One Inch World

I’m not supposed to be blogging right now, I’m supposed to be meeting my deadline. But it’s been a week! My house is getting messier and messier and older daughter spent an unheard of amount of time in front of the computer today. So here, here is something I whipped up before I was sucked into this One Yard Wonders 2 thing.

Birthday. Mother suggested that she would appreciate play acting props, careers other than ‘princess’. I chose mail man. This hat, other than being too small, worked wonderfully from my imagination to implementation!

The bag, well, it is recycled from a shirt in the rag bag. I got a new serger! Named Sammy. This was practice using it, quite a different thing than I’m used to, it was quite fun! I made the strap about twice too long and tried to just lap it and sew to make it shorter, but that was a disaster, ended having to undo the bag seam, remake a bunch of it, but it was still a quick satisfying project. So what if I did write the letter shapes with permanent marker rather than erasable marker… It is still quite good for play acting, not going to be winning any design comps with it though!

I was throwing out all my old makeup – I never wear makeup anymore, and besides, old makeup is gross – and I thought, being sadly unable to throw *anything* away, that the twisty mechanism was a good thing to put into some kind of Montessori-esq tactile activity. So I cleaned them out, and then they twisted, but there wasn’t anything left to show that they went up and down, clearly they needed something inside them, and hey, wouldn’t it be cool if it was a crayon?? At first I was thinking of hot glueing in some regular crayons, but then I realized that fat crayons were more lipstick sized. They were too big to fit though, so I started whitling them down with a butter knife, until I could cram them into the little veined cups, and they stayed in just fine!

And they twist up and down, and they draw, and they are so cute! So, now we have four lipstick crayons, and I’ve only found *one* in the washing machine so far…

Once we were done making them we used the wax shavings – yes yes, couldn’t just throw them away – to make sun catchers. I’m sure that’s why it’s been raining for the last two weeks…

So, I’m sure, being moms, that you have some lipstick languishing in a drawer somewhere that would be so much happier as a crayon!

Basic Instructions:
Clean out lipstick with a paper towel, and maybe a q-tip. They don’t need to be washed, just mostly clean.
Take half a fat crayon, and whittle it down until you can jam it into the lipstick holder. You shouldn’t have to hammer it in, but it should be tight.
Done!

I think these would make great little valentines day presents too!

I’m back from vacation in modem land, and I have a lot of catching up to do on this blog! I think I need some kind of schedule, craft, homeschool, and kid art once a week on their own days, but I haven’t gotten there yet!

This is a carrot. Carrot leaves look nothing like that in reality, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a soft carrot with a realistic top. Only plastic ones.

This carrot is a basic cone pattern, with velcro patches holding it together. I’d really like to get some colored velcro for projects like this, and making sushi rolls, I’ve seen some really cute patterns that use colored velcro. I used random orange fabric patches to make the pieces I cut the cone sections out of, which I like. The construction is pretty messy though! I tried to get away with sewing the tiny circles on with the sewing machine. That never works…

Finally finally finally! This is what I’ve been working on for the last month besides my 2007 photo book. And suddenly I find I have nothing to say… I think the pattern came out nicely though, this time I decided to illustrate it instead of photographing it. I like how it looks, it isn’t overloaded with pictures for each tiny step, and I think the illustrations are easier to understand. I wanted to get this done further before the holidays, but it’s pretty easy to make, so maybe I’ll get some adventurous takers.

I think finding wheels is a little intimidating, so I put some sets of those up for sale in my shop too, although I really don’t want to get into the business of selling wheels. If I was a business major I’m sure I’d think it was great and call it something like horizontal productization or leveraged diversification or something, but there’s a reason I’m not a business major, and I don’t run a store. Because I want to make things, not resell them. Except, now I have a store. Hrm.

On a separate note, Thanksgiving was really low key at our house this year. We were going to go over to a friends for a group shindig, but Rebecca got sick Tuesday night. Thursday it got to be time to cook dinner, well, 20 minutes until dinner is supposed to be ready is a little late to start, and I felt lame that we didn’t have anything Thanksgiving-ish. So in 40 minutes I managed to cook elbow noodles (Rebecca survives half on whole wheat noodles and half on milk and fruit), sour cranberry relish, biscuit wrapped chicken sausage bits, and roasted chestnuts. And the biscuits didn’t come out of a pop-tube either. We opened a bottle of wine, and had the chocolate cream pie Jesse made for the party for dessert ourselves. I was quite pleased with my adrenaline fueled speed cooking session. It brought back the days when we used to have Iron Chef cooking parties at our house.

