Last One!

This is the last week I have to do a blog for Reporting Class! :) But I am going to try and keep up with it over the summer with some crafts and things that I do this summer, especially since I will have a sewing machine to use! This week I have to have a video so I made a video with my pictures. I took pictures of my craft as I went a long and then put them all in a video. The general idea was that I took a bunch of old magazine, I got them at Salvation Army for 25 cents a piece and then cut up the pictures and ft them in a outline. I used the outline from the pipes of pan because they're awesome. But I think it would work better if it was with an animal or something. I also suggest painting the background first before you put the news paper on it, I didn't think about it and ended up paining the background after.

I used a glue stick and it seemed to work great!

Until Next time,
Felecia <3

Busy Week

This is one of the last weeks in the semester! It is sorta crazy to only have 2 weeks left! But anyway, this weeks blog is going to be looking at some of the painting I have done in the last week.

 This is the stain glass window rose from Beauty and the Beast. My friend, Mandi, loves Beauty and the Beast so much, so as a late birthday present I painted her this.

 This is the Sigma Alpha Iota crest. It has a lot of special meanings to me as sister of this organization and I was glad to be able to paint it. This took me a really long time because it has so many parts. I spent about 5 hours on this.

 This is the coat of arms for Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia. The fraternity my boyfriend is in. This was a lot of fun to paint because its sparkly! :) It took a long time too. I think I was up until about 2 working on this simply because I had to repaint it several times to get the gold to look right.

This is my latest project. My 1st Adopted Big Sister in SAI LOVES Pooh. So as I painted her this. But shhhh...she hasn't gotten it yet. I am going to give it to her tomorrow. :)


Well I have painted a few other things that I don't have pictures of but these are the coolest (or at least I think they are) that I have done.

If anyone ever wants anything painted, let me know ;)

Until next time,
Felecia <3

Hey, I'm a Sister!

So tonight has been a whirl wind of things. I was initiated into SAI! I am so excited. So tonight doesn't get a real craft sorry. But here is my video tonight. I will put a video up for the night! Today we had Alumnae Tea for Sigma Alpha Iota my best friend and now sister Hallie tried to dissect a Siamese twin chocolate covered strawberries! So hopefully this will upload correctly and I will do a craft later! I have a few in mind and now I might have some because I'm a sister!!!!!!!

Here is the video of Hallie performing surgery on strawberries....

This week has also been tour for Symphony Band. It was a crazy week because we left at 5:30 on Wednesday morning and drove to Birmingham, Ala., and in the course of 3 days did 6 concerts, 2 a day, before 3 pm everyday. And now, I am back in Troy and last night the Phi Mu Alpha brothers crossed and we had initiation tonight.

One of the best part of initiation is that now I can craft with letters! I can use SAI for all sorts of crafts and hopefully it will show up later!

Sping Revamp

First of all, Happy Easter! 

My brother Tyler and I after Church this morning.

Good things about this weekend- I was able to go home this weekend and spend it with my family. I was able to work on Saturday. And I was able to use my mom's sewing machine for my craft! (since I don't have one in Troy with me)

Momma's Fancy Sewing Machine

Bad things about this weekend- My daddy had to have emergency hip surgery. He has his hip replace for the second time in November and the incision got infected. They have tried giving him antibiotics and all sorts of things but nothing helped so on Saturday they went in and cleaned up the hip area and he is currently hooked up to an IV with a really strong antibiotic on it! Hopefully he will be able to come home tomorrow.

So, he's doing better now and  I have a cool craft to show you. It might look a little scary if you have never used a sewing machine or don't use one very often, but it really is not that bad. I promise!

Its Spring and that means that we will be getting warmer weather soon (I hope), wearing shorts and other cute springy clothing, and wanting to look cute. I have seen all over shorts with lace on them, and I love lace, but I just can't let myself spend upwards of 30 dollars for a pair of shorts! So instead of trying to convince myself that it was okay to spend the money on the shorts, I decided to revamp a pair that I already had!

I had a pair of white jean shorts from last summer and just added a trim of lace around the bottom! I used a thinner lace but you can use what ever you want. Basically the steps are take the lace, line it up on the shorts, pin it down, and then sew it on. It really is as simple as it sounds.

Until Next time,
Felecia <3

Keys.

