Two crafty projects in one week?

What's wrong with me?!? I don't really know. But I will show you what I made (and how they got put together).
The first project is a copy-cat Halloween decoration of a little kid ghost that my friend, Liz, has in her house. It was so cute I just had to give it a try.

I started with all this stuff:
I got quite sentimental going through my little girl boxes and ended up with my favorite girl shoes and some little jeans that were so cute on Savannah. I also used some spare wood left over from our fence, a shoe box, an empty #10 can, white fabric scraps, batting, a little basket, some black acrylic paint, a paintbrush, some twine, and duct tape. It turns out that we had no duct tape in our boxes of random useful junk, so I had to borrow it from my neighbor (thanks, Janelle!). The rest of this was stuff I already had at my house. I took the can and shoved it onto the shoe box, then cut the wood up to fit the jeans and shoes. I screwed the wood pieces together to make feet and legs, then duct-taped all of the parts to hold them on.
I dressed my creation in the jeans and shoes and tied the jeans over the top with twine (like suspenders) to be sure they would stay up. I added a wad of batting to the #10 can to round it out a bit on top and then hung some around the sides to help give it some shape. In the end I actually took one of the three strips of batting off since it gave my little person a fat head.

I threw a roundish sheet over the top and painted some eyes and a mouth on it, then tied the little basket to a belt loop and the final product turned out really cute! Savannah was so excited to have a little ghost sister and Sid was amazed at my creation (he thought it was pretty funny that I used real pants and shoes)!

The second project is the smaller of the two and I happened upon the idea when my friend, Tiffany, posted a tutorial on her Plaid Apple blog the very day that I happened to inherit a Relief Society clipboard that was very brown and ugly (and still had the sticker on the back, which had been there long enough that it wouldn't come off--that just bugs me). Here is my version of Tiffany's "creative clipboard" (put together a bit differently since I did both sides).

I started with this stuff:
A clipboard, Mod Podge, a foam brush, two sheets of scrapbook paper and an ink pad. I trimmed off 3 inches from each of the papers so I could use the scraps to accent the other side of the clipboard (and then took 2 1/2 inches off of the bottom of the flower paper so I could use the flowers as an accent).
I measured the "clip" and trimmed the striped paper to fit around it, then pasted both papers on with Mod Podge (I did a thin coat and rubbed it down to get in on with no bumps or bubbles). Truthfully, I had never used Mod Podge in my life. I know, it sounds impossible that I could possibly be raised in the LDS church and not have used Mod Podge until I was almost 30 years old. I may be excommunicated for admitting this serious character flaw (not really though). It turns out that the stuff is pretty easy to use.
I took the accent paper I had previously trimmed and pasted it on the bottom of both the back and front (with that Mod Podge stuff, again).
After cutting out some of the excess flowers and accenting the white one by rubbing the edges with an ink pad, I stuck those on there with the Mod Podge as well.
Since I trimmed the paper pretty close to the edge, I simply sanded the edges to get the corners rounded and the rough spots evened out, then rubbed the edges with the ink pad to give it a little character.
I put about three layers of Mod Podge over the paper to give it a finish (and let it dry between the layers) and my clipboard was ready to go. The thing I did not know about Mod Podge is that it would turn my dark brown ink into a red/pink color. Weird. Good thing that color still works for this project! I also learned that this project can be completed with only ONE ARM! I did almost all of it in the one-armed fashion and I'm sure you can guess why I had this amazing opportunity (something to do with short naps)! Now if only it will grab enough attention that people will be excited to look at what is on it (and maybe even sign up for things they wouldn't have even looked at with that boring old clipboard).