Playground Love

Our happy family on the beach in San Jose del Cabo- the Baja, Mexico. Lovely vacation. Love the sun!

We’ve been back from Mexico for a week now and have gotten back into a routine. M has been busy working two jobs- his really one and a fun one. The fun one has involved him in sound design and music for a friends’ web-based video game called Zombie Minesweeper- check it out!

V Day doesn’t get celebrated much around here- although A has discovered hearts and is loving decorating them. M has promised me some Kahlua chocolate mousse tonight as well!

We’ve been pretty busy creating up a storm. A has been painting like crazy and blowing through all our easel paper. It’s great watching her process though and she’s been extremely creative in telling us what each painting is (ie: apple tree, worms, clouds, sad babies, sick cats).

I got all domestic yesterday and baked some ginger snaps with A and we cut them into heart shapes.

We also did some in regular old circles and used the cookie cutter as a template and pressed down  some sprinkles inside. When lifted, the sprinkles look like a heart!

I swapped A’s art easel and art table around and I like this layout better. I think she does too!

A Ferris wheel made out of potato print hearts. I love this! I had no idea A even knew what a Ferris wheel actually was.

Water colour hearts made out of cut up coffee filters. Glued to the window using a glue stick. Neither of these ideas where mine- check out the Artful Parent for awesome art ideas. The coffee filters also work really well for making snowflakes. Watercolours get really diffused with the paper in the filter and when glued to the window, look like stained glass when the sun shines through. (sun, what sun?)

A making zillions of cards. I showed her how to paint one side and then fold the other over to take a print of it. She’s really taken off with this idea and seems to really like making “footprints” with the different colours of paints and lining them up. Perfectionist tendencies? I wonder who she gets that from!

In case you are wondering, the purge is still going strong- have started on the kitchen, which seems a monumental task and will move onto the laundry room and then the crawl space shortly. Running out of energy earlier in the day these days- only 8.5 weeks to go until babe!

xok

I’m not sure it it’s just a little girl thing or not, but most of  our time these days consists of playing in the play kitchen making food for A’s dolls. Most of the time we are getting ready for some one’s birthday party and need treats. I’ve been making a few pieces here and there so here is my tutorial for making donuts (ironically, these look much better than the real thing, except for Honey’s of course!)

You will need:

• 1  sheet of acrylic felt
• 1 sheet of acrylic felt in a contrasting pretty icing colour
• embroidery thread for sprinkles plus embroidery needle
• regular needle and thread
• stuffing (old pillows work great)
• something circular about 6 inches in diameter to trace ( I use A’s wooden stacking ring for a disproportionate amount of crafting these days!)

1. Lay your circles down on the acrylic felt and trace them. Make a centre point and a smaller hole- about 1.5 inches. Cut them out. You will need two.

2. Lay right sides together and sew all around the larger (outer) edge with the regular needle and thread.

3. Turn the donut right side out. Begin sewing the smaller circular edge but leave about 2 inches unsewn. Stuff all the pillow stuffing through this hole. Sew it up tight.

4. Using the same size large circular object, trace another circle and draw a hole inside. Instead of following the chalk line all the way around the circumference, I cut the circle in a wavy pattern, mimicking the drippiness of icing.

5. Take contrasting embroidery thread and make large haphazard stitches over the icing circle. This is the icing wrong side facing the camera as you can see the stitching crossing over and the knots. Sorry!

6. Using the same colour regular thread, blanket stitch the icing in place over top of the sewn up donut (sew right side of icing facing up on top of right side of donut). Don’t forget to sew the icing to the donut hole small part too!

Enjoy!

xok

A and I have been delving into the world of nude painting lately. Well, I’m fully clothed and A is painting scantily clad. There are practical reasons for this as we all shall see….

Several weeks ago, I rediscovered Creative Children. I used to work for an art school for kids and ordered a lot of supplies from CC. A mom in my area reminded me that CC is actually located quite close by, in Port Moody across the street from Rocky Point Park. So A and I went on a mission to source out some new tempera paints and heavier stock paper for painting on.

