Mermaid Baby Gown

One of my favorite sewing blogs to follow is See Kate Sew. Ever since I saw her mermaid baby gown I have been looking for an excuse to buy it. (My youngest was still small enough, but also so small that I couldn't find time, at least I thought I wouldn't be able to find time.)

Fast forward a bit, and my bestie pregnant with baby number 3, and it's a girl!! So, I talked myself out of being afraid of knits and the envelope neckline and bought it. And then I spent at least a month looking for the right fabrics, probably because I hadn't fully talked myself out of the fear of working with knits.

But when I finally found a fabric that I loved for this gown and got to work. It really was so easy. Kate does a great job of walking you through the steps in the pattern. I cut the pieces one night after the 3 youngest were in bed, and the next day I was able to get it all sewn together -- that's less than a day, total!! I felt pretty awesome, even though I know a huge part of it was great instructions.

Anyway, here's the finished project:

 Isn't it just the most adorable baby gown ever!?! I love it so much!
I also used some left over fabric to make a few headbands to match (one in the floral and one in the pink and gold polka dots) but I absolutely did them the day before I took the gift to her and so I didn't get a picture of them.

That's all for now,
Jo!

Fun with Nails

Summer break seemed to fly by, but nail polish was on my girls' minds. So we bought a few fun tools and played around a bit.
We did a lot of just plain or sparkly nails, but here are a few of our more artistic designs.
(I thought I took more photos than just these, but I guess not.) 

A fun floral for mom, free-handing some flowers (the flower centers were the same glitter as the accent nail) :

 A blue to black gradient, with white donut stamps for KK:

 Inspired by Disney's Descendants, purple and black (Mal's signature colors) and since we didn't have a dragon stamp she chose a seahorse - or sea dragon, as KL chose to call them.

I feel like I've been super concentrated on house tasks that I've not had much time for crafting. It doesn't help that I still have a VERY curious 2 year old who likes to take anything I'm working on, if it's in her reach.  Hopefully soon I'll be able to get fully back into the crafting/artistic swing. Maybe...

That's all for now,
Jo!

Family pictures

A few years ago I sent my mother and mother-in-law (and grandmothers) a series of photos of the kids holding, in age order, the letters L, O, V, and E for Mother's Day. This was obviously before KO. I spent some time trying to figure out how to add KO into the series. I thought maybe an S, because I call them my "little loves"; I thought about a D, because we were sending the pictures to people who we want to make feel loved; I was suggested a U, so it would say "love u"; but I finally settled on a heart. The problem was I had a hard time finding to make the letters. They were either the wrong size, or I didn't like the way they looked, or they were pre-decorated and cost no less than $20 which I didn't want for something I was going to have to re-decorate to fit the format. But I finally found one, it was still a little bit bigger than what I wanted, but I was tired of looking and settled, plus it had a string that made it easier for the little one to hold on to.

Here's where we started, it was a dark stain, but I had already painted it black by this picture:

After adding the tissue paper I took the girls outside and took some photos.

Here's the final chosen photos:

Aren't they the cutest?!?! I love them!

That's all for now,
Jo!

Theme Days

End of the year means theme days for the ABC countdown.

Here's what we've thrown together:
B = Book Character Day
KL went back and forth between Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter and Rarity from MLP (she's an interesting mix, and I love it).
She settled on Rarity, which it great because I only had to make a skirt and a hair clip.
Here's the crafting:

We paired it with a white shirt and leggings, along with tall purple socks to try and imitate for tall purple boots. Then we used a little eye shadow to make the cutie mark on here cheek. She also kept her hair in a bun after washing it the night before so that her would be wavy.

Here's the comparison photo (apologies for the early morning quick shot before heading out the door poor lighting):

E = Eagle Day (AKA Spirit Day)
I love my little KL who is just a little extra. Along with wearing her school shirt, she also asked me to make her an eagle costume. (She probably comes by it naturally because I didn't even think twice about making it for her.) I followed the same pattern that I did for the parrot earlier this school year for jungle day.

 Here she is showing off her wing span <3.
And she smiled the whole time she wore it (at least that I saw), she spent the whole morning showing it off.


Edit to add a little cuteness, KO wanted to be Rarity too:

That's all for now,
Jo!

St. Patty's Decor

The kids are on Spring Break this week. Monday is library day, so since they are home they got to pick out their own books. KL chose a book of St. Patrick's Day crafts. This isn't the first time, she's an artistic child, she has checked out several "learn to draw" and craft and kid themed cookbooks in the past. Most the time, she looks through them and maybe picks out a few to try. Most the time it gets brought to me, I say I need to check and see if we have what we need, and it usually gets forgotten or we don't have the materials/ingredients.

This week, all the crafts were pretty simple, and she picked out 4 (I think) and only 1 did we not have the materials for. So here's what we made:

Cute little window garland. (She chose to let it fall down instead of combining them for a long chain across the top.)

These were pretty simple, I cut a ton of 2" paper strips in the colors of the rainbow. She glued them together to make long chains, and then folded them, what I always called, "snake" style. (Where you stack two and then flip them one over the other.)

