How to Make Aprons From Kitchen Towels

Here's an easy tutorial for you today!

Turn a cute kitchen dish towel into an even cuter apron!  I put this tutorial together last year after I found these towels in the dollar bins at Target.

There are four different ways to make the apron (part 1 and part 2). .  You just need to decide which one is best for you.  All you need is a towel and either ribbon or fabric for the belt sash.

This one is by far the easiest and fastest!  Towel, ribbon, sew together!

This one was probably my favorite.  I used a piece of red fabric for the sash and gathered the towel before sewing together.

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{5} Little Crafty Things to make in bulk!

(...gifties that will improve my craft-credibility! Which I need after last weekend.) Did you see my un-crafty gift tags on Monday? ugh.

Which led me to the idea that I need to just make some crafts in bulk. I mean like sitting down on a Friday night, catching up with the week's TV shows, and making about a dozen or two of these things. I can store these items in a small box and have them ready to deploy at a moment's notice!  Because when I try to be crafty and make a last-minute gift, at the last minute, it looks less like cute and mostly like crap. Then I don't look crafty, I look crappy.

{Friday 5} Gifty Things to Make in Bulk

1. Gift Tags.  Here are some free printable polka dot printable tags from hello, Good Gravy. There are a zillion out there. My #1 and #2 go-to sites are Tip Junkie and Living Locurto.  Others I like are:  Solid Tags from Pugly Pixel, Cupcake Tags from Pink Owl Designs, adorable hand drawn tags from Little Paper Dog,

2. Recycled Gift Bows.  This one is from Hope Studios.  More tutorials can be found at New Green Mama, Hope Studios,  and How About Orange


3. Thank you cards and birthday cards.  A couple cute ones here are (3top) Kids thank you note from Positively Splendid, via Somewhat Simple and (3bottom) Thank you card from Sweet Metel Moments.  More you might like:   Aqua or Purple dotted thank yous from Living Locurto, Pink flowered card kit at My Grafico.

4. Gift Add-ons or Favors.  Things like, felt hair bows, trinket keepers, scrabble tile necklace, Bottle Cap Magnets...basically anything you can add to a kid's (or adult's for that matter) birthday present or bring as a hostess gift.  And you can see this idea goes on and on....

5. Fabric flowers and rosettes.  Tons of tutorials (These blogs have some great tutorials:  My Sparkle, Skip to My Lou, Craftaholics Anonymous, My Blonde Ambition, and Mad Mim...to name a few.
Here are my tips to make a rolled flower.

Because the possibilities are endless for what they can be used for!

screen shot:  "fabric flower" Yahoo! Image search

...or even put a flower on the gift itself!

{Printable} Owl Valentines

Happy Early Valentine's Day!

This is my free Owl Printable for 2012. A bit updated from last year. Printed. Updated colors. Fixed the wording. Made more room for a child's large signature or a signature label. Tweaked the size, text spacing and a couple other things.

Download image by: drag and drop to desktop OR right-click and save as... 

Want last year's?  Here are a few more for this year.
Did you like it? Please,

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{Tutorial} Signature Labels

These are easy little labels that you can use for Valentine's cards, thank you notes, birthday tags, or just for practicing!

I started this when my daughter was three. Here is the full tutorial.  She couldn't yet write, but she could trace. And yes, her little "signature" inside of cards was really adorable, but she really wanted to write her own name.

This year, I made them for my Henry!

How to make these:  1.  You need labels, and a traceable font, and I used MS Word.  2.  Follow my Tutorial for Signature Labels for Pre-Writers.  Print out one full sheet in MS Word.  Don't know if the Windows version is different, but on my Mac I just click Tools, Labels, choose a font, and type in the name where it asks for address, select the correct label size you are using, *click* Full Page of the Same Label, OK.  
3.  I used the font called  It is a free font, too, at Fontspace.com!  Two more freebies that are similar to this are Trace (at fontspace.com) and National First Font (at dafont.com) has a dotted option.

Thereyago!

Did you notice that owl?....come back tomorrow!

If you like it...

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Last-Second (un-crafty) Gift Tags

We went to a couple kids' birthday parties this weekend (super fun!) and I realized that there are some crafty things that don't look so crafty at the last second- like trying to slap together a handmade gift tag *just* before you have to leave.  Seems I always have the gift in time...occasionally I have it wrapped a day before the party...but I forget about the tag until I grab my keys to leave!  And I did it again this weekend- twice!

The best I could come up with in 10 seconds was this:

I just used a pad of printed paper (4x6 size I believe) and cut the papers in half and then into a tag shape by snipping off the corners.  (I just eyeballed it so they were crooked, too.)  I did make one a giant size and just snipped the corners off the 4x6 paper.  It was kinda funny how big it was.  Fitting for a 3-yr old birthday.  

I mean, they were cute, but not Cuuuuute!  Therefore, I resolve for 2012 to wrap better, cuter gifts!  This means having cute tags and bows on hand at any given moment!  This means, I need to get a move on this because there is another birthday party to go to next weekend.