We came back with a big boxful of lovely new art supplies and have been pretty busy creating ever since. The deck in the late afternoon has become the creating place of choice. These next projects are not for the faint of heart….

1. Get yourself a large tarp AND drop cloth. The tarp will protect any paint from bleeding through onto the surface (ie: deck) below. Use large paper. We bought a 50 lb weight paper that is 18 x 24″. I’d go even bigger if I had a place to store it properly. Right now, whatever is not clipped onto the easel is stuffed under the couch…. You will also need a set of textured roller brushes and some flat bottomed pans, lids or containers. Whatever you use, make sure it has a lip- this will collect any paint that is bound to slide around. I think next time I do this, I will just use a baking sheet and lay out the colours inside. I added bits of tissue paper and paper scraps in case A decided to move into mixed media territory. I also added some chalk pastels to play with and a paint pot with a contrasting colour of paint.

2. Take off your child’s clothes and run a bath.*

* You can only skip this part if you are planning on dunking your child in a nearby kiddie pool or hosing them down. Your child will be covered in paint and will not hold still while you try to contain them and run a bath at the same time. They will ensure maximum collateral damage is done to your clothes, your body and your bathroom.

3. Encourage your child to experiment with the roller brushes and paint pots. We have a few rollers that have squares and stars as raised images on them which leave a really neat texture on the painting when rolled into the paint tray and then onto the paper.

4. I was a bit bummed when I super excitedly introduced A to splatter painting with little to no obvious effect the other day. Imagine my delight when she decided to add the splatter paint technique to this painting! Splatter painting is just loading your brush with runny tempera paint and letting the paint drip while holding the brush from various heights onto the paper below. You can also gently arch your arm over the painting for interesting effect. This can get messy and you will want to at least quadruple the area covered in tarps.

5. Hold onto your child when they decide to step into the roller paint tray to leave multi coloured foot prints on their painting. This can get quite slippery and your child will get quite excited.

6. Have a cloth handy to mitigate any damage made from paint drips while you haul your child from the outside into the bath once they have completed their works of art

7. Groan when the tub drains and you realize you will have yet another thing to clean. Although this one is kind of fun to clean as you chuckle to yourself about what you’ve just let your child experiment with.

The tree with some leaves

This wasn’t nearly so difficult as I thought it might be. It was incredibly time consuming though, or perhaps could be done over the course of a weekend. Lot’s of little tasks and a lot of cutting involved.

Cutting many leaves

But both A and I are super excited with how the tree has turned out. Really pretty and so feminine. I will be looking to ad a few more things to wall over the coming weeks, but am in no hurry to get started on those backburner items.

A posing by the finished tree

The big expenses for this project was the Steam A Seam 2- @ $6/ metre x 4 metres it ran upwards of $24. You could do this project with a lot smaller of a decal, but I wanted this quite big and close to scale. Fabric cost $0 as it was all stuff I had on hand. Still less expensive than many wall decals I have seen in stores and much larger. I ended up selling some of A’s old toys and spent the money on the SAS2 and some strawberry plants I bought for the planter I made (more in the next post).

I was looking back recently to when my first blog post was posted and this week celebrates my one year anniversary. Unbelievable- I cannot understand where the time has gone. I’ve met some really inspiring people over this past year and have jumped into the crafty mama blogosphere head first. I’m in love with so many blogs and projects, that it’s hard to figure out which I love most. To celebrate this past year of crafting,  I have made this cute little wine cozy and I’ll do a random draw for it. To enter the contest, leave a comment in the comments section below (e-mails do not count!). My handy random number picker will choose the winner. Contest closes on Sunday, June 27 at midnight. Thank you and good luck!

In the last post, I mentioned that I’d be taking a bit of a break from the Zero Cost Challenge project of redecorating A’s room. If you’ve been keeping track, I’ve done 3 out of 4 walls plus a closet and window. I’ve got a grand idea for the fourth and largest wall involving a fabric tree decal as seen on Sewing for Scarlett. I tested this on a spot on our wall and it didn’t peel off as promised and left sticky goop on the walls so am now torn about doing the decals this way. I think the size of the project is intimidating me and this makes me want to step back a bit and take a break. However, I love a good challenge, and I think to make it more manageable, I may document it in smaller steps. Anyone have some nice latex brown paint (nice for a tree trunk brown) they’d like to lend me or do a fabric swap? I’m looking for fabric that’s got nice modern prints with greens in them for leaves.  In keeping with the spirit of the challenge, I am trying to refrain from buying anything (especially paint and MORE fabric) that I cannot reuse.

