November Embroideries

Here are some of the things I've been working on.

Small cloth napkins to tuck into Jr's lunchbox. Bunny in a ghost costume by Craftblog.com.au. Teapot and the barrel of monkeys from Sublime Stitching. Racecar and driver by Blackbird Jr.



Bear pattern from Badbird

Elephant pattern from So September



Another Badbird pattern







Works in progress: a Polo shirt and more cloth napkins. The napkin with red marker on it is how I get Jr to draw a picture and then I embroider over it and the marker washes right out. That picture is of a pirate ship and an island with a treasure box and palm tree.

Painting with Gelatin

Jr really liked this activity- mix a bit of flavoured gelatin (Jello or any brand) with water to make chunky, smelly paint. You can add a lot of water to make a thin watercolour type paint or add a little to have a thicker paint. The paintings smell when they are dry and you can even scratch them to have your own scratch and sniff painting.

I Made a Play Campfire

Blackbird Jr is currently clamoring for "white and brown pretend marshmallows". I even offered that we could pretend to cook REAL marshmallows that he could eat later, but he wants play ones.

I used red corduroy with orange and yellow felt for the flames. The large flame is stuffed with stuffing with poly pellets on the bottom to make it stand and the small flame has wire armature so you can shape it.

I used some scrap wood for around the flames but I'd like to collect some sticks on our nature walks to use instead.

Paper Toys

Paper crafts, especially papercuts (sigh, so lovely) seem to be more popular now and I've been finding all kinds of cool websites with paper crafts for kids and adults.

Some of the beautiful paper toys from The Toy Maker.

I printed off The Adventures of Florimel to make for myself.



















The paper dolls are really sweet.














Canon also has a site of really cool paper toys to print. Blackbird Jr's favourites are from Craftown, a city set that includes vehicles and buildings. They include instructions and lots of detail (which is not surprising as they sell printers and ink, lol).



Little Red Riding Hood



Locomotive



Taj Mahal



Phee McFaddell also has some cool toys, like this Dragon Puppet.

Valentine's Day Button Book

from Lavender and Limes.

The Adventures of Polo

Blackbird Jr's new favourite books are The Adventures of Polo and Polo: The Runaway Book by Regis Faller. They are written comic book style with few words (if any) and with plenty of action. Here are a few panels:






There is also a Polo website, which is lots of fun and full of surprises. There are little aliens hiding and you can also find Polo doing different things around the site. As well, there is a printable boat craft (which we've assembled), colouring pages to print and games if you click on the right things. Jr's favourite is to find the aliens that play music when you click them.

I picked up a couple of blank shirts and Blackbird Jr requested a Polo one so this is what I made, using one of the colouring sheets as a pattern:

DIY Play Kitchens

I've been enchanted by these lately. One of my favourites is here on Craftster:



and then ohdeedoh did a roundup recently:

Crafting Catch-Up

A new doll, made in a swap for some knitted dishcloths.



A shirt for Blackbird Jr where I embroidered some pictures he drew. He drew him in a racecar for the front and the 2 of us in a rocketship for the back.






Kitchen teatowel, made with sublime stitching patterns from my lovely friend, A.



And more shrinky dinks! We've been having lots of fun with them.

Embroidered Baby Quilt

A baby quilt I made from the book Doodle Stitching. You can see more photos of the quilt, including progress shots in my flickr set for the quilt.

The whole quilt. It took me about a month to sew and embroider. I really love the pattern and would like to make another one sometime.



details:









Matching shoes and bib

Doll

I made a doll this last week, the first I've made in a long time. She was made with this pattern from Wee Wonderfuls. I love the little buns in her hair.

No-Staple Paper Chains

Brilliant! I love doing paper chains in the windows for holidays- black ones for halloween are especially appropriate.

Click the link from World Preschool Mom for instructions.

Fabric Teapot

This is adorable. I just picked up a small enamel teapot for Blackbird Jr at the reuse centre, but everyone expect to get one of these as a christmas present.



Tutorial via Ric-Rac- Teapot Tutorial

New Favourite Meal on New Placemats

My new favourite thing to eat:



Mix cream cheese with dried ranch spices. You can add sour cream and mayo to the mix if you like, but I just use light cream cheese and don't add the sour cream or mayo.

Spread on a greek style pita bread (they are thicker and fluffier than the thin pita pockets)

Top with veggies- here I used red, green and yellow pepper, broccoli and cauliflower

Optional- lightly sprinkly grated mozzarella cheese on top

Delicious!

I made new placemats over the weekend as well for Blackbird Jr and myself. Blackbird Jr doesn't like his and asked me to make him a different one. Hmph.





