It's not a party without Pink Popcorn and Punch!

Ok, ok, last post on my daughter's party, I promise, lol. I think. No really, I promise.

What  fun is a party without pink popcorn? I ask ya! When my daughter said she wanted a pink party, I hopped right on pinterest and started pinning everything pink that I could think of for her party. I even made a board titled "pink slumber party", click on it if you want to follow it.

So I see the idea of pink popcorn, I was like "Ohhh ya baby, gonna make that!" When I told my mother, she said "OMG, hahahaha, no way, ya know they sell colored popcorn at Crackle Barrel?" And then I said "Well, no but... half the fun is trying to make it myself!"

I searched for enough recipes on how to make it myself and this was the simplest and easiest..

1 cup of  (uncooked) popcorn cornels or 2 bags or plain microwavable popcorn
2 cups of sugar
1 tbsp of butter
1/2 cup of water
food coloring

Preheat oven to 250 degrees
Pop your popcorn by either method, and then place on a cookie sheet in the oven to keep warm while you make the sauce.

In a sauce pan mix all of the rest of the ingredients, I placed about 6 drops pink food coloring.They actually have Neon Food coloring and it comes in pink.

Let all ingredients come to a boil and then let the sauce cool for about 5 minutes. I at first tried just pouring it over the popcorn but it was making it soggy so what I did was place the solution in a gallon size baggie about 1/4 of the a solution at a time, and then filled the bag with popcorn, and Shake, Rattle, and Roll! 

Then empty and put it on the cookie sheet spreading it out so it can dry properly without clumping together.

Keep doing this until all of your popcorn is PINK, PINK, PINK!

As you can see it was a hit, the girls kept sneaking it before the party started.

Now onto the the pink punch!

I love any excuse to get out my punch bowl set. This punch bowl is as old as I am. My Aunt purchased it for the my mom's baby shower when she was pregnant me. So when I got married, she gave it to me as one of my wedding gifts. Unfortunately, I have only gotten to use it about 3 total times. So when I saw pink punch and it was in a punch bowl set, I was so excited.

The recipe is so yummy and so simple.

1 gallon of Raspberry Sherbet

1 liter of Ginger Ale

1 liter of Sprite

In the bowl, 1/4 of the gallon sherbet,  1/4 liter of ginger ale and 1/4 liter of Sprite. It makes a total of 4 batches.

Maybe I should have taken the picture before we started drinking it, lol. Hey we were thirsty from all those sweets!

Thanks for tuning in, and stay tuned later in the week/weekend for my next DIY project that's not related to my daughter's party, lol.

How to make a Triangle Fabric Banner

 

Hi guys, I think this might be a record, 4 posts in one week. Eeek!

I have a lot of things I want to post, especially from my daughter's party. I thought I would do individual posts on each of the crafts I did for her party. Today, we'll learn how to make a fabric triangular banner.

Step 1 choose your color palette, pattens etc.


Step 2 Pick out fabric

Step 3 Cut them into triangles you can make them as big or small as you want. I made a cardboard template and then traced and cut mine.

Step 4 attach the triangles to bias tape (quilting trim) I attached mine to this pink color

Step 5 is optional: I sewed a zigzag stitch around each triangle, but they do not have to be sewn, you could also just cut them with pinking shears.

Step 6 attach it to whatever you desire. I made mine for my daughter's 8th birthday party. We used it to do a photo booth type pictures.

Hope you got some ideas. I had fun making mine. And I will for sure use this for other photo shoots. I am thinking I'll make many more for boys etc.

Thanks for tuning in! Don't forget to follow me!

DIY Pink Slumber Party Decor and FUN!

My little baby girl has turned 8. Awe, so sad for mama, but I have one happy girl. We planned a slumber party for this beautiful girl. And of course she wanted a PINK Party! I was well... tickled pink, lol.

Anyway, so I did what I always do and searched Pinterest for some ideas. Ahh, I just love them. I really am a "Pinterest Addict"!

Here are some pictures...

The Pink Punch

Homemade Pink Popcorn

Handmade tissue paper pom poms

DIY Photo backdrop, with handmade Banner. You can learn how to make the banner here.

I edited them and then made them into photo booth strips on pixlr.com

She was so excited to get her laptop (mini-lap top that is)
and loved her new bag for it from her Aunt Ra-Ra

I'll post individual recipes and how to's in case anyone wants to know how to do them, and then I'll put the links on this blog post. I'll hopefully be able to do that very soon!

Now that her party/planning is over, time to concentrate on back to school!

Thanks for tuning in and don't forget to follow  me.

How to make Tissue Paper Pom Poms/Flowers

Oopsie, sorry guys. Last night I did an impromptu Drive-in movie night with my friend Terri, her kiddos and my kiddos.

It was super fun, we saw Smurf's 2 and Turbo. Two movies my kiddos have been wanting to see. So yes, guilty as charged, I wasn't able to post the project I promised. Please, pretty please forgive me.

Ok, enough mushiness. Onto the good stuff. How to make tissue paper pom poms/flowers.

I used the pink dyed tissue paper to make these, and made several, some large and some small.

So what you need:

Tissue Paper

Yarn or string

Scissors

Step 1 you'll need about 8 to 10 sheets tissue paper. The more paper the fuller it will be.

Step 2 bend the sheets back and forth like a fan.

Step 3 tie a piece or yarn or string in the middle.

Step 4 Cut a rounded tip on each side.

 

Step 5 Fan it out.

Step 6 peel each layer up, until it is all fluffed up.

Keep on fluffing until you get a ball, like below.

 I love how they turned out, now all I have to do is attach some clear string, and hang them from the ceiling. These were decorations for my daughter's slumber party. 

