Ambrosia Creative

While browsing decor ideas for the nursery, I came across this cool wall map letter a while back. While I liked the concept and price, I found it a bit on the small side, as is the same with other wall letters on the market right now. But I figured with just a few simple materials, an oversized letter can be easily and cheaply made.

My materials: 1) Two large sheets of white foam core, 2) Spray mount, 3) Glue stick, 4) X-acto knife with new blade, 5) Glue gun, 6) Long metal ruler (mine is 18″), and 5) Large world map.

Step 1: A letter can easily be freehanded, but I wanted to use a specific font so I began by creating a template in Adobe Illustrator. I had to divide the letter up and print it out onto multiple sheets of paper, then piece together to get my large 19″x 19″ size. (Let me know if you’d like a tutorial on how to create and print an oversized letter in Illustrator using multiple artboards. Too much info to post here right now.)

Step 2: Using my template, I traced my ‘M’ onto one of the sheets of foam core and cut the letter out with my craft knife.
Step 3: Cut out long strips from the remaining pieces of foam core. These pieces are to make the letter 3-dimensional. Make sure a few pieces are at least the same length as the longest side of your letter. I made my strips 1.25″ wide. You can go thicker or thinner.

Step 4: Trim the length of the foam core strips to build up the sides of the letter. I did this by butting up a strip against the side of the letter, marking the excess length with a pencil, then trimming off. Using my glue gun, I glued the strip to the back of my letter.

I made sure to bevel the corners that didn’t meet at 90° so that they will be nice and sharp. To do this, I sawed through the foam core using my X-acto knife.

Repeat until all the sides are glued on.

Step 5: Open up the map and place your letter where you like (I made sure to capture North Carolina!) Trace lightly around the letter with a pencil. Set letter aside. You will need extra map to cover the sides of the letter, so measuring from the outside of the outline, create another outline. I measured out 2.25″ from my original ‘M’ outline. Basically, I was making a thicker ‘M.’

When trimmed, my extra thick letter looked like this:
(note: my map was a bit bumpy so I actually ran the iron — no steam, low heat — over it a few times)

Step 6: This step was a bit tricky because now I had to place my letter exactly along my outline. I did this by folding along the first, original outline that I penciled in, folding the left-hand most side and the bottoms of my ‘M.’ You will need to make a slit to fold the paper up at the corners. These folds now serve as my ‘registration marks.’ I removed the letter, then sprayed the front with spray mount, then very carefully laid it down on the map, using the folds as my guide for placement.

Step 7: After smoothing out the front, I began the process of wrapping and gluing down the sides.

Because of all the angles in my letter, there were a few spots where there wasn’t enough paper for coverage. These were along the inside. I just cut out strips of map and patched on to cover these white areas.

Step 8: Lastly, I very lightly took an eraser to my pencil outline. Some of the ink rubbed off from the map, but I actually appreciated the effect which gave it a very slight worn/vintage look.

The whole project took me about 2 1/2 hours, split up over a few days. The most tedious part was wrapping the map around the letter. But time and spending less than ten bucks on materials made it worthwhile to me.

Candace, congrats! The random number generator picked you!

Thanks to all who participated, and so sorry I didn’t close it on Tuesday like I had originally posted. The week sort of got away from me!

When I was pregnant with Dax, I remember being perfectly content with pregnancy until the very end. In truth, I was swollen, ungainly, clumsy, and running out of outfits during that last month. But having a then 2-year-old Kai to chase around was plenty of work for me, so I was happy to have Dax safely tucked inside my belly on auto-care.

But this time around, I find myself surprisingly anxious to meet this little one. Surprising, because I can’t tell you how tired I am keeping up with the boys and how stressful and harried most days are. Yet I want to meet her (or him? Yes, I’m still slightly in doubt…) and have a baby in arms. Or in the very least have radiation-free x-ray vision so I can peek through my stomach and say hello, I like your tiny hands or oh, that’s what you’ve been kicking me with! Is it kind of sad that despite this being my third pregnancy, I still can’t make heads or tails of all the baby bumps and lumps? It’s like, the greatest mystery for me right now.

Only seven more weeks to go!

When I first spotted CitiBlocs at the store around Christmas time last year, they looked so cool and fun, I just knew they’d be a hit with the kids. I made sure to grab a set as a ‘Santa’ gift for the boys. Sure enough, it has become a favorite in our home since then. And these blocks are so simple and pretty, I don’t quite mind as much when they’re scattered all over the floor.