I used this patchwork placemat tutorial.

My Solution to Blackout Curtains

I didn't want to pay for the curtains if they weren't going to make Blackbird Jr sleep longer (he has been waking up between 5:30 and 7 am, regardless of what time he goes to bed) and I thought he might freak over paper on his windows so we made Space Windows. I used that tacky poster-hanging stuff to hang them on the windows before bed and we take them down in the morning. It's usually hit and miss how much he will sleep so I think we will just stick with these for now. He can peek out the little stars and circle windows (circles by his request) to look into the backyard, which for some reason is really fun for him. You can also see through the rocketship window but I wasn't clever enough to make that one at a height where he can reach it to see out.



We've been busy spending time at playgrounds, day trips to the beach and generally enjoying summer. I can't believe it's halfway done already!

Space Shirts

My lovely friend A sent me some sublime stitching patterns and I put them to good use. The bottom t-shirt was for Blackbird Jr and the top one was for a friend who turned 3 years old. Blackbird Jr has made me promise to make him a yellow rocketship one as well though.





The robot originally had blank eyes and a straight mouth but Blackbird Jr proclaimed it "too scary" so I made him a bit friendlier-looking.

Salt Dough Beads

I was so bored today I made up this tutorial for salt dough beads. Yes, that bored. Is Spring here yet?

Start by making your salt dough. The recipe:

Salt Dough

1 cup very warm water
1/2 cup salt
1 cup flour

Heat your water- either run it really warm from the tap or use a kettle. You don't want it to be too hot (definitely not boiling), especially if you are making the recipe with kids. Add your half a cup of salt to the water and stir thorougly, getting as much salt dissolved into the water as you can. Then add 1 cup flour and stir. It will be goopy but firm up as the water is absorbed into the flour.

You should be able to knead it into a ball now.



If it's too sticky, roll in some more flour. If it's too dry and crumbly, add more water.

My dough says Hi.




You can pretty much make whatever you want with the dough. There are books on dough art at the EPL, from dollhouse furniture to big wall hangings. I am making you all big wall hangings for christmas with little figurines of your family on them, just so you know. Fine art.

There are lots of different ways to make beads but the basic way is to roll a ball and poke a hole in it. We used a knitting needle and an empty pen shuttle to make our holes. I also made some flat pendant-style beads that I poked 2 holes in the tops of to thread our string through. I also could have stuck a paperclip in there with one loop sticking out to string the thread through. Another form of bead I made was to wrap a long snake of yarn around the knitting needle like a coil.



Your preschool might get distracted and start making some sort of track for racecars. That's ok.



Now you bake your uncooked beads in the oven. Set the temperature to about 250 C and cook until the edges start to brown. The time this takes can vary, depending how thick your creations are. Our beads took a couple hours. The things that look like squished salt dough poops are cars.

Now that they are cooked, I have set up some paints to paint them with.



Finished painting. I am going to coat these with an acrylic sealer tonight to keep the tempera paint from flaking off and tomorrow we will make some beautiful necklaces with them.

Spring Fever Continues

It's -19 C out, but I just sewed this sweet jumper:



I love that it could be worn over a long sleeved onesie and jeans on a day like today or as a sundress with the diaper cover in the summer. Thanks for the idea for the diaper cover, m :)

I also made another chocolate swirl apron for the etsy store, this one is reversible.



It's way cuter in person, you'll just have to trust me on that one.

I read lots of books in February, hiding from the NEVER ENDING winter in literature. What I read:

The Glass Castle- Jeanette Walls
Fragile Things- Neil Gaiman (audiobook)
The Girls: A Novel- Lori Lansens
Brown Girl in the Ring- Nalo Hopkinson
Icy Sparks- Gwyn Hyman Rubio
Plain Janes- by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg (graphic novel)
American Born Chinese- Gene Luen Yang (graphic novel)
Book Thief- Markus Zusak
Anansi Boys- Neil Gaiman (audiobook)
Bitten- Kelley Armstrong
Stolen- Kelley Armstrong
A Year Without Made in China- Sarah Bongiorni

Of all those books, the best ones were The Glass Castle (a re-read for me), Fragile Things (could Gaiman be any more talented and brilliant?) and the graphic novel American Born Chinese. The Girls was interesting as well as it was written from the point of view of twins cojoined at their heads.

Right now I am reading Coyote Road: Trickster Tales edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. It's a collection of tales (some stories, some poems) about trickster characters in all sorts of settings. Trickster is an archetype that is found all over the world in many different cultures. Trickster can be male or female, wise and foolish, good and bad, but always loving to create chaos and play tricks on people, spirits and animals.