Thanks for tuning guys! Until Next time...

To see how I made the tissue paper pink, click here.

How to dye tissue paper

I know what you're thinking... Why on earth would anyone want to dye tissue paper? Well there are a couple of good reasons, one might want to.

1. You need a specific color and can't find that color in stores.
2. You only have white, and don't want to spend the money on purchasing more.
3. You have a lot of RIT dye, and lot of white tissue paper.

Ok, so in my case. I had a lot of RIT dye and a lot of white tissue paper, and not a lot of money to spend on purchasing more. I mean come on have you seen how many sheets you get in a package. I mean even if you shop at the Dollar Tree, you will still spend $1 on about 10 sheets, and well for the project I was going to do, I was gonna need a lot of tissue paper.

So this is what you will need

1. RIT Dye (its the cheapest and comes in a lot of colors, plus it comes in liquid) I used Petal Pink

2. A spray bottle ( you can get them at the dollor store)

3. White tissue paper

Fill your sprayer with 1 cup of hot water to one cap full of RIT Dye. I filled up my whole bottle. Using 24 ounces and 3 caps full. Unless your're only planning on doing  20 or less sheets, I say fill the whole bottle up.

I have a roll of white tissue paper, so I rolled it all out long sections at a time, and began spraying away.

It's kind of hard to tell by the pictures. But as it soaks into the paper it becomes a beautiful pink color. Best of all it tends to collect in certain spots, and dries pinker in that spot. It sort of looks tie dyed, which you would think would look strange. But it actually looks really pretty.

It took a little while but then again I made probably 160 sheets (by the time I cut them).

My back was getting a little tired from bending over to spray it. But the good news is I think I may have killed some ants. If I didn't then they are really pink now, lol.

Here is the outcome when it dries. As you can see, it will dry wrinkled, but I like it that way.

Stay tuned tomorrow! I will show the project I am working on, hence why I wanted the tissue paper pink.

Thanks for tuning in, and I'll see you guys tomorrow!

Click here,to see project I used the pink tissue paper on.

Photoshop fixes... How to fix under the eye darkness

If your are like me, you get a great photo than needs little adjustments, you fix it in your editing software but then you notice a small detail that just seems to throw off the whole picture. In this case, it was my daughter's eyes. The picture itself was almost perfect, but I increased my contrast, and bam was pretty much done. I even went as far as posting on Facebook, oh wait and on my blog here, when I was talking about the chair re-do.

But of course like all other times I do editing and posting, I'm tired and don't always see any additional problems. Well, I got a lot of likes on FB, and then when showing the picture to my husband, I then saw the eye flaw.

This can happen when you increase the contrast. Plus the sun was perfect in all the other areas, but like most of the time harsh on the eyes. A reflector probably could have been used to avoid that, but this was a real quick, hey get dressed, and drag her and the chair outside kinda of thing. I was trying to get the picture done before sunset.

But its ok, it can be fixed. Now... a lot of software programs have airbrush, which by the way is one of my favorite tools. But in this case it would make her whole face to soft. I didn't want that look for this picture. And also airbrush doesn't always correct dark spots. You can try the Spot healing on Photoshop, but its hard to get it just right.  So what do you do?

Photoshop Elements 11 is the editing software I use for now. I will one day upgrade to CS6, but for now this software has a lot of the same features. This can be used in a lot of programs. It just may not be as easy. I found it did work slightly the same in Pixlr adavanced. Which was the program  used before PSE 11.

Step 1:

Click on blank layer

Step 2:

Click on the eye dropper

Step 3: 

Click on an area near by the eyes that is the correct color that the under eye color should be. I clicked on below the eye but closer to the nose to achieve the color I needed.

Step 4: 

Click on the brush, and slightly zooming in, (not to much or you'll over do it on the brush and brush away the eye lashes and affect the eye shape). And carefully brush the darkness away.

Step 5: 

If it seems to be obvious, then decrease the opacity to your liking. If its too dark or too light, go back to step 3 and click on another part of the skin nearby to see if that skin color matches up better.

And Whaaa-laa your're done! Easy Peasy, Mac and Cheesy!

I love this picture of my daughter, it would have been nicer if she smiled a little, but hey that's the model in her right? Look serious and glamorous!

Hope this helped. I love learning new tricks. I am still trying to get the hang of PSE, but the best thing to do is look on pinterest and look and search photography tricks. You can find tons of tips, actions, and freebies. I have a lot of on my pinterest board, titled photography tricks. If anyone wants to follow me on that board, simply click on the link.

Thanks for tuning in. If you haven't already please follow me here on my blog!

DIY Chalkboard

As some of you may or may not already know, I am a photographer. I am getting ready for a 1 year old photo shoot, and I had lots of props I wanted to incorporate, but not enough money to buy them all. But the fun is making it if you have the time right?

So here is my first prop....

Haha, I know huh? But just wait as I magically turn this $1 frame from the Dollar Tree into a chalkboard.

I already had pink paint and chalkboard paint by Folk Art.

You can also buy the spray paint by Rustoleum . Its so much easier and it applies so smooth and more evenly.

Ok, so step one...

paint the glass with the chalk board paint.

Step two...

paint the frame

If you buy a plastic frame like I did, it will take about 3 coats.

Step 3 apply another coat (after the first coat has dried) to the chalkboard.

Then after it is all dried, put the glass back into the frame and put the cardboard backer back on as well, and waa-laa you have yourself a chalkboard. I'll post some pics of it when I do my photo shoot.

Apparently I should have the mom write the I'm 1, lol.

Thanks for tuning in, stay tuned for some more DIY photoprops this week :)