Friday, June 28, 2013

Lego Tray

What is wrong with me?  Why can I not just buy a gift and do nothing 'crafty' with it?  Why do I have to think about it, obsess about it, figure out a way to make it 'perfect?'  I am not sure, but I think it has something to do with not having bucketfuls of money, but still wanting to give an awesome gift...

Anywho, not something I plan on changing about myself, so I guess I should move on right?  :)  Here it is; I made this tray from these plans.  I didn't use the exact wood Jaime used, because I wanted to use my scrap wood, but used the overall plan in my design.   I used the wrapping inspiration from here.

 
I decided to use the Lego font (search for it, there is no special site) and used paint pen to color it in.  I used the same process for tracing it on the wood as I used here.


I got the cool drawer pulls at the Depot.  I thought they looked great with the tray and they were the cheapest!

Unfortunately, I could only make two trays (one for the birthday boy, who is friends with my oldest, and one tray for us) which means my boys will have to share until I get more wood...  For ours, I did our last name so that no one could say it was his.  Just trying to head off future fights...


What crafty gifts do you like making for little boys?

Take Care,
Morgan

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Boy Graduating High School Gift

Ok, so I don't remember any of the gifts I received upon graduation from High School (or College, by the way.)  I know, I am a terrible person, or maybe the gifts were not that memorable? Well, this gift should be memorable for our upcoming graduate...  Personalized towels! 

Useful - check. Needed?  Probably, since he will be staying in the college dorms and not the comfort of his family's home...  You know, I still have the towels I went to college with, well minus a few that were 'borrowed' by roommates to never be returned...  I am certain that if I had monogrammed towels, those towels would be in my bathroom cabinet, not in someone else's...

I have five body towels and two hand towels for our guy.  That way, he can at least make it through the school week without doing laundry...
Used PB font I downloaded.  Not from a special site, you can find it anywhere on the internet.
This is centered on the towel, my cropping on the pic is not...
If you have embroidered before, these were not that difficult.  I mean, really, the machine does all the work...  But, you do have to make certain the monogram is straight and you don't run out of bobbin thread and the thread gets cut at the right time (I did my cuts, while the machine was doing the monogram - I didn't wait till the end.)

I really wanted to get one of those fancy, schmancy tools that would tell you right where to do the monogram, but I didn't want to spend even more money to buy a tool that I may never use again, so I just did this old, school style (you know, print out the monogram on paper and eyeballed/measured where it looked best.)  To make sure everything was centered, I folded the towel longways directly in half and used two pins to mark the center.  I had the center of my monogram 7 inches up from the bottom (I folded 7 inches up from the bottom and used two pins here on the sides,) with my letters being 2.25 inches tall and 3 inches wide (I only have a 4 inch hoop.)  I used the reference marks on my hoop and lined them up with the four pins. I used rip away stabilizer on the back and the water soluble on the front, both were in the hoop.  FYI...  You don't need to rip the stabilizer away on the back, mine all came off in the wash after...

I am really pleased with the way these turned out!  They look just like the fancy ones you can get from a PB catalog, but not the price.  I found these on clearance at my Tarjay and in the color scheme he likes! What an exciting time, the transition from High School to College!  I am very excited for our graduate and hope he enjoys these towel and in (cough, cough) twenty years, he is still using them.

Take Care,
Morgan

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