Appreciating Teachers

All three of my children landed three of the most gifted teachers one could wish for.  I scrambled a little bit to pull together Teacher Appreciation gifts for this week.  As all three of my darlings are home sick from school today.  There just isn't much time for shopping or crafting for that matter with sick little people in the mix.

The plastic Flamingos just add that touch of class...don't you think?

They crack me up and I know they will give our teachers a bit of a chuckle.  Especially here in rainy Washington. I picked up the little sea grass totes and flamingos from the Target "dollar" bin for $2.50 each.  The potted lillies were $9 each from Lowes.  Easy Peasy!

For the flower tags I used up some scrap booking supplies that I had on hand.  The center medallion which reads "Thank You for helping me GROW up great!"  was found via  Skip to my Lou available as a free printable.  The creator of the printable and absolutely darling project to go along with it was Kami from Nobiggie.

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

Sonja

Mothers Day Bracelet Tutorial

Its a challenge to come up with Mothers Day projects for kids to make that is something other than their hand print.  Hand prints are darling and I do love all those tiny fingers and wrinkles and what not.  But after turkey hand prints and angel hand prints and tree hand prints I am ready for something a little different.  This year with my sons kindergarten class we are making bracelets (no colored macaroni in sight!).

This is such an easy project with absolutely darling results.  The kids loved making them, the materials are easy to come by and its a relatively speedy project.  Working with one child at a time I was able to do 13 of the 26 children in about 1.5 hours.

Tutorial 
For materials you will need:
Wool Felt ~ I think the wool ups the aesthetics of this project and makes it feel special. 
Buttons ~  I used shank buttons, buttons with holes and self made fabric covered buttons too.  Mainly in the 1 inch size. Bigger is better!

Sewing Needles ~  I used large eyed blunt tip needles for several reasons.  I wanted to minimize the stick factor and I wanted them to be easy to thread.

Thread ~  I gave the children the choice between embroidery floss and seam binding ribbon (vintage style) depending on the style of button they picked out.

Tools ~ Sharp Scissors, Pinking Shears, Rotary Cutter, Straight Edge, Cutting Mat, Brad Hole Punch

My Process:
Step one:  Let the child pick their button first
 
Step two:  Let the child pick the felt color
I pre-cut some of the felt in the colors that I thought the children were most likely to pick to cut down on time. They could also pick from all the colors I had with me. Using my rotary cutter, cutting mat and straight edge I cut my felt to 1.25 inches X 10 inches. 

Step Three: If the child selected a shank button (the hole is on a stem on the back of the button) or one with four holes I let them choose the color floss they wanted to use and helped them thread the needle.  If they picked a two hole plain button I gave them the option to sew it on using vintage style seam binding ribbon to make it a bit fancier. 
***I made a point to make the knot on the floss large and keep a tail of several inches after the knot to make tying it off easier at the end.
 
Step Four:  Using my brad hole punch I put holes in the felt to make sewing easier and neater for the kids.  Not necessary, but a nice touch if you have this tool already.

Keep the button about an inch away from the end of the bracelet. That way when you cut the slit for the button felt with show through the slit and not skin. 

Step Five:  Let them sew away!  Start from the back of the bracelet when sewing with floss.  Start from the front of the button when sewing with seam binding. Tie off your floss on the back of the bracelet and trim floss so that it doesn't hang over the edge of the felt.  Knot seam binding on the front of the button and trim ends in a V shape to prevent unraveling.

Step Six:  Cut the button hole (slit).  I tried to make the bracelets 8 inches around with my hole placement.  Make the slit slightly smaller than the button.  You can always make it bigger but you can't make it smaller once you have cut it.

Fold over the tail end of the felt and using sharp scissors cut your slit.  *** Remember that if you cut 1/2 and inch you have just made a 1 inch whole because the felt is folded. 

Trim the end of the bracelet into a shape or using pinking shears if the child desires.

Happy Mothers Day!
Sonja
 
Ps: I will come back this evening and add a little link love to this post to show you can purchase similar supplies!

The Day After

I am not big on Valentines Day as an adult, but oh how I did love it as a child.  Spending hours with my mom crafting cute heart shaped Valentines and making sure to spell each classmates name correctly.  The anticipation of passing them out and the worry if I would get any in return.  Siting for hours and pouring over all my school valentines reading each little message.  Bliss I tell you. 

Now that all three of my children are in school I still love the idea of the homemade Valentine but I am starting to look longingly at the store bought ones too.  Sometimes handmade is just really hard.  Like 75 homemade Valentines hard.  That's a lot of paper and glue and in our case rocks.

This year all three children decided to make wishing stones.  Soren (age 7) wanted to put a message on her rocks.  So she stamped the phrase "U Rock" or the word "love" on the back of hers.  This was a very long long process that neither of us enjoyed very much. We used individual letter stamps and it took forever...shan't be repeated.  No pictures were taken.

