don't let life pass you by: Dress the gift - little girl style... part 1

After all that Christmas crafty stuff we did last month, my wheels were spinning with ideas for the girls birthday. Earlier this month I pawed through my stash and came up with a few fun ideas for dressing up little girl packages with reusable style. Unfortunately the girls decided they didn't really need gifts this year, so I made all this great stuff for nothing. But I had so much fun making it I thought I should at least share what I made before I packed all this great stuff for next year...

I made the bags the same way I made them for Christmas. (Someday I'll learn how to make a different style of bag, but for now, these are so darned easy.) When the bags were done, I started in on the fun part. I went with garlands again, figuring that the girls could decorate their room with them when they were finished.

The first one I made was for Miss Annie, the queen of all things pink. To cut the felt circles I used a 1 1/2 inch circle paper punch and punched a circle out of a piece of scrap paper. Then pinned my paper circle to the felt and cut out the circles. I did the same thing with a 1 inch circle so that I could layer them. Then I threaded the felt circles onto silver thread and dug through my craft supplies to find some brads, buttons, and embroidery floss for embellishing.
The other garland I made for Louisa was super simple. I found some cheerful looking pompoms, and some felt flowers that I found in the scrapbook section at Hobby Lobby a few years ago. Using a needle and silver thread, I made a simple pattern of pompoms and flowers. Orignally I wanted it to be more pompom-y, with less flowers. But when I went searching I realized I had more flowers than pompoms, and I wasn't about to go to the store at 10 pm to get more pompoms. So I used what I had, and I loved the way it turned out.