This was the beach. It was really cold, so we didn't spend a long time there.

A lot has happened in the past couple weeks. I've went on Spring Break, came back to school, and performed in a musicale and concert.

Spring Break was a very awesome week, it was relaxing, no classes, and just spending time with my friends and family. But like all good things, they must come to an end, so I had to come back to school. This week was very busy. As a Member-In-Training for Sigma Alpha Iota, one of our requirements is to put on a musicale, so that was this past week. Tuesday night we got together and did some singing and some playing and all went well.

Then, Thursday night we had a concert in honor of Dr. John Long. (For those who have no idea who he is, he is the man who founded the Sound of the South marching band, and is a really cool guy.) The coolest part of this concert is that we played with a high school band from Hawaii. The kids from Pearl City High School in Honolulu, Hawaii flew out and came to play with us. We had a banquet with them and they even had hula dancers! (I said they looked like Lilo, from Disney's Lilo and Stitch)

We got Leis from the kids during the concert!

So it was a pretty awesome night. We played great music and had a great time with the kids. 








And somehow during this crazy week I have had time to do a craft! So here it is. I turned a picture frame into a key holder.

I took a dollar store picture frame, some cork that my friend had lying around the dorm, and some scrap book paper and it didn't take very long at all. 

First take the back of the picture frame, and lay it on the cork board. Draw an outline so you know how big to make it. You want to use the back of the frame so you know it will fit in the frame.

 After you cut it out, make sure it fits right. You don't want to cover it and then find out that it doesn't fit in the frame. I used a 5x7 frame so that it would have a little bit of size to it and not be huge but you can do it with whatever size you want.

 Then I went to my giant pack of scrapbook paper and picked one out. You could also do this with fabric or just leave it with the cork. Whatever you want to use to cover it is good.

 This is the paper I picked! To figure out how big you need it to be, lay the cut out cork on the paper and I added a half inch around each side to leave room to fold over. It is like the seam allowance in sewing.

 Then I folded down the paper on the back of the cork. I used white glue, like Elmers, because a friend was borrowing my hot glue gun, but I think the hot glue would have worked better. It would have made it easier to dry. But just make sure that it is flat on the front side.

Then I put it in the frame and wrote "Keys" on it (that was obviously after I took this picture) and Voilà! Picture frame key holder! Or it can hold all sorts of things. I am using a push pin/thumb tack to hold the keys because I think that a Command Hook would cause the paper to rip. But I'm not sure. 








Anyway, Happy crafting. And until next time!

Spring Break!

As a disclaimer, I don't have a craft this week...next week's will be awesome though! 

So it is finally spring break! It is the time to just lay around, enjoy a week off of classes and spend time with friends. My spring break is really starting a little later than most of my friends because I have to wait on the basketball band to come back from Arkansas. The mens and womens basketball teams played in Hot Springs this past weekend for the Sunbelt Tournament. Both teams won the first round of games and lost in the second. This is the first time that the women's team has won the first round of play off since 2009. The men's win was the 500th career win at Troy for Coach Don Maestri. After the team lost last night, the coach announced his retirement. It was a huge shock but a well deserved retirement. He was coach at Troy for 31 seasons, taking the team from an unheard of team to a team people know about. He saw the new arena open, and named in his honor. Coach Maestri will be miss dearly.

In honor of his time at Troy, and the fact that I have to have a sound recording on the blog this week, I am adding a recording of myself singing the Troy University Alma Mater, TROY: A Beacon to the World. It was originally written by Robert W. Smith (Class of '79) and Ralph Ford (Class of '86)and is now sung by the band at every home football game, during graduations and other school events.

So here you go coach. Congratulations on 31 years of excellence at Troy, 500 wins and an impact on many students, past and present. Enjoy retirement.

Bows before Bros

This week I did a little bow bookmark thing! The original idea was a pin on Pinterest that led to this blog here. But that link was in Spanish or something other than English so I figured I would show my "how to" on this cute little simple craft tonight. All it is a paperclip with some ribbon and hot glue! :D

This is what the final product was.

This is what I used!!! I used a hot glue gun (which I got in pink because well they had it as an option and I love pink), Floral Wire, material and ribbon. 

This is the wire. I found it at Wal-Mart in the craft section.

