April Fools

Happy April Fools everyone!  It's only the morning time here, and the April Fools jokes have already been plentiful in our house.  Everyone in the family is partaking in the pranks:  plastic wrap on the bedroom door, happy faces drawn on the toilet paper rolls, purple milk, surprises in the cabinets, Barbies in Daddy's briefcase (he'll discover them later when he gets to work), and a fake "present" from the cat on the bathroom rug.  The fake cat ... er, um ..."dropping" hasn't been been discovered yet. Maybe if we're lucky, someone will find it before I finish writing this blog post.  Did I mention I have the sense of humor of an 8-year-old boy? Please refer to my last blog post. ;-)

Since Spring has sprung, here's a very "Springy" layout I did for the Creating Keepsakes blog a few weeks ago.  I was inspired by a plethora of ruffles that I saw on Pinterest.  I grabbed some colorful Close to my Heart fabric and stitched up a few ruffles of my own.  I used them on this layout:

Products used: Cardstock: American Crafts and Close to my Heart; Fabric and patterned paper: Close to my Heart; Chipboard letters: American Crafts; Flowers: Prima; Stickers: Crate Paper and Jillibean Soup; Paint: Jacquard; Die-cutting machine and die: Sizzix; Pen: American Crafts.

There are many different ways to make ruffles using either a sewing machine or by hand-stitching.  To start, cut a strip of fabric that’s approximately twice as long as you want your ruffle to be.  The fastest way to make a ruffle is to stitch along the fabric strip using a simple running stitch, then pull the thread at one end so that the fabric gathers into pleats.  I made my ruffles using a slightly different technique.   I wanted the top edge of the ruffles to lay flat on my page, so I pleated the fabric strip with my fingers as I went along and added 2-3 stitches to the top of each pleat to keep them flat.
Here’s a photo showing how I stitched my pleats:

I used dark thread and big stitches for demonstration purposes, but normally I use a thread color that blends in and I make smaller stitches that are less visible (though if you’re covering up the top of the pleats, it doesn’t really matter). It didn’t take me long to make the set of pleats for my layout (less than 10 minutes total).

Oooohhhhhhhhh . . . my hubby is about to go into the bathroom and find the fake cat "surprise" on the rug . . . wait for it, wait for it . . . and there it is!!!  Got him!!!  Bwahahaaaaaaa!