Christmas Crafting: What are YOU working on?

I've been diligently working on two of my Christmas gifts for family members and I am determined to finish these two before starting any new ones that I have on my list. It got me wondering what everyone out there is working on so far for Christmas (gifts or decor). Take a minute to click on the poll on the sidebar to the right and let us know! -C

My Best Halloween Tip

I happen to have a fair amount of training in theater make-up and as a result, own a lot of theater make-up. I've painted faces for Halloween for many years now and I want to share my best secret of making all your hard work stay in place.

The secret is loose face powder.

My son, below, has been a tiger for his third (non-consecutive) year now and this tip has yet to fail us. (in fact, my daughter has has some white swirls on her face since Saturday that I had forgotten about due to her hair covering them up. Yikes!) Here's how it's done.

You take your loose powder and shake it on to a non-fluffy powder puff in excess. You press that powder on to the make-up firmly without smearing. Get it on every whisker, patch, scar, whatever. (unless you're making a ghost or vampire, you're going to want the powder to be skin colored)

Next, you'll need a powder brush. You'll want one dedicated to this because the last thing you want is remenants of grease paint getting onto your own skin later because you used your expensive brush set. Just dust the powder off with the brush and you're done. The make-up will stay all through the school day and trick or treating. Even if you're just doing a little puppy dog nose on your baby, you'll want something to set that black eye-liner of yours or he just won't look complete for pictures. :)

--C

My Best Idea for a Long Time

With a little of this...

a wooden dowel and drawer pulls some disassembled flowers

Then I layered them together

on this rather large shelf.The shelf began its life on my little sister's wall. It was painted a midnight blue. Next I painted it a lavender color for my daughter. After that it was painted an almost periwinkle blue for my new baby boy (now three).

I have now repainted it again for my daughter. It used to have those little pegs meant to have connected-wick candles (remember those for home decor?) and other such items, but I did NOT look forward to finding hanging objects for this round of decorating.

My simple solution was to buy a dowel to fill all those tiny holes with. I cut it into small pieces. I found the drawer pulls and when I knew I wanted them to be a different color, the idea of their being the center of a flower turned out to be perfect.

I hammered the dowels in, fitted the flowers over those and capped each off with the drawer pulls. Very inexpensive and my daughter loves it.

-C

Something in the Air: Cami's sewing, too.

When I first got the idea to make my daughter's outfit for her preschool graduation, I was worried that I would have a post similar to Anisa's sewing rant as she has a lot more skill with fabric than I do, but then...

I found this fabulous and simple tutorial from Grand Revival Design for a ruffle skirt, bought the material at Hobby Lobby and went to it.

It was really easy and I finished in an afternoon. When I do it again (I already bought the material) I'll be adding an inch to each panel. It was a bit short for this mama.

Next, I made a binki clip for this cute little monkey.I liked the tutorial found here at an adorable craft blog called Ruffles and Stuff. Again, I liked the simplicity. Something I can do!

I had to alter her design a bit because I could only find overall clips. To use them, I took an extra strip of fabric and folded it length-wise in thirds and sewed down the length of it. I looped it over the clip loop and secured it with more stitches.I slipped it in to the tube (see tutorial link) and then did the top stitching around.

Since baby uses the Soother (which has no loops for elastic or ribbon) I used a clip on each side. Before the week is over, I hope to post a template for two different felt clip cover-ups, but in the mean time, I love this sweet fabric.

-C

Top Picks for Kid Crafting

Crafting with your kids can be a lot of fun. Expect a mess and you'll have a great time, though these aren't very messy anyway.

Here are my three top choices for crafting with my kids. By saying with my kids, I do mean, supervised crafting and together time.

1. Perler Beads/Fusible Beads-Ever since my little girl got these beads for her birthday we've been having a blast with them. The boys love them and we even got my husband involved once. She has been very gracious in sharing them.

The concept: small cylindrical beads are placed on peg boards for infinite possibilities. Then you fuse the plastic together using your iron and parchment paper.

My son is holding the horse that he chose the colors for. We assembled the shape together on the horse-shaped board with our heads close together. I made up my own owl using the hexagon peg board. I love it!

2. Pipe Cleaners-This mostly has to be supervised because they always use too many! It's also good to have me on hand to cut extra length off with a wire cutter.

The concept: fuzzy wires are twisted and woven together to create anything their minds can come up with.

