Paper bag pumpkins

We have almost no Halloween decorations up at our house.  Not because we don't *have* any Halloween decorations, we just don't have any that I like!  Ha ha!

I've seen so many decorations that I'd love to do.  However, life being what it is - I just haven't been able to do them. 

I saw these cute paperbag pumpkins over at Best Toys for Toddlers (side note - I just found this blog a few days ago.  So far I haven't figured out why it is called "best toys" since most of the posts are about art projects/crafts.... any thoughts?) I've been wanting to do some craft projects with my middle daughter and thought that this would be a great opener.  She has never painted before and it looked fairly easy.  Here she is having a good time:

 

So proud!


Here is a picture of the final product.  I made one, my oldest made one, and my middle daughter made two. 

Isn't our mantle sad?  I had hoped to make one of those penant banners that are so popular right now.  Maybe next year!

Personalized Fabric Blocks / Taggie Cubes - Part 2

Whew!  My daughter must be growing through a growth spurt!  She and I have spent many hours bonding together with her nursing pillow in our rocking chair.  I think we are finally over the worst of it!

Here are some pictures of the completed fabric blocks:


The "front" of the A block -

See how bad the sewing is?  Yuck! 

See the awful sewing?  I saw a tutorial where someone sewed about 1/8th - 1/4th inch around their letters and then the fabric did this cool fraying when they washed their item.  I guess that is the look I'm going for.  8 )  If only the sewing was even. 

The sides:

On one side of each block I "made" the square by taking 2 pieces of fabric and sewing them together.  I thought that this would add some fun texture to the blocks as well. 



Side 1



Side 2 - See all of those ribbons?

Side 3

The "S" block -

Never take a block away from a baby!  8 )

Sewing Cue # 1

Here is a list of some of the projects that I have in my cue:

1.  Nursing cover - I desperately need a nursing cover.  When my oldest was little we didn't live near any family, and we had just moved so we didn't have any friends either.  How sad, huh?  So, when I was nursing, I was always at home or by myself in the car.  So, there as no need to cover up.  Now we are lucky enough to live near family (yay for Grandma and Grandpa!) and to have friends, so I need some coverage! 

I found some fabric that I love at Hobby Lobby a few weeks ago.  I'm going to use this tutorial from Ta Da Creations.  Except when I bought the fabric I couldn't remember how much of each color of fabric that I needed.  Of course, I bought the wrong amount.  Instead of 2/3 yard of main color and 1/2 yard of contrasting, I have 3/4 yard of main and 3/4 yard of contrasting.  8 ) 



2.  Fabric napkins - My husband and I keep forgetting to buy napkins from the grocery store.  I think it is because back in May I bought fabric to make fabric napkins and I have yet to finish them.  Perhaps this will be the push I need to finally start and finish this project!  Hopefully I'll finish before we run out of paper towels!



3.  Super hero cape - I'm making this for my nephew for Christmas.  He calls himself "Super {insert his name}" whenever anyone asks his name.  Too cute!  I'm also going to make a mask and wrist covers.  I'm going to use this tutorial from Get Your Craft On.



4.  Doll Diaper bag - My middle daughter (and my oldest too) loves to play with baby dolls.  This site has tutorials to make a doll sized bassinet and diaper bag - and even all of the accessories for the diaper bag - wipes, wipes dispenser, changing pad.  How cool is that?  I know that my daughter would love this for Christmas.  I hope that I can get my act together to get it done in time.  I don't have the fabric for this yet, I want to get my other three projects done first. 

Personalized Fabric Blocks / Taggie Cubes - Part 1

There are lots of tutorials out there for fabric blocks.  I used this one for taggie cubes and this one for cloth blocks to make mine. 

I made my fabric blocks for my nephew (1 year old) and my daughter (6 months old).  My nephew has some vision issues - in fact, he is legally blind - and his doctor recommended that my sister give him toys that are black and white since black and white are the colors that contrast with each other the most.  Since I was mostly making these for my nephew, I chose fabrics that were black and white.  I also chose a plain black and a plain white.  I am going to put his name on the cubes (one letter on each cube) and I picked out a red for the letters in his name.  The fabrics are also different textures - I found some cool courderoy that had a zebra print on it.



Fabric



I forgot to take a picture of the ribbons that I picked out.  I chose ribbons that varied in width and in texture.  Guess you'll have to wait until the end to see the ribbons.  8 )





Since I followed the tutorials above, I'll just show what I did different -

I chose a font that looked like it would be easy to sew around and spelled out the letters of my nephew's name and my daughter's name.

I cut around the letters and pinned them to the red fabric.



Letters pinned to red fabric



Then I cut out the letters.  That was the easy part!



Then I pinned the letters to the plain black and plain white fabric.  I didn't worry too much about making sure the names when black-white-black-white.  I just randomly pinned the letters to the fabric colors.

Letters pinned to squares

I'm not that great of a sewer so it was REALLY hard to sew the letters on!  I'm not happy with how my stiches turned out.  8 (   I couldn't get my stiches to be the same distance from the edge of the fabric so some of them are really close to the edge of the letter and some of them are further away.  I guess I'll have to look on youtube to see if there are any tutorials on how to sew  on letters or rounded shapes.

I just realized that I don't have a picture of the final product.  Doh!!!  Lazy crafter indeed!  I'll post a picture of the final product tomorrow.



School bus cake

My oldest started kindergarten this year.   KINDERGARTEN.  I'm still not over it!

To celebrate, we made this school bus cake.  Actually, she and her dad made it while I nursed the baby, but it was my idea!  I saw the idea in Family Fun magazine.

The kids really enjoyed it!

Felt car mat

Felt car play mat

My middle daughter loves to play with cars.  For Christmas last year, Santa brought her a race track.  I've seen several tutorials on the web for felt playmats and I thought that she'd enjoy a mat to go along with her race track.  I looked at several tutorials and the ones that I used are below.

I had never used wonder under before, and I used this tutorial to learn how to use it:  HERE from Serving Pink Lemonade

I took some of my ideas for the play mat from HERE, HERE, from A Girl and a Glue Gun and from HERE from Serving Pink Lemonade.



First I drew free had pictures of what I wanted on the mat - trees, buildings, etc.  I cut them out and placed them on the mat to make sure that I didn't draw them too big.



Placement of items on mat.


Then I drew a nice template and used a ruler so that my straight edges would actually be straight.  8 )



Template

 Then I traced everything onto the Wonder Under.

Wonder Under with items traced onto it.

Then I ironed everything on to the felt, cut out the felt, and ironed the shaped onto the mat. 

I saved it for her birthday and she loved it!  We've had some good times playing with our mat and my nephew wants me to make him one too.

First Post

Hello!

Welcome to my craft blog!  I'm a newbie to the crafting world - I just tapped into my creativity about 9 months ago.  I love searching the web and looking at other peoples craft blogs and I thought it would be fun to create my own.  Right now I enjoy getting ideas from other blogs and I hope to someday be creative enough to come up with some on my own.

Happy Crafting!