Super Hero Soap Party Favors

I have been spending the last few weeks getting ready for my son's birthday party.  One of my seemingly more ambitious projects for the party was homemade soap.  In the end, it was pretty easy and I hope to try some more ambitious soap projects in the future.

The party will have a super hero theme so I went with superman and batman chocolate molds for the project.  I bought all of my supplies (except the molds) from Bramble Berry Soaps.  They have a great website with everything you will need to make any kind of soap.  They have great instructions and I also called them directly a few times to ask some questions before I got started and they were super nice and helpful.  I went with simple pour and melt soap.  I bought a clear base, some colors (red and blue) and I picked a grapefruit scent since I thought the kids would like something sweet.  Here is my set up before I got started:

First, I cut up some soap and melted it in the microwave.

Next, I added a little scent (a little goes a LONG way) and then the coloring.

I used a small wooden dowel to mix the ingredients, but you can use anything to mix the solution:

Next, I poured the scented and colored soap into the molds (I used some leftover red soap to plug the lollipop stick section, but you could also just tape it off).  Once the soap is poured, small bubbles sometimes form on the surface.  You can spray rubbing alcohol on the bubbles right after you pour the soap to get rid of them.  This was my favorite part...the alcohol just zapped them away:

It took the soap at least an hour or two to dry so the project took me a few nights since I only bought two molds.  You can re-heat and re-use any soap left in your glass measuring cup, so you don't have to waste any of it.  

Lastly, I packaged them in some cellophane bags and printed out labels to go along with our theme:

 All in all, a fun and easy party favor that my son is super excited about!

Clothes Pin Bling

I ordered alphabet cards for my new alphabet prints and I want to be able to hang them from a ribbon.  I thought it would be fun to give the clothes pins I am going to use a little punch.  I am a big fan of glitter and I had an unopened bottle of Mod Podge calling my name so I gave it a go and am thrilled with the outcome.

The process was as easy as could be.  I added one layer of Mod Podge to the top surface of each pin and sprinkled on some glitter.

Nothing is more annoying than a glitter project that sheds all over the place so in order to secure the glitter I put on a second coat of Mod Podge with one more light sprinkle of glitter.

This method secures the glitter very well.  I am also planning to add some strong magnets to the back of some of them and use them on the fridge to hold our favorite art projects.  I love 'em!

A Halloween Celebration

Our Halloween festivities started on Friday and have finally come to a sweet and tired close tonight.  I made some Halloween treats and my three year old and I made homemade play dough to share with friends throughout the weekend.

I made some worm infested ice cubes (thanks for the idea Martha!):

These were a HUGE hit:

Here is the candy corn shaped play dough we made using this perfect play dough recipe:

My son's favorite part was adding the glitter:

I also made some ghost and pumpkin cake pops, using my own easy recipe (doughnut holes dipped in chocolate):

Easy dinosaur mittens

I came across a tutorial on MarthaStewart.com recently for embellished mittens and was so excited when I found an inexpensive pair of fleece mittens in our closest that were to big for our son last winter.  I think he will love his new dinosaur mittens this winter.

I tweaked the original design so that the spikes would stand up like and look more like stegosaurus and less like a dragon.  First, I sketched out a template for the spikes and cut out a green piece of felt and then pinned the same template to blue felt and cut it a little smaller than the green piece.  Then I folded them in half, pinned them together and hand stitched them along the spine.  This caused them to stick up when I tacked them to the mittens.  Lastly, I sewed on some buttons for eyes.  It was a little tricky stitching the pieces onto the mittens and I found that using a short needle really helped.