One Week of Pre-Christmas Crafting Left

I haven’t put my tree up yet and I have about 10 projects that absolutely have to get done. I did finish these felt and embroidered ornaments.What is everyone else working on for the holidays?
Have a super crafty (and productive) weekend!!!

More Quiet Book Pages

I have been doing some more work on the quiet book I have been making for the kids.  I have finished up another page spread, this one is a barrel of monkeys and a match the color set of cars.  I really like how the monkeys turned out, although it was really hard to sew around the edges on the sewing machine, if I made them again I would hand stitch them.  On the cars I used iron on Velcro and I have to say that was a mistake.  I have let the kids give these a trial run and already the Velcro is coming loose, I think I’m going to go back and try some tacky glue.  I should have sewed the Velcro on before stitching everything together and adding the dimensional paint.

I have started working on a fishing page.  The wave pockets are all sewn down and the fish are all ready to go.  I added tiny magnets to the insides of them and will be using a magnet instead of a hook.  I have stalled on this page because I can’t figure out how to do the fishing pole string, I think I’m over thinking it.  I should probably just tie some string on a dowel and add a magnet to the other end and be done with it, but I want it to be cute, I think I need a bobber bead to make it more authentic.

Once I finish up the fishing page I only need one more page and I’ll be ready to sew it all together.  Now I just need to decide what I’ll be doing for the final one, hmmmmm, anyone have any ideas?.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

A few weeks ago I told you about finding a partially finished quiet book.  I have been working on it here and there trying to get the pages wrapped up.  This is a garden matching page page. The vegetables and flowers snap onto the rows and can be stored in the picket fence pockets.  I want to make a watering can and some garden tools to keep in the pockets too.I had all of the pieces cut out and embroidered all I needed to do was to sew everything down.  I use clear nylon thread so I don’t have to worry about changing thread constantly to get everything sewn down.I sewed the vegetable and flower shapes to the circles, embellished them with dimensional fabric paint and then I hand stitched the circles together.

Little Miss and Little Sir have given this page a test run and they had a lot of fun playing with it.  I’m motivated to finish more of it now.

Ghosts of Unfinished Projects

In my cleaning a rearranging I often find the remnants of unfinished projects.  Some of them get tossed in the trash, but not all.  Some are re-filed, because I have just not figured out how to finish them up or I am waiting to find the perfect thing to finish them or they need to be dismantled for supplies.  It’s not that I’ve forgotten them, it’s just that I have moved on and not made it back.

Today I found a treasure that I really need to finish.  I know why this project never made it to the end.  This is from around 2 1/2 to 3 years ago, I was working on it before we lost our jobs and had to move and all that other awful stuff (no, I still don’t want to talk about it).  I had every intention of finishing it, it was neatly tucked away in a labeled box with all the parts and pieces that I might need.  There was also the vintage instruction booklet and original inspiration made for me by my Mother, vintage 1970’s.  I would also like to note here that the purple striped fabric of the dog can also be seen in this Sun Bonnet Sue quilt.  (I come from a long line of frugal hoarders.) This is my favorite page from the first one: Where is my tail and look inside.  This is my favorite page from the second one, the one I helped her make: Hang the laundry and look inside (again) I love those baby ladybugs!

I know what I need to be working on this weekend, I need to get this ghost project put to rest!

Crinkly Robot Baby Toy

I thought I had all of my shopping done, turns out that I completely forgot to get anything for the baby. Since he is only eight months old I’m not too worried about having a ton of presents for him, but I do want him to get some super special things. I made this super cute crinkly robot toy (from Prudent Baby) in an evening, I did do some fairly fancy embroidery (fancy for me) otherwise it would have only taken about an hour to cut out and sew up on the machine.

I have also started knitting him this awesome toadstool rattle from the Purl Bee, hopefully there is still time to finish it up. I have one more top secret project in the works for my Mom and I still need to take a fabulous Christmas picture of all three children together and today is the last day of school until the New Year. I’m going to be pretty busy for the rest of the week! Have you finished your Holiday crafting?

Felt Peppermint Ornament

I found this great tutorial on Pink Suede Shoes for a felt peppermint ornament and fell in love! So simple, but so fun. I thought it would be a great little something to give all the teachers, assistants, bus drivers, etc. for the holidays.

The one on the bottom right was made using the full sized pattern. I wanted to stretch my glitter felt a little farther, so for the others I reduced the pattern to 65%. I also saved my cut out triangle pieces and made reverse peppermints (twice as many ornaments!!!). I used rick rack for the hangers and finished all the edges with a zigzag. Hand sewing would have be great, but I’m getting a little pressed for time. When stitching the edges I stitched until there was a few inches to go, shoved some stuffing in the opening and kept sewing.

