Becca Groves Header
 photo home_zps1cc7d3c8.png photo start_zpsa2c6c1a1.png photo motherhood_zps5b7bd8a5.png photo grovestead_zpsa872b0de.png  photo bees_zps9cbb22f2.png  photo contact_zps6de91cd9.png
Showing posts with label crafty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crafty. Show all posts

more bath bombs...


Thanksgiving evening, the guys all went to movie about the end of the world, and the ladies went to Michaels for craft supplies. And then we came back to make fizzy bath bombs. Except this time, they sort of actually did bomb. I'm not sure what we were doing or not doing, but I think it had something to do with a lot of talking and laughing and being distracted and not adding oil to one batch and looking at favorite websites while we were making the other batch. Whatever the reason, these bath bombs were pretty crazy. The white batch were so saturated and sticky that we couldn't get them out of the molds. The pink batch was so dry, they turned to powder when we opened the molds. These on the plates turned out, and for that I am thankful. :)

Christmas Craft Night

We had a fantastic turn out for our first Christmas Craft Night on Friday night. The hope of this evening was for women to come and make classy gifts to give to teachers, babysitters or coworkers. We had 30 ladies come, and had a really great time. I had the room set up with six different stations and the ladies moved around the room as they pleased. We had great food, great childcare and Bing Crosby singing us into the season.


Our craft stations included: Christmas Cocoa cones, Fabric covered magnets and tacks, Scrabble Tile Necklaces, Gift Tags and pretty gift wrapping, and Bath bomb cupcakes. Click on any of those titles for the link to the tutorials, where I found all of these fabulous ideas!



I hired a few camp counselors and co-worker's kids to be our babysitters for the evening. They were awesome. When I went to check on them I found the crew having a snack in their fort. Love that.

The evening was not without a few glitches, however. I was in charge of welcoming ladies, helping with the bath bombs and helping with the cupcake frosting. And honestly, I probably should have delegated the frosting or bath bombs. One batch of frosting was so thin it ran off the cupcakes entirely. Another batch of frosting misfired, when all of their ingredients were added together at the same time. Turns out, this is how you make marzipan! The putty was incredible and we actually played with it for a while because it was just that cool. At that point, I realized I needed to hang out at the frosting table and made sure everything was put in exactly as the directions specified. And then it turned out great every time.


Pretty Gift Wrapping

I enjoyed another day of Women's Christmas Craft night preparation and today I worked on making demonstration pieces for the gift wrapping station. I found this pattern for a paper iris on this site. Pretty easy to make, and lovely on the present.



Fizzy Bath Bombs

A while back I found this awesome tutorial on Little Birdie Secrets. I love this blog...three crafty friends who do cool things together. How fun is that?!! The site is full of inspiring and thoughtful projects to tackle and I have many bookmarked that I want to try. So, anyway, I found this tutorial, and later my co-worker, Casey, and I decided to host a Women's Christmas Craft night at Carol Joy Holling. The hope was to get a bunch of crafty-types in a room for a night of food, creating and childcare done by camp counselors. Genius. So this Friday night we have 20 women coming to make three different projects, one of which is the Fizzy Bath Bomb. Today I did a trial run of this project and basically decided that I have the best job in the world.

First I gathered all of the supplies. This was the hardest part of the entire process. I had to track down five cups of citric acid. And figure out what witch hazel was (it's not a vitamin, so don't waste your time looking in the vitamin section in countless stores across omaha...just head over to your local walgreens and go to their face wash section. who knew?!! not me, obviously.) But once I gathered all of the ingredients it was a pretty simple process. I told Rory that by the time the ladies actually come and do the crafts, it will only take them 10 minutes because the prep work has already been done for hours, and if I were really honest, days. It reminds me of watching someone on a cooking show and they say, "simply toss your chopped vegetables in the pan" and you think to yourself, 'well who chopped those vegetables?!! All recipes would be easy and simple if your ingredients were premeasured and ready to dump into your pot!' Basically, this is what I have done for craft night.
So from there it was a pretty straight forward process...mixed the dry ingredients first and then added the oil and coloring. Apparently the citric acid and baking soda are the two things that really make these babies fizz. Again, if you want the actual instructions with step-by-step pictures, click here for great easy to follow directions from Little Birdie Secrets.
Adding the witch hazel was maybe the trickiest part, but it would be hard to screw this up, so I use the word tricky quite loosely. The key is that you don't want to ever saturate your dry ingredients or it will activate the fizz prematurely. So you spray on the witch hazel until the mixture clumps easily in your hand.

Then I packed the mixture into the cupcake cups seen below. The stuff hardens really fast, so I filled them fast. I plan on making mostly cupcakes, but wanted to try the actual "bomb" like you would purchase at LUSH.

For the cupcakes, I made a lotion frosting to go on top. It actually is a pound of powdered sugar, meringue powder and cream of tartar. I was sort of weirded out about bathing in powdered sugar until I realized that lots of people use sugar scrubs, so it can't be that horrible for you.

It stiffened up really quickly, so we filled the icing bag fast and decorated our fizzy bath cupcakes. This is my friend, Gina, who showed serious skill in her use of the piping bag. Very impressive, Gina.

They hardened up within two hours. Hard as rocks, actually. I was still curious how they would react in the water, unsure if I had done everything exactly right. So we tested one. I can't explain how thrilled and relieved I was that it worked, because I have been promoting this entire event based on these things, raving about how cool they are when they fizz up, while thinking, "Lord, please let them fizz up!" Not only did it work...but it fizzed like a hottub jet shooting up out of the water. Well, I mean, like the little spits of water that shoot up from a hottub jet. Not really like a gushing fountain. I'm just trying to say the fizz was impressive!

We wrapped them up and are all set for Friday night. If you're in the Omaha area and want to come, drop me a line. We'd love to have you!

PYSANKI Easter Eggs!

Oh man, do I have a favorite Easter tradition joining my world of traditions. I already cannot wait for next year. Last year Lisa had Sara and I over for a ladies afternoon of Ukrainian Egg dying, known as Pysanki. Lisa is Polish and Ukrainian so to learn from her is really incredible. So this year I wrote her an email that said, “I’d like to invite myself over for more egg dying (as well as my mom and my grandma)” She wasn’t going to get all the gear out this year, but I am so THANKFUL that she did:

&Easter 2009 005 Easter 2009 004

When we showed up, we each had a station (Rory took Grandma’s place) and 14 colors of dye to choose from.

Easter 2009 021& Easter 2009 026

We began by drawing with pencil on our blown eggs, then adding bee’s wax with a special tool to draw on our eggs, and would dye the egg in the next color. This is horribly hard to explain (I’ve tried all weekend) but something you MUST try to experience one day.

Easter 2009 011Easter 2009 008

Lisa got us babushka’s for our hair! Don’t we fit the part?!! She is the master teacher…honestly, I think she could offer this for the month before Easter and make some money next year! It’s a hard art form to teach, but she was so patient and made a killer lunch with aged provolone! :)

Easter 2009 018 Easter 2009 007

Easter 2009 029 Easter 2009 030

Easter 2009 025 Easter 2009 035

Easter 2009 037 Easter 2009 039

It was a phenomenal morning and afternoon. And we left evidence that we had been there…

Easter 2009 040

I always say there are three words that describe Lisa Groves: Above and Beyond.

I love being her sister.