Archive for October, 2010

Mushroom Barrette Winner

Saturday, October 30th, 2010

Random.org says that the winner is peach nia from a lovely little dear.
She said:

i adore the last one xx

The blanket stitch lovers were far in the majority, followed by the running stitch and then the irregular whip stitch. Now I get to say, that I like the one I did first, with the running stitch. (They were put in the order I sewed them in, not my order of preference… I was trying not to stack the votes!) I really really like Japanese sashiko stitching, although I’ve never done any ‘actual’ sashiko. I’m going to have to try whip stitching the spots, and a running stitch around the outside next.

Mushroom Barrette Giveaway

Saturday, October 23rd, 2010

I’ve been sewing a lot of barrettes recently. I think I should always have some felt cut out to take with me and sew, like a knitting project. I manage that at the playground sometimes, but mostly when I find myself sitting somewhere I am sadly empty handed. Boo! I have been doing a bit better recently with these barrettes, because, I don’t know!

I think these mushrooms are cute though. Which do you like the best? The first is made with a running stitch, the second with a blanket stitch, and the last I made tonight with an alternating length whip stitch.

Here are the backs, so you can see how not perfect I am! The first two are backed in red felt, and the last in white. Not paying attention!

I will give one of these away. Just comment with which one you like the best, and if you win, you will get that one! You get an extra entry for blogging about my giveaway. (I’m going to have to start blogging about other people’s giveaways…) Giveaway closes on the 30th. Feel free to tell me that if my whip stitching were neater, you might pick that one, but given the particular instantiation of hole size and cap shape you like the running stitch, or whichever. I’d love to hear your opinion!

[ And while I usually reply to all comments, I don't generally reply to all giveaway comments. :-) ]

Glowing Play Pumpkin

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

This is a mashup of a felt board dress up pumpkin and a decoupaged candle holder. With it you can have a different pumpkin friend every evening, or experiment to find your favorite pumpkin face for carving!

We made two, one is a round plastic cookie tub, the other is a glass peanut butter jar.

What you need to do this:
* Clear container
* LED candle
* One 1″ square of stick on velcro (just the sharp half)
* Black felt
* Orange acrylic paint (tempera might work)
OR
* glue and orange tissue paper

Cut up the black felt into lots and lots of pumpkin eyes, noses and mouths. Size them to fit comfortably on your container.

The peanut butter jar we painted inside with watered down orange acrylic paint. Once it was dry I took the prickly half of a stick on velcro square, cut it into 5 pieces and stuck them about where I thought the face features should go.

The cookie container we decoupaged on the inside, using watered down school glue and 1″-ish squares of yellow and orange tissue paper. Rebecca worked on the lid, and Penelope helped me with the main container. She loves mashing a paint brush around! We added a little bit of Crayola Glitter It! Tempera Mixing Medium, (which is basically just glitter glue), to the watery glue to make our pumpkin glittery, because glittery is better. :-P

For this ‘pumpkin’ I just cut the velcro square up into 4 pieces. Both layouts worked.

We decoupaged the inside of the container, but if you are using a real candle (and hopefully a glass container) you should decoupage the outside so that the glue and paper don’t catch on fire! We used an LED candle so that I didn’t have to worry about the girls tipping it over when they were playing with the felt shapes, and of course, I wouldn’t put a real candle in a closed plastic container!

Put your LED candle into the container, and Play! And then of course, cut out more faces. Keep extra felt and scissors next to your pumpkin, because you never know what sort of shape you will need next!

Back to School Necklace

Monday, October 18th, 2010

One month ago Rebecca started her second year of preschool (parent co-op which she loves and never wants to leave, today she said she wished the school day was longer… Next year baby…). Penelope went down for her nap, and I suddenly had an hour and a half of completely child free time. How novel! (Rebecca hasn’t napped in two years…) So I used it to assuage my guilt at not having made Rebecca a back to school anything, and made her a pink necklace. She’s just started to get into pink. And princesses… If you asked her what her favorite color was before the school year started, she would say, all the colors that my art friends and I use to paint with. Now she says pink. And black, sometimes. Anyway, I gave her the necklace as a ‘congratulations on your first day of a new school’ present, which she was thrilled with. The school and the necklace. :-)

To make it I used the clear stretchy beading string you can get at the craft store. We use a lot of it around here, Rebecca loves to make bracelets, and so do some of her friends. We use the 1mm stuff, which is pretty sturdy. For the kids I used to try to knot it, or knot it around a bead for a stop, which sometimes came off, it’s slippery stuff. (When you make the final knot you have to use a dot of super glue to lock it.) I’ve finally figured out that the best way to start a string of this stuff for a small child is to bend the end into a large U and fold some masking tape around it.

I also dug into my vintage cats eye and crackle beads, glass pony beads and seed beads, and the few remaining pink beads in our glass bead grab bag. Need to get some more of those!

Giveaway Closed

Saturday, October 16th, 2010

Aaaaand the candy corn barrettes go to julie and Ramona who has been sewing some really cute stuff for her kids! Sorry if you didn’t win, there is a candy corn barrette up in my Etsy shop if you are actually desperate! ;-)

Also, I think I will be having another barrette giveaway real soon, because they are sorta fun. And I need to practice the whole publicity thing! Clearly either no one loves free things, or I am not very good at getting the message out yet… Practice!

Barrette Giveaway

Friday, October 15th, 2010

Just a reminder, that today is the last day to comment on my Candy Corn Barrette Tutorial to win a candy corn barrette. I am happy to ship internationally. I clearly haven’t learned to properly publicize my giveaways yet… So you have a really good chance of wining! :-)