I found this tutorial via Chickabug and there was also a link to the most fabulous two color felt pinecones. I was so excited about them, I was even undeterred when I had to give my name, email, and address and opt out of four different newsletters to get the free template because those pinecones were going to be so awesome. I don’t know where I went wrong, I think the directions were a bit vague or maybe I missed something. It’s from the Family Circle magazine, maybe the actual magazine has better instructions (anyone have a copy? let me know). Mine is sad, and it looks better in the pictures than real life and this is also after I fixed it (as in stopped following the directions and used some glue). Way too much cutting and time invested for such a piece of crap. I would not recommend it and I have to say I am not likely to try one of their free patterns again. However, the tip about ironing freezer paper to you felt to make it easier to trace you pattern on was genius, it’s so hard to trace a nice line on felt, I’ll definitely use that one again.

I have some more felt ornaments to work on this weekend, I’ll share those next week. Have a super crafty weekend!

Sugar Skull Masks

For those of you that don’t know, Halloween is my wedding anniversary.  When we got married, five years ago, we were dressed as skeletons(loved my hot pink veil).  This year, at the last minute I realized that I had skeleton costumes in everyone’s sizes.  The kids still wanted to be “characters” my brilliant idea was to make them “character” sugar skull masks. Little Sir got a clone trooper sugar skull and Little Miss was a Hello Kitty sugar skull.  I made more traditional ones for Robert and I and Little Man went bare (maybe I’ll make one and we can display all five).  This was a great, easy way to personalize plain costumes and avoid applying messy make-up.  They are made with glitter felt and puffy fabric paint, I whipped them up Saturday night. It will also be a wonderful memory of the five of us on our five year anniversary.

Kitschy Fun Magnet Tutorial

You know that extra special fabric you bought, the one that you hoarded for a year and a half before making it into anything and when you finally did cut into it you saved every last scrap, yeah, well I have a project for those scraps, Fabric and Felt magnets!!!

You will need:

• fabric scraps
• fusible interfacing, any weight that you have on hand
• felt
• promotional magnets, think insurance promos, calendars, etc.
• an iron
• a hot glue gun
• mesh press cloth or paper

Start by roughly cutting out your fabric motifs, you can also start with squares or rectangles if you’re planning to make shapes, letters, or numbers. Lay out you mesh press cloth or paper, this will protect your ironing board from the fusible interfacing. Lay you rough cut shapes, right side down on top of the press cloth. Now would be a good time to press your scraps and get all the wrinkles out. Roughly cut a square of interfacing large enough to cover the shapes and fuse according to interfacing directions. Peel fabric and interfacing off of press cloth or paper. At this point I cut off all of the exposed interfacing because I like to press everything again to make sure it is fused really well. The interfacing helps stop fraying, if you want your edges to fray skip this step. Trim fabric into desired shapes, for motifs leave a narrow border around the edge of the design. Match up the pieces with scraps of felt. Sew along the inside edge of the fabric, trim threads, and cut felt to shape. If you are using thin magnet sheets they can easily be cut to shape with regular scissors. I like to cut the fairly large, they are not super strong and I don’t want magnets sliding off the fridge when the door shuts.Hot glue magnets to the felt and you’re finished! The tattoo fabric still frayed, even with the interfacing, oh well. I need to finish up all the other shapes I cut out and fused, but I ran out of time. These are a great stash buster for those super special scraps. I might have to go back and add some glitter, dimensional paint, or rhinestones, they need a little “bling”. I think I need to make some sets of three or five to keep handy for little gift, it would be a great hostess gift or just for fun.

Are You Going to Throw that Out?

I think that is my catch phrase. I say that a lot, just try to throw something away when I’m around. My friend Lisa (oobbles) even saves her trash for me, she has really good trash. I will also circle the block to pick up something off the curb and I can’t walk by a trash can or dumpster without peeking in.

Plastic caps, lids, and cups have really captured my attention lately. I really enjoy making bottle cap pincushions, I like that the pins won’t poke through the bottom. Then I had a thought: why just use soda caps?, any size would work, right? I have sorted them by size in my crafty “spice” jars, small, medium, and large. BTW I have a lot of soda caps, let me know if you need any. I have started covering them, so they are ready to be embroidered when the mood strikes me. I also just bought that floss winder for $.99 (best investment!), I keep my floss on bobbins on a ring and it keeps everything neat and portable. If you embroider a lot winding the bobbins might be counter productive, but I don’t so it’s great for me.

I think that the medium sized ones are my favorite, what size of pincushion is the best?

Cocktail Ring for a Voodoo Queen

We all know that Voodoo Queens get invited to a lot of cocktail parties and now they can have a stunning ring that conveniently keeps their pins handy and sharp for poking dolls.  Next in the design sketchbook:  Voodoo doll bracelets and purses.Okay, seriously, last Friday I had a pincushion ring featured in my favorites.  It was really cute and it reminded me of when I first showed my friends the bottle cap pincushions I was making, someone (I don’t remember who, Kelly, Christy, ???) suggested I make them into rings and I finally have.

An adjustable ring base, a bottle cap, E6000 glue, felt, embroidery floss, rick rack, and stuffing is all you need to make one of your own.  I started by sanding the bottom of my bottle cap lightly to help the glue stick.  Then I traced around the bottom of the bottle cap on felt and cut it out.  In the center of that felt circle I cut a little slit and slipped the pad part of the ring base through the hole, just like a button.  I put a dab of glue on the pad and stuck it to the cap.  I left the felt unglued so I could sew it easier.

