Friends, you are loved! In this great big world, the internet can bring us together and make it so small. I have met so many beautiful souls on the web that I am blessed to now call friends.
I truly believe God brings people into our lives to encourage us and lift us up. One of the most beautiful spirits I have met is my sweet friend Annette. She is crafty and so talented. I love all her pieces. You really must check out her store, The Rustic Orange.
She creates prints, signs, and so many other cute things that will have you swooning, but more importantly is her heart. She is beautiful inside and out and has one of the biggest hearts I know. This is her print, You are Loved. She has so generously offered it as a free printable to you all.
Please click here to download her free, colorful print.
Life is so short. We are so blessed to have the ability to love others and leave our mark by our actions. I pray that today that you know you are loved by a heavenly father that created you. Have a blessed day!
Do you have a mission in life?
I cut my felt and fabric to create sweet ends and points for my arrows. This is a great way to mix patterns and colors. Your pieces could be all felt or felt on one side and fabric on the other. The big thing to note, is you need two identical size pieces for each part of the arrow. They create a front and a back as you will see in the following pictures.
I used hot glue to attach some feathers to the end piece of my arrow and then glued the identical size piece on top.
Once I had made a few of the end pieces of my arrows, I sewed all the identical size pieces for my arrows together. I could have just used hot glue, but I liked the look of the sewn pieces with stitches. The thing to be careful here is to keep an opening on the different pieces for a dowel rod or kabob stick (which are much cheaper!) to slide through.
After all my pieces were sewn, I simply started sliding them onto my wood kabob sticks and squirted in a little hot glue to hold them in place. They were done!
They were so fun to make! I am already dreaming of making more! There are so many possibilities for how to display these and the options for colors and patterns to use to create them.
Now, if you are like me, and create something you are excited about (and you voice it), your kids may want to get on board and create some too. After I made these arrows, my kids wanted to make some arrows. I adapted this idea to fun paper and just using hot glue for them. I created a stencil piece and let them trace and cut out their own arrow parts. I let my oldest hot glue his own arrow, while I did the younger three kiddos’ arrows for them. They loved being able pick their papers and place feathers where they wanted too.
This was such a quick little craft for them, where they got to use their imaginations and practice some easy skills like tracing and cutting. Reagan also decided to color hers. So, although it is the same idea, every arrow is different. Just like each of my kids are different. I love them! They have been enjoying flying these off the steps as if they were paper airplanes. Oh, to be a kid! 🙂
How about you? Do you have a passion that excites you? Something you want your life to be marked by? I hope you can make a little arrow or something that helps remind you daily that the grinding moments matter!
It might get messy. It might take a few steps and seem tedious, but in the end you could have one really happy My Little Pony fan grinning ear to ear.
She had a blast painting her Fluttershy. If you have a new three-year old, you know her painting looked nothing like Fluttershy. Yet, she was proud of it, and it truly was beautiful. I have so many paintings and “pictures” of hers like this. I decided to help her transform her art into a Fluttershy.
After I printed off my Fluttershy, I taped the puzzle pieces of her together, cut the image out, and laid it on top of Reagan’s painting. I then traced the pony onto the painting, and cut it out.
Once I had some pencil lines of Fluttershy’s features, I went over them in Sharpie. I ended up cutting out eyes and a wing from a different part of Reagan’s painting, and I glued them onto Fluttershy’s body to give her pony another pop of color and texture.
Once all the yarn was in place and dry, our Fluttershy was complete! We think she turned out so cute, and Reagan wanted to carry her all over :).
I had to convince her she was safer to hang on the wall. We ended up placing her in an Ikea frame and did a background matte like I did in this 
So, what about you!? Do you have a My Little Pony fan? You could easily take this concept and turn it into your child’s favorite character.
Do what you love.
I then took some fabric and cut slits in the top about an inch long and an inch apart. I then ripped the fabric along each of those slits to get about one inch strips of fabric with pretty fringe on either side. 
I put a dab of hot glue on the back of my sign and pressed one of the ends of a fabric strip into it. Once the glue had set, I started wrapping my first letter with my fabric strip. I was sure to leave some space between some wraps. I did not want it to seem perfect or polished. I liked how my mint green paint coordinated with my fabric and wanted to see some of it. You can certainly wrap yours tighter or more to cover all the letters evenly. I only added glue at the end of my first letter, but if you find your fabric is slipping-simply add a dab of glue here and there to hold it in place. 
After I finished one letter, I cut my fabric strip. I simply did the same process one letter at a time. You could easily switch out your fabrics at this point too, if you wanted every letter to be something different. I decided to make all my letters the same. Just keep wrapping and doing each letter till you are done, and then find a fun place to hang your sign! 
For now, my sign is hanging in 
Do you love what you do? I pray you are living our your gifts and passions too. I feel like I have a dream job, and I am so so blessed. Creating and being with my family are two of my great loves. I would love to help make creating easier for you as well. It might not be your thing, but you can carve some “me time” and try. Yesterday, I released registration for 
Today, I am going to also give away a box! Please let the rafflecopter widget load, and then enter in as many ways as you would like for your chance to win February’s Spoonful Tribe craft kit. I will release the winner in a post next Wednesday, January 29, 2014.