I should probably have some kind of giveaway now, shouldn’t I? Maybe tomorrow.

Rebecca has a swing in her (smallish) bedroom. I’m not sure what this says about me, or my husband that he agreed to hang it there. Anyway! It is a very tippy swing, and has been great for her balance. The other day I suggested we stack blocks on it, it was great! It turned an easy block stacking exorcise into quite a challenging one. So, if you just happen to have a tippy Ikea swing in your bedroom… no, I thought not.

Also, see those little people? Big hit. I got some peggish people, thinking I would paint them, but it turns out the smallest, ‘1-1/8″ Baby – Little People‘, are the perfect size to go with European blocks that have a basic measurement of 4cm, like Plan blocks and HABA blocks. So now they are all living with Rebecca’s blocks, and I’m not going to paint them. I think it might be a good idea to stain them different colors, because Rebecca kept getting mad at me when I would loose track of which one was ‘her’. And I might give them eyes, but probably not, and I’m definitely not going to paint them to be different community characters, because they are so much more flexible this way.

What to do with tiny fabric scraps from your stash? Cut interesting shapes out of them and add them to a felt board set. It will be more fun to build with because there will be more textures and patterns to play with, not just felt. You can use any kind of fabric for this, cotton, corduroy, velvet, linen… You can even use paper, and although nothing will stick on top of the paper shapes they can add a lot of interest too. The secret to using all these different materials on your felt board is to bond them to a layer of felt.

First you need a felt board though, perhaps you already have one, or they aren’t difficult to make. Just take a large piece of felt or flannel and back it with thick fusible interfacing for a roll-able board, or wrap it around a board and tack or staple or glue it for something sturdier. Here is a great and super simple travel felt board tutorial by MaryAnne at mama smiles, and a really cute felt board in frame posted by itty bitty love.

I think the fun part, and what I want to talk about here is making all the shapes. The traditional way is to cut them out of felt, which is great because it’s cheap and it doesn’t fray. But with a little craft glue or fusible interfacing you don’t have to be limited to just felt. The steps are super simple, demonstrated here in part by my three year old assistant.

Smear glue on the back of the fabric or paper. Use a craft glue that says it is flexible when dry, or I’ve also used glue sticks before to glue felt. If you are using liquid glue try to spread it quickly and thinly so it doesn’t completely saturate the fabric and felt.

Stick the paper or fabric down on top of a piece of felt.

Fold inside an ironing cloth to protect your iron from the glue and iron it flat and dry. Then cut it into an interesting shape.

If you have some fusible interfacing scraps around that have a fuzzy felty back you can skip the glue step. The thin kind of fusible interfacing I have is slippery on the back and won’t really stick to the felt board, but the thick kind I have is fuzzy on the back and works great. Just test what you have, and see if it sticks. Or you can use double sided fusible stuff, with fabric on top and felt on the bottom, replacing the glue above.

Just cover your fusible interfacing with tiny scraps, or big scraps, cover the whole thing with an expendable ironing cloth, and iron it. You will have to peel the ironing cloth off, but as long as there aren’t too large gaps between your tiny scraps it isn’t a big deal, the fusible glue isn’t that strong, especially if you peel it while it’s warm. Or you can cut up your fusible interfacing before hand to fit under your fabric scraps. If you have a lot of really tiny scraps though I don’t think it’s worth the fuss.

Then you’ll have a fast pile of interesting shapes to cut up.

Slice them and dice them into triangles, squares, circles, squiggles, splots, lines, wiggles… Oh and of course these fabric scraps make great felt person clothes. Here is a simple person pattern for making a felt doll, there are extra lines on it suggesting where to cut for shirts and short and pants, follow the outline from the waist to the hips and then flair out for a skirt, or just cut a trapezoid, felt boards are the land of imagination after all.

There are so many directions you can go with felt boards, geometric shapes, animals, people, story-boards… mama smiles has a lot more patterns for sets of felt shapes if you search her site for ‘felt board’, and there are also some cute felt shape ideas at Dundee Writer: Flannel Making Frenzy, and Chasing Cheerios: A Felt Jack O’Lantern Game.

Rebecca had as much fun cutting up the new shapes as playing with them later, so if you have a little one be sure to involve them in both kinds of play!