St. Patty's Day Hair Bows

So I sat down yesterday to make sure me and my big Ks had green for today. My idea was pretty simple- 4 leaf clover hair bows, and I think they turned out pretty good.

Here we go, start with a few simple things:

-Hot Glue Gun
-Alligator Clips
-2 different shades of Green Ribbon
*Grosgrain ribbon usually works best for ribbon sculpting but with something this simple my silkier craft ribbon worked just fine.

Start by lining your alligator clip:

Cut your ribbons, I didn't measure them, just formed a loop that I thought would be good sized and then cut 4 pieces that size. For the second color, (I used a darker in back to make a shadowed look) make them about a half inch longer, and cut 4 of those.

Then use your hot glue gun to make petal shapes with all of your strands:

(For some reason it keeps switching those two pictures and won't let me switch them back, oh well, you get the idea.)

Then glues the smaller pieces onto the larger pieces at the point of the petal:

Use a foam or felt circle for a supportive base, form your clover, hot gluing the petals on:

Cut another smaller strip of ribbon, about the length of your alligator clip. (I stuck with lining my clip in dark and putting the lighter on top to keep the shadowed look on the "stem" also.) Then glue it to the front of your clover.

Almost done... Glue the clip to the back, this can wait until the very end, but for some reason I didn't today. Make sure your stem and clip stick out in the same direction; and think about the way you will push the clip in to make sure that you won't have an upside down clover!! (I made this mistake with the hearts I did for Valentine's Day.)

Lastly, I didn't like how the middle of the clover showed so many seams, so I decided to add a button. I was going to do a green, but I don't have any and didn't feel comfortable in my ability to dye a white one, so I went with a light yellow-almost gold color. And here's the finished product:

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Celebrate responsibly,
Jo!

A Quick One

Got a super fast one for you today. Next week is spring break so on Friday my K girls' school is having a "Spring Fling." They will be offering several different movies for the kids to watch and for some added fun, they are to dress up to match the movie.
My oldest, KK, has decided that she wants to watch The Lego Movie, and the chosen attire to match is superheroes. Well... being a 9 year old girl we don't have much superhero clothing... or toys... or anything really, unless you count movies, Daddy loves his comic book movies.

Anyway, I found a simple solution: I let her choose whatever superhero she wanted and I was going to make the symbol for her. She choose Batman, and here it is:

I found an image online, and traced the components on to felt. Then I used Heat n' Bond to hold them together. We will pin this on a black t-shirt and we're good to go!
**Word to the wise- I found that the heat will actually start to melt the felt, so it's best to use a layer between the iron and the felt (since I was in the kitchen working, I just grabbed a paper towel and it worked perfectly).

Also, remember those cute dresses I made for my twin Ks? Today is warm enough for them to actually wear them, however they wouldn't stand still for a photo shoot. So here's a picture of them in their high chairs eating so I could get them to sit at least semi-still:

That's all for now,
Jo!

Bow Keeper

With all the bows I've been making we've run short on storage for them. So I did a quick Google search and found a couple ideas, one noticeably easier than the rest and, honestly, if needed, could be added to.
So we started with a trip to Goodwill for a large picture frame and Walmart for paint (and decided on a few accessories too).
My bathroom, where it will be hung, is grey scale, so I told the girls they had to stick with black, white, and grey (leave it to my fabulous 5 year old, KL, to realize that silver i practically grey). She chose a very sparkly, glitter filled silver (I wasn't paying attention, and figured it was a more metallic, oops). So I started to paint the frame and realized it wasn't going to work so the girls picked a white base with the silver glitter over it. (And according to KL, one coat wasn't enough so the second picture is two coats.)

 After the frame was completed we moved to the backdrop. I was going to so a solid black but decided that was fun enough. So I taught my girls how to splatter paint (and they had a blast, it was so cute to watch too).

KL was practically dancing to throw paint! (And I'm so thankful that it warmed up this week and allowed us to go outside to do this!)
Here's the finished product:

Definitely more fun than solid black! (Even though my grey is so light that you can't tell the difference from the white.)
Next we added ribbons, we took a couple black and white, and one grey and silver to keep with our color scheme. All I did was hot glue them to the back- super simple!

After that it went back into the up-cycled frame and added a few decorative silver stars we found at Walmart. (Detailed in the close up but you can see in the frame there are a few more.)

All done! Super easy right, much easier than wood working to make one that looks like a dress and much less material cost than the, albeit cute, flower pot bow keeper I saw.

Here's the finished product, with most of the bows in place (all but the plain pink in the lower right was made by me):

That's all for now,
Jo!

"Fairy Dough"

I saw a Pinterest idea for "fairy dough" made of just hair conditioner and corn starch so I figured we'd give it a try. First, here's the cute pics- Mixing it all up:

 Monster Hands :)

And then playing:

It really was very simple. Start with hair conditioner (when we went shopping the cheapest was scented, so our dough smells like strawberries) and then add corn starch until it makes a dough. The recipe I found called for 2.5 cups for 1 cup of conditioner but we started small and then added if needed and I'm glad we did. I started KK with 1.5 cups and KL with 1 (because being smaller it takes her a little more to knead it in). KK's turned out really dry and we needed to add more conditioner to it, but KL's was still pretty sticky so we added more starch to hers. By the end KK's was still drier than KL's dough but both were happy with their results and played until bedtime.

That's all for now,
Jo!

"Warmies"

KL has always been attracted to heat. She used to curl up next to my laptop so she could feel the fan push off the heat, she sits on the couch where the sun is shining in on it, and most recently she has discovered hand warmers (left over from Christmas gifts for delivery men). So I decided to make her a rice hot pack, and of course I had to make two so KK could have one also.

Remember in my dress post I told you my grandma had mailed me a bunch of fabric scraps, well some of those were pre-cut squares and rectangles from her quilt making. So I started by sewing together two rectangles of fabric, right sides together, on 3 of the 4 sides, with a zigzag to help secure it. And then flipped it right side out.

Last year me and KL dyed some rice for a speech activity that's just been sitting in a box. The girls used it as a sensory box many times but for the most part it just sits there. So I grabbed a couple cups and added a little lavender EO since these will mostly be used for bed time.

I put about 1 1/2 - 2 cups of rice in each bag.

Then just folded in the top and stitched it up.

And here's the finished product:

Two "warmies", just put them in the microwave for a minute or two and they'll stay warm for about 10 minutes.  I added a little too much EO so the smell is a little overpowering but otherwise they were loved by my big Ks.

That' all for now,
Jo!