Rabbit Is Wise

images from easter...

 

 

What did the Easter bunny bring to our family this Easter?

Potholder hook looms for each of the girls!  He must have heard my eldest talking about wanting to weave the other day.

I never had one of these as a child... not sure why not as I would have totally been into this. So, mommy the girls had a great time using these this morning.

Grampy also got each of the girls some live flowers.  Looks like I'll need to find a pot to transplant these to.

And these baskets can be re-used as craft baskets!  My youngest has taken over our family craft basket, so I'll add some plastic cups to this Easter basket for organizing markers and pencils, and it will become my eldest's.

 

Oh, did I mention another gift from the Easter bunny - for me in particular?

I found my youngest on top of our dining room table!  Yep, looks like I got a true climber for Easter!

easter diorama

While looking for a spring-themed craft project for my girls, I stumbled across this activity on Rhythm of the Home.  I've done paper mache with my girls before, and it was always a huge mess.  Did I really want to start a project like this without the ability to go outside and do it (I can't see anyone being happy doing paper mache in the snow!)?

I somehow screwed up the courage to give it a try, and I'm so glad that I did.  It's even given me an idea for another project that I may try (maybe more on that later, if that project is successful!).

My three year old package of colored tissue paper I wanted to use for the project was M.I.A. from the move (and all the good colors used up anyway), so I splurged and got another package, along with some 12" balloons.

I couldn't believe how excited the girls were at the prospect of this project.  I feared that they wouldn't have the patience for a multi-day project... but their enthusiasm carried through to the very end of the project.  And here are pictures from the project:

The finished projects... so hard to take a great pictures of diorama's and see the insides well!

Each of my girls got to pick out their own selection of tissue colors...

We cut them quickly into various sized squares using a matt and rotary cutter.

Just starting with painting the tissues onto the balloons...

More painting... it worked so much better than dipping the tissue paper.

Layer one complete and drying

Quite a lot of paste on this one!!!

The best way we discovered to dry the balloons - hanging them!

Once the eggs were dry and the holes cut, we put down a base of moss for grass.

My youngest wanted a cloud in her diorama... I think this one turned out really nice

We made trees out of felt sewn into a tube, stuffed, then with toothpicks on the bottom to act as anchors.

That girl is lying in the grass looking up at the cloud in the sky

 

 

Lessons Learned:

• Definitely use the petroleum/non-petroleum jelly on your balloon.  It really does help it to not stick to the tissue once you pop the balloon.  When we popped our first balloon, a tiny bit of it stuck and it sucked in the balloon.  After much horror on the part of my eldest, I was able to calm her down, cut the hole in the egg, and push the side back into place.
• Do NOT follow the instructions for dipping the tissue in the paste and placing on the balloon.  I can't believe that even worked for the author.  As soon as we dipped the tissue, it disintegrated.  It was a mess... I had to quickly think of another option.  What I found was that placing the tissue on the balloon (which is sticky from the jelly), then painting over it with a brush and the paste works like a charm.  Once you get to the second layer, if you're placing tissue on a part of the balloon without any wetness, use your brush to swipe a quick bit of paste, then stick your tissue and paint over it.
• Our balloons were naturally "egg shaped", so we left the hole at the top where the balloon knot was, carefully pasting tissue right up to the edge of the knot.  This allowed us to hang the balloons to dry.
• Definitely hang your balloons to dry.  We found on our initial layer that the tissue stuck to the bowl we had the balloons sitting on and caused rips.  The hanging solution we came up with solved the problem.
• One of our balloons burst through the tissue.  We're not exactly sure what happened.  I think that the temperature must have increase, causing the balloon to expand and burst through the tissue.  If this happens, just whip up a bit more paste and put on a few more layers of tissue.
• The instructions call for two layers, but I think three may be even sturdier.  Don't forget that this is tissue.  It is definitely a lot more fragile than paper mache created with newsprint!

VERY Last Minute Valentines ... for my girls

 

 

Who knew that my girls would be heartbroken that their Mama didn't make them any valentines?