My oldest son likes to make pet dragons out of them.

Yesterday, my three year old made me a modern art mobile that I really am planning on hanging in my craft room after the flood clean up is over.

These are also a great items to take along on road trips because they're mess-free. (Just be aware that the ends are poky and wouldn't be great for kids under, say, three.)

3. Shrinkable plastic-Shrinky-Dinks or any brand shrinkable plastic is something that was cool way back when, but it is SO fun.

The concept: special plastic is drawn and/or colored on using colored pencils, water colors, or markers. (Crayons are a big, flammable NO) Cut the item out, place it on a foil lined cookie sheet, in a preheated oven and watch through the oven window as the plastic twists and distorts down to a considerably smaller size than when you started.

I used to wonder why you'd make something big, just so it could turn out smaller. (I still wonder this about felting). However, once I gave it a try, I learned. It's just SO COOL watching it melt in the oven. We spent two hours playing with them the first time.

I like tracing an image from the kids' picture books with a fine Sharpie marker and letting them color the item or they draw something on their own. My son wore these to school today.

Summer is approaching and all these things are great to do to keep the boredom away. They can all be found at your chain craft stores and you can use those great %off coupons. :)

What do you like to do in the summertime to keep your kids entertained?

-C

Got your thumbs in a bind with yarn left-overs?

UPDATED! Scroll down I've been doing a lot of crocheting lately. Amigurumi, fashion scarves, bracelets for my daughter, more amigurumi... Now I have a lot of unused bits of yarn. I found a great, very easy project in Crochet! magazine which I check out from my local library. It is a pet mat/cushion for inside animals that need a place to sit and stay. You simply use your yarn scraps by crocheting in the round, making a long tube that you stuff with poly-fiber-fill. You spiral the tube around itself, sewing as you go, until you have a pad for a pet to sit on. (I'm not done. I estimate that I have 60% more to do.) My little sister's dog, Sadie, is going to love this when I finish it. This project is reminiscent of those old braided rugs that many of our grandmothers had in their homes at some time or another. I like doing things like this while watching movies with my husband. I like to keep my hands busy. Now that I've gotten this far with the project, I'm going to work on designing large amigurumi snakes following a similar pattern to this. I know my boys will LOVE them. Another note on crochet, check out the Free Form crochet movement via http://www.freeformcrochet.com/ or http://www.marloscrochetcorner.com/freeform.html It's definitely unique and those who do it, liken it to painting with yarn. Even Björk Guðmundsdóttir likes free form crochet. Sydney asks: So how do you sew it together? My grandma used to make rugs kind of like this. I want to try! Reply: The instructions say to use a tapestry needle. I was going to weave in and out and use yarn (since it's thicker and will bind it strongly), sewing as I coil it. I'll do it through the center of the tube so that it won't be visible.

Sunshine Award

A big Thank You to Jennifer at Because I Can Crafts for awarding us the Sunshine Award!!! It's always nice to know there is someone out there that loves what we do!!! The Sunshine Award, is awarded to bloggers whose positivity and creativity inspires others in the blog world. The rules for accepting this award are:- Put the logo on your blog or within your post, Pass the award on to 12 bloggers, Link the nominees within your post, Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog, Share the love and link to the person from whom you have received this award.

So, here are my 6 favorite blogs...

1. Maggies Holmes Photography and Scrapbook Blog... She used to live across the street from me and I just LOVE her scrapbooking style! I also love her photography.

2. UCreate... I just have to go to her site whenever I am looking for a new creative idea.

3. Nanny Goat... Cute ideas that are my style.

4. Games for Family Night... easy, simple, ready to print FHE lessons.

5. Dear Lizzy... love her scrapbooking style.

6. Make it and Love it.... The blog has a totally new look and it's even better than before.

-Anisa

And six of my (Cami's) favorites:

1. A Beautiful Mess -Once a Creating Keepsakes darling, Elsie is an individual in a sea of crafters. She's adorable to boot and has a really fun personality. Lately, she's been adding mini-tutorials to her blog.

2. How About Orange-A fabric designer with a fantastic sense of humor and self. She has great ideas, finds great stuff at Etsy.com and occasionally has a great internet time-waster on there for fun (or inspiration). Tutorials and photo-fun as well.

