the first craft of summer

So this past weekend my mother, my sister, and my brother all went to the beach while my dad and I stayed at home. No, I was not happy about this, but I had class (I'm taking Bowling at MTSU... it is as funny as it sounds!) and a wedding to attend so I just could not attend the beach trip. It was very sad but also gave me some great time to CRAFT! Crafting is one of my favorite hobbies that I rarely have time to do due to school. But now that I am no longer in school, the crafter is back!

I follow this FANTASTIC blog called Jones Design Company. She has 4 children and still manages to do everything she does. She's practically super woman! She has all kinds of design and do it yourself tutorials as well as things you can purchase. I pour over her website daily. I just cannot get enough! Anyway, a couple of days ago she blogged about how to make monogrammed art. It looked easy enough so I gave it a whirl and I LOVE the way the 2 pieces I made turned out. I made an "E" for myself and then an "H" for my family to display.

I realized once I put the letter on the paper that the colors were too similar. So I chose to carefully outline the "E" with a sharpie. I like how it turned out! It matches the frame nicely.

I actually like this one that I made for my family more than my own :) I'm just obsessed with yellow!

I won't blog about how I made these since Emily gives a pretty simple and easy to follow tutorial in her blog mentioned above. However, I will say that I changed a quite a few things from her original tutorial:

1. I used scrapbook paper instead of fabric and it worked just as well.
2. I also printed off a letter from Microsoft Word and then hand traced the monogram onto a book page instead of printing directly on the book page like she mentioned and this seemed to work just as well also.
3. I left off the "established" date she adds to hers.
4. I didn't matte mine.

I chose to venture from her tutorial and make it my own and I had a lot of fun! and the best part of this project: Cost- $0 (I had all the materials needed at home already) Don't you just love free and cute?! ME TOO! :)

So if you are bored one day and have nothing to do, give this a try! It is SUPER SIMPLE and very inexpensive! I recommend!