pinwheels, hair-clips, and....Adam Lambert?

I couldn't decide what to make for the girls' classmates for Valentine's Day this year.

At first, I had no ideas.

Then suddenly I had too many, and I couldn't pick which ones I wanted to do, and which to save for next year.

I ended up doing these for Arissa's drill team buddies:

They're pinwheel pencils.

I just cute lovely Valentine paper by Making Memories into 4x4 inch squares, cut lines from each corner almost to the middle, folded one corner from each section in, and secured with a pretty pin (thru the eraser). The pins were far too long, so I used wire cutters to snip the ends off so they don't poke thru the back.

I poked myself plenty of times while making them, I didn't want any of the recipients to have to go thru that too!

For 2 super-cute drill team siblings, I made little hair clips (almost exactly like the headbands I made for my girls):

A big THANK YOU to Mallory's Sleeping Beauty Styling Head for modeling those. :o) She was a pleasure to work with....more well-behaved but not nearly as cute as the live models I usually use.

Here's how I finished up the "packaging" for the clips:

And while I was working feverishly on those, this sweet guy was being crafty himself:

He was working on a birthday gift for our neighbor, Courtney.

We wanted to silk-screen something for her, cause that's Jesse's latest acquired skill and it's pretty awesome. Courtney happens to be a fan of Adam Lambert, so we went with that.

Jesse found a photo of Adam Lambert online:

and used photoshop to convert it to black & white with maximum contrast.

Then he traced that onto a sheer fabric in an embroidery hoop.

Then (the hard part)....he used mod pdoge & a paint brush to cover the areas he didn't want to be shown on the final product. The modpodge clogs up the tiny holes in the sheer fabric, so that when paint is applied, the paint doesn't come thru in those areas.

Is that not the most awesome thing ever??

(The silk-screen, not Adam Lambert.)

After the mod podge dries, he sets the embroidery hoop on the item to be printed on (in this case, a canvas tote bag), and carefully applies paint to the whole thing. The paint comes through the open areas, and not thru the mod podged spots, and the image is transferred.

Jesse learned how to do all this by googling it. It gets really detailed, but Jesse is good at stuff like that. I avoid super-detailed things...if something takes too long, I get bored and half-ass it or just quit. Jesse, on the other hand, sticks with it and gets it done. And somehow he's got the rep for a short attention span. Go figure!

He's currently taking orders if you want Adam Lambert printed onto anything. ;o)