I then hot glued a piece of ribbon together that I had cut. It was about 5 inches or so. The longer you make it, the wider your bow is.

Then I added another line of hot glue to the middle of the circle to make it close off.

Here is what it looks like when you put it on its side.

Add some wire around the center of the bow to turn it actually into a bow. Just wrap it around a few times so that it is fairly tight and looks pretty. :)

Then after you wrap around the ribbon, wrap some more wire around the paper clip so that it will stay in place. I also added some hot glue to the wire on the clip so that it would stay in place. But I've done it without the ribbon as well.

Then I added a little strip of ribbon, any color you want. Start on one side, which ever you sorta want to be the "back side" and then add some hot glue to hold it in place. Wrap around the rest of the ribbon around the paper clip so that it looks cute. And once you're done, add more hot glue to make it sturdy.

And here is the finished product. I did a couple with different size ribbon and colors of material. 

So here is a really simple craft, that uses things that you probably have around your house, or your friends might have. So enjoy making this. :) And if anyone has any craft ideas throw them out for me! Maybe I'll make something you say!

Till later, 

Felecia

Endorphins

If you've read my first post (here) then you know that this blog was originally designed as a class assignment, a way to get us writing, and this weeks assignment is to "build a case" about something, anything we want. This week was Valentines Day and a lot of people would expect me to talk about love or something, but I'm going to talk about happiness and how doing things can make you happy.

One of my favorite movies of all times is Legally Blonde with Reese Witherspoon and Luke Wilson. First off, if you have not seen this movie, STOP what you are doing, and go watch it. You can come back when you're done watching it. Ok, done watching the movie? Good! So here's the basic story line of this movie. Elle Woods, played by Reese Witherspoon, is a California girl who never had to work for anything and has everything she could ever want. That is, until she is dumped by her boyfriend Warner because he needs someone "less of a Marilyn and more of a Jackie" if he "wants to be a senator before before he's 30". This depressing change of events triggers Elle to go after Warner, all the way to Harvard Law. When she goes to school, all everyone sees in her is the blonde, sorority girl who doesn't belong at the school.

Saying all of that leads to this, during the process of being at school Elle actually gets good at the lawyer thing and lands an internship at her professors law firm, and the trial that they work on during the internship is defending Brooke Windham,  a success fitness expert who is being charged with murdering her husband.

And the reason I have gone on about all of this is because during the trial, when the interns are talking together, Elle says a line "Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don't shoot their husbands, they just don't." And that is very true.

Endorphins are the neurotransmitter that make you happy and doing things that are positive can make you feel better.  If you have ever heard of having a "runners high" its the same kind of thing. Something in your body releases the endorphins and can give you a "natural high". Having a lack of endorphins in your body is what causes depression and antidepressants fight the lack by increasing production of endorphins. Watch this video to understand a little better.

My case for this blog is that, everyone needs to find something that they love to do, and truly makes them happy, and find time to do it. If you're like me and its crafting or playing music or if you're like some people who exercise to relax or even if its just dancing in your mirror listening to your "happy music" you understand the importance of having you "thing" to do. Especially if you are a college kid and stressed with school and everything else you need the as many endorphins in your life as possible. So find whatever it is in your life that gives off your endorphins and enjoy it.

Till Later <3
Felecia

Party Night

This week has been a great week. I got to enjoy the week with my friends and we even had party! So that is where this weeks craft comes from. I am currently in the process of training for the academic music fraternity for women, Sigma Alpha Iota and something we have to do during the training process is throw a dinner for the sisters of Sigma Alpha Iota and the brothers of Phi Mu Alpha. The party was thrown with the help of the Probationary Members of Phi Mu Alpha and I must say it was a great success. :D

For this party, I was doing the decorations. I actually found a Pinterest idea and decided to try it myself. What we used is a bunch of wine glasses, tea candles, and Styrofoam cups. We were able to get everything from the dollar store too. We had to make center pieces for the tables so what we were theoretically doing was place the tea light candles in the wine glasses with water in it. And once we light the candles then we would put the cups on top of them to make little lamps. But here's how it turned out!

These were the wine glasses we got. And the tea lights. We actually ended up putting water in the glasses to try and prevent an accidental fire in case someone spilt one.