3. Craftaholics Anonymous-This girl oozes clever creativity with the power of using-your-supply-stash

4. The Purl Bee- This is mainly a knitting site, but they have crochet as well, but truly, I like visiting because it is an absolutely lovely site.

5. My Mama Made It- So creative when it comes to sewing. I have little blips of sewing skills, but this woman oozes skill. I LOVE the kids' clothes.

6. Ric-Rac- Lots of fun here! Toys, dolls, felt, vintage charm, sewing...

-C

Chained Daisy Pin

It's Teacher Appreciation week at my son's school and we LOVE his teacher. When he told me that her favorite flower was a daisy, I wanted to do something crafty as a little gift for her. I came up with the Chained Daisy Pin. First of all, I crocheted this daisy (found in 100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet by Lesley Stanfield)Instructions: Chain 6 with yellow yarn and join with slip stitch into a ring. Chain 1 then 11 single crochet in ring (12 stitches). Using white yarn continue [11 chain, slip stitch in next single crochet] twelve times in each single crochet from the first round. Fasten off and weave in ends. Next, I lightly misted the flower with water and gently stretched and shaped the petals to how I want them to look and let that dry flat. I cut pieces of moss colored felt freehand: one petal and two circles for mounting the flower. I used embroidery floss (1 and 2 ply) to bring it all together.

Taking the larger circle, I sewed on the brooch mount.

You may be tempted to use hot glue.

Don't.

Hot glue doesn't like metal, long term. Sewing holds it closer and looks so much better.Sandwich the leaf (make sure it's where you want it in relation to the brooch mounting pin) in between the two circles and whipstitch around the smaller circle, joining all three felt pieces.When flower is dry, use tiny stitches with floss to attach petals to the felt. You want the petal tips to have free movement, so stitch around the edge of the larger circle and leave them free. Just make sure you stitch into each side of each petal to keep it lying flat.Here you have it!

I used a size G crochet hook and worsted weight yarn. Any variations with make the flower larger or smaller.

--C

A Button for Punishment

I am a complete novice at jewelery making which leaves me wondering why I keep coming back to it. It's right up there with counted cross-stitch when it comes to fine motor-skill annoyance and crafts from which I get derive no pleasure.

However, I was walking through Joann's fabric store and saw some lovely over-sized buttons and immediately thought of a friend of mine whose birthday is coming up very soon. I thought that she'd really like to be able to wear those cool buttons and my only answer was jewelry.

The buttons were already 50% off so they made a really inexpensive focal point for, say, a necklace. I purchased two and some beads and began to work on them. I started with the prettiest, an ivory-colored button with a flower carved into it. I used silver wire in lieu of thread in the button holes. It was kind of sticking out the back too much so I thought it would help to lightly hammer the wire down.

The button shattered. (I tried to replace the button yesterday, but there were several blank spots in the ivory button racks so think that's a sign that she only needs one necklace from me)

I moved on to the next button and through much trial, error and advice came up with this. I applied a circle of felt with hot glue to the back of the button to cover the wire and keep it comfortable to wear. Despite being completely frustrated with the task, I'm quite happy with the result and hope that my friend likes it as well.

-C

My On-Going Project

Ever since we moved into our current home (just over two years ago) I have had a craft room. It's just a non-livable space that the hubby granted to me and I've been really happy about, but it has never been decorated or organized or anything special.

I got tired of that a few months back and have been trying to make it a comfy, cute place where I'm not completely embarrassed to have Angie or Anisa come and craft with me.

It has not been easy.

Little things help, like Anisa recovering a cute chair (here along with a spray paint tutorial) for me and giving me a matching lamp that doesn't fit her decor any longer, but ther real issue is clutter and so much crafty stuff that I don't know what to do with it all! Yikes!

I have before pics that i'm not quite ready to share yet, but here is the first thing I did for my room to add some personality.

I love playing with words so I thought it would be fun to make cross-word puzzle looking wall decor.

I used Making Memory's Simply Fab foam stamps and simple acrylic craft paint. The letters are just under 3" in height, I believe.

I used two pins and a thread with a level to give me a guide to follow and did the long, horizontal phrase first. The rest was just eye-balled.

I love it.

I love it because it didn't cost me anything, but time, as I already had these supplies for scrapbooking.

I love it because it's a piece of me in a room of my very own. How's that Virginia Woolf?

