[sisters, smiles and...]

While on our recent travels to see family and friends I couldn't help but be inspired by my lovely nieces. After spending a couple of days with them I knew right away that I wanted to do a simple sewing/dress up craft with them. Lucky for me, they were willing to indulge their silly I-must-create-while-even-on-vacation aunt.

We went to fabric store and purchased 3 simple white t-shirts (on sale at Joanns for a steal). I was inspired by their carefree, flowing gold locks and felt that they were just begging for flapper inspired feathers and gold sparkly head bands. So we went straight to the trim section and picked out a few strands of trim. Then it was straight to the feathers. Bright fun feathers.

From there we proceeded to pick up some gold fringe (I was loving the majorette meets flapper idea) very wide black grosgrain ribbon for a giant sized bow and 1/8 a yard of bright pink spandex for a little ruffly pop of color.

We then went home and got to work. I wanted to have the girls involved with the creation of their shirts and head bands as much as possible. Sarah, the youngest, needed little help in deciding just how she wanted her head band to look. She seriously has a natural eye for things. For her shirt, I helped her to lay out her gold fringe in a reverse tiered fashion. From there I machine stitched the fringe on for her. She later, on her own, decided to use a piece of fringe to create a corresponding bracelet which I thought genius.

For Anika we decided to do a long thin strip of ruffled pink down her shirt. We loved the bright neon pink color but didn't want it to be too overpowering so we settled on a 1 1/2" ruffle.

Anika already knew how to ruffle up the fabric by hand, using a needle and thread, so I just let her get to work. Once she had the ruffle to her liking, I sewed it on the t-shirt for her.

For Katie, the oldest, we knew we wanted to create a giant bow. We played around with a few ideas but most of them looked sloppy. So finally we settled on cutting two strips of ribbon and sewing what would be the two tails of the bow strait onto the shirt. From there we created one large loop for the main bow by sewing two ends of the ribbon together. We then created another loop to go around that one in the same fashion. Katie then hand sewed the top of the bow on top of the tails, straight onto the shirt. We were really happy with how it turned out.

And as for the headbands, I had the girls choose a feather color that would correspond well with their own shirts as well as look good all together as a whole. They then picked out their own feather placement and we hot glued them onto their headbands. They girls then hot glued the ends of their head bands together to complete the project. I loved the headband craft as it was really something they were able to do completely by themselves, from start to finish.

It was loads fun for all and I think the girls were happy with their final creations. I think this would be a really fun birthday party craft don't you? You could get a bunch of t-shirts, trim, ribbon, feathers, etc. and let the kids (or adults!) go at it.