Last year, I saw an idea on how the children could decorate the outside of terra cotta flower pots for presents. I can’t find the original idea anymore, but the basic idea was that you covered a terra cotta flower pot with model magic clay, took broken mosaic pieces in the clay, let it dry, and voilà! You have a decorated flower pot!

For what I wanted to do, there were a couple of problems with this set of directions. I wanted these flowerpots to be able to go outside for our mothers (It was to be a Mother’s Day present), and my dad, who has worked in the flooring industry for 30+ years, said Model Magic wouldn’t hold up in the outdoor elements. Model Magic is also costly if you are doing a big pot (or many pots like we were doing.)  I also did not want to use broken tiles, as I wanted my children to do the decoration part, and I did not want them cutting themselves.

Instead, my dad told me to use premixed adhesive and grout. I use the Mapei brand that is available at Menards in the quart size for around $10. It will do several small pots, and around two of the big pots you see in the pictures below. He also gave me some beautiful glass mosaics where the sheets were missing a few pieces, so they could not be sold.  If you check with a local tile store, they may agree to giving you some broken sheets of mosaics that you could cut apart or tear the small pieces off the netting to stick on the pots.  Or you could buy a few sheets of mosaics. Amazon even sells mosaic pieces! On the left is a picture of some of the pieces my dad gave us. So I would spread some of the adhesive onto the pot with a butter knife (spread it rather thick), and the kids would stick on the pieces. We came up with a design beforehand. For the pot that says, “I ♥ U”  Kaylin worked on the top; Karis worked on the middle, and I helped Kristi on the bottom with the letters.

Putting the tiles on the flowerpots:

Then I took a damp cloth and very carefully tried to get wipe off the tiles before the adhesive dried. I let the pot dry overnight. After it was totally dry, I would wipe with a damp cloth and scrape with my fingernail off the rest of the adhesive off the tiles. The adhesive is not perfectly smooth, but I wanted a project the kids could do. If you want to make a mosaic flowerpot that looks professional, you could follow the direction on Craftbits.com.

The finished product:

If you live in a cold climate, you will want to put these flowerpots in a heated garage or inside your house somewhere in the wintertime. I made one for my mom last year, and it was fine outside on her porch all summer. But they put it in their shed, and the freezing temperatures that we get made the grout expand, and it all cracked off. So we my dad brushed off the outside of the pot with a wire brush, and we re-did it. I think they will put it in their garage this year, and it is not heated. It will be better than outside, though, so we’ll see what will happen.

Finally, you get to do the fun part! You get to plant the flowers! I read somewhere that I should put some Styrofoam at the bottom of a big pot to help with drainage so the dirt doesn’t pack down so much. I don’t know if that is true or not as I am not a huge gardener, but I did it!

I got some spikes and other full to part sun annuals at Menards and went to work.

Here they are on my benches waiting to go to my mom’s house:

Here they are on my mom’s porch:

We did little ones (about 4″) for the girls’ teachers at the end of the school year last year. They would also make great anniversary gifts. You could use the mosaics to put years or how many years they have been married (1973-2013 or 40 for 40th anniversary).

Here is another affordable, yet custom-made, present you could make for girls (or boys) of any age. It only cost me $1 out of pocket as I  already had glue, scrapbooking paper, ribbon, and all the other paraphernalia. I use the notebooks that are roughly 10″ x 8″, and I was able to  find them at the Dollar stores. If you think way ahead, you can get them at going-back-to-school sales for awesome prices! I have made these journals for each of my children for Christmas and for Kaylin and Karis to give as presents at birthday parties. They do take a little bit of time to do–depending on how much decoration you desire, but the notebook along with a cute pen make such a nice present, that the work is worth it! I originally saw this on The 36th Avenue blog, but I’ve made some variations to the idea. She made 13 tabs and gave it to her children at the beginning of a year. We give them out mainly at birthdays, so I just make 6 tabs and leave the tabs blank so thebirthday child can decide what they want to write in their journal. I also decorated mine more and put duck tape to cover the black binding–an idea I got from seeing Martha Stuart do this more for adults and using book binding tape. You could use not as much decoration and even make these journals for teenagers and adults!

So,  I’m sure you can figure out how I made these by journals just by looking at the pictures, but I’ll take you step by step through how I did it along with a lot of pictures! 🙂

1.  I gather all my supplies. I do have the oldest Cricut made (I think) that I got from a garage sale for $15, and two cartridges that I bought at a different garage sale. If you do not have a Cricut, don’t despair! If you wanted to personalize your notebook, there are precut letters that could be bought. Using ribbon and other accessories would also make your notebook look beautiful. So I gather my spray adhesive (which is not necessary, but I like it better than glue sticks for putting the paper on the actual cover), my ribbon, my cricut, my paper, glue sticks, X-acto knife, Tacky glue, duct tape, paper cutter, and  glass beads. (I probably forgot something!)
   