When we were making my Last Minute Valentines the other day, I made only one myself, for my husband.  I told the girls then that I wouldn't be making them any valentines.  They seemed OK with that at the time.  But today, all I saw were sad faces.

Because we homeschool, they didn't have a classroom of kids they were going to receive valentines from, and they felt that the day wasn't being celebrated enough.

So, I had to get my "craft" on.  I had to come up with something quick and dirty that would be loved by them... and my solution?

Stuffed hearts with embroidered words on them.  I know my girls.  They both love anything that is soft and stuffed.  And I was happy to see that they were both extremely excited to receive these valentines.  If I had had more than 10 minutes planning to make these, I might have tried to stuff them with a bit of lavendar so they smelled nice.  Let's not even talk about the horrific embroidery I did on these (totally freehanded, so not evenly spaced or anything - very homemade!).

But the speed at which I whipped these up didn't seem to diminish the amount of love my girls have for these.  And I had all the supplies on hand (fuzzy red knit fabric, red felt, white embroidery floss, stuffing).

Who knew?

Last Minute Valentines

I just realized that Valentine's Day is in just a couple of days.

Because I homeschool, I don't have the stress and pressure of sending my girls to school with valentines for their whole class.  Nor do I have to worry about the candy/no candy decision.

But I do like to use it as an opportunity to make some homemade, hand-crafted valentines for family and close friends.

We started by each making a list of those people important enough to get a valentine from us.  Then, I took a collection of white and pink paper, folded in half, and cut out various sizes of hearts.  While the hearts were folded, I took a paper punch (or for my eldest, she did this herself) and punched holes all around the outside of the heart.

The girls then got to choose between red, pink or white yarn to lace through the holes.  Tie a pretty bow at the top, add maybe some glitter glue, possibly another smaller heart glued to the center - then it is just a personalized message and you have a wonderful valentine card!

The girls had so much fun making these.  The hardest part is waiting for that darn glitter glue to dry!  Easy-peasy!

 

Lessons Learned:

• When the heart is folded and you are punching the holes, make sure to punch an odd number of holes.  That will ensure that the next step will make your strings come out at the front of the Valentine for tying the bow.
• Start threading at the bottom of the heart, ensuring that the string passes to the back of the Valentine between the two bottom most holes.  Then lace up each side to the top holes and you'll find the string comes out on front where you can tie a bow.

Baby Grab Ball ... a Christmas Gift

So, I had gone to a craft fair held at a local Waldorf school and I saw someone selling a toy I remember from my own childhood - a fabric baby grab ball.  I thought to myself, "I can do that!" - and promised myself to make one of these for my youngest as a Christmas gift.

A bit of searching on the internet led me to this pattern.  As you can see from my photo, I chose not to use felt for this project, so when sewing it, I did standard stitching with a tight 1/4" seam allowance and then turned it inside out and stuffed.  I also opted to make it into a puzzle ball - so that my older children would find it interesting (and I seem to recall the ball from my childhood being a puzzle ball).

I particularly enjoy that I chose a quilt-weight cotton for the outside pieces of the ball and corduroy for the inside pieces.  The different textures of fabric give it just a nice feel on the hands.

It isn't easy for me to sew without everyone in the house knowing what I'm working on.  Given that this gift was for my littlest, I didn't figure it would matter.  It turned out that prior to getting the ball as a gift for Christmas, my littlest gave it a dry-run and absolutely loved it.  I loved that it was a hit.  And if I'm looking for a reasonably easy homemade gift to give at a 1st birthday, I think I'll pull this pattern out and use it again.

Homemade Gifts from the Children

Traditionally, my kids make gifts for those family and friends that they want to give something to.  And there was quite a bit of making this year!  I however missed capturing most of it on film.

Here, however, is one of the items.  My kids love to take fabric markers and draw dolls on white fabric.  We then cut out around the image, pick a piece of random fabric for the back, stitch it together and stuff it.  It's a very quick, simple and satisfying way to make dolls.  This "robot doll" was for a best friend.

