Candy Confection Birthday Dress + Bodice Pattern

Hello, hello! I am so happy to say that after 2 months, I finally have photos and a bodice pattern for Miss Leah's 5th birthday dress! The dress top is such a great shape for spring (a little late now, eeep!), the skirt looks like a jumbo sized stick of cotton candy and the pale pink makes it oh so girly - and perfect for this girly girl.

Ooh the layers of ruffles! I never get tired of them. The top 2 tiers are chiffon, the middle 3 are lace and the bottom layers are made of poly/satin. The different textures add so much interest, don't you think? The skirt is the width of the fabric - so no cutting or measuring required - and then gathered at the top to fit her waist.

 (In case you noticed, nail painting is never a good idea while wearing a fancy dress - we got a bright pink stain right in the front within 10 minutes of the party starting! Oops!)

This is also the first top I've ever finished with (functional) buttons and wow, is it easier than expected - and inserting a zipper. Normally I always use a pattern for the bodice but since ours are all size 4 and under, this time I had to create my own. Also much easier than expected and insured a *perfect* fit.

You can download the bodice pattern right here.

The sleeves are just a sweet and simple ruffle - a tapered length of fabric gathered all around. Since the are so small, I was able to tuck them into the lining to hide the seam completely! Hooray!

And this little lady was very happy with her dress. If only we had birthdays every week. :)

Have a beautiful day!

Princess Wishes

Just dropping in to share a birthday card created for a Princess party we attended this last weekend for a 4 year old friend. I have wanted to create a little dress card for some time and finally found the perfect occasion!

Those pearls there at the bottom are supposed to be pick-ups for the tulle skirt but it was just too sheer to look right. Unfortunately I didn't notice til it was already hot glued in place!

The sentiment is from Pink by Design - Vintage Greetings but something from Inner Princess would have been even better. Kicking myself for not picking up this set! You can find the lovely lace ribbon (and lots of other pretty things) at Hydrangea Hippo.

Now excuse me because I just have to gush about how amazing this party was!! The aunt of the birthday girl runs Little Princess Parties out of Urbandale, IA and throws these parties with "real" princesses, games and lots of jewels for the little guests. Everything was so well choreographed and the girls were absolutely enchanted with Jasmine. Honestly even I was enchanted! They made sure to make the birthday girl feel extra special but also went out of the way to see that each little guest felt like royalty as well.

If you are in the area and have a little princess of your own, I definitely recommend having one of these parties!

Okay that's all for today. Talk soon!

Altered Basics Blog Hop

Welcome to the Altered Basics Blog Hop! The Clearsnap Design Team is inking and altering our Basic Necessities, a variety of packaging materials and containers released at the CHA-W 2012 show in Anaheim, CA earlier this year.  These "Basics" allow you to create custom inkpads, mix your own color combinations of Smooch Spritz and glitter, as well as provide a blank canvas for cute altered gifts, like the adorable tins our My First ColorBox Stamps are packaged in. You might recognize packaging from some of your favorite Clearsnap products like the salt shaker style jars from the Donna Salazar Designs Fairy Dust Glitter, an uninked ColorBox inkpad, and the Clear Boxes our Smooch Spritz Assortment Packs are packaged in. We think these Basic Necessities will allow your creativity to soar!

We're also excited about giving away a set of select Basic Necessities items as prize for one hop commenter! Just click on the blogs each day, browse through the post and check out the "Altered Basics," and then leave a comment about your favorite Basic Necessity to be entered to win.

For an extra entry, post the secret phrase "I love the Basics!" on our Facebook Page here: http://www.facebook.com/Clearsnap

We'll choose one winner from all of the comments on March 9, 2012!

March 7, 2012

Clearsnap Blog - Tami Sanders

Sabrina Alery - you are here

Mary Dawn Quirindongo

Jean Okimoto

Daniela Dobson

March 8, 2012

Clearsnap - Jean Okimoto 

Steph Ackerman 

Jennifer Priest

Charlotte Jenkins  

Don't forget to leave a comment about your favorite Basic Necessity on each blog in the Hop. Happy Hopping!

--the Clearsnap Design Team

From the Basics products, I selected the Jumbo Smooch Spritz bottle to alter. We have a couple birthdays coming up later this month and this butterfly will be positioned with a "toppings" sign to let everyone know where the goodies are for the ice cream buffet.

The inside is filled with candy sprinkles and all the spraying parts are still intact, though hidden. Since it's such an awesome bottle and will surely come in handy sometime in the future, I made sure everything is removable so someday it can again become a bottle for spritzing.

The wings are inked, stamped, sprayed and glittered with several layers of Clearsnap goodness. To start with, I stamped and blended repeating images with a few different sets of the new My First Colorbox stamps on different parts of the wings. There are 5 colors of pigment ink total from both the Classic Pigment line and also the Mix'd Media Inx - Lime, Berry, Chiffon, Honey and Truffle.

The next coat was Smooch Glitz in Pink Fizz and Frost, followed by a light sprinkling of Fairy Dust Glitter. Although I'd like to take credit for drawing in the wing segments myself, I actually cheated here! They were printed on and I just outlined them with a little Smooch in Molasses and added a few spots.

The final layer was a couple different shades of Smooch Spritz - Cosmic Pink and River Mossy. I covered the sprayer portion of the bottle with cardstock and dressed it up with a little trim and pins from the Hydrangea Hippo. So easy and fun!!

So what are you looking forward to creating with the new Basic Necessities?

Next stop on hop the lovely and hilarious - Mary Dawn.

12 Days of Giveaways! + 2 more

Christmas is coming early and Santa is bringing inkpads, Sparkle Fibers, and Smooch Spritzes to all the land, early! That's right, jump on over to the Clearsnap blog to add this cute Christmas blinkie to your blog (and leave a comment on our Facebook Fan Page) for the chance to win a prize each day until Christmas Eve.  How awesome is that?!

