No Sew Easy Old Fashioned Shawls

Since it was so cold down here, when I stumbled onto this tutorial over at wee folk art, I knew I had to make this. We love anything that reeks of little house on the prarie. Plus, I had woven cotton taking up space in my closet. These are so easy, you just cut the fabric into a square, and then fray about 3/4 inch by picking out threads. I made five of them in about an hour real mom time.

The girls were using them as shawls, as lap blankets, and they even wore them as scarves under their jackets. Emma is modeling the sari look. Chloe has gone back to her Polish roots and is wearing it as a head covering!

Ps. Brandy, if you are reading this. Don't make it, I already made one for each of your girls.

Santa's Sweatshop progress so far (and links if you wanna make them)

For Christmas, I like it when a certain percentage of the gifts are handmade. Trust me when I tell you that there is WAY more thought put into them. Crikey! One of these days I will go back to pure retail and get my evenings back. Just in case you find any of this inspiring, I will put the links where I can.

First I painted some Harry Potter peg people for Chloe. You find the bags of peg people at Hobby Lobby or Micheal's for less than 2 dollars for five of them. I have a tone of acrylic paints lying around, so I didn't need to purchase those. I did however have to purchase the finest paint brush imaginable. These are so tiny to begin with. I should have just borrowed a single strand of the hair from my friends newborn. I had great fun painting them. I know not everyone is into Harry Potter, but you can adapt them for what you like. I want to make Emma a Star Wars set. I have seen People create a little mock up of their own families too.

I made little felt tea bags for Emma's tea set Brian brought back from Holland. I am also midway through a felt set of poptarts and cookies. Here is a tutorial I am using.

The TuTu has been one of the quickest and easiest things I have made so far. I made three of them in under an hour (and that is real mom time=with many interruptions from the kiddies). I used Martha's tutorial here.

Next, my friend Terra and I made glass tile pendants and magnets. I am not sure how many of these will make it out as gifts. I love these SO much. I think we are going to be forced to make another batch just for ourselves. I used the same process for both. The glass makes it hard to photograph, but these turned out really well. Here is a tutorial. I bought all my supplies for these on Etsy very inexpensively. If you head out to a Hobby Store, its really pricey.

The last thing I made was Starbucks cup sleeves from fabric. Here is a link with several different designs.

I am in the middle of about eight knitting and sewing projects. As I get them done, I will update here and post the links just in case you are bored in the evening and need something to do while you watch holiday movies!

Craft fail: A for appearance, F for clean up

I saw this adorable tutorial online for how to make these "cupcake" ornaments, and I thought to myself, "I could totally do that!" and "this would totally be great to do with the kids!". So I promptly conned my friend Terra into doing it with me and the kids. I am sure that right now she is thinking of me as she picks concrete off the pads of her fingers. Don't you love gifts that keep on giving? If you have the same desire to make these, I have one question: "How attached are you to the skin on your fingers, or your kid's fingers?"

The project seemed easy enough as outlined on the website. You spray expandable foam into cupcake liners, cover with glitter, put a bell on top and wahlaa! Cute cupcake ornament. Riiiiigghhhtttt. The crazy tutorial lady left a few things out.

Problem number one, I had never worked with this foam before. Someone should have mentioned gloves. In its liquid state, it resembles liquid marshmallows, once its dries its much more like concrete mixed with super glue. It. will. not. come. off. As I type this, four hours later, I still can't completely bend my index finger. The only chemical that even touches it is pure acetone. Public service announcement: once the foam has taken off your skin, the acetone is really going to burn. Gloves would totally have solved this problem.


Someone also should mention that when you squirt the foam into your cupcake liner, it will not look all puffy and wonderful. As a matter of fact, its going to look like an albino cat used your carefully chosen cupcake liner for a litter box. If you don't know this in advance you will try to "fix" it (and so will your darling children), only exacerbating problem 1.

Poor Chloe, my sensory sensitive child just could not stand to have it on her fingers. We did the best we could to clean it up, but ack!!!! We are going to be picking this stuff off our fingers forever.

Now, just so you know.. the end result is super cute, and the glitter is very fun. Hindsight being 20/20, I am glad to have the cute craft to hang on the tree. However, we will never, ever, do this craft again. But, if I ever run into someone in the witness protection program who needs to get new fingerprints... well, I may have just the craft for them.