Proclamation to the Family {mini tutorial}

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We've been getting our crafts ready for Super Saturday eh that one day of the year where our Relief Society gets together to uh learn some important skills. ;) Yep even though it isn't until November 6th, we are in full swing planning and executing our ideas.  The tricky part is coming up with ideas that are purposeful AND don't cost a lot of money.  Luckily we have managed to do that and we came up with some great stuff! 

 :A little teaser for all my Pasco 1st Ward ladies!:

My sweet friend Celia {she's right down there in that photo!}is a graphic designer and had reformatted the Family Proclamation.  We went round and round on how to make it a craft in a larger format and then I thought:  What about going smaller?! So here is what I came up with.

 I started with 3 blocks.  Two that are 5x7 and one 1.5x7. 
 First I painted the wood black, let it dry and then modpodged on a family photo.   

Then I added my vinyl to the small block.  

I  modpodged the proclamation on my third block.  After all three were dry I sanded the edges of the blocks and the paper AND the picture.  Then I used my distressing ink pad {walnut stain} to distress the edges a bit.  Doesn't wood always look a little better distressed?

It would also be cute if you used a 4x6 photo and put some scrapbook paper behind it.  You could also add any kind of embellishments that you wanted.   Kind of fun huh?
Just a little bit more personal way to display the Family Proclamation.  


EDIT!  CLick HERE to get your proclamation download.  

Women Who Create Books

Here is my Women Who Create book I got from the Relief Society dinner.  This was the best part (and most time consuming and rewarding) part of the evening.  We started three months ago and divided up the list of sisters among our "enrichment" committee.  We were to come up with five attributes about each person.  Now this was no small task since there are almost 150 sisters in our ward!  We had the list on a Google Document so we could all edit it at any time and then went to work.  It was so rewarding to find out who each person was (since I didn't know very many to start with) and the things that people thought was special about them.  This cute girl kept us on track and with a couple of days to spare we did it!  I hope everyone loved it because as much as it was hard work we loved doing it.   

So here's how we put our books together!

As soon as I saw this post on the House of 3 blog I knew that is what I was going for.  So I got the Monogram kit.  But I wasn't quite sure on a background. 

Our  sweet Celia made this amazing poster for advertizing. Didn't she do an amazing job? Those words in the back ground are from the "Happiness, Our Heritage" talk.    I had her send me the file of just the background and put it into Adobe Fireworks.  From there I made a sheet with 4 of each letter on it.  (Sorry no pictures of this process)  Then I counted how many of each letter we needed and printed them out.

 Here is just a sampling of all of the different letters.  I loved how each one is different.

Behind the cover we had this quote from President Uchtdorfs talk.

"Don’t let fear of failure discourage you. Don’t let the voice of critics paralyze you—whether that voice comes from the outside or the inside. You are a great power for good. You will make the world a better place. Lift up your chin; walk tall. God loves you."
D.F. Uchtdorf

The third page was the attributes page.  I know its blurry but its all I have to show you!

And after those pages were 4 blank pages for other people to write on.  The idea was to go around and write in others' books about what you admire about them.  

I'm so glad that everything worked out and we were able to have such a special evening.  And just like I promised HERE is the recipe for Lindsay's Asian Wonton Salad! 
Oh yeah and then to put the book together punch two holes in the top and tie with a strip of tulle!

Women Who Create and a Lolly Tutorial

Last Thursday we had our Relief Society Birthday Dinner.  The theme was "Women Who Create" inspired by the talk Happiness, Your Heritage by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf ( of the LDS Church).  We had a fabulous dinner-chicken and wonton salad with ricin the gym and then moved to the RS room for 3 speakers based on President Uchtdorf's talk and then back to the gym for icecream sundaes with chocolate dipped fortune cookies.  Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the yummy food-I forgot my camera for the actual night- but Lindsay and Mandy did a awesome job!  I was in charge of decorations which I love and always make too big of a deal out of, but thats what makes things special right?

If you've ever decorated an LDS gym you know it can be a challenge.  They are quite large and you just can't get around the basketball hoops.  We kept to one side of the gym and used the rolling chalkboards to cut it off.  (Same idea as from the valentines dance)  I hung these tissue pompoms from the basketball hoop at varying heights.  These are my fave or decorating since they are so cheap and easy.  

I made some garlands from doilies and ribbon, just fold the doily in half and staple over some ribbon (I used gift wrapping ribbon spools).  I saw this at a  boutique in Utah and fell in love.

I also did some coffee filter garlands.  I love how fun and inexpensive these are.  Right now these are hanging in Ivy's room!

Originally we were going to have our dinner in the multi-purpose room so I was going to hang garland for the ceiling and have small centerpieces.  Then we realized almost 70 people would be coming (We sent out an Evite) and moved it to the gym.  So I needed a bigger centerpiece.  Don't you love when you get an excuse to make something?!  I had been eying these lollies on the House of 3 blog and now had the perfect reason to make some, or 30.  So now here's your tutorial!  (Sorry there are a lot of pictures but I'm kind of visual that way and something gives me the feeling you are too!)

Supplies
~ an old book you don't mind ripping up
(I got mine from Goodwill for 70 cents.  I think the pages are about 7 1/2 by 5?)
~six inch doilies
~embellishment (I'm using feathers and scraps of paper)
~hot glue
~ a circle punch or something circular to trace
~dowels
~ribbon

First up fold your pages accordian style (you need 3 pages per lolly)

Then fold that in half

Do this for all three pages

You are going to put a strip of glue on one side and then pinch it together so it stays in a fan shape,

like this!  Again do this for all three pages.

Pinch the fan together and put a line of hot glue on one edge.  Glue it to another fan, and another,

 so all three are glued together like that.  Put glue on one outside edge and open up your fans so you can

glue it together like this.  I hope this is making sense so far.   Cuz that was the time consuming part especially if you make 30 of them! (Thanks Celia for doing half)

Now put some glue on the center of your doily and center you book pages on it.

For my embellishment I used some feather trim.  This is where you can get all kinds of creative, but here's mine.  I glued on some feathers,

then I traced some circles ( maybe an 1 1/2 inches?) cut them out and distressed the edges.

And you guessed it I hot glued it onto the feathers.  Ta Da!

I used 3 different papers and put three in each vase.

Sugar is a great vase filler cuz it is so cheap and if your vases are clean you get to just put it in your pantry instead of taking up precious space in your craft room.  I tied on some pink ribbon to the dowels.  You could paint them but I didn't want to ran out of time.

Oh and those lollies just slide on to the dowel behind a fold so you can switch them out and store them easily! 
Tomorrow I'll share the best part of our evening and how we celebrated the women in our ward.
  (since this was way long!)
I'll also try to get the Wonton Salad recipe since it was SO yummy.

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