I've probably mentioned before that my husband is the most difficult person to buy gifts for. If he needs something, he buys it, and if he wants something, only he really knows which color, size, style, brand, gigabytes of memory etc. Every once in awhile I get lucky and he'll mention something and I buy it before he does, but it's a pretty rare event. ;) For Christmas this year I decided to take one of our favorite scenes from Harry Potter and turn it into a sort of love note/piece of art for him.

"after all this time?" "always."

Even if you're not a super nerdy, take yourselves and your two tiny children on a pilgrimage across the United States to see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Florida type Harry Potter fan, this is still a pretty sweet sentiment. :)

I made this using my Silhouette for the words and hand cut stencils for the trees and doe. The font for the words 'after all this time' is actually the font used in the books (I know, it just keeps getting more obsessive! It's Adobe Garamond in case you're interested.) ;) To make the trees, I cut tree shapes out of brown craft paper and then cut notches in the sides so they'd look like birch trees, just because I like birch trees. I looked up a picture of a doe and drew her on the craft paper as well, and then cut her out. I glued the tree stencils down with glue stick (I would've used spray adhesive but I was out!), painted the gray around them, and then peeled the trees off after the paint was mostly dry. I glued the word stencils on and painted inside of them, once again peeling them off when the paint was dry, and lastly added the doe using the same technique. I sanded the whole thing lightly to give it a slightly distressed look.

This will go in our bedroom as soon as I decide which wall to hang it on! Quotes, song lyrics, poetry etc. make for really personal art pieces and great gifts... Valentine's Day is coming up!

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For us, no trip to Disney is complete without adorable homemade Minnie t-shirts. :) Last year, I purchased two Minnie head iron-on decals from an Etsy shop, sewed on a bow, and the shirts were adorable! This year I knew I had to learn how to use my new Silhouette Cameo and make them myself! I was hesitant to do it, so much so that I actually looked up the Etsy shop I bought the decals from last year! The shop doesn't exist anymore, so I took that as a sign that it was time to conquer the Silhouette.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the process because I did most of this project the night before we left!

- I used plain white t-shirts from Old Navy. I love their shirts because of the cute girly details, but the ruching at the neck does make it hard to iron on the decal. I had to stretch it over the end of the ironing board which worked fine.
- The fabrics I used are Michael Miller Ta Dot in Lagoon and Raspberry.
- To create the decal, I used Heat 'n Bond Ultra and adhered it to a square of fabric according to the package directions.
- In Silhouette Studio I actually designed the head myself just using the circle tool. I put two on the page so I could cut them out together.
- I placed both pieces of fabric with the Heat 'n Bond attached on my cutting mat. I set the blade to a 7 and had it double cut. I think the speed was a 2 or 3.
- Once they were cut, I peeled the finished heads off the mat and ironed them onto the shirts! I sewed a bow to each shirt and used clear nail polish to seal the ends.

I'm not practiced enough with my sewing maching to sew around the decals, which is why I used Heat 'n Bond Ultra. :) These actually wash really well though and still look pretty cute! After the decals were made this project only took a few minutes per shirt. I almost made two more in different colors, but realized I already had far more outfits for the girls than days in our trip!

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