So, just incase you thought I’d been over here hiding under a bush and twiddling my thumbs – I have actually physical proof for you – I’ve been a busy busy lady! In addition to school, and soccer and home life craziness, I’ve spent the past few months carefully preparing for our MOMS Club Holiday Bazaar. Last year I participated, although I did not take near enough time to prepare so I ended up with just a handful of hand-made cards and a pile of recycled gift bows. So as soon as the last year’s was over, I started looking forward to this year – and all of the awesome-ness that I would put up for sale LOL. Well, in August I kept my word and started looking in to making our Bazaar happen again this year. Then I started carving out a day here and there, a down week in the designing department, a free evening, when ever I started to feel like I needed a little bit of craft therapy. I slowly started piling things up, and then last week I went into high gear, and pulled it all together – and on Friday night (at 1 am!!) I had a respectable pile of crafts to fill my table at the bazaar.
Now I’m going to show off what I made:
The biggest project (and most time consuming!) were these:
Last year, when I had a zillion paint chips left over from my living room painting project, I had this thought that it was such a waste to put all of those beautiful colors on that high quality paper into the trash – I’m not sure exactly what spurred the idea in my brain, but I started thinking that they would make beautiful rolled flowers - after I piled them up, I realized they would be the perfect decoration for my living room, so I hot glued them to a simple little wreath, and I just LOVED what I ended up with. This year, I started collecting paint samples, from around my house, from all my friends, and from the local hardware store just a few times. Then i spent hour after hour, cutting them in to spirals and rolling them up – i brought piles of paint chips to soccer practice and cut my little heart out – then I became bff with my glue gun as I carefully glued them together – I should have counted how many roses I ended up with, but it was well into the hundreds I’m sure!
After they were made, I used some pretty wicker and grapevine wreaths that I picked up at the dollar store, and clustered my little roses to make some perfectly adorable little wreaths!
When I ran out of paint chips I still couldn’t bear to stop, so I have one I made out of an old roll of wallpaper my mom gave me forever ago, and one from an Ikea catalog. I am planning to do one with a book of maps and a vintage book as soon as I can! These are so addicting to me, if I could, I would cut up everything I can get my hands on and roll it up into a flower!
I also made some “kissing ball” ornaments with rolled scrapbooking paper:
I adore these so much! I made some for gifts for Christmas last year, but wow are these time consuming!
I also had the urge to cut up a self magazine when I was at another practice – I turned it into these.
I wanted to have a few teacher gift ideas – so I decided to make these:
They Velcro closed and hold a gift card inside – they were a big hit – which is bitter sweet, since it means i have to make them again to give to the boys’ teachers 
I also wanted to make more pomander type ornaments, so I tried this idea – with cupcake papers, it was a little bit less time consuming and I adore the result – although you would be surprised, it takes a TON of liners!!
Here are a few more pics of the ornaments:
Oh! And i don’t want to forget these! Inspired by Pinterest, I decided to buy a roll of jewelry wire and some assorted glass beads to try my hand at wire wrapping. Those little birds nests are also incredibly addicting! I am in love with these, and ended up with over 20 necklaces to sell, I only stopped because I kept running out of chains!
To make them stand out in the crowd, I made a bunch of little tiny paper boxes and had the customer chose one so that i could put the necklace on some batting inside and tied it up with a little bow.
I also made a few sets of handmade cards using some of my own designs:
I was so proud when I set it all out at the bazaar on Saturday:
It was an amazing time, sort of like a gallery show or something to me, it was a wonderful feeling to be sharing my “art” with the world. I did pretty well too! People loved the wreaths and I almost sold them all, like I mentioned the post its were a hit, they sold out pretty quickly, and my necklaces found a few new homes too!
I’m completely hooked! I am turning in an app for another bazaar at the elementary school this year, then I guess I start to get ready for next year! I am just absolutely inspired after it all 
and I can’t wait to do it again!
