mamalibrarian » crafts

Flower Wrapping

handk — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:24:56 +0000

We had another birthday party to go to today. My friend Haikumama’s daughter is three today! We got her this Green Toys Indoor Gardening set. I love this set, because the plants really grow well. My daughter, C received it for her birthday. It was great fun for her to watch the plants grow a little bit each day.
I decided I wanted to continue the garden theme for the wrapping paper. My five-year old daughter, C and I created this easy-to-make tissue paper flower bouquet.
We started with some very roughly cut tissue circles. We used old tissue paper that had been salvaged from presents and was languishing in the bottom of the wrapping bin.

We made the flowers each with two tissue paper circles and a pom pom. The pom poms came from the Target $1 bin.

We used white glue to glue down the tissue circles in pairs. I had to use the glue gun to secure the pom pom centers. After each center was dry, we crinkled the “petals” on each flower. I also used the glue gun for the grosgrain ribbon stems. I was going to cut the stems flush with the edge of the box, but decided I like the effect of having them hang off slightly. I think this would be a good design for a wedding shower or baby shower gift too.
Happy Birthday G! You are the sweetest!

Lego Print Wrapping Paper

handk — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:44:10 +0000

Average Jane Crafter’s mad-for-Legos son had a Lego-themed birthday party this weekend. My kids and I wanted to do something special to wrap his presents. I am never happy with the choices for buying wrapping paper at the store. I prefer plain paper that I can decorate myself. We used brown wrapping paper, Crayola poster paints, and Duplo Legos to make this printed paper. In order to make the print, we first put paint on the top of the lego to make the circle print. To make the block portion of the print, we flipped the Lego over and printed the outer square “on top” of the circles.

Square Lego Print Side

Circle Lego Print Side

Lego-wrapped Legos!

My son made a short video how-to.

I Spy Coke Bottles

handk — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 03:50:57 +0000

Well, I never thought I would say this after living in Seattle, but it FINALLY rained here. A couple of days stuck indoors inspired us to work on some kid crafts. I saw this post about making your own I Spy Bottles on the Entertaining House blog.
We used empty Coke bottles. (Thanks neighbor Sara for my new addiction to Coke Zero.) I bought a big bag of cheap rice at the grocery store, and we used craft supplies and tiny toys that we found around the house. I was going to try to make each bottle a different color theme, but the kids were so excited about this project, there was not time to sort colors. This was such a fun, quick project. One of my friends, Average Jane Crafter pointed out how great these would be to take on summer vacations. After the kids put them together, I used the hot glue gun to secure the lids.

Handmade Hellos

handk — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 05:51:31 +0000

I made this Valentine’s Day card for C. based on a card design in Chronicle Book’s, Handmade Hellos, by By Eunice Moyle and Sabrina Moyle. I used felt for the body of the octopus and embroidery floss to sew on the button eyes and mouth. For the tentacle suckers, I glued on holes punched from colored paper. The inside of the card says, “Sucker For You.”

My son, H, designed this lion themed card for E’s Valentine’s Day. I used felt for the head, and embroidered the eyes and mouth. The inside of the card says, “I’m not lion, I love you.”

For H’s Valentine’s Day card, I used felt to make the brid body, beak, and eye, and craft feathers for extra decorative plumage. The inside of the card says, “You’re My Tweetheart.”

The Valentine’s Day presents for the kids with their cards. Snoopy Valentine’s day tshirts, heart socks, and candy for the girls. Itunes giftcard and candy for H.

Sun Hat Embroidery Baby Gifts

handk — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 05:24:20 +0000

I hardly ever have the time or planning necessary for creating more involved projects for baby gifts. I like to buy a small gift and match an embroidery project to the gift-a sun hat, a bib, or onesie.
I made this butterfly hat to give to my cousin’s new daughter for Christmas. The leather baby shoes are from Target, as is the sun hat. I hand drew the butterfly pattern with a pencil. Sometimes I will iron-on a pattern to the hats, but it is easy to burn the nylon fabric of the hat. I try to stick to simple designs that I can easily match or use transfer paper to trace a pattern.

Here are a couple more examples of baby gifts I made this summer to give to my husband’s co-workers.

hand drawn caterpillar, paired with a Zutano tee.

Cherries pattern is from Sublime Stitching.

The Vespa pattern was posted by Average Jane Crafter.

