Craft Hour at the Beach

I went to the beach this weekend with a few friends and I decided it would be nice to have a good wholesome girl bonding activity to do.  So I came up with craft hour.  It was actually supposed to be 'craft 20 minutes' where I showed everyone how to make an easy pair of earring.  For some people, making stuff was fun, while for others making stuff was hard.  Apparently not everyone is in to crafting.  I won't name names.

Beezus5 gets the gold star in crafting as she finished hers first and with the least help.  Plus they were pretty cute.  Hers are the big ones in the front.  (Everyone else did great too, for the most part.)

Even though some people had a little trouble (mostly with selecting the beads they wanted to use), everyone did end up with a pair of nice fashion earrings to wear out to dinner.  (Although B5 didn't put hers on until after the photo.)

The boys did not participate.

Would you be mad if your friend made you have craft time at the beach?

The Latest In T-Shirt Making...Vegas Style

When we decided to go to Vegas, I was obviously put in charge of T-shirt design.  I thought tank tops would be more Vegas-y and good to wear to the pool, so I picked up a few cheap ones from Old Navy.

When I lived with Mo back in college, she had a copy of a poem that her mom wrote called 'Lucky Sevens'.  It was about Mo, who was born on 7/7.  It was kind of an inside joke after that.  (There was also an interesting poem about a tootsie roll pop in there.)  So I thought that would be a a good slogan for the shirts.

I have tried to make my own stencils before without much success but I came up with a new idea that I thought might work.   I decided to cut the stencil out of contact paper so I could stick it directly on the shirt.

Here's what I did.....
1-Print out a Word Document in the size and font you like of whatever you want to go on the shirt.  I printed out a page that said Lucky 7's.
2-Tape contact paper over the paper with the word doc on it.
3-Tape this to cardboard and then cut out your stencil with an Exacto knife by tracing/cutting over the word doc/contact paper.  (The cardboard keeps you from cutting in to a table or something.)

4-Stick the stencil directly on the shirt and paint it.  I used a stencil paint brush (which you can get at Michaels, a normal brush would probably work too) and fabric paint.  I think I'm going to try spray fabric paint at some point.
5-Peel off the contact paper and you should have a nice design/word on your t-shirt.

Do these instructions make sense?  No, probably not.  But you should do it anyways.  Give it your all.

If so, you will end up with this wonderful set of personalized tank tops (which we did actually wear to the pool)...

And here is a photo of us looking slightly more fashionable later on...

Yay Vegas!
And that concludes my Vegas posts.  B5 you can come back to reading my blog now.

Making Stuff is Hard-The Pizza Stone

I know what you are thinking.  Wow I am an amazing chef to get that pizza in the shape of a triangle.  How neat. 

No, not neat. 

I finally attempted to use the pizza stone my mom bought for me.  What I did not realize was just how hard it is to transfer your pizza onto the stone once the stone is already in the oven (heating up).  I do not have one of those paddle things so I literally sat/stared/attempted to move my pizza dough (which was round and very pretty) onto the stone in the oven for about 20 minutes.  I almost cried.  Once I finally got it on, it was in this sort of triangular blob with sauce and cheese falling off the sides instead of the beautiful round pizza I had before I moved it.

It still tasted ok though.  (I mean who doesn't like the taste of fresh melted mozzarella?  Plus pizza is definitely one of my top 3 favorite foods.)

Have you ever used a pizza stone?

PS-Mo, this was not the craft fail attempt of your bday present.  I had many fails this weekend.