4 in 14 May

As the month was turning yet again, I was trying to think of a cute theme for my May "pretty shelf". May brings to mind Mother's Day, but somehow decorating a shelf saying I was great seemed a little too far. (Although perhaps the kiddo gets a guest starring role next year!) So, I went a little on the lame side with the whole "April Showers, May Flowers" route and tried to find things I already had that reminded me of Spring and flowers.

May Flowers

Here is the shelf as a whole. If you have seen my other months, the bird and rabbit are March recycles, and the vase is a February recycle. This was a bit of a harder month for me, since I was really trying not to spend money on anything new.

February Recycle

 Next to the vase, I added this colorful little bucket that I picked up in the Target Special Finds bin for a dollar around Easter time either last year or the year before. They have them all the time in different designs at different holidays / seasons.

Kid Creations

If you have ever celebrated even one holiday with a kid in Pre-School or Elementary school, you know what these are. Yes, mine are now about 8 years old. No, I have never lit the candle inside. Yes, they did melt in the moving boxes at one point. Don't care. Still keeping them. In fact, hoping to get more when I get grand-babies ( a LONG time from now).

Silliness

The last little fun flower I added was this chipboard album I made a couple years ago. Since it is sturdy and on a ring, it stands up like an easel all on it's own. This is one of my favorite pictures of her - we are at the World's Largest Gift Shop in Las Vegas and the giant hat is made of foam, the poker chips are pillows. We were there waiting on family to gift shop, so we decided to get silly with some of the SWAG.

Froggy Fun - Banner

Throwing a surprise party is fun. A friend is a huge fan of frogs. Her BF, and the official party planner told me to take the theme and run with it. So I did.

First I cut out some "tags" using my Cricut.

Again, referencing my out of control paper collection, I added green patterned paper mats to each tag.

This part was pretty easy, using scraps from my collection. I made sure that one side of the mats was a perfect 3" to give me even cuts across a 12" paper, which a lot of mine are. I thought about rounding the corners but that seemed like unnecessary extra work.

Next came the letters. Since it was a frog theme, I went with "Hoppy Birthday". I used more scrap and just played mix and match. I also went through all of the fonts on my Cricut and played mix and match with those too.

On either end of "Hoppy" and her name I added this cute little guy.....taken from a Google search for "frog clipart".

 

I originally knotted the ribbon on the tags, but then they didn't lay right when I was hanging it. So I decided on this little double loop pattern.

It worked out much better. I alternated feeding the first loop from the front, then from the back. The banner laid perfectly after that. I left it in three separate strips since I wasn't sure how big a space I had to hang it at the party location.

And of course I forgot to take a nice photo of it after I hung it up.