So, I have a lot more that I'm going to be posting about my craft room improvement in the upcoming weeks (months? Yikes!) so keep a look-out for those. Lots of fun!

-C

Lucky You!

This shamrock pillow is a cheeky way to let your husband know that he might not want to wear green on St. Patrick's Day this year... To make your own draw a heart. It can be any size, but it should be broad with a shallow middle dip. Here's mine with my hand to show scale.

Take your heart and rotate it as you trace it as each of the leaves (you can do three or four). I used a disappearing fabric pen. Then I cut it out with a rotary cutter.

Here is the whole cut out. You can kind of see the traced lines here. This green felt was left over from a Christmas craft and was purchased in a package I got at Roberts Craft. The wrinkles steamed out easily.

Next I stamped my message (as I am probably the only crafter who has not yet used freezer paper) with white acrylic paint.

Next I added a little decorative flourish with white embroidery floss. I used one of my favorite stitched called the split stitch.

To balance out the flourish, I added a red heart button. You could add a leprechaun-themed charm or gold buttons here instead.

To finish off the pillow, I pinned wrong sides together and used a zig stitch around the edge. Stuff this pillow lightly or it looks all warped and you lose the shamrock shape. I had to work a bit to get the stuffing to look just right. I closed it with the zig stitch when I was done.

From start to finish, this easy project took me just under two hours. If you have any other fun ideas for a good phrase for this pillow, leave it in the comments. -C

Amigurumi

What is Amigurumi? It is the Japanese art of knitting or crocheting small stuffed animals and anthropomorphic creatures. The word is derived from a combination of the Japanese words ami, meaning crocheted or knitted, and nuigurumi, meaning stuffed doll.[1] Amigurumi are typically animals, but can include artistic renderings, and inanimate objects endowed with anthropomorphic features. (Thanks Wikipedia)

I've been having so much fun with this great mini-book of crochet patterns from Lion Brand Yarn. My little boy looks through this book like it's a catalog for him to choose from.I'm not trying to personally promote Lion Brand Yarn, but Angie and I have checked out a few books from the library on amigurumi before and the patterns have left me really confused, but this little book I picked up at Hobby Lobby was really clear and easy to follow.

I'm almost finished with this alligator I started this morning and I waved good-bye to a cute little owl that I made for a friend's daughter just last night. Lots of fun.

They make up quite quickly. You just need yarn, a crochet hook, stuffing and safety eyes because at Lion Brand Yarn they have a endless selection of free patterns for amigurumi. You do have to sign up for their site, but I've personally never had a problem with them (ie they don't share your email) and I like getting their occasional email updates (which are easy to opt out of, if you desire).

Type 'amigurumi' in the Search box, sign in and enjoy all the free patterns! Here's some pictures of some of the adorable critters you'll find here.

-C

Here's Some Great Crafting Eye-Candy

About a week ago I asked you readers if there were blogs out there you'd seen and liked. Thanks for sharing your blogs with us (though I couldn't get your link to work, Kim)! You're all doing a lot of cute stuff! I found a list of reader favorites in the crafting world on Poppytalk. Of these, I loved http://www.goinghometoroost.com http://blog.betzwhite.com/ http://racheldenbow.blogspot.com/ Most of the winners in the post I linked have etsy shops for you peruse. Poppytalk itself is full of great stuff. Enjoy! -C

Cozy Car Caddy by Jill

We love getting all sorts of ideas from craft blogs everywhere to make for our families. When I saw the cute Cozy Car Caddy on homemade by jill (click link for her tutorial). I knew I'd be making it for my three-year-old. Being the least skilled at sewing of the three of us, I felt this was something I could handle. Here's my version:

The changes/shortcuts I took were these:

• I used a double layer of regular quilting cotton as I didn't have any duck fabric on hand.
• I used foam stamps instead of the stencil intending to paint over them again, but I liked the faded look of one layer of paint a lot and kept it that way.
• I didn't 'get' the Velcro closure part and so I used a ribbon folded over to make a loop and placed a button on the back. My little boy likes to button his own buttons now so this is perfect.

This is going to be ideal for taking in the car or for quiet time in church (if boys can really be quiet playing cars in church). Now my eight year old wants one. I'd like to make a My Little Pony version for my little girl, but time will tell if that materializes. Here's the very happy recipient. I don't know how he's survived these two days (though it just took two hours of those two days) to make this.

--C