The Little Things: Blackhawks Bridesmaid Gift

For my girls' gifts, I wanted to do something personal and crafty.  Enter Artful Designs in my town, which is a paint your own pottery and ceramics place, or any place like it near your town.  I love painting pottery, and it had been a long time since I was able to do it.  My mother and I decided to go together, and I sketched things out and painted details, while she painted large sections for me.  I wanted to get something that all of my bridesmaids could use, so I settled on travel coffee mugs.  They all drink tea or coffee, and putting something personal would make it even better.

One of my bridesmaids is a HUGE Blackhawks fan, so a Hawks mug was truly the only answer for her.  I painted the detail of "Commit to the Indian" with a small brush, then sketched out the feathers and passed it on to my mom to paint the black and the base of the feathers.  I then used their smaller writing bottles to go over "Commit to the Indian" again, drew the lines on the feathers, and wrote "Bridesmaid 8.4.12" on the bottom of the mug.  One week later, it was ready for pickup after firing.

In coming days, I will post the other 5 bridesmaid gifts, as well as the ringbearer and flowergirl presents.

Long time, no see...

I had so much crafting to do for the wedding, that everything else fell by the wayside.  Now that it's done, in the next few weeks I'll be sharing stories and pictures from the wedding, then get back to my regular nails and school posts.
To tide you over until I can post more, here is the story of the Dome of Silence.

That thing on my head is the Dome of Silence.  It's becoming a running joke in my family for almost 10 years Before my cousin Jamie got married, we had a family fun night that included paper footballs and a cookir container.  There were some adult beverages involved, so someone decided we needed to protect our heads...with the cookie container.  It ended up being called the Dome of Silence by the end of the night.  Someone joked that Jamie should wear it as her wedding.  My cousin Carlea took it home and added a paper crown on the top, then gifted it to Jamie at her wedding.  Jamie kept it, and, 7 years later, decorated it with flowers and gifted it to Carlea at her wedding reception.  2 years later, Carlea gifted it to me after adding ribbon on top.  We were able to confuse the heck out of both my bridesmaids and my photgrapher, and I was able to be reminded how much I love my family (after a couple of years of family drama made that hard to recall at times)...we're unabashedly weird!!

The dome is also the gift I was most worried about getting back, since I hadn't seen it after we took pictures with it, and it kind of looks like it could be garbage  Pretty garbage, but still garbage.  No worries...it ended up in the gift pile!