My eldest had fun sculpting a cat from Sculpey - giving it unpainted as a project/gift for her best friend to paint.

We then made bookmarks (becoming a family tradition).  I have a simple Scotch laminator and was able to use this to take their art, laminate it, punch a hole in it and take two strings of yarn, twisting them together to make a nice string/tassel.  You can write on the back of the drawing/creation and put the year/date/etc and it shows through the back lamination.

We also took inspiration from these and these to make some Santa and Snowman Christmas ornaments (becoming another family gift tradition).

More Holiday Gifts ... Topsy Turvy Doll

I just LOVE Hillary Lang's book Wee Wonderfuls.  I forget how I found out about it, but luckily my local library had a copy.  So many cute dolls/toys to make.  The big question was, where to start!

I heard from my sister-in-law that my niece has just gotten old enough to be interested in playing with dolls, so I figured the Margot Topsy Turvy doll would be just perfect for her.

It took me quite a while to get this one started, and I ended up cutting it close (I spent 3 hours finishing the doll on Christmas Eve!), but it was definitely worth it.

I have fond memories of having a doll like this from my childhood.  The one I had was Little Red Riding Hood on one side and the Wolf dressed as Grandmother on the other.

I thought having a holiday theme for this doll would be nice, so I picked all fabrics that were festive.

The hardest part by far was sewing on the hair.  My fingers were sore afterward.  I luckily did a bit of surfing the web to see what others may have said about making this doll and found first that there were errata to the book pattern that I needed to download.  I then also found a comment that, when sewing on the hair, to be sure to have the yarn exit the head at the seam and enter the head in the middle (either at the part or where the bangs hit the forehead - I can no longer find the original comment).  I tried one strip of yarn the other way and it does indeed distort the shape of the head more.  I found in doing it the "correct" way, that any strangeness with the shape of the head can be nicely corrected.

I found myself using a ladder stitch to sew a lot together rather than using a whipstitch.  And I decided to sew on the collar of the dressed-up doll to leave it floppy (and I tacked it down in two places to prevent it from flapping up, but this way it looks like a real collar).

 You may also notice that, instead of sewing the sleeves to the body of the doll, I decided to hand topstitch them so they looked like real sleeves.  I'm happy with that decision.

If I had it to do again, I think I would do the hair a bit differently. When doing the back of the head, I would bring the yarn up on the other side of the seam so the seam is hidden underneath.  I think then, when you do the bangs, you wouldn't have to do as many (or any, for that matter) filling stitches.  If anyone tries that, please let me know how it works out.

Holiday Gifts... Christmas Stockings.

So this holiday season, while there were certainly a lot of gifts that were purchased and given, I had a few that I wanted to make.  The first was for some extended family that have a new child.

It is tradition in my family to have Christmas stockings.  And not just any stockings.  These must be handmade of red felt.  They must have big white letters on the front with the name of the stocking's owner.  They must have white felt fringe along the top of the stocking.  And they must have holiday images made of felt on the stocking.  Otherwise, the imagination is the limit for what images to place on the stocking.

My great-grandmother and her sister started this tradition.  I still remember my mother's stocking as a child. My grandmother was the one to make the stockings for me and my sister.  The first stocking I made was my sophomore year in college.  As a holiday craft activity, I got my roommates to sit down with me to make stockings to hang in front of the fireplace of our apartment.  I didn't make my next stocking until I was married and my husband and I bought our first house.  I made stockings for everyone who celebrated that Christmas with us that year.

It was years later when I was visiting a distant relative (the granddaughter of my great-grandmother's sister) that I saw that she had stockings exactly the same as my family's!

For this project, I had fun this time looking at Pinterest for some inspiration.  I searched for "felt Christmas decorations" to find items that would look good on the stockings.  I found some of my inspiration here, here and here.

I like to think that maybe someday I'll have grandkids that I can make these stockings for, and that future generations of mine will have these family stockings hanging by their firesides.