felt veggies

i made an assortment of felt vegetables for my niece for christmas. i'd never sewn any stuffed things from felt before, but that's how i craft (apparently) -- do something new, get the hang of it, then promptly become bored of it. :)

(i should say, i'm catching up on posts from before the holidays -- because i didn't want to spoil the surprise for the various gifts i made, and also because i've been swamped since then.)

i originally planned to design all the felt food myself, but i was short on time in december, and am finally starting to learn from past experience. so, i searched for and found some really cute patterns on etsy from seller umecrafts. and then i splurged and bought the set of every kind of vegetable she offers. i was really happy with the patterns -- for the most part, the instructions were clear (every so often, a step was less than obvious, probably because i'm new to this), and she used really interesting techniques to create the various shapes. so, by (for once) not trying to recreate the wheel, i ended up learning a lot, and as a bonus, got my project done in less time with less frustration. (though, i did