#1 Nativity Blocks

And my #1 craft is this set of adorable nativity blocks! We had a lot of fun working on these blocks over two MOPS meetings. We spent the first meeting painting them (they needed 2 layers of acrylic paint) and then at the second meeting we did the sanding, stickering, and Mod Podging. We finished them up in December and our speaker's topic was sharing Christ at Christmas with your children. It was so neat for everyone to have a nativity to take home that their kids could play with and not worry about breaking. The trickiest part of this craft is finding someone who can cut the blocks for you. I am blessed enough to have an awesome father-in-law that spent countless hours cutting out over 500 blocks for our MOPS group. The stickers were from Current but you could use different ones or maybe even print out clip art and color it yourself? My favorite tutorial for this type of block is here at Bucket of Cherries. Thanks for taking time to read about my favorite crafts, hopefully you will be inspired too.

#2 Beaded Spoon

This is my #2 craft only because some of the mommies had trouble getting started. Once everyone was started it was a super easy craft to put together and everyone's looked great! I personally love that however you put your beads on the spoon ends up looking great. I am sure that my mommies loved doing something different than painting, gluing, or scrapbooking. I bought cheap serving spoons from Wal-Mart for 4 for $1. This really helped to offset the price of the beads and I stayed within my budget by buying all of the beads when they were 50% off at Hobby Lobby. It worked out to be about 20 of the larger sized beads per spoon and then about 10 seed beads. I connected the wire to the spoon by hot gluing a large flat bead to the far end and then wrapping the wire around a few times and curling it in the back. When I got to the end by the scoop we again curled the wire and hid it on the back. One downside of this craft is that the spoon is not dishwasher safe but that didn't seem to bother anyone in my MOPS group. There is an old MOPS forum for this idea here. The name is life and the password is together. We did this craft over a year ago and I still have people mentioning how much they enjoyed it!

#3 Decorated Journals

Just last month we put together these journals at our MOPS meeting. They were a huge hit and it was a good thing that I had ordered extra! We used scrapbooking paper and Mod Podge to decorate the front and back. Then we used Mod Podge to put ribbon on the front, followed by hot glue to attach flowers and sequins or buttons. They were also very pretty with just sequins on the ribbon. I found some sticky sequins at Michael's that matched our papers really well. The only tricky part was making sure that you did not accidentally glue your cover to your pages. :-) I ordered the journals from Oriental Trading and they were very sturdy and just the right size (4"x6") for $12.99 per dozen. I've done fabric on a composition notebook as well but these were more useful since they would fit in your purse, glovebox, etc.

#4 MOPS Reminder Calendars

We have a tradition of making a calendar at the beginning of MOPS every year. This year I mixed it up a little with this great calendar/post-it holder magnet.

In order to expedite the process of putting this together I had all of the paper pre-cut into the right sizes and the circles I cut with my Creative Memories circle cutter. I also printed and put together all of the calendars so that all the mommies had to do was add the stickers on the days that I had pre-marked for our MOPS meeting dates. I put as many of our events as I could on the calendar as we had planned for the year. The overall cost of this project was pretty minimal and we only used part of a post-it note so that it would not be too heavy. I would suggest making sure that your magnets are strong enough to hold up the whole weight of the calendar and post-its. Here is the link to the old MOPS forum where I got this idea from. The name is life and the password is together.

#5 Celebration Plate

I love Nikki's blog, Whimsy Love, she has such great ideas and her tutorials are very thorough! Her tutorial for a Celebration Plate has me inspired! I am really excited to do this craft with my MOPS group this May. I think they are really going to love it and it's so much cheaper than those pottery painting places where I made my first Happy Birthday plate. So, the things that make this easy are drawing on the top with a dry erase marker before you paint on the back and using the "air dry" method so that you don't have to bake everybody's plate. (We don't even have an oven at the church where we meet!) Be sure to plan a little extra time for this one if you can and remind everyone that whatever they paint first will be "on the top". I found the plates at the Dollar Tree for $1 each and the paints are at Michael's and Hobby Lobby. Be sure to get the paint that says it is for painting on glass :-) Happy painting!

#6 Cupcake Potholders

Here is the cupcake towel that I made as a sample for our MOPS group.


We ended up doing this craft on potholders because they were easier to find 60 of and much cheaper. (2 for $1 at the Dollar Tree) This was a great opportunity for us to use up fabric scraps from various projects we had already done but I did go ahead and buy a few different fabric pieces so that they would match the potholders we bought. It didn't take very much fabric at all and they were cute with little red circles on top for cherries too :-) For the most part, I followed this tutorial from Flower Girl Designs. It's a pdf so if you can't open it try going here first. We did the frosting and the base as two separate pieces that were both ironed onto the potholder. I provided the mommies with HeatNBond - UltraHold so that it would be a no-sew project. A few of the women went ahead and embroidered around the edges and that gave it a nice finished look but it definitely wasn't necessary. I love my potholders but they'll probably just be decorative for my kitchen since I also love my silicone oven mitts!

