Pinterest-a-thon: Rein-beers

At the office we are doing a holiday "secret elf" exchange. I drew a guy's name, which has been a tad challenging because I have only met him once. I've tried my very best to get thoughtful, manly stuff while sticking to the strict $15 budget. 

Today is the big elf reveal and I could not, for the life of me, think of what to give as a final gift. That's when I realized, just because I have a guy doesn't mean I can't still do something a little crafty. You know how much I love making gift 6 packs (see birthday, baby), so this rein-beer 6 pack seemed like a fun and festive idea!

Pinterest Inspiration

After confirming he drinks alcohol and that my idea wasn't too lame or inappropriate for the office (since I am the new girl and all), I purchased the supplies to make my very own 6 pack of rein-beers!

It was SO EASY to put together and cost me approximately $12.

Supplies:

6 pack of beverages - I went with New Belgium Trippel

Brown pipe cleaners

Small multi-colored pom-poms
Wiggley eyes
Wrapping paper
Glue and scissors

 1. Unload the beers. Wrap the base of the 6 pack box or leave it plain, especially if the beer is a winter ale!

2. Wrap pipe cleaner around bottle top and make bunny ears. Kink into desired antler shape. Add an extra piece of pipe clear if you want larger antlers.

3. Glue on googly eyes.

4.Glue on a small pom-pom nose. I used one red pom-pom for Rudolph and brown for the rest. Ta-da: rein-beer!

I put them all back into the box their sleigh and attached a Santa gift tag. Hello - someone's gotta be a designated driver.

 

Since you cannot buy wiggley eyes, pom-poms or pipe cleaners individually AND this was so fun, I will be making more of these rein-beer 6 packs in the future!

Pinterest-a-thon: Snowman Ornament

Last but certainly not least, today is my final guest post for the week written by Adriane! I met Adriane during the conference but did not get a chance to get to know her until we were back in the office. She's super sweet, funny, also a CSU ram (lots of rammies in our Boulder office) and works out at 24 hr Fitness so we've taken a few classes together. Thanks for sharing your project, Adriane!

Pin-spiraiton

 Every Christmas we get my Mom a snowman ornament – so this year I decided to make mine! My project was inspired by this pin, originally see on Craft Goodies.

After an hour-long trip to Michael’s, in which I spent way more than I needed to on Christmas decorations, I came home with Styrofoam balls, yarn, wire, buttons, and burlap.

I started out by wrapping three Styrofoam balls in yarn (takes longer than you’d think), and glued them together to create the body. The original post used black furniture tacks for the buttons, but I rebelled and chose the genius route of hot-gluing – wait for it – four buttons to the body. I then used 20 gauge wire to makes the arms and hat, and cut a burlap scarf to complete the project!

Pinterest-a-thon: Ruffled Pillow

Today is my second guest post this week written by Jen! Jen is a Meeting Planner and has been the primary person to train me in my new role. I shadowed her the entire week at the conference and we traveled together to Boston, Miami and Tampa for site visits. I feel so lucky to be learning from her, as she is amazing at her job. In addition to all the work and travel time we've spent together she also includes me in social activities. In short: she rocks and I'm grateful! Thank you for sharing your project, Jen!

Having totally fallen in love with the diy ruffled pillow I knew it was exactly what I wanted to create when I was challenged to actually follow up on a pin and create something myself! Since the original pin only included a series of pictures for instructions I hit the web to find some additional instructions and landed on ruffle pillow {by Jess} from Floral Showers. I combined the two with my ultimate vision and created exactly what I wanted.

The tutorial suggested using an extra large t-shirt and stuffing, instead I purchased one yard of beautiful blue/gray striped taffeta and two 16” x 16” pillow forms.

Step 1: Slice that fabric

Taffeta has a tendency to fray, and since I was concerned with the inside seams of the pillow falling apart I decided that I would sew French seams for all my interior seams. Since French seams would need more seam allowance I cut the front of my pillow at 17” x 17” and wanting the back of the pillow to be an envelope, I cut two back pieces that would overlap, 12” x 17” and 9” x 17”. My rotary cutter made it extremely easy to slice nine 1.75” x 25” strips which would become the ruffles. The ruffle strips need to be cut considerably longer than the final pillow size as they will become shorter once ruffled.