Dunn & Ella stuck with each classmates initial and this was a blast.  For Ella (age 4) it was wonderful to look at each child's name and then find a letter sticker that matched the first letter.  This task was a snap for Dunn (age 6) and he was able to do it all on his own (love that).

After the kids put their stickers on they sealed the rocks with Liquitex Acrylic Gloss Medium & Varnish.  ModPodge would have worked equally as well but I had the Liquitex on hand so that is what we went with.  They sealed the sticker side first using a small foam brush. The Liquitex dries in about 5 minutes so by the time they did one side of the stones they could flip them over and do the other side with no waiting.

The real Mom labour came into play with the packaging.  I decided that there needed to be a little note to accompany each wishing stone so that the recipient would know what it was.  Above is Ellas note.  They turned out so sweet.  I printed the poem onto card stock, cut them out, then added a little highlighting to the edges of the paper pieces with ColorBox Chalk Pigment.  Ella helped me glue all the pieces together over a couple of days. 

Ella took great joy in stuffing her treat sacks with the stone, poem and a little bag of conversation hearts.  She was quite proud of the finished project and eager to take them to school. 

Dunn thought Ella's Poem was too girly so we changed the words up a bit. However, the concept was the same. On this one I did all the cutting and gluing (I was running low on patience) and Dunn did the stickers.

Dunn wanted a Robot theme for his packaging so this is what I came up with.

He too had a fantastic time stuffing his treat bags and was a great sport about all of the name writing.  What I loved is that I had almost everything needed for this project on hand.  The rocks did require two trips to the shore which is part of our normal lives.  I had lots of left over letters from scrap booking that might never have been used.  All the paper and treat bags were on hand too.  The only things I purchased were the star stickers and the candy.  I love it when I can use up some of things I already have from other projects.  Makes me feel a little thrifty!

Happy Post Valentines Day!

S~

Dunn's Marshmallow Shooter Party

Boys are nice.  They are so very easy to please.  And best of all they think their mothers are the best thing to ever grace the planet.  My boy is now six years old.  Yes, I have managed to keep the child alive for six whole years and I can not think of a better reason to have a party than that.

On Saturday NINE spectacularly boisterous little boys assembled PVC pipe Marshmallow Shooters and proceeded to wreck havoc on the neighborhood.  They terrorized innocent doggies being walked by worried owners.  They were loud, fast and dirty.  They spent three hours truly being boys.  I heard the ABC's recited via armpit farts.  It was a good day.  My neighborhood association will likely send me a letter on Monday requesting that I remove thousands of mini marshmallows from my grass.  I am praying that marshmallows are indeed biodegradable.  I have my doubts.
 

This is a great boy party to host and would work well for boys 6 and up.  Older boys could cut out all of their own gun pieces and sand them.  For this party Jon did the cutting and sanding in advance and the boys just assembled their shooters.  On the barrel of each boys shooter I put a name so we knew who's shooter belonged to who.  Dunn's shooter name was "Diabolical Dunn".  Other names we used were:  "Drop The Hammer Drew",  "Will The Whiz", "Cannon Ball Carson"...you get the idea.  I used my Circuit Expressions cutter to do the lettering in black adhesive vinyl. 

For the invitation I used this cartoon blueprint.  The blueprint has the directions for building the shooters we made.  We did choose to make the mouth pipe 5 inches instead of three inches so that it would be easier to hold and shoot.  When priced out each shooter cost about $5 to make using schedule 40 PVC pipe (the nice stuff).  You can purchase a kit for $10 here (using a lesser grade pvc).  HOWTOONS is a pretty awesome resource for party ideas and fun projects to do at home with the kids.  I really want to do this one and this one too!
S~

The Wild Woven Tree

Soren's school does not have an Art Teacher. I know, crazy right? They do have lots of outside professionals that come into the classroom to teach pottery and fine art. I participated this year in the Art Adventures Program through the MIA (Minneapolis Institute of Arts). I was a Poster Person for Soren's Kindergarten classroom. There are two other moms in the class that are doing it too which has made it very fun. As a Poster Parent you take posters of items currently on display at the museum into the classroom and discuss them with the class. Then you create an art project related to the pieces of art for the children to complete. For our first project I bit off more than I should have. I think big and complex when it comes to creating. Our first project was a woven tree. Yep, a whole life size tree. Did I mention it was woven by 5 & 6 year olds.

Twenty four 5 & 6 year olds! It turned out spectacular and was worth all the hard work. It will be a wonderful focal point for this Kindergarten class room for many years to come.

Oh a moment of pride!  That is my lovely Soren up front with her finger very close to, if not inside, of her nose.  I am hoping she was just scratching!

For the base of our tree we used a roll of chicken wire.  The children then wove strips of fabric willy nilly in and out of the holes.  I am still surprised at how long they stuck with this.  I am also surprised by the number of children this was difficult for in the fine motor skills department.  After the fabric weaving, the remaining holes were filled with crumpled brown kraft paper. 

It took several more visits to her classroom to make all the brances for the tree.