Don’t try this at home

handk — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 18:10:40 +0000

I almost lept out the door at the UPS man the other day when he dropped this off. I was so excited to get the new Sukie Iron-On Craft Pad from Chronicle. I had high hopes I would be able to pull off some quick Christmas gifts. The many designs in the craft pad are colorful and fun. I love the color pallette.
I was able to make this set of napkins and two baby tees.

napkins

craft pad tees

Even though I followed the directions as closely as possible, I ran into a lot of problems. The transfers bled through substantially. If the iron was hot enough to transfer all the color, several times I burned the fabric. If the iron was cooler, the design did not transfer very well. Also, I washed the two baby tees and the animal design came almost completely off. The butterfly still looks good, but it is much lighter than in this picture. The napkins faired better. I think the design will hold on those. They are 100% cotton napkins from Target. All in all, if you are persistant you can make this work, but be prepared to have some false starts. It took a large amount of patience, a good movie to watch, and coffee to keep at it until the wee hours.

Next, I am going to try to come up with a project to do with the transfers once they have been used. I hate to throw out the pretty designs, so I want some kind of paper project to re-use these. Stay tuned.

Buttoned Up

handk — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 23:38:30 +0000

mamalibrarian's ribbon

Last night, faced with wrapping the teacher thank-you gift for my son’s class, I decided to borrow the button-ribbon idea from this Anthropologie box my sister-in-law gave me for my birthday. I used grosgrain ribbon and embroidery floss to secure the buttons. The Anthropologie version has actual button holes on the cotton tape. I was working on this at 11:00 last night, so no time for button holes! It turned out nicely, but I think I prefer the muted colors of the Anthropologie version.

Anthropologie ribbon

It’s Art Lesson Time

handk — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 03:28:52 +0000

Last school year, my son, H, took art lessons in our home from Laurie Mann. She teaches private lessons, as well as teaching a bunch of other classes through the art museum and studios. For our lessons Laurie not only taught the basics of drawing, she also read art-based stories to the kids, and picked out appropriate supplies for them to use.
She focused mainly on the fundamentals of drawing with him. Like a lot of kids, H is interested in comics, and drawing things that interest him, so they incorporated those elements into the lessons. Henry likes to draw pictures of birds. Here are two birds he drew during last year’s lessons.

This year, C, decided she would like a lesson also. Laurie is great about working with both the kids on their individual levels, as well as sometimes having them work together. This year Laurie is going to expand beyond just drawing to include some other types of art projects.

We just had the first lesson the other day. Laurie is having them make mosaic tiles. Each child picked out their own tile selections and glued them on the larger tile. Next week they are going to finish them with grout. C also worked on drawing a dragon with Laurie. The kids had a great time getting to use the caulk to glue on the tiles and sorting through the big bag of pieces to pick just the right one. Here are pictures of their works-in-progress.

Melting Beads

handk — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 01:10:26 +0000

Stuck at home. Everyone is sick. What to do? Emit a cloud of noxious fumes from some craft beads, of course!
A recent trek to the IKEA, brought us some great finds to bring home. We only go to IKEA once or twice a year, so we make the best of it when we go.

Who could resist this giant jar of craft beads? The kids have been playing with them, as well as using them for crafts. The beads are good for measuring, pouring, scooping, counting, stringing, and gluing. They are also small enough that if the odd bead gets popped into the mouth of a passing toddler, mamalibrarian might just turn her head the other way and pretend she didn’t see anything. Mostly because any more calls to the Poison Control are no doubt going to warrant some kind of uniformed personnel showing up at the door.

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Anyway, we embarked on the bead melting project one afternoon, when I was trying to keep everyone calm. It took a long time and a lot of dexterity to get the beads placed on the melting peg boards. (also from IKEA) The only instructions showed a woman with an iron and a piece of wax paper, so I had to wing it. I just set the iron to low and placed the wax paper on top of the beaded board. It took at least 2 or 3 minutes of the iron resting on top of the wax paper and beads to get them to fuse together. Then we let them cool, pulled off the wax paper, and removed them from boards.

I also picked up this cute hippo? fabric. With IKEA, you just never can quite tell what the animal is exactly. Flodhäst is what we are calling it. I am not sure what I am going to do with it yet. It is a little stiff feeling for clothes, but a little A-line jumper experiment would be awfully cute. In case you are in need of a chart with the translation of hippopotamus in many different languages, here is a link.

And for my friends Average Jane Crafter and Haiku Mama, I grabbed these market totes. I am anxious to see what kind of crafty gear Average Jane Crafter puts in hers.