Starting this Sunday, a few of the Clearsnap girls are also doing a blog hop with Imaginesce so be sure to check back for that as well.

And now for a couple things that I have been working on...

A few close-ups of the birthday crown I posted about yesterday. The light colors looked so pretty against her bright fuchsia birthday dress.

I used Lucky Penny Designer Foils with the Celebrate Design Adhesives for the title. Also used the new Simple Dots Rollagraph on the background and sprayed the whole crown with Smooch Spritz in Gold Glow. I love that with Smooch you just get a gorgeous shimmery coating of spray without all the drips and splotches.

For the final touch I lined the edge with Glue Gloss and glitter in Honey Glow. This was so much fun to make - I want one too!!

And since I was feeling inspired by Elizabeth Kartchner, it only made sense to dig out some of her fun floral Dear Lizzy line for a card for Make It Monday #45, coloring embossed images with Copics.

I don't own any Copics, but I did use my daughter's new glitter markers to color on the embossed sentiment - it worked, kinda! Pretty much every Christmas project I've made so far this year has been in traditional red & green so I mixed it up a bit with bright fun colors here :) The butterfly pin made it's way to me via an embellie swap last fall. Thanks again, Heather!

And I think that about covers it. PS. I started this post almost 12 hours ago - it's been a busy day!
-

Supplies:

InLinkz.com

My Birthday Girl

Today is the 4th birthday of our youngest daughter!! At the risk of sounding cliche, wherever does the time go? I can hardly believe how big she has gotten or how grown-up she seems every time I look at her. No longer my baby girl, that's for sure.

I didn't want to have a big party this year (it always keeps the kids from having fun when there are too many unfamiliar faces anyway) and instead of a physical gift, we gave her a night out on the town.

First stop, the salon, where a friend styled her hair in curls, painted her nails and gave her a bit of make-up too. Despite the face the gave her, she was thrilled about it.

Next we stopped for dinner and split appetizers and seafood. She even got to blow out a candle on her dessert. I convinced her to try a few new foods too which is always a plus.

For the grand finale, we saw The Nutcracker Ballet at Hoyt Sherman. I wasn't sure how she would do, but she sat through the entire 2 hours completely in awe, asking me questions about what was going on throughout the show. It was pure magic.

The best part was listening to her recap the story when we got home. "There was a big cheese and the mouse tried to get it but then he got shot." "The little girl was so scared and the monsters tried to get her." "They danced and spinned and they had pretty dresses!"

At home we had a little party with immediate family and chocolate cakes with raspberry buttercream frosting. Yum!

Not sure if you saw the crown that Elizabeth Kartchner made for her daughter's bday but it is the most precious thing and I just had to make one for Rora too. I'll try to take better photos and post those tomorrow.

The girls also both went to get their ears pierced on Saturday night! Both cried for about 5 mins but then were fine. They both said it was worth the pain and can't stop admiring their new bling in the mirror.

Oh my gosh, this is the longest post ever. But I will never ever tire of the girliness these girls bring into our life. That's all.

Sweet Sugar Plum Birthday Dress

Hey there. I've been MIA this week - but not for lack of material to post. The mornings are so busy if I don't preschedule a bunch in advance then I just never get around to it.

Anyway.... I want to share the dress I put together for my little miss' 4th birthday. She requested a purple dress this year and we picked out some very pretty pinky/purple lace from Ben Franklin. It took almost 15 yards to make a size 3T!

The shape is just a basic A-line - I taped together a bodice pattern with a skirt slip pattern and did a little snipping here and there to create the shape I was going for.  The lace is sewn right onto a good quality muslin without any ruffling - that might have been even cuter though!

I tried the keyhole neckline again - such an amazing alternative to sewing in zippers! The button closure was covered with a bit of scrap fabric that was that same shade of purple. For the dress lining I used an old ribbed sweater so it would be extra cozy and warm inside.

The sleeves are my favorite part of this dress!! I wanted the shoulders to be very poufy but the sleeves to be slim. I cut down a pattern for regular sleeves but still had to make a 1" seam to create the very slim silhouette. They could have been just a touch longer but it probably would have bothered her and gotten into her food - still a messy eater - so we compromised.

And one more look at the front view :) I don't like taking photos inside with the flash but it has been so cold here there is just no going out without the heavy artillerary for even a few moments. We picked out some black sparkly tights to go with and she has been asking to wear both every single day this week and has thanked me about a million times. I am just so glad that she loves it. Every little gal needs to feel her very best on her special day.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to post my new skirt tomorrow. Night!

Halloween Costume: Little Mermaid

Yesterday I finished up the final kiddie costume! Saved the hardest one for last since I never did find a pattern that was just right. The green sequin material and netting came from Joann's and the purple is from a thifted wrap top and tank. Pattern was made from measuring her clothes.

We couldn't do the sea shell top because it will just be too cold so I sewed in a tank top covered with a sheer top. It's just disassembled from the wrap top and sewn together in a smaller size. Left an opening on the outside of the sleeves and added in a couple fins there. Ariel doesn't have those, I was told, but she did accept it when the costume was finished.

There are fins on the sleeves and also on the hips. I put a wire stem in each one to help them stand up a little.

And the tail. It was so hard to make this look realistic and easy to walk in. We settled in the middle and added some extra ruffle detail to make up for the lack of authenticity. There is about 2 yards wide of tulle ruffled together to help it poof out. Hmm, maybe I could just sew an extra triangle of fabric in between the fins? That might look much better.

Added a fin in the back as well.

My little gypsy fish. We're off for the first round of trick-or-treating tonight at the zoo. What are you planning to be or will you dress up at all?