Here's a few action shots:

(And a peek-a-boo, twin

The first 2.

Having fun folding, after she got the hang of it.

While KL was working on this, the twins were busy playing with the scraps. Since construction paper is 9" wide and I was cutting 2" segments, I had left over 1" lines. So I split these among the twins, gave them a glue stick and said have fun. (They don't get the glue very often, so they were pretty happy.)

Here is what KM came up with:

She made a lot of "x-rays" (this is what she currently calls the letter X), and then didn't want to be done with the glue yet, so she glued all of them on top of each other.

Here's KN's:

Sorry, the brightness is way up on this photo, I was doing my best to try and get the color to show (I should've taken the photo before I hung it in the window). I think it slightly resembles a prism - she was just gluing strips together randomly, there is not pattern to the madness, just simply glue and paper.

Also while KL was working, KK looked through to see what ideas were in the book and she found the rag/scrap wreath. So here's how her's turned out:

 The book used lots of green, I thought a touch of gold would be nice too.

So here's our all involved, individually, decor. It was a fun way to spend the first day of Spring Break, here's hoping we can continue to stay busy, but we also have a new round of sickness moving in so we'll see.

That's all for now,
Jo!

February's Crafts

Sorry I've been quiet, since the New Year we've been pretty busy.
The sickness kicked in (I had thought we were going to get lucky because we hadn't had anything in the month of December). The sport kicked in, so there was just less time to craft and even less to post.

In the month of February, there was obviously Valentine's Day. Here is the one craft we did:

This was originally a Disney's Family Fun Magazine craft, but I we'd done it before and I used a few short cuts that really left me with just using their idea more than anything else. I cheated (saving myself hours of cutting) by using heart shaped stickers for the ears. I also thought it would be cute to add a small one for a nose which wasn't part of the original idea. I skipped out on the feet, also to save me from hours of cutting and just glued it straight to the cheese. These went with one of the twins.

KL looked through a magazine for ideas and decided on Valentine's themed whistles for her class.

The other twin brought these I had bought a pack of 30 (or so) twistable Crayola crayons on sale a while ago and they've just been sitting unopened because school provides an ample amount of already opened packages of crayons. So I figured that was a good way to get them used.

After Valentine's Day, we had a wax museum for the school, and KK was required to participate.
So she chose Cleopatra for her famous person, and I said sure, not thinking about the fact that I was going to have to make/buy a costume for her. But I think we pulled it off (especially since I didn't even buy the fabric until a week and a half before and took a break to print/make/supervise 4 year old signatures on Valentine's).
Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the full costume. I took a video of her speech from the night, but there's a few too many identifying markers so I'm a little uncomfortable posting it. So here's the pictures that I do have:

This was her necklace. This is a recent photo and it's been played with, so it's missing a few gems.
This was craft foam, spray painted gold, and then adorned with sticker gems, beaded strands, and metallic Sharpie in a few spots. Then we just hot glued a ribbon to each side to tie it on her neck.
(Kudos to the Orca for helping with the picture.)

The event is a fund raiser for her class so she needed a "bank" to collect the money paid to hear her speech. So we paper mached a pyramid and then we painted it gold.
And then there's her crown, we used craft foam and an embossing tool to press the snake shape, along with a few small red jewels for the eyes, and a few extra jewel stickers for the added riches emphasis.

Her outfit was a black dress (she liked the black costume ideas better than white- we look into buying a costume, but they looked cheap but cost a fortune). I actually made her dress (very simply)- I bought 8 feet of fabric, folded it in half long-wise and then width-wise, and then cut out the neck hole and the width needed for her body. Sewed the seams for the sides and so the extra fabric on the arms just draped, since most costumes come with a ribbon that almost looks like a train but attaches to the hands. I don't even know what it's called, but I think we made it work, it still made it look flowy and regal.
On top of that we spray painted a belt gold, so she could cinch the waist and break up the black and allowed it the extra to fall down.
And finished it off with a pair of sandals that laced up the leg (that I found on sale for $10).

We accessorized with a wrapping paper tube and card stock paper cut to the shape of an ankh, also spray painted gold. Tada, instant staff.

I think the cheapest costume I found (which didn't include as much as I had here) cost $40, and we ended up spending a total of $35.

We also made a paper mache snake because she needed a "prop". I used spray paint to make it green, she designed and painted it's markings. Then we added a quick felt tongue.

That's all for now,
Jo!

My Little Pony Soft Book

Here is the soft book that I made for my niece.
She's into My Little Pony right now so that was the theme I went with. Each page represents a different pony character and I put that character in the corner (using Shrinky Dinks). My girls love MLP (as if the hair bows I've shown didn't give it away) so this one was pretty simple.

Here goes:

 Again I labeled with the first initial, it was easy, especially since they didn't get sent out until after Christmas (*Cough*NewYears*Cough*) anyway.

 Princess Cadence - A simple mix and match page to build the Crystal Palace, similar to Cinderella's castle.