But I digress, the real purpose of this post it to highlight some of the cutesy items I’ve been making lately:

A’s beautiful sundress. This pattern is from Heather Ross’ Weekend Sewing. I found the pattern to require an excessive amount of fabric. Most of this ends up getting trimmed off. You can use a bit less length wise and about 12 inches less width wise if your keen to try the pattern.

Close up showing smocking

This is A modeling the dress with her cowboy hat and ballerina tutu. What a fashion maven.

A’s super cute shoulder-tied “halter”.

This was inspired by the pillow case dress I made in February when we went to Cabo San Lucas. For the halter, I used up some of the fabric from my most treasured red dress. When I wore this dess and cruised around East Van on my custom baby blue faux cruiser, I could almost smell the Parisian baguettes in my front bike basket. Sigh.

Favorite red dress. ruined. sigh.

I had this for ages but got a rip just below my bust (no idea how that happened!) and it was unfix-able. I also had tried to let out the seams underneath the arms to make room for a bigger bust while pregnant. Bad move. It’s been sitting pretty in my closet because I can’t bear to part with it. I can’t consign it because of the alterations, so I am reusing it.

It’s a pretty simple idea, take a pillow case, use the hemmed bottom and cut above to desired length, make a casing with the raw edge, cut out some ½ circle arm holes. I rolled and finished the arm holes for a cleaner look. Fold, press and sew the fabric strip that becomes the tie, thread it through. I also added the matching ruffle along the bottom in a fit of brilliant inspiration. This was done by making a really long fabric strip  (about 2.5 times the width the circumference of the bottom hem), stitching it with the tension let out and then pulling the thread so that the tie bunched up. I pinned and sewed it from there. These are brief instructions so if you’d like more I’d be happy to share them.

A’s cute tights from old stretchy fabric. I used a pair of her old holey leggings that couldn’t be fixed as a template and made a pattern from them. This was super simple and fast. It took me about 2.5 hours from the creation of the pattern to finished product and I’m not speedy when sewing! I’ll be looking for odds and ends of stretchy fabric now that I know how to make pants. I have an overabundance of elastic (a Value Village score) so A should be set for stretchy leggings now. In our climate, it’s a great way to still wear a skirt but keep the breeze off of young legs.

Shay’s b-day party frock.

Back view showing cross over straps

Front view. Check out the buttons and button holes. Buttonholes!!

Thanks to Soule Mama for turning billions of women on to this pattern from Near Sea Naturals (after it was featured on her blog, NSN experienced a shortage and had to do another run on the pattern). I happened to be one of the people who got backlogged waiting, but am so glad it finally arrived! Shay’s is made of with two gorgeous batik prints. One is a bit more subtle than the other but complement each other well.

I made a vintage fabric- inspired version for A as well:

Front view with vintage buttons

Back view

Product testing

I made something for me after finding some lovely fuschia organic cotton jersey at my last Fabricana trip. I used the “Yard Sale Wrap Skirt” pattern from the Heather Ross Weekend Sewing book and really was not impressed. I’m not going to dwell on patterns, because I hate them. I hate following instructions. However, if I am going to take the time to sit,read and learn, the pattern better be made properly. The “wrap” was ditched in favour of a seam. I kept the tie waistband and made the skirt more of a faux-wrap. I liked this fabric because I didn’t have to finish the edges. It’s the first time I’ve worked with jersey and I don’t really want to work with it again. I really like quilting cotton and wool felt the best.

Love the feel of this- very swingy

Next up:

It’s A’s birthday in a few weeks and I’ll need to start thinking about making some birthday treats. Capes? Felted food? Not sure, yet.