#7 Twine on a Glass

This creative vase or votive holder was one I stumbled onto at the Bucket of Cherries blog. Her pictures of the finished project are so pretty! I didn't have a picture of our finished glasses but they pretty much looked just like hers and her flowers are my favorite, daisies! Our MOPS group used Mod Podge to glue the twine onto the glass and it worked like a charm. I also provided everyone with a tea light candle to put into their glass since the overall project was so in-expensive. The glasses were 4 for $1 and the twine was in the hardware department. We used green and tan so that the mommies could have an option. We also used tall and short glasses, the short ones made a much better candle holder and the tall ones a better vase :-)

#8 Diaper Bag Tag

These diaper bag tags are super cute and really useful too! I was going to order some luggage tags from an on-line company but I scrapped that plan when I found these wallet-sized no-heat laminating sheets at Wal-Mart.

I ended up buying them at Target since they were actually cheaper than Wal-Mart! They were in the office supply part of each store. I never planned on doing a tutorial for these so I don't have any pictures for you but they are super easy to put together. I just followed the directions on the laminating sheets, figured out how big I would need my scrapbooking paper to be and put them together.
Here are the steps I put together for my MOPS moms to follow:

Choose your decorated paper. (You will need 2, one for the front and one for the back.)

Trim the white paper as desired.

Write your information on the white paper. (Name, address, phone numbers, allergies, and whatever else you may want to include.)

Glue the white paper to the decorated paper.

Glue the decorated papers back to back.

Trim the edges of the decorated papers if they are not even.

Follow the directions on your no-heat laminate to cover your tag.

Hole punch your tag.

Insert key chain, key ring, or clip as desired.

This craft was really in-expensive which was a nice change from some of the more spendy crafts. The key-chains, and key rings I picked up at Hobby Lobby when they were 50% off and the laminating sheets were about $.50 each. :-) I am excited to make some of these for my girls backpacks because they should hold up pretty well. My oldest, Kathryn, is headed to kindergarten next year so I may just let her pick some paper to make her own backpack tag :-)

#9 Photo Flip Book

My #9 craft is one that I've made but I haven't attempted with my MOPS group yet. It is a really great Photo Flip Book from Better Life Bags. It was a bit tricky to put together but it turned out really great! I definitely recommend using cardboard vs the two pieces of cardstock that she mentions. I made one of each and the cardstock just isn't as sturdy. The elements of this craft and the time it takes to put together make it one that I may have to do over a 2 month period. I love her 31 days of prayer and would recommend to email her and get your own copy of these great photos she made. I printed mine just like photos and they look fantastic. If I do end up doing this craft I may offer the 31 days and additional photo sleeves for a fee. Cost-wise I think I will have to just let each mommy have 2 photo sleeves. The holes were very difficult to punch but if you punch through the cardboard before you add the fabric it can be done! Here's my finished photo flip book - don't I have a great looking family!

#10 - Decorative Wipes Cases

My #10 craft is a decorated wipes case. We made this last May and all of the mommies loved it. It was a bit complicated to put together and a bit high on the money side. Some people had trouble with the glue not being strong enough so you may need to use hot glue, at least on the edges. The moms that cut out around the flap on the top seemed to be the ones with the most glue issues - I recommend just covering over the flap. In order to make this craft go more smoothly I made a cardboard pattern of the fabric that each person would need. The moms traced the pattern, cut out their fabric, and then used modpodge to put it on their wipes case. We had flowers and buttons to decorate the top and ribbon to hot glue on the edges. The ribbon also neatly covered the edges which were not exactly straight since we didn't use the razor knife method shown in the tutorial. Here is a link to a really good tutorial from Make Your Own Baby Stuff. This is what our finished project looked like.

Creative Activities

I have been in leadership at my MOPS group for the last 2 years. I am the Creative Activities Coordinator - which really just means I help the mommies do a craft each month :-) Next weekend I am attending Summit which is a MOPS leadership weekend. I will have an opportunity to meet with a bunch of other awesome mommies that help their MOPS groups with creative activities. In order to prepare for this I have decided to put together my top 10 craft list. I am going to give a little information and picture about each one on my blog and then I will be able to refer any questions I come across to my blog. Seemed like a good idea to me anyway :-) So, if you are crafty, read on, if not these next few posts may not be for you. This craft didn't make the top 10 list but I thought it would be a nice pic for the blog!


To find a MOPS group in your area visit MOPS, Intl.

Kathryn the Crafty

We do a lot of creating at our house :-) I'm not sure how much Kathryn creates because I encourage it and how much it is because she is very naturally talented at creating. She is not a great singer and she's not fantastic with a ball and a bat but I (biased though I am) think that she is a superbly talented artist! We went to a pottery painting place last Friday and she came up with her own plan of what she wanted to do and she just went for it. For the time being, Rachel is a bit more active and less creative but she is definitely starting to follow in her sister's footsteps. I think that I am going to have to get a bigger scrapbooking table :-) Here is a picture of Kathryn's tile from Pottery 2 Paint :-)