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

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.

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.