Halloween Cont. & More

As promised I have returned with updates on Lily's Little Mermaid costume. Again, I am so glad I started this project early. I've had so much  fun finding cheap and interesting ways to make this a one of a kind instead of another patterned blah piece. I wasn't too fond of using a pattern in the first place, but I couldn't see myself successfully creating my own without it turning into an extremely expensive ordeal. Someday my financial supplies will allow for more creativity/trial and error/etc. Anyways.... off of that tangent. So at my visit to the Goodwill I discovered a 5 cent bag of seashells, what luck! I used these to glue to her dress and the crown I picked up on clearance at Target.

As much as I love cheap items, I have been recruited by my husband in the war against all things "made in china." In fact, after he pointed out how difficult it is to find American made goods, I began noticing it as well. Wal Mart was basically made in China, therefore I stay far away. No offense to those who choose to shop there, I would just rather not. 

Note: Don't mind the teddy bear, my daughter had gone to bed and usually is when I have time to sit and Blog therefore unavailable to model my creation. I borrowed this :) ... I put the shells on and felt it looked a little boring, so I added a bit of seaweed onto each side to give it that "under the sea" feel. I'll be creating a seaweed boa out of the rest of it later, its a work in progress. Come Halloween I will post the finished costume. 

In order to get a good hold between the seashells and the plastic, I used some foam I had laying around. I cut it into squares and stacked them using a hot glue gun until the foam was flesh with the edge of the shell. Then after glueing it to the crown, I stuck another piece on the back of the crown so there would be ample area for the glue to adhere to. 

Other than tweaking this I have had multiple other projects to keep myself busy. One reason I started blogging these sort of projects is because I enjoy browsing other online sites and blogs for great ideas and felt that I should give back with what they have taught me and how I've been able to expand on them. I found a lovely little project here. Its a tutorial on how to turn old boxes (cereal etc) into little houses and villages. I created and painted the first box to test the tutorial. Later I mad a few other boxes to surprise my daughter with. She's only two and loves to paint literally anything. The houses were perfect, she was able to pick out her favorite colors then paint the solid colors. I'll have her glue pre cut windows to them later when she's painted the other side. We had to allow for dry time. 

Disregard the random items, we store the village on a craft dresser and pull it down when she wants to play. As you can see, the larger box house is the one I made, while the two smaller ones she painted herself. I had also saved quite a few paper towel and toilet paper rolls to find use for. Though two of the tp rolls were allocated for binoculars, the remaining ones were turned into gorgeous autumn trees. 

We simply painted the paper rolls and then used Modge Podge on the inside rim to adhere tissue paper for the top. I liked this project because it gave me a chance to use a lot of items I'd been storing and she had a really good time. I hate when I need one color of tissue paper to match a bag and I'm forced to buy this unnecessarily large muti pack to get it. Guess what? They got their use. :) Love that even after the project was done she still wanted to paint the plate lol. 

I'll save my next update for another post. Thanks for reading <3