 Princess Celestia and Princess Luna - This is a spinner that changes from day to night (I just used a cardboard disk with a brad)
Princess Twilight Sparkle (And Spike) - Mixing potions with another abacus page (I seriously love the educational possibilities of the abacus)

 Apple Jack - Picking apples -- (This is the reason I bought the Cam snaps) Everything is attached because we know a 4 year old will not manage to not loose these little apples, even if the basket is made to hold them.
Rainbow Dash - This was the hardest one for me, so I went with just rainbow colored layers. The red is actually glued to the book but the others are free to twist around the brad in the corner and fold back over.

 Pinkie Pie - Color Matching - each balloon has a matching colored snap (the purple snap is more lilac, but I didn't have the snaps yet when I cut the felt)
Rarity - Dress-Up, because that's how Rarity is, all about fashion

And finally an ISpy page for Fluttershy. Since Fluttershy is all about animals, I made animals the object to search. (That's the butterfly on the left side of the panel.)

I got a message from my Sister-in-law containing images of them both playing with them and huge smiles on their faces. That's why I do these kind of things. I know some people say it's the cheaper route (PS- not always) to make a gift instead of buying, but I love putting thought and love into what the individual wants, and customizing it as needed. I usually try to buy something to throw in there too, so they don't think I'm doing it to be cheap- not sure if that's how it comes off but whatever.
I love it, and if it makes them happy, I am over the moon happy for them.
Sorry to end on a mini-rant, but it's how I'm feeling right now, and I said from the beginning this is more like an online journal than a blog, I'm not trying to push it on anyone, just keeping the memories together.

That's all for now,
Jo!

Batman Soft Book

Here is the soft book that I made for my nephew's Christmas gift:

 My nephew's name begins with the letter B (although, this works for Batman also).
Also, this picture shows that I used black and yellow Cam snaps for the closure. I bought the Cam snaps for this project (well, technically his sister's, but close enough) and now I'm in love and so is KL (she put snaps on her socks so they stay matched in the wash this weekend).

 The first page was just a simple puzzle page.
With this book, it was kind of fun to put it into "story mode"- I used the "directions" to lead it.

 Next, was a "paper doll" page. It wasn't finished when I took the picture apparently, but they were in dress suits and need to change into their super suits.
Then was readying the utility belt. There was a different tool in each pocket (anchored so they weren't lost, or thrown at his little sister) - there was a Batarang, a rope, and a key. I took to Google and found many lists of tools from Batman's belt, most are sprays or too big to fit in a soft book page, so I took what I could and made it work.

Bat Mobile - The wheels button on and off, simple fine motor practice.
Grappling Hook - This page slides the same was as Ariel in the princess page, I took the advantage of the side angle to add a satin cape, because why not?!?!

 Next we're tackling the villains, Penguin is an abacus page of weapons (batarang, "POW", throwing stars, and bat bombs). Joker is just a simple lift the flap, under the flap is the traditional comic book "BOOM". I tried to keep it simple and not to violent appearing.

And finally another ISpy page, looking for the villains. (Harley Quinn is showing.)

I found the cute, more kid-(and felt cut out)friendly character style by searching through Pinterest. The simpler animation was a God send for this project.

That's all for now,
Jo!

Soft Books Christmas Gift

This year we had my niece's name for Christmas, who is very similar to my girls and myself; she's crafty and loves to learn. So along with a few crafty and educational gifts (dry erase to be done multiple times, of course), I put together a Princess inspired soft book. So here goes.

I forgot to get a photo of the cover, but it was a simple crown, nothing too fancy.

First we have Snow White. She and the Seven Dwarfs are done in Shrinky Dinks and stitched on.
I love an abacus page because it's so educational. You can practice counting and addition, and it's just fun to push them side to side. So we've got the gems from the Dwarfs' mine.

 Next, we get to build Cinderella's castle. I used a sandcastle template, but cut it out of the proper colors. It's all velcro, so it can be mixed and matched.

Then Aurora (I looked up the years the movies came out and put them in that order, but I'm sure that the 6 year old I gave it to won't notice). Pink dress, blue dress - a simple dress up page, following the Disney version. I reinforced the dresses to make sure they wouldn't tear after several uses.

 Beauty and the Beast - The magical rose, the petals can be removed and put back, another simple Velcro page.
Ariel - She's on a looped ribbon so she can swim back and forth. There's also a couple lift the flaps (that I also, apparently, forgot to photograph) that expose Sebastian and Flounder.

 Mulan- this one was a little tricky, I had a hard time thinking of what to do. So I Shrinky Dink'd (sure, that's a word) a few characters and hid them in a pocket with some colored rice for an ISpy page. I was pretty fun to play with though.

Tiana - The frog's tongue is looped to "catch" the button flies.

 Rapunzel - Braid the hair- this is just sewing floss to be played with as her hair.

Elsa, well Olaf really - This page is 2-for-1, Olaf can be taken apart and rebuilt and the snowflakes on the white felt each match a snowflake drawn on the blue background.

That's all for this one, but there are 2 more that I'll post after they make it to their future homes. I finished them on the first day of the girls' winter break and it got super cold so I didn't want to take everyone out and then it snowed, so I REALLY didn't want to take everyone out. So they finally got out this week after the girls went back, and should be there early next week.


That's all for now,
Jo!