Grandma necklaces

For Christmas gifts for my mom and mother-in-law this year, I decided to take the "easy" route and make something that relates to my kids. Once you have kids, it's easy to create gifts involving/relating to them, and people appreciate them and enjoy them more, I think, than just buying them something generic, like a shirt. 

For my mom, I ordered a locket online through Etsy. I wasn't really thrilled with how it turned out when I got it, however. 

I ordered this locket in silver, with a request for the girls' birthstone colors for the flowers--amber and amethyst. 

The locket turned out pretty good, but I wasn't really happy with the flower beads, so I ended up switching them out for some other beads I went and bought from Joann's. 

The pictures that were on our Christmas cards ended up being the perfect size for inside the locket. I traced out the shape, cut them out, and decoupaged them inside the locket. 

Such cute little munchkins!! 

My mother-in-law had mentioned some time back that she always wanted a necklace with her kids' birthstones on it, but since her kids were born in July and May, the colors were red and green. What an odd, random combination. 

I'm pretty proud of how this necklace came out, I designed it myself :) I call it the family tree necklace. I searched all over for the big heart pendant. After a few stressful trips to craft stores with two kids getting into everything, I finally found one that worked at Craft Warehouse. I attached my husband's birthstone (the red) and my sister-in-law's birthstone (the green) to the big heart, then hung smaller hearts off of those stones to signify offspring (i.e. Madelyn and Audrey).

After giving it to my mother-in-law, she started to give my sister-in-law a hard time about the empty heart. If that's what it takes for me to get nieces and nephews... so be it :)

Bobble flower hat

 I've really been going hat crazy :)

I made this hat for my sister for her Christmas gift. I really like how it turned out, I wanted to keep it for myself, but I will be nice and give it to her.

I loosely followed this pattern. It was a horribly written pattern, the stitch counts did not add up at the end of each row, it was inconsistent, and didn't even make sense in places. So I pretty much just used the bobble stitch and made up my own thing. It actually turned out really cute, especially after adding the flowers.

I added two flowers to this hat, instead of my usual one, something a little different this time. I used the flower pattern from here but only made one round of petals. 

This hat looks horrible with my orange shirt, but oh well, what can you do :)

A last close-up of the flowers.  

A fun and different hat, I think she will really like the bright pink.

Flower hat

This is the first hat out of all the hats I've been making lately that I made for and decided to keep for myself. I followed this pattern but changed it a little bit. 

This is how it was supposed to look.

But this is how I ended up making it.

Instead of making it into the "cloche" style, I shortened it and made it into a beanie. It just didn't work right with it long and folded, so I added a round of single crochet around the bottom to make a smooth edge and finish it off. 

The pattern was really neat, it used a special stitch that I actually had to watch a video of to figure out how to do it. It was supposed to be somewhat of a flower pattern. Once I got the hang of it it was easy to do, and really turned out pretty.

I've already worn it a few times, kept me warm and somewhat dry at Zoolights a few weeks ago.

Mom's birthstone necklace

I spent a lot of time on Etsy awhile ago trying to find the perfect necklace featuring the girls' birthstones. I finally narrowed it down to one that I ended up buying, but I was not really happy with it. I actually ended up buying a couple different things, and wasn't very impressed. I could have made better versions of the items I got, for much cheaper than what I paid. Oh well, live and learn I guess. 

The birthstone necklace I purchased had a pendent with two birds on it, with the girls' two birthstones hanging in front of the pendent. It just didn't look right, so I ended up taking it apart and making two different necklaces. The bird pendent I put on its own chain, and wear it plain. 

I put the two birthstone beads on a new necklace, and added a couple charms I got from Joanns.

I've always liked keys for some reason, and they're all over the place now, thanks to the steampunk craze that seems to be going around. And I really wanted the "mom" charm, but they were out, so I decided to just use "daughter." I'm a daughter, and I have daughters, so I figured it worked. 

Madelyn's birthstone is the topaz, and Audrey's is the amethyst.  

After a lot of rearranging, I'm finally happy with how it turned out. It's a fun necklace to wear with meaning behind it, I wear it all the time. Just goes to show, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself :)

Borax snowflakes, swirlies, letters, snowman, the possibilities are endless!

A friend of mine had a bunch of crystal snowflakes on her tree that I really liked. After asking her and looking up on pinterest, I found out they were made using Borax!! So after a trip to the grocery store, I went a little crazy. These things are so addicting!

After looking up a few different recipes, this is what I ended up doing.

Materials

Pipe cleaners of various colors

Borax

Water

A glass container of some sort

String

Pencil

Directions

1. Use pipe cleaners of various colors to make different shapes you would like to be turned into crystals. This is the fun and creative part. Snowflakes are a good place to start. I really liked the look of using colored pipe cleaners, they turned out prettier than the white pipe cleaners, I thought.

2. Boil (or as close to boiling as you can get) water. Pour into the glass containers. Add a few tablespoons of borax to the container, stir until it all dissolves. The amount of borax you add varies and doesn't really matter. I ended up re-using the solution several times, just adding a little more borax each time, so it was nowhere near an exact amount. Just add some till you think it's good and make sure it dissolves.

3. Tie string to your shapes and suspend in water, looping the string on a pencil to straddle the top of the glass.

4. Let sit undisturbed for 8-10 hours.

5. Pull out and let dry overnight.

6. Enjoy the awesomeness of your beautiful crystals!!

7. Repeat. Many, many times repeat. To re-use the solution, put the glass container in the microwave and heat until the formed crystals in the glass all dissolve again, heating in 2 minute intervals and stirring after each time. I usually added a few more tablespoons of borax each time, too.

This is the set-up I used to make all the ornaments.

Then here's how they all turned out!

A white snowflake.

A red crystal swirly. 

A red snowflake.

An A and an M for Madelyn and Audrey.

They look so pretty hanging on the tree with the lights shining behind and through them.

This is where I got creative. I really liked how the snowman turned out. I only bought red and white pipe cleaners, but with more colors you could make even more shapes.

I finally stopped making these, but I had the whole system going for about 4 days straight. So much fun!

"Bonita" hat

This hat I gave to a friend for a baby shower, actually the same friend that I gave the little bear hat to. 

I tried taking pictures of Madelyn modeling it, but they turned out blurry and I already gave away the hat, so this is the only picture I got.

I used this pattern. It's kind of a beret style hat, not quite what I expected when I originally started the pattern, but it was cute.

Kitty hat

This hat was inspired by a hat I saw on a random little girl a couple weeks ago. I was admiring the hat, thinking it would be cute for Madelyn, so my mission became finding a similar pattern to make my own version.

I had pinned this pattern a while back, but I wanted to make a generic kitty hat, not necessarily a Hello Kitty version. Out of all the commercialized characters, Hello Kitty is one I actually like and don't mind Madelyn having things with the character on it, maybe it stems from my liking it when I was a kid.

Here is the pattern as it was supposed to be...

and here's how I changed it.

I chose to use brown instead of white, and didn't end up putting the face features on the hat. I wanted Madelyn to be the kitty, rather than a kitty plastered on her head.... 

as seen below.

 Isn't she a cute kitty?

All-in-all a fun project, and a great pattern to follow. I ended up making the ear flaps a little more off-centered than the pattern required, just to make them cover more of her ears instead of her face.