Ball of Treasures

I have tons of old jewelry, pins & beads that I wanted to display in a unique way rather than having them collect dust in my drawer. I like the look of decorative decor balls, so I decided to make one of my own to feature all of my treasures. I bought a 4" styrofoam ball from my local craft store, painted it brown and then glued all my little items onto it. I started with the largest pieces and then filled in the gaps mainly with beads & buttons. This took a while to finish, but the ending result is beautiful and the perfect way to display all of these neat treasures.

Bird Mobile Project for Nursery

In preparation for our first baby, I decided to take time off around the holidays to put the nursery together. The baby's room will get a new coat of paint which will include a handpainted mural along with other handmade items, so I thought I would post pictures on our progress. The first craft project that I decided to work on is a bird mobile that will hang above the crib. The idea along with the pattern for the fabric birds came from a knitting blog called Spool. Sewing has never been my forte and I feel like it took a while to just make one little bird. For those that are visual learners, here are pictures of each step in the process. 1) First, start with the bird body pieces cut from Spools' PDF pattern
2) Next, line up one side of the belly with one side of the body. When you start sewing those pieces together (starting with the un-patterned side out), you'll need to keep lining up the pieces together due to the curves of both pieces.

3) Once you complete sewing the belly side to the body, you can move on to the opposite side of the belly and start sewing and will continue sewing until the head is sewn shut

4) Next, you will turn the sewn bird inside-out and then fill it with stuffing. Once stuffed, sew the tail shut.
5) When you are finished with all the birds you'd like on the mobile, select 2 branches. I cheated and used decorative branches that were in one of my vases. You can find these at any craft store. What's nice about these is that they have a glossy coating to prevent any bark from being shed.

6) The hardest part for me was getting the birds to hang right-side up. I first glued the birds how I wanted them positioned on each branch with a glue gun.

7) Next, I used stretchy, clear string bought from the craft store and tied the ends of the top branch to a key ring that will be used to hang the mobile from the ceiling. You'll need a little patience to balance the bottom branch which was the most difficult, but once it's all set you'll have an adorable bird mobile that will be enjoyed for many years to come!