   Most of the supplies I use

2. If it is a birthday present for a friend, the girls help me choose the paper.
3. I put some newspaper on the floor, spray with permanent adhesive spray the back of the paper that will cover the notebook cover, and then put it on the cover.
4. I then flip the notebook upside down on top of a piece of cardboard (so the scrapbook paper is on the bottom), take an X-acto knife, and cut off the excess paper. I used to measure the cover and try to cut the paper the right measurement, but I never got it exactly the right size, so I find this easier to do.
5. After I get the main paper done for the front and the back, I cover the binding with a matching color of duct tape. This is not necessary, but I like how it looks.
6. I cut the paper for the tabs. When I do 6 tabs, I cut them 1 1/2″ thick, 12″ long. I divide the notebook into 6 parts (I just eyeball it), and put the papers as bookmarks where I will want to glue them. Then,  I fold the first paper in half, and glue the front half to the front side of one paper, and the other half to the back side. I start all the way at the top of the paper. I make sure that there is about 1/2″ left outside of the notebook for the tab. Then, for the second tab, I make sure it is under the first tab and that it sticks out the same distance.
7. Then I start embellishing the cover. I like to put a ribbon on first so that it will be under the name, and I will cut out flowers and hearts. I will put glass beads on the front of the girls’s notebooks with the regular tacky glue–not the spray kind. There are so many different ways to decorate the notebooks–let your imagination go wild!
8. I will then make a bookmark for their notebook. Many times, I will put their name on the bookmark as well. Lastly, I slide a pen onto the cover of the book.
   

   The completed journal with a picture of the front and back of the bookmark.

Here are some more pictures of a few of the journals I have done.

We have made these post-it pad presents for many of Kaylin’s friends for birthday presents, and I have made one for each of my sisters. I got the original idea off of pinterest from Paper Wings blog.

Materials needed:

• 5″ x 7″ clear plastic photo frame–I get mine from Walmart for $1
• post-it pad
• Pen Pals–I get a pack of 3 at Walmart for $3
• Pencil/pen
• Scrapbook paper and any embellishments you want to use (ribbon, chipboard, etc.)

First, I cut a piece of scrapbook paper so that it is 5″ x 7″.

Then  I pick out the color of ribbon, post-it pad, and pen pal I want to use.

Next, I put on the post-it pad. I have read that if you get the super sticky post-it pads, that they don’t fall off. I have tried double stick tape and glue dots, and I don’t like how they work. So I just hot glue the next-to-last page to the last page, and glue the pad onto the frame.  After I glue on the pad, I put on the pen pal and insert the  pen or pencil.

This present I used tacky glue and glued glass beads all over the frame.

I am not that fond of Barbie dolls. In fact, I even considered not allowing our girls to have them. But my husband and I gave the girls a “Barbie” doll house for Christmas a year ago. (Smart move, right! Well, my oldest daughter was going to garage sales with me, saw it and liked it, and I thought it would be a fun and cheap present for all of the girls.)

I do not know if it is a real Barbie house, but it is a house that is the perfect size for Barbie dolls or princess dolls that are the size of Barbie dolls. So of course, my girls wanted Barbie dolls to play with in the house. The girls already had a couple of dolls, but I told them I would look for more when I went to garage sales. I did get a few that next summer, but most did not have appropriate (if any) clothing.

So we needed new clothes–and here Kaylin will take over the story of our homemade Barbie clothes.

My sisters and I like to play with Barbies, but we don’t have many clothes for them. The clothes in the stores were expensive and immodest. One day, I was flipping through a magazine (Family Fun), and I saw how to make Barbie clothes out of socks. My mom got one of my younger sister’s socks that already had a hole. She cut off the foot part of the sock, and then cut a tiny hole in the middle for the head and two more on the sides for arms. The sock was small, so she added a piece of pretty material on the bottom. It fit perfectly! We did that to other old socks, and we had plenty of clothes for our Barbie dolls.

Here are a little more details:  The original picture that we saw were from big socks, like an adult male white sport sock. The article said that her daughters then used fabric markers to decorate the “dress.” We did this, which you can see in the picture on the top of the page; and I also took red socks from my two year old, and added material to them to make it long enough for the Barbie dolls. I will attempt to show you how I did this.

If you used a white adult sock, the dress would be done!

This is how I added material to the bottom of the sock:

If a white sock is used, children can use fabric markers to design their own Barbie dresses. I had some leftover markers from when we decorated T-shirts for a birthday party, so the girls had fun drawing patterns and designs on their sock.

So now we have some modest clothes for the Barbie dolls that cost us almost nothing! All the socks we used also had holes in them so normally we would have just thrown them away!