Make Your Own - Birthday Party Hats

Check out my post being featured over on the Taylor Joelle Blog where I show you 

how to make your own birthday party hats!

Make Your Own Monday - Decorative Vase

Glass vase, spray paint, rubberbands and tea light candles = fun project!!! Check out more pictures and tutorials for this project I did over at the Roberts Crafts blog! This is a really fun home decor idea for the holidays or even a great gift idea for Christmas! It was fun, cheap, fast and easy!

Make Your Own Monday - Decorative Wood Letters

Check out this fun Halloween project that I did for the Roberts Crafts blog! Pictures and instructions can be found HERE. All the supplies I used can be purchased from Roberts Crafts website!

Make Your Own Monday - No Sew Tutu! + GIVEAWAY (closed)

Check out my post at Roberts Crafts to learn how to make your own no sew tutu!!! I am a member of the Roberts Crafts design team and my first post was just published! Here is a sneak peek of the project and your chance to win a tutu made by me!

The giveaway is now closed. Congrats to the winner, Kacee! I have emailed the winner. The winner has 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen. Congrats! Thanks to everyone who entered. Please come back again and check out our future giveaways!

Roberts Crafts Design Team - Blog Hop

Welcome to those that are here for the Roberts Crafts Design Team Blog Hop!

My name is Brooke, I am a first time mom to my beautiful 6 month old daughter, "M". I have asked to be part of the Roberts Crafts design team and am in a rotation of regular posts on their blog! I am pretty excited about it. Brookies Baby Bargains is a blog focused on moms with babies and how they can save money. I post giveaways, reviews, make your own how to's and about my journey as a first time mom. For the Roberts Crafts design team, I will be showing how you can save money on baby related things by making your own! I am here to show you that you don't have to own all of the latest craft tools (although they would help save some time and make things a little prettier) and you don't have to be the next Martha Stewart in order to make your own baby items. I always thought I was somewhat crafty until I worked at Roberts Crafts (where I worked on the marketing team for 2 years before my little M made her arrival) and met some REAL crafters! My posts will show you that you don't have to be as amazing as some of those women (and men) in order to try your hand at crafts.

Click HERE to see my first "Make Your Own" project that I posted here on this blog last week. It is a fun whale themed baby shower that I threw for my sister. Here is a preview:

Stay tuned for more where that came from! I will be linking up all of my posts on the Roberts Blog, and will also be posting more Make Your Own Monday projects here as well.

The blog hop starts 8/11/11 at 7:00 am MST. Here is where you can start to hop along all of the other blogs that are a part of the Roberts Crafts design team. The blog before mine on the hop is Jenny's blog Crazy About Cricut! The blog that you will visit next on the hop is Zoe's blog CraftyX.

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Make Your Own - Baby Shower

This is the first edition of "Make Your Own" Monday. I won't be doing this every Monday, but will do these posts on Mondays when I do them. :) I have asked to be part of the Roberts Crafts design team and am in a rotation of regular posts on their blog! I am pretty excited about it. I will be showing how you can save money on baby related things by making your own! I am here to show you that you don't have to own all of the latest craft tools (although they would help save some time and make things a little prettier) and you don't have to be the next Martha Stewart in order to make your own baby items. I always thought I was somewhat crafty until I worked at Roberts Crafts (where I worked on the marketing team for 2 years before my little M made her arrival) and met some REAL crafters! My posts will show you that you don't have to be as amazing as some of those women (and men) in order to try your hand at crafts. This week's post is not one of the featured posts by Roberts Crafts, this one is just for this blog. But, I will be posting links to all of my posts that will be featured there. 

For this edition of "Make Your Own Monday", I am showing you how you can use your crafty skills (or lack there of) to throw a baby shower! My sister is expecting a baby boy, and I hosted her baby shower at my house over the weekend. She had mentioned 2 things that she wanted, and I made sure it happened. :) She said she wanted a whale theme and she said that she wanted a diaper cake. I will tell you that the party stores do NOT make whale themed baby showers. So, I made my own decorations! It saved us money, and it was what she wanted.

Let's start with the diaper cake. It served as part of my gift to her, and as a centerpiece/party decoration. I will admit, I saved time by using a pre-made diaper cake. So, I did not roll all the diapers and put them on the stand. But, you can save even more money by doing this. Here are some instructions from another fun craft blog. To decorate the cake, I bought chipboard ($0.65 each), a wood letter ($0.99), scrapbook paper ($0.50) and ribbon ($2.00).... and that is it! (I didn't get these items at Roberts Crafts, because they didn't have the chipboard for the theme that I needed, but they do have a wide chipboard selection). I just used double sided tape and wrapped the ribbon around to cover what was holding the diaper cake together and then just added the chipboard. For the letter on the front (the first initial of the baby's name), I took the wood letter and traced it onto the scrapbook paper. Then, I cut out the shape of the letter and used a glue stick to adhere it to the letter. Then, I just used the double sided tape to adhere the letter to the cake. Done!

Next I made the cupcake toppers. To save on hiring an expensive cake decorator, or the disaster of me trying to make them look like whales on my own... I made cupcake toppers to keep the cupcakes in the theme. This was so easy! I got some blue cardstock ($0.25), white cardstock ($0.25), blue ribbon ($2.00) and a whale rubber stamp ($4.00). (All basic craft items that can be found at Roberts Crafts, or your local craft store). I used some markers, tooth picks,  and an ink pad that I already had. I used cups from my cupboard to trace circles onto the cardstock. I used the top of the cup for the bigger circle and the bottom of the cup for the smaller circle. Then, I cut the circles out. On the white circles, I stamped on the whale. I then colored it in and then wrote "It's a boy" on half of them and the baby's name on the other half of them. I then used a glue stick to adhere the white circles onto the blue circles. I used a blue marker and added the dots around the border. Then, all I did was use tape to adhere the tooth picks to the back of the toppers and added a ribbon. Done! So cute and so easy! If you have a Cricut machine, cutting the circles our on your Cricut would make this a lot easier and a little prettier.

For the favors, I got some favor bags ($10 for 24) at Roberts Crafts. Then, all I did was put some cardstock inside and stamped on the whale using my rubber stamp. I also then filled it in using a blue marker. I put the cardstock inside so that the ink wouldn't go through to the other side. Then, I just added in mints and nuts and I was done. I put the favor bags at the bottom of the diaper cake for some extra table decoration. Another cute idea for the favors that would have gone along with the theme would have been to get bottles of bubbles and replace the label with a home made label with the whale stamped on it and the baby's name.

A Fun finishing touch was how we displayed the drinks. We got a baby pool ($10) from Target that was in the shape of a whale. We added ice and put the drinks in it. :) I don't know if this finishing touch would work for a lot of different themes because there might not be baby pools in the shape that you are looking for. But, we got lucky this way! All of the other steps you can make with any theme really, just as long as you can find a rubber stamp and some chipboard to go with your theme.

Here is a pic of the finished table with the food and all (and someones plate of food on there too, lol). You will also see some gift bags on the table. That was for the prizes for the games. I had a whale stamped onto those bags as well. There you have it! She wanted a whale themed shower and she got it! I also made the whale themed invites on my computer and had them printed at Walgreens for under $10! A little bit of design skill on the computer is required for that. But, that is a post for another day. :) Happy Monday everyone! 

Need a fun baby shower gift, but don't have time to make your own? Check out this BEST baby shower gift from Perching At Home. 

We are hosting a giveaway sponsored by Roberts Crafts!

ENTER TO WIN A $50 ROBERTS CRAFTS GIFT CARD HERE!!! (Can be used in the form of a coupon code on their website)  

Ends 8/16

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