I will have a lot of time this summer. I’m looking forward to getting a break from work. It will be nice to comb the beaches and waterparks with A. Ah summer. It can’t get here fast enough!

The other day A and I made some really great pictures out of wax paper and crayon shavings. I don’t have any pictures of the process, but it was a blast. I’d been wanting to try this for a while and am glad we’ve got around to doing it.This project is a great way for using up all the broken crayon ends that are too short to be held by small hands!

1. Grate crayons using a cheese grater- any colour. A chose the colours and I grated

2. Tear off some wax paper. A drew some large circles on the paper using permanent (yikes!) marker with supervision as her markers didn’t show up on it. (You can also just scatter the shavings all over the paper, iron and then cut out shapes, but A isn’t great with scissors and I wanted her to have fun with this project and not be frustrated.)

3. Then we picked different crayon shavings and dropped them inside the shapes she had drawn.We either folded over the wax paper to cover the picture or tore off another piece and placed it on top.

4. I placed a plank (for roasting salmon, but stiff cardboard would do as well) underneath the wax paper to transfer it to the ironing board and then ironed it.

5. Next I cut out the shapes and punched holes in the tops of the shapes.

6. We cut different lengths of yarn and tied the yarn through the holes.

7. Then we used masking tape to hold everything up and taped them to the window.

We finally had some light the other day and the effect of the sun coming through the window and the shapes looked like stained glass.

Really easy and fun!

PS- run your grater under *hot* water and the remaining crayon shavings will wash right off.

PSS- More posts on the ZCC (Zero Cost Challenge) to come later this week!

Happy Spring!

xok

So last week I introduced the idea of a Zero Cost Challenge which would involve making over A’s room for zero cost (financially, speaking of course. I forgot to mention how much it costs me physically to try to get the zillion things swirling around my head into action!) I’ve been madly selling items on CL and at work and have been repurposing all sorts of items from other areas of the house. I’m really great at starting things, but not so great at finishing…. So I am happy to present 2 projects that I have completed!

1. Patched up old holes in the walls, puttied, sanded and re-painted the whole room. I could only accomplish this with A away at her nearest grandparents. Thanks guys! Cost= $0, reused old (VOC-free) paint.

2. Rainbow pennants. Cost: $12 for wool felt, $0 for all other fabrics and other acrylic felts. So fun and easy and they really brighten up A’s room. Here’s how I did them.

• First I made a cardboard pattern. Essentially a triangle  with a  base measuring 5.5″ and the pointy tips 6.5″ long. Then I trimmed each of the corners near the base back about 1/2 inch so now the pattern looks more like a dart.

• So you can see the cardboard triangle pattern above. I used a straight edge and my cutting tool to get really nice clean lines when cutting out the pennant pieces. I measured the distance across the ceiling  in A’s room and estimated that I’d need about 16 per string with 9 across the curtain rod. (You may have noticed those are not up yet in the picture). I cut out 41 triangles in total.

• I folded over 1/4″ of the base in order to make a casing so that I could thread the string through and make a chain of pennants and pinned.

Folding the base edge over 1/4 inch to form casing

• Stitch the casing. Repeat.

• I also added some fabric to some of the pennants in the string as well. I used my new best friend- fusible interfacing- to get a really nice clean triangle without fraying raw edges. I cut out  the dart/ flag pattern as above and placed it good side down onto the soft side of the fusible interfacing. I sewed the interfacing all the way around to the fabric.

• Cut out each sewn interfacing + fabric triangle.

• Next- Make a small cut with scissors into the interfacing being very careful not to cut the fabric. This cut will allow you to turn the fabric right side out and have a clean finished seam instead of a raw edge.

• Flip the fabric right side out. You can use a blunt pencil to help poke the tips to get a pointier tip.

• Iron the fabric. The interfacing fuses to the fabric- aha! Genius.

• For the next step- Pin and sew the fabric triangle to an already stitched felt triangle.

• Turn the felt flag over and follow the casing seam and sew over this in order to make sure this will still be threadable.