I created branches out of the chicken wire wrapped into a cone shape. I crumpled the cones a bit for interest and added smaller branches to each limb. The children then wrapped the wire branches in kraft paper strips using watered down white glue. They loved this part as it was quite tactile and gooey!

To assemble the tree in the class room I wrapped the base of the tree around an exposed pipe in the corner. using zip cable ties. The branches were attached using zip cable ties as well, after removing the weaving from the areas where I wanted the branches to go. After they were attached I woven back in the fabric and paper to hide the ties.

With spring coming, the tree will soon be sporting leaves and wildlife created by the children.  I can't wait to see all the ways Soren's Teacher comes up with to use the tree!

Lovely Finds

A little impromptu thrift store visit yielded the following fun crafty goodness. For local ladies & gents the following finds are brought to you by Unique in NE Minneapolis.

Three rolls of vintage Lions Brand "Petti-Lace" in Mint Julep and Orange Creamsicle.  Each roll was originally 40 yards.  I estimate that there is more than 50 yards of the mint and 30 yards of the orange.

The polka dots are flocked on a sheer colored fine mesh.  The mesh is attached to the net lace underneath and the two layers can be pulled apart.

Fun Fun Fun!

I had to bring this home with me too.

30 yards of striped one inch suspender/belt elastic.  There was just so much of it.  What are the odds that I will ever come across 30 yards of suspender elastic again?

How about these sweet acetate ribbon bundles.  Once again there was just so many of them.  I apparently have a thing for volume and the letter S.

Advent Web

It all started with this sweet elf, the advent web that I did weave. Well, sew really. Last year I started on this advent elf with the help of Calamity Kim's Tutorial. I had been admiring the advent elf in the Garnet Hill Catalog for some time. When I ran across Kim's awesome tutorial, I sat down in a frenzy of fabric & trims to whip up the rather large fellow. I knew I didn't have time to get all the pockets on before the December so I decided to put one pocket on each day. About half way through December I failed. And so this sweet elf has been sitting for an entire year incomplete. Now, another December 1st is here and I have been unable to face the elf. I am going to sit him by my sewing machine in the hopes of completing him this year.

In the meantime the children still need an advent calendar, right? I decided to whip up a version of this advent calendar from the latest issue of Marie Claire Idée’s.

I had everything on hand to do something similar. This is how mine turned out!

I used 24 inch wide Poultry Fencing (chicken wire) to hang my jute upholstery webbing pockets on. The poultry fencing is finished along the running length. I cut the fencing to size and wrapped the cut edges around sticks from the backyard. I used a black paint pen for the Noel and numbers. Little clothes pins attach the pockets to the wire. I love that the kids can turn each pocket around to the blank side at the end of the day. Even better is that this project took two hours start to finish!

Ella Boo Bella

Little Ms. Ella turned three over the weekend. It also snowed here. Both are equally shocking. Cold wet weather does allow for some good party throwing and crafting so that is what we have been up to. Ella having an October birthday in a house with a mama who adores Halloween ends up with a pretty creepy birthday bash. No, not Crappy! CREEPY.

This is the third year that Ella has had Southern Living's Chocolate Pumpkin Cake as her birthday yummy. It is so good and makes a very dramatic presentation. The recipe is HERE. The black cake stand which of course I purchased just for making this cake is HERE. The cake stands come in spectacular storage hat boxes just in case your tempted.
Due to the snow I had tender plants to bring inside. This is a large cast concrete bird bath basin filled with succullents from my garden. Instant centerpiece with the addition of a human skull.


The glittered spider and vulcher silhouettes admired our guests as they supped. I printed off silhouettes from google images and glued them to orange card stock. I then painted in the shape with glue and poured on the glitter. My pictures are not doing them justice as they are quite sparkly and alluring.

Our yearly goul or witch (changes each year) Neighbor Greeter was present to welcome our family, friends and fow. The foot traffic in front of our house increases dramatically after I put up something scary. Lots of kids come up and have a picture snapped or inspect our scary's. However, come Halloween night many of the same children cross the street when they come to our house. We have creepy music playing, rats creeping out of crevices ghosts lurking in the mist. Mostly I think it is the murderous screams that scare them off. Oh well...more candy for me.

What do you think of that playdough hook? Her normal nose just wasn't very witchy.

On the front porch I put my much loved Crow in my also much loved antique birdcage.
On Halloween night I light votives in the cage for a very spooky effect.

I managed to get one spooktacular skirt sewn for Soren. Ella's matching skirt is cut out and just needs to be sewn up. I used the same skirt pattern as this one HERE.
As a little crafty bonus I was able to make this banner for above the dining room buffet using left over scraps of Halloween fabric from the skirts and random bits. It was so fun to make. I mounted the fabric using photo mounting spray from a photography class I took a few years ago. The stuff worked great for sticking the fabric to the cardstock triangles. Addictive! Now I am all tuckered out and have caught a virus. I'll be back in a week or so.