Step 2: Sew those ruffles

To create the ruffles I sewed a basting stitch (long stitch) down the center of each strip. I then laid each strip on the pillow front and tacked them down by sewing ¼” seam through the top of each strip.

Begin to ruffle!

This was the best part of the project! To create the ruffles I simply pulled the bobbin thread causing the strips to scrunch up until they were 17” long (be sure to hold the threads at the opposite end from where your pulling and don’t pull too hard). I then went back to the sewing machine and sewed each of the strips down their center onto the front of the pillow. If your original basting seam is showing you can easily pull the threads out, making the pillow top look cleaner.

To complete my ruffle pillow I laid the two back pieces of the pillow so that they overlapped (to create the envelope) and then laid the ruffled top on top of them so that the wrong sides of the fabric were against each other. I then sewed the front to the back around the perimeter using ¼” seam allowance, be sure not to sew the ruffles down (Part 1 of the French seam). I then turned the pillow inside out and again sewed around the perimeter of the pillow using ¼” seam allowance (Part 2 of the French seam). Once again I turned the pillow right side out and I had a ruffled pillow cover! To finish I just put the pillow forms into the pillow cover using the envelope opening in the back.

front - ruffles!

back - envelope

Hardest part of the entire project was dealing with my
poorly trained cat that not only continually jumped on the
table, but also attacked fabric as it came out the backside of
the sewing machine. Good thing she's cute!

Pinterest-a-thon: Braided Scarf

Today is my first guest post this week, written by Ashlan! I met Ashlan while waiting to catch the plane to Philadelphia. I saw a group of people who I thought might be from my new work. A few minutes later I heard my name, first and last, followed by "she has a blog...that I've been stalking." That's when I walked up, introduced myself and embarrassed the heck out of poor Ashlan. I've learned she's crafty, a runner and hilarious, which all make up for the fact she went to CSU ;) Thanks for sharing your project, Ashlan!

Using the braided scarf tutorial from Put Up Your Dukes, I stopped pinning and started crafting! Here's the original Pinterest post.

The tutorial advises using two 60"x15" strips of fabric and suggests  using an old t-shirt as an inexpensive and green fabric source. However, you need XXL tees and my husband doesn't really have much color variety in his collection. I purchased half a yard of each color in a knit fabric instead.

I suggest using the tutorial mentioned above because, unlike me, I bet that she didn't sew a pin into her project. If you're the adventurous type, go ahead, see if you can figure it out with my pics.
 

Step 1: Show Me Your Tubes

Sew two tubes. Mine are 7.5" wide by 58" long. Turn 'em inside out when you're done.

Step 2: Do your tubes low? Do they wobble to and fro? Can you tie 'em in a knot? Can you tie 'em in bow?

Overlap your tubes.

Put your hand through the loop on the bottom. Grab the tails of that loop and pull 'em through.

Flip the piece over.

Put your hand through the other loop and pull it's tails through.

Step 3: Sports Bra (combine your tubes)

Sew the opposite colors of each tube together. Make sure they're not twisted and that you're sewing the insides of them together. See tutorial for more pictures.

Step 4: Wrap the One You Love in Your Tubes!

Yarn Wrapped Holiday Wreaths

Today I am guest posting on Inspired Honey Bee for her holiday Pinterest-a-thon.  Using left over yarn from the yarn wrapped letters I made back in September I made not one but two holiday wreaths: one for our front door and one for my office door!

Hop on over to IHB to see how they came together!

Want to join the Pinterest-a-thon party? Link up your Pinterest holiday project right here.

Pinterest-a-thon: Round 2

Wowsers - time flies! It's already been a month since our last Pinterest-a-thon and sadly since my last post. Well good news - I'm back and very excited to share my project with you tomorrow! 

In addition to the posts this week on Inspired Honey Bee's blog, I've recruited a few lovely ladies from my new office to share some Pinterest projects they've whipped up. How awesome that I have crafty ladies at work? I KNOW! 

So basically this week you'll get DOUBLE the fun and amount of Pinterest-a-thon posts by stopping here and Inspired Honey Bee to see the original crew. Have a project you'd like to share? Join the fun by linking up on Inspired Honey Bee Linky Party #2. 

Huge thank you to Debbie for pulling this all together and including me in the fun again this month.  XO