• The final step involves threading a pre-determined length of string. Tie the string to a safety pin and began inching the pin and string through each casing making sure to have the seams of the pennants all facing the same direction. A helped me choose the colours by throwing them up in the air and letting them land on the floor. She handed me various colours and I did some minor corrections to make sure two of the same colour didn’t end up next to each other (oh the horror!)

• Because today was a bit of a miserable day, it was great to get these up and hanging on her ceiling. I tied the strings to white and clear coloured tacks and tacked them to the corner of the wall and ceiling.

A fun project to pick up an otherwise rainy west coast day.

xok

And we’re back….

It’s been a busy few weeks! I’ll catch up on that in a later post, but first- Valentines crafts! I did this potato print craft with A and it took two days to complete. I used some of the supplies from the printmaking party that I did before Christmas and the prints turned out awesome!

You will need:

• medium potato
• heart shaped cookie cutter
• paring knife (keep this away from the kiddies)
• paint- I used Speedball printmaking paint because it has awesome coverage
• scissors
• styrofoam plates as trays
• colourful paper
• tissue paper
• old un-used Valentines day cards- or blank paper
• glue
• ribbon
• envelopes and stamps (optional, but our families are far away so walking something over isn’t an option)

This was a really fun multi-day project that was really simple, didn’t require a lot of set up or mess and covered a lot of craft mediums. Plus a trip to the post office and mail box made everything seem extra special.

1.  First- cut the potato in half. Press the cookie cutter into the potato. You may have to press down on a cutting board.

2. Leaving the cookie cutter in the potato, start scoring lines around the cutter. Once you’ve scored around the cutter, start slicing them away. I sliced about 1/2 in so the heart was really raised and obvious. Take the cookie cutter out.

3. Set out some paper and paint. I put paint in styrofoam plates for A to use. I added a bit of water and mixed with paint brushes as the Speedball block printing ink is quite thick.

4. Dip potato into the ink and then onto the paper. Repeat and let dry.

5. The next day, I cut out a bunch of the more obvious heart shapes and set them aside.

6. For tissue paper, I used a bunch of red squares that a box of mandarin oranges came in-I knew they would come in handy for something! I had Amina glue the hearts onto the tissue paper. We made about a dozen of these.

7. Last year, Please Mum handed out blank Valentines cards and we never used them. I cut off the logo at the bottom and used the to/from side. I glued these onto the backs of the tissue paper hearts and stuck some ribbon in between. An older child could have helped with this, but A’s attention span had wandered at that point.

8. After I addressed a bunch of envelopes to friends and family, A helped put stamps on the envelopes. We had a great afternoon walk to the mail box, chatted, counted squirrels and took a detour to the park. It was a lovely way to extend the craft and the Valentines’ sentiment.

Enjoy! Give your loved ones an extra squeeze on Sunday.

xok

The No-Sew Tutu

Credit for this idea goes to my friend Stephanie who showed me this awesome idea.

You will need:

• enough ribbon to comfortably tie around your child’s waist (or elastic- I used 19 inches)

• 22 metres (not a typo) of  6.5 inch wide tulle (I was fortunate to score mine at an Abbotsford MCC for $2 total)
• scissors

1. Measure your child’s waist and add on at least a 16 inches.  Cut ribbon to this size. You could also use elastic and tie a knot around it that approximates the measurement of your child’s waist but I wasn’t happy with how bulky that looked, so I actually sewed mine. This is also because I wanted A to be able to pull the tutu on and off herself.

2. Cut tulle 24 inches long. Repeat until you have 36 lengths of tulle.

3. Wrap ribbon or elastic around the backing of a chair. Take a length of tulle and fold it in half. Slip the tulle behind the elastic/ribbon so that the loop is at the top. Feed the ends of the tulle up and around the elastic/ribbon and pull through the loop made by the tulle. I don’t know what kind of knot this is called- a slip knot? , but it’s a pretty easy one.

4. Repeat the process, knotting the tulle around the ribbon or elastic until you’ve used up all the tulle. If you are using ribbon, work your way out from the middle and make sure to leave at least 8 inches on each side so you can tie it up. You may need less or more tulle depending on your child’s waist measurement. My daughter is a long and lean 2.5 year old and her waist is 19 inches if that helps you gauge the fabric requirements for your own child.

