Easy as (birthday) pie

Today we celebrated my fabulous mother-in-law's birthday! I offered to make her a little birthday dessert, and she requested apple pie. I was about to stick the pie in the oven this morning, and I thought it might be nice to personalize the pie crust to make it feel just a bit more birthday-ish:

Many happy returns, Lisa! <3

Shrinky dink hamsa ornament

I know I said that I was done showing Christmas tree ornaments, but I've got one more to share that I had to save until after I gave it to my hubby on Christmas morning.

Whenever possible, Steven and I try to give each other handmade gifts, so I wanted to whip up something original for him for Christmas this year. (Of course, I will spend the rest of my natural born life trying to catch up with the awesomeness of the gift he gave me for our first wedding anniversary.)

Last fall, we went on a fabulous vacation in Spain (I still need to get my act together and blog some of the crafty things that I shot photos of over there!) so I knew I wanted to make something for him that was inspired by our trip. I decided to use one of our favorite photos from the trip as inspiration:

I took this picture of a door-knocker when we were wandering around the beautiful, sunny streets of Marbella on the southern coast of Spain. This door-knocker is a hamsa, a middle eastern symbol that is believed to ward off the evil eye. (And who couldn't use a little help warding off the evil eye?)


With my photo identified, my next step was to print the image out using my inkjet printer and some inkjet shrink film, trim the image and poke some holes in the corners, and toss that baby in the oven. (Have you watched a shrinky dink bake lately? I'm 37 years old and I find it to be a magical process to watch, every time!)


After my image was baked and shrinked, I sewed up a small pillow using some fabric from a vintage dress that I picked up at a local thrift store a couple of months ago, and stitched the shrinky dink to the pillow with metallic thread and some french knots. (Sorry for the lack of good tutorial images on this -- I was under the gun on Christmas eve to get this finished and had no time for photography!) 


Here's the finished piece:

Ta-da! I was sad to pack this one away when we took the tree down last weekend. I'll have to start brainstorming another shrinky dink project soon!