Then finished cutting out and sewing the pincushion (see this picture tutorial).  I think that the embellishing is what really makes these little things, I like to add rick rack around the base of mine.  Quick tip: rick rack is polyester, to stop it from fraying where it’s cut use a lighter to lightly singe the raw edge, this melts the fibers together and keeps them from unraveling.I love how it turned out, so cute and handy.  I’ve really been loving this red and turquoise color combo lately, I hope you guys aren’t getting sick of it.  I plan on making a few more of these, but I want to order some nicer adjustable ring bases.  The one I used is okay, but there are better ones available online.

Awesome Cupcakes of Doom!

I have finished my felt cupcakes for Little Miss, you will notice that only half of them have bead sprinkles.  After beading them for two nights and only getting three done, I just couldn’t make myself do all six.The sprinkles are super sparkly and I hope she likes them.  I guess if it is really a big issue with her I can always go back and bead the three plain ones.Happy Holidays everyone, I’ll see you guys next week!

How Long Does it Take to Make Cupcakes?

Apparently quite a while.  I was expecting to show you the first set of six cupcakes today, however, they aren’t quite finished.  I’m blaming Facebook, an old friend from art school found me and we spent the afternoon catching up.

I have finished the cupcakes and wrappers.

I did not flute the wrappers and instead used tie-dyed felt (who knew there was such a thing?).  I might even add some hot pink rick rack around the middle to make them fancier! 

I have started on the frosting, the pieces are cut out and sewn together, but the hand sewing and stuffing has just begun.

It reminds me of hot pink poo.  They’re really going to be bright and fun.  I just need to decide what color of bead sprinkles I’m going to add, silver, pink, orange?  Help me decide.  I’m hoping to accomplish more on these later, I would like to get the other batch of six finished this weekend, so I can check this off my list.

Testing for a Handmade Christmas

I have mentioned before that I like to test things out before I really make them and today I have been testing a felt cupcake pattern from buggabugs.etsy.com. This pattern is really adorable and features the base cupcake pattern and six icing choices. Little Miss is getting a play kitchen for Christmas this year and since that used up the majority of my shopping budget I decided to make some accessories to go with it and what better than felt cupcakes!

What I want to make is two sets of cupcakes, six chocolate and six white and I want the icing on each set to match. Today I made samples of the cupcakes and the icings that I thought I would like.

I really like the two on the top right, the one on the bottom left is okay, but no quite what I was looking for. This pattern really has a lot of detail and an excellent level of realism for felt food. The cupcakes even have removable “papers”.

I am really glad that I decided to give this pattern a test run first, I really learned a lot and I think that the finished cupcakes will be fabulous!

What I learned:

Purchase felt by the yard instead of by the rectangle, it will eliminate the need to sew some seams in the frosting.

Sewing a round bottom onto straight sides using a 1/8” sew allowance on a sewing machine is really hard for me and I will be happier with the results if I hand sew the bottom on.

Don't forget to buy matching thread.

The pattern is perfectly sized to fit in a real cupcake tin.

Hand sewing takes time, but the finished results are worth it.

This pattern was definitely worth the investment, it is well written and has a lot of photos to walk you through all the different steps. I would have to say that almost anyone should be able to make these cupcakes, although it may be time consuming for someone with less experience. Be aware that hand sewing is required for finishing the frosting. The level of detail in this pattern really makes these little cupcakes realistic and I am excited to try another pattern from this designer. This pattern is for personal use only, but I imagine that I will be making this for gifts for years to come. The designer has a large variety of food and toy patterns available, you really should check it out.

Now all I need is some more felt and a couple of cupcake tins from the dollar store and I’ll have another package to wrap up. Don’t worry, I’ll share pictures when I’m finished.

Fabulous Felt

I think I may have mentioned my love of inexpensive craft felt before, but I’ll say it again, I love this stuff!!!  As I was checking in with some of my favorite blogs this week I saw these adorable felt hair clippies on Treasure for Tots and was dying to give them a try.  FYI, hair clips are on sale this week at Hobby Lobby, I got regular sized ones and extra large one. 

I ended up just experimenting with the larger ones, my embroidery skills are very basic and having a bit more space to work on made it easier.  This is a little, quick project and bonus, I had all the supplies on hand except for the clippies!  Note the squares on my cutting mat are 1” to give you an idea of the size of these things, I think one will be enough hair decoration.

Okay, the clippie on the top center, with the sequined sugar skull may be a bit much, but I got the idea in my head and had to see it through! 

I really like the purple one and it perfectly matches one of Little Miss’s sweaters, so yay!  I have also used felt to cover other things, like bottle cap pin cushions and fabric tape measures, can you tell I was going for a Halloween theme?  I would like to make little sets that include a pin cushion, tape measure, and needle book, it’s on the never ending list.

The real question is what else can I cover with felt and primitive embroidery? any suggestions would be appreciated :)