5. Wrap or stuff into a stocking and enjoy watching your child play with it for hours on end!

Super Easy Shrug

This is for all the knittas out there who like to knit, but cannot progress beyond squares and rectangles. I.E. People like me. Thanks to Baad Anna’s for this idea:

You will need:

• 50 grams of lovely yarn- I used a mottled nylon by Moda Dea- Eden in” serpent”
• size 8mm needles (UK size 0)
• 16 inches of ribbon- cut into 2-8 inch pieces

1. Cast on 40 stitches (for a slender 2.5 year old). You may need to eyeball this and adjust accordingly to your child’s size.

2. Using garter (knit) stitch, complete 8 inches

3. Cast off.You should have a nice rectangle now. Lie your piece flat in a  “landscape” orientation.

4. Join the top left and bottom left corners- sew them with left over yarn, or knot them with one 8 inch ribbon piece.

5. Repeat with the top right and bottom right corners. You have just created the arm holes. Super easy and functional!

Pair the tutu and shrug together for a really fun time or play/wear seperately.

I have been experimenting with tie-dying lately. I’ve made several pretty cute t’s to date and have given them all away as gifts. Here are the pictures and instructions of the gift sent to A’s cuz in Quebec and to our friend Max.

A's cuz J, dancing in our living room in his tye-dyed T.

The pattern I used is a spiral. (The t-shirt was first tie-dyed pink and I used elastic bands during the 1^st dying process- that’s why there are white circles on the shirt).

Lie a slightly damp plain cotton t-shirt (or whatever it is you want to dye) on a flat surface. Using your finger, draw a cross shape to help identify the centre of the shirt. Using your thumb and forefinger, grab a chunk of material, lift slightly and begin turning.

The fabric will begin turning as well and you will need to keep adjusting your grip on the material. It is very important that while turning the fabric, it is kept snug. If too much dye gets in between the folds, you will not get the spiral pattern.

You should keep turning until the fabric is snugly wound into a circular pinwheel shape.

Slide two elastics over the material to form a cross and one to go around the base of the pinwheel. This will keep all the fabric secure in the dye bath.

All the supplies for the project were bought from Maiwa (synthropol, Procion non-toxic dyes, + soda ash and household table salt)  If you live in or around Vancouver, you will probably know this store. There are shops in East Van and on Granville Island with both artisan crafted items and a shop for supplies. Alternatively you can look on-line.

I followed the instructions that came with the dye but changed the amount of water, dye and salt recommended as it called for enough water to dye 3 adult sized t-shirts. Here are the instructions from Maiwa: http://www.maiwa.com/pdf/procion_mx.pdf- I used probably 1/3 of what was required but stuck with the recommendations for the amount of dye as I wanted really vibrant colours. Iused the hand dying portion of the instruction sheet. You could probably use RIT stuff to dye the fabrics as well, but the Procion stuff is non-toxic and I liked that aspect as the shirts and onesies I made are all for babes and toddlers.

The dyes are supposed to be very colourfast, but I’ve had some feedback about them running so be sure to hand wash in cold seperately (I know not what you want to hear when you do many loads of washing with kids in the house!) and lay flat or hang to dry.

Lot’s of fun to wear, or buy some babydreadz and dress your kid up as a hippy for Halloween! Harhar.

Here's a great picture showing off the spiral pattern. This was for our friend Max's 3rd B-day.

Be sure to check out the “summer fun” page as it’s been recently updated with more indoor activities for babes. More to be added as the monsoons are coming.

More crafts on the horizon! I’ve taken a bit of a break from all the sewing I had done earlier this summer as we suddenly decided to upgrade our kitchen. Cabinets, paint, screws + f-bombs flying all over the place. Sanity has returned to our home and I am really keen to get started on some new projects. I had M re-wire my grandma’s sewing maching, now I just need to figure out how it works! I have found some great diaper cover patterns that I am going to try out as well, so I’ll be posting those when I’ve got them underway. And lastly, a Homespun Salon, a night of crafting and conversation, hosted by the lovely Doula Bonnie coming up this week! Lots to look forward to.