name labels from Stuck On You (thanks for the advice re: school labels on my facebook page) before covering with the duraseal.

For one of the books I had fun doing a bit of 'patchwork'...

and for one I had this collage picture in my stash that I made about 4 years ago and had never framed so on it went!

I couldn't label the books for each subject as I wasn't sure what each book was going to be for so I added a blank label sticker to the top of each book after covering them.  I got the labels from this gorgeous sticker book "Crafty Stickers" from Book Depository. 

Another fun idea would be to use your children's art works or get them to design their own covers for each book if they're a bit older or use photo's- cut them to fit the book and cover with the clear duraseal- they would love that I'm sure. I still love the fabric idea as well so will keep that in mind for other things like having a special writing or drawing book for home maybe.

And I have to share this great tip from my friend Kylie for school- keep a jar with coins in it - because if you are anything like me you will never have cash in your wallet and there is always something your child will need $$ for school- mufti days, shows, trips, fundraisers etc. And they'll tell you just as you're leaving the house in the morning!

And thank you for all the great ideas about meal planning in my last post Organised Home Challenge: Meal Planning. Using random.org the winner of the tea towel set is Number 10- Miriam! Email me your address Miriam and I'll post the tea towels to you :)

For more creative spaces click here

Megan x

my creative space: a flower invitation

Our baby girl is turning one in a couple of weeks so I have just made some cute invitations for a little family party we are having.  I got the idea from Maddie at LilMagoolie who has a gorgeous free flower card pdf  on her blog- isn't she kind! I downloaded it and played around with it in 'Pages' on my mac and printed it on some Christina Re scrapbooking paper.  Isn't it neat how to folds out into a little flower :)

I made up a little envelope for them too. I just folded a piece of A4 paper and stitched up the sides on the sewing machine, then decorated the back.

To see what other people are up to in their creative spaces click here
Megan

A crafty organising project

I saw this cool clipboard project on the website The Creative Mama. My sister is getting married in August and her hubby-to-be is teasing her that she needs a clipboard to get everything organised so I knew this project would be perfect for her! I have also got a problem with bits of paper ripped out of magazines and piled on the bench so I made one for our kitchen too.

I had to buy some Mod Podge craft glue from Warehouse Stationery ( it's like PVA but matt and maybe a bit easier to spread than PVA) and I got the clipboards and the stickers on the metal clip part from Warehouse Stationery too. It was a bit tricky cutting the paper to fit because the only clipboards I found were large ones and my scrapbooking paper wasn't big enough to completely cover the clipboards so I had to do a bit of cutting and trimming, hence the yellow ribbon on my one. I actually think it would look better without the ribbon but it covered up the paper joins and when I was rubbing out the air bubbles I accidentally ripped the paper so the ribbon is a bit of a double cover up!!

Here is a link to the project on the creative mama website
http://thecreativemama.com/organizing-piles-of-paper-diy/
and a link to the lovely blog that the original idea came from
http://martawrites.blogspot.com/2009/05/mini-clipboards-for-may.html
Megan