So the boys and I were super excited when CitiBlocs sent over one of their new colored sets for review. And what’s doubly exciting is that CitiBlocs has offered an additional 100-piece set to give away, any color set of your choice! Care to enter? You can choose from Hot Colors, Cool Colors (the set we tried out), or Natural.

To enter, (1) Leave a comment.
For an additional entry, (2) ‘Like’ the CitiBlocs Facebook page.
For a third entry, (3) Tweet this giveaway
(mention @Citiblocs and @AmbrosiaGirl).

Please make sure to leave separate comment for yourself if you do (2)
and another separate comment if you do (3).

This giveaway will close at midnight EST
next Tuesday the 27th.Best of luck!

To see more pics and neat building ideas, visit the CitiBlocs website.

All the ombre projects floating around has inspired me to try the dyeing method on twill tape. Twill tape has always been a go-to for packaging up gifts as an alternative to ribbon. But ombre twill tape is like the superhero version.

The materials list is very basic: 1) Rit powder fabric dye, 2) 100% white cotton twill tape (mine was 1″ wide), 3) Salt, and 4) Something to stir with, like a popsicle stick or plastic.

I began by heating a cup of water on the stove top and mixing my dry ingredients together in a small bowl. Since I was dyeing just a few yards of tape, I used only a portion of the powder dye. The proportions I worked with are 1/4 powder dye : 1/2 cup water : 1/4 cup salt.

Fold/roll your tape into a manageable size as in pic above and get it completely wet under running water. My setup was in the kitchen right next to the sink, by the way. Makes this project easier for rinsing and wetting. Next, pour the 1/2 cup hot water into the bowl with salt and dye and stir, stir, stir. Once everything is mixed well (my mix was still grainy because of the salt), you can do your first dip.

I was extremely conservative in my dipping, so at first pass, I submerged the tape about 3/4 of the way (so that the very top stayed white) and held it in the dye for just a couple of seconds. I wanted to see how saturated it was right away, so I rinsed the tape under running water in the sink and opened it out of the folds. This is where you may notice that the areas where the tape was folded didn’t take the dye as well. Just fold it up (but don’t fold along the same spots) and briefly dip again to get those missed areas. Then rinse again. Again, I took extra time doing it this way because I wanted to control the lightness of the color along the top and didn’t want to risk overdyeing.

To build the gradient, I would dip less and less of the tape, but for longer increments. At about 2/3 of the way, I dipped for 30 seconds. My very last pass, which is the very edge/bottom of the tape, I held it in the dye for 40 seconds at a time, pulling out to check, but dipping back in if the color wasn’t dark enough. My hand got tired doing this, so I actually poured some dye out of the bowl, and just let the tape sit upright with just the bottom submerged.

When I was happy with the color, I rinsed and hung to dry. I repeated with orange and yellow dyes, and found my technique got better with each color and I got more comfortable with the process. Now I’m anxious to get some blue and green dyes to do a color family of those too!

31 weeks along and doing very well in growing this little one.

I snagged a couple of Missoni items from Target this morning (tights for me and shoes for baby), but was surprised that the bedding collection was cleared out by the time I got there — at 8:30 am! The market for obscenely marked up items on Ebay is in full, ridiculous swing. Were you able to get what you were looking for?

My mom made fun of me because I kept taking pictures of the trees in her backyard, which is huge. Being out in the country is such a new and novel thing to us.

And some Instagram images taken when we were downtown Durham. Cool city that place is.

Have a happy weekend!

And just like that, my son accomplished his first week of kindergarten! I am so proud of him. There was nervousness and maybe a some tears on the first day, but Kai has adjusted to his new routine well. Though waking up at 6:30 is still something I have to get used to. Ick. And that pic above was Kai’s first-day, after-school treat. He wanted a chicken sandwich.

It’s been so sweet having the one-on-one time with Dax. And quiet! No fighting or crying (although the crying part will change when the baby comes). And I can do errands almost twice as fast. At times, I catch myself thinking, Really, this is my life? It got kind of easy all of a sudden.

I’m excited for the long weekend and our mini-roadtrip. Now that the threat of a hurricane has passed, we’re headed east to visit my mom in Durham and look for artsy stuff and food trucks.

*****************
P.S. Would you be interested in promoting your shop or blog? I’m now accepting a couple sponsors that would be a good fit for this blog. Shoot me an email jenniferkirk{at}gmail{dot}com for rates, site stats, and all that info.