The Library Baby Shower

Once upon a time. That's the start of an awesome book, right? Well, it's also the start to an awesome baby shower! 

I have some friends that I have known since we were 8 years old. In 5th grade, I went to a different school, yet somehow, we managed to stay friends all through Jr. High, High School, and into college. Now we are married and having babies!

I jumped the gun (I guess), so Talina is the first of my friends from way-back-when to have a baby, and it's a girl! I co-hosted with our good friend Lena and we decided on a library themed baby shower. The goal of this shower is to give the mom-to-be a good start to her children's library! 

It was a lot of fun to make the invites. I staged the picture, then edited the words right on top using picnik.com. Do you see Hero's addition? He's really into Pokemon right now.

Lena was in charge of location (it being at her house) and the food. Which left the fun decorating to me! (Thanks, Lena, for letting me have free reign on this.) We are not the game-playing type of shower-throwing people, so I put a bit more effort into the decorations to really make it special.

I searched for "book shower" on the internet, and discovered that Martha Stewart had this great book garland idea for a "Once upon a baby shower"! Wow. I'm cool like Martha Stewart, having a book shower... We decided to make it a bit more colorful, rather than the all pink that the original suggested. Lena and I spent a night ripping apart an old book and making these little ones.

I'll post more about the making this later.

I made a few more items, too. It turns out that ripping up books is very satisfying. So I made a wreath, a tray, and a canvas art piece.

I spent an good amount of time hunched over my glue gun (about 4 hours) making this book wreath, using this tutorial. I made a few changes to it, and will post more about that later.

The tray and the art were made with an old book, Mod-Podge and a little black paint. I also made more of my baby food jar party favors, this time adding the round magnets that hold so much better.

I'll show you exactly how I did these two items in later posts as well.

Here is Talina with all her new books! She got so many great books, as well as the usual and useful baby clothes, blankets and burp cloths.

It's amazing to me that we all met 18 years ago, and now we are here. Congratulations, Talina! I can't wait to met your sweet little girl!

Baby Food Jar Party Favor Tutorial

The party favors at the shower were by far the most time consuming. But nothing about the process was difficult. 

Supplies:

• empty and washed baby food jars with lids.
• images for inside lid
• resin
• magnets
• E-6000 glue
• ribbon
• M&M's (or other goodies for inside the jar)
• small party favor bags
• string (crochet thread)

As soon as Pretty started on baby food, I have been saving the jars and lids, not having any craft project in mind, but knowing that they have potential.

To start the project, wash and dry lids.

I used picnik.com to create this image so it would go with the invites I had made. I printed them through Sam's Club, so they are on photo paper.

It took a few tries to get the circle just the way I needed so it would fit in the bottom of the jar, but once I did, I used it to trace around the rest of the images.

Cut them out and lay them in the bottom of the lids.

You can also use magazine images (I had more lids than I needed for favors), but be aware that the magazine paper will absorb some of the moisture and darken.

the snoring was supposed to be a joke for my hubby, but he didn't think it was funny!

Random info: I am an EMT-I. At least I am until my licence expires at the end of this month...

Prepare your workspace by covering it in tinfoil or some other protective covering. I used cookie sheets so I could move the whole thing up out of the way to dry.

The resin is a bit pricey, but with a 50% off coupon, it was totally worth it. It comes in 2 parts, the actual resin, and then a hardener. They need to be mixed in a 1:1 ratio ie. equal amounts of both. I eye-balled that the level in the bottles were the same after pouring.

Use tools you can toss at the end, because the resin will harden on everything it touches. Make sure to mix thoroughly.

Then pour in! I filled mine just below the lip so it wasn't completely full.

After filling them all, keep an eye on them for the first hour. Not hovering constant, but checking in because the images can float to the top, so you might need to poke them back down with a stick. They harden pretty quickly, but should sit for 24 hours before doing anything else to them. I had a few that never fully hardened, and were tacky to touch. I think these must have been the resin I scraped out of the bottom of my cup so the mixture wasn't as equal. I used some of my wood sealer to paint over the top. It worked great, but did leave the image a tiny bit cloudy.

The next step was to glue magnets to the back. I cut squares from my flat magnet roll, and glued them on using E-6000. I tried hot glue at first, but they pulled off. . . The thin magnet works to hold the lid onto the fridge, but it won't hold up any paper... so it's more decorative than useful (sorry shower goers!). I would suggest getting the thicker round magnets for a stronger more useful magnet. But this stuff also says to dry for 24 hours.

To complete the favor, I separated red from green of the holiday M&M's.

Used hot glue to attach ribbon around each jar:

Then filled them all with the green M&M's.

The last step was putting it all in a bag, with the image face up and tying it closed with crochet thread.

A great little favor! I'm considering this for a little holiday neighbor gift, using up all those red M&Ms! If only I hadn't picked such random images for my other magnets. . .