magnetic paper dolls!

I found a variation of this online and it gave me the idea! I wish I woulda made myself a set now. I gave them to my Mom for Christmas this year!

I simply took pics of all 4 of our faces and cut them into a circle with a cheap program I have on my computer. There are alot of places online you can do this for free; such as www.lunapic.com. Then I went online and found the characters that I wanted to use and sized them according to how big our heads were. I had to experiment with different pictures of heads, as some that I tried looked wrong on the bodies. Then I simply put them all on a one page document and printed it. You can use MS Word, or Paint to do this if you don't have a program on your computer already.

I ran out of laminate so I put them all on photo paper to make them stronger and more durable, then cut them all out and put pieces of magnet on the back with hot glue. I used magnets we had acquired free from places; dentist offices, real estate companies, etc. and just cut them into little pieces.

I made a cute little envelope out of construction paper and put the saying "they say we grow old when we stop playing" on the outside of the envelope, on a smaller piece of construction paper, cut with wavy scissors, and tied it with a piece of hemp rope.

First posting! Beach theme decoration!

YAY! It's our first official 'Crafty fools' posting! I've decided to post a craft that we made for my Mother for her birthday!


We recently moved close to the beach and Mom is re-decorating her kitchen in beach theme. Lucky for us, we can collect free supplies to make cool crafting things for her! I had this one in my head for awhile and it turned out better than I expected, with only one minor flaw, it was lopsided. haha! Luckily Mom knows that it was made with love and doesn't mind it's minor flaw!

Since we try to make our crafts out of things we have around the house, not needing to spend a bunch of money, my biggest struggle with this particular craft was finding the 'wreath' to use. I did look at some stores and found that I really didn't want to spend $5-$10 on the wreath when I wasn't positive it was going to work out for us. So I looked around the house and found an old 'fun noodle' used as a swim toy and cut a piece off, stuck a wire hanger through the middle and Viola...I had a 'free' wreath!

I then used a sand, paper mache mixed and wrapped it up, then dipping it again in sand to cover all of the newspaper. From there I simply started gathering items from the beach. I really wanted a star fish but we don't have them here so I made one; out of tinfoil and more sand paper mache! I used blue and green crayon pieces to add some beach colors. Real driftwood and shells and the 'stringy stuff' I don't know the name of also.

The special touch on this particular gift was a penny I found while walking on the beach looking for decorating pieces. My Grandfather used to tell us that penny's were kisses from heaven...from those that you'd lost. So needless to say, it HAD to go on the starfish! 

Once I put the piece all together, I sprayed it numerous times with a clear coat spray paint so that it wouldn't damage easily. It made it through shipping from Cali to Colorado!

bird playground

Once we finally decided where our new friend Tango the Cockatiel's cage was going to go in the living room, we needed a playground for him to come out of his cage and hang out.
Cockatiels are naturally curious and need to have something to do other than hang out in a cage or on your shoulder all day, so we came up with this idea and he LOVES it!

We had 2 little corner shelves hanging around that we decided to use to build around. We took a trip to the park and picked up branches that were long enough for Tango to climb around on and thick enough to hold his weight. We screwed the branches into one of the shelves and tied them together with hemp, so that if he chews on them it won't hurt him. I used hemp rope to make a ladder for him to climb from one shelf to the other. The bottom shelf is simply a place for him to hang out, he likes to nap in there and rub his little head on the pine cone that hangs on that shelf.

Tango adores his new playground and squeals every morning until he is let out to run free and play on his branches.