My eighty-year-old neighbor loves birds and birdwatching, and in the two months we have lived here, she has taught me a lot about the birds that call Texas home. This mobile was inspired by her love of birds. And my love of mobiles.
linen, wire
made at Mom's on one of our Craft Tuesdays.
They were $2 apiece, and I had a stack of more than twenty. Time to make some criteria. I decided that this time through I would only buy books that would inspire the kids to do something creatively, using their hands and their imaginations.
Growing up, we had many books of this kind, and as you can probably imagine, I ate them up! I still use ideas and techniques inspired by my collection of "make and do" books from childhood. So here's a start for my own kids. I could buy new, but then you wouldn't have these hilarious illustrations from the 70's!
Note: I did not get my stack down to 5 books, but these were the only 5 I could find at photo time!
As long as I'm the one doing the labeling...
To make the labels I mentioned on this post, I pulled out some iron-on transfer paper that I'd been hoarding since Christmas '06. I printed out as many "lasso the moons" as I could fit on a page. (Make sure you print in reverse-image!)
Then, one at a time, I cut out the labels really close to the image. Iron face down onto your fabric. Mine was already backed with and iron-on adhesive to help prevent fraying.
Let them cool a little before pulling the paper off the label. Then, when I'm finished with an item, I can just hand-stitch them on. If you want to iron the label to the item before sewing, make sure you protect your transfer with some parchment paper to prevent damaging it.
Then you can just sew it down when you're finished with the item. Here it is on my friend Jessie's little wristlet bag.
I have been having fun trying to wear something that I've made everyday. I have plans to make a couple skirts and a dress, but so far I've been making it easy on myself with these three scarves, which I'm wearing almost every day! The one in the middle is 100% mohair, and was knitted a few years ago. The one on the far left is made of super-soft wool that I handspun, dyed, and knit before we moved up here.
Other than those, there are the earrings that I'd completely forgotten about. These are among the few earrings I own with a remaining pair.
And here's the first new item of the year: This is actually the first knitting project I've done since moving here, almost 4 years ago. I had made one sock before, just to see if I could, but this is my first time to make a matching set!
These will not be the last socks to come from my needles. I had so much fun learning how to make these. I haven't worn them yet, though, because I'm afraid to wear them out!
...making my fabric stash look a little more respectable. I've always had the fabric organized by color--that's how I organize everything--but it's time to get it out of these shoe boxes and into a more usable form. As I'm ironing and stacking, I'm falling a little in love with all of them again. Some of them I didn't even remember having. New projects are racing through my head--which makes for a few sleepless nights. But it is making the Christmas gift list a little bit clearer. Lots of sewing to do this year, I think.
While I'm working, I'm listening to archived podcasts of CraftSanity. I don't have an iPod, but you can still listen by streaming on the internet. Most of the crafty interviews are over an hour long, so they make a tedious task much easier to bear. (They are also quite inspiring--another thing bringing on the insomnia!)
I just found the picture of the onesies we made for my teeny tiny niece, Ellie at the freezer paper party we had. I mentioned them way back here, and again here.
Almost all of these were made using freezer paper stencils, so they might give you some ideas. The four on the bottom are my favorite. That kitty was so unusual and mod. I would never have come up with such a cool design. (Good job, Charis!) The seahorse on the left was inspired by an Eric Carle illustration. I made one new one, but the angle makes it hard to see. It's way up at the top, second from the left. A dandelion. (click the picture for a bigger view)
I highly suggest hosting a freezer paper onesie party for a mommy-to-be. It was a huge blast.
I am pretty excited about Halloween costumes this year. We like to go as a group theme, so this year we picked 101 Dalmations. Yes. The kiddos are going to be puppies, Daddy is a dog-catcher, and I am of course Cruella de Vil. I already found my wig. Yay!
But there was a problem with the puppy costumes. No dalmation fabric anywhere. I wanted fuzzy, spotted puppies! So we did this:
Solid white furry felt. Then I made a quick stencil out of...
You guessed it--freezer paper. Only I didn't iron the stencil down. I didn't need the spots to have sharp, clean edges, and I wanted to be able to reuse the stencil. It worked really well!
And in less than an hour, I had four yards of the perfect (and cheap!) spotted puppy fur. Of course, I did this last weekend while Donnie was out of town and I was really REALLY sick, but had to watch the kids anyway since everyone I know was also out of town on the youth group retreat. So I was painting, mothering, and coughing my head off all at once. There might be something wrong with me.
A couple weeks ago I went down to Texas, mostly to see my new baby niece, but also to celebrate my dad's 50th birthday. in keeping with my New Year's Resolution this year, I had to give him something more than a card, so I decided that the freezer paper portraits I made of my kids would be just the thing. Here's what Emma's looked like last time I showed you:
I thought the green was a little overpowering, so I planned on retro-fitting a background design around Emma's head.
I mapped out the flowers and random dots that I wanted to use. I was trying to give it a screen-printed look with overlapping graphic images. I drew these directly onto the freezer paper, plastic side down.
After I cut out the shapes with my swivel knife (fiskars makes a great one!) I ironed the stencils directly onto the canvas. This can be a little tricky, since the heat makes the paint want to come up. Just be careful and use a cloth between the canvas and the iron.
Then, paint inside the stencil design. The ironing made a really good seal, so there isn't much seeping. I tried to keep the yellow paint from overlapping the black. It's supposed to be a background, remember?
Ta Da! Next came the flowers. I let them overlap the dots for a layered feel, but not the black of the portrait.
Cutting out those flowers was tedious, but worth it for the effect. You have to cut out each image separately, since the stencils can only be used once. They tear when you remove them from the ironed surface.
Ethan's was a little easier (relatively) since I was able to do the background first.
Start by painting your canvas a solid color. Then plot out your background shapes. It helps to know approximately where the portrait will be, so your background isn't crowding or lacking anywhere.
I love peeling off that freezer paper! Next comes the portrait. I printed out the stark black and white image, then traced it onto the freezer paper by taping both to a sunny window. Then I filled in all of the stencil portions with black sharpie so there would be no confusion during cutting. The black goes, and the white stays.
Then cut and cut and cut. Ouch. Hand cramp. There are only two "white islands on this stencil. They are the reflections in Ethan's eyes. When I cut these out, I had to save the white dots and iron them on before painting.
The reward for all of that cutting is almost instant. Carefully iron the stencil down, and paint.
I think the painted stencil looks cool, above. It even looks like Ethan to me.
And the reveal!
My dad liked them. Donnie was annoyed that I gave them away. I guess I'll be making a couple more. Maybe for Christmas.
Happy birthday, Dad!
If you have been reading this blog for any amount of time, you know that summer is a beast for me. I have been doing very little crafting around here, but I thought I'd share this little snippet, just so you know I haven't stopped altogether. This is the instruction list I left for my mother-in-law a couple weeks ago when we went to Chicago (without the kids!). It's still on the fridge, 'cause I think it's pretty and it makes people laugh. I didn't intend for it to be funny, though. This is still pretty close to our daily routine.
Click on the image to make it bigger.
When my sister first got pregnant, she asked me if I would make her a onesie for the baby to wear home from the hospital. I said, "Sure! Sounds great." And then I forgot all about it. Not that I forgot she was pregnant or anything, and occasionally the memory of the task would come back to me and I'd say to myself, "Oh, yeah...I still need to do that..." and then instant memory loss again.
And now she is 37 weeks pregnant. So this was what I did last week in the midst of all the hooked rug hoopla.
This one is their favorite: (Until they settled on the name Ellie, they called her "Fluffy." Ahem.)
Freezer paper stenciling saves the day, yet again.