These are the cups we used. They started white and we painted them red and then added black paint to add some dectoration on them. 

 Unfortunately for us, we didn't think through that fire burns things and that styrofoam melts pretty easily, so during the party, we had to take the tops off the cups before I got a picture of them. But they looked really cute.

The idea would have worked better if we had used paper cups instead of styrofoam, but the concept was cute.

This is me and Alex at the dinner last night. He is a brother of Phi Mu Alpha so he was at the dinner with me! Even though he was just sitting there while I was working. It was fun and I'm glad he was there. 

Till Later,
<3 Felecia

Music All Around

 Well this week has been interesting to say the least. It started off like a normal week until I was walking to symphony band rehearsal and fell...and sprained my ankle. So I spent Monday night at the doctors office getting X-Rays and medicine.

This is what my foot looks like. Look at all the bones!

This is my swollen ankle. I had already taken medicine so some of the medicine so thankfully most of the swelling had gone down at this point. 

 

 

I also had my first symphony band concert this week. It was so much fun and I can't believe how well the concert went. My first concert and I got to perform for a theater full of high school kids at the 40th Annual South Eastern United States Band Clinic. Its an honor band for the high school students from around Alabama and surrounding states.

The Troy University Symphony Band for Spring 2013 during the SEUS concert.

Okay, so heres to the craftyness now that I am done talking about my crazy week.  My boyfriend Alex is a music education teacher and he has to teach tomorrow for the first time. He has to make rhythm sticks so my craft for the week is making the sticks. We went to Lowes earlier and bought the stuff and made the sticks! And here is my simple tutorial about how to do it!

We went to Lowes and Wal-Mart and bought the materials. Six rods, 1/4 inch in diameter, a small hand saw, and some paint.

We used Apple Barrel Bight Blue Acrylic Paint, because he wanted "a happy color for the kids" and blue makes everyone smile.

This is Alex. He is cutting wood with a saw. I don't think he appreciates that I took this picture.

Here is the saw we used. It is a Kobalt saw and it works great. I think he paid about $6 for it and we cut all the rods with it. Because he has to teach first graders, he wanted the rods to be about six inches long so I took a ruler and marked the sticks up before he cut them.

This is Ares. Alex's roommates dog. He kept trying to eat the sticks while we were working on them...that would have been bad.

Here they all are after we cut them. 36 of them. The class he is teaching has 16 kids in it and he needs two for each kid. Well when we cut the wood, they didn't have exactly the smoothest ends. And since little children will be playing with them we decided that it would probably be a good idea to sand them down. So we went back to Wal-Mart and got sand paper and sanded them down. It turned into a race of who could sand them down the fastest, and I won.

Now that they are all sanded down, we set them on a paper towel on the table and started painting.

Here they are after they are all painted. They're finishing drying before he takes them to school. I'll let you know how it goes after he teaches tomorrow. Hopefully the little first graders will like them. 

Yeah, this post was fairly short but I hope maybe someone will find it useful.

Until next time,
Felecia <3

Things of the Past

Now some of you might be wondering, what on earth is this girl going to post about. Well, basically it will be the crafts that I do.  Some crafts will be made with material, like when my mom helps me make things, and some will be made out of things like wood or painted on a canvas. Right now I am looking at ideas of things to make so I decided to up load some pictures of things I've made in the past. Mainly the things I've painted.

Well first of all about this one, I have an obsession with Marilyn Monroe. Like I think she is the coolest person ever! I know some people are like, well she was just a sex icon, she was just a pretty face that didn't really do anything, but I think she was awesome. She literally started as nothing, going from foster home to foster home and became one of the most well known people from her time. 

(Random thought, I think I look a lot like her. Well especially my mom. The top left corner is my mom, the top right corner is Marilyn Monroe and the bottom one is me)

I made this for a friends mom who was going to a baby shower and asked me to paint it for her. The mom didn't have a name picked out yet so I was given the baby shower invitation and went from there. 

This is one of the first things I made in college. I made it my freshman year for my door. Unfortunately I lost a couple of the letters. But I still think its really cute.

So this is just a few of the crafts that I have done. I promise next time that I will add a new craft. I have a few that I want to work on and hopefully I will get to this weekend. But that is all for now, I got to go  do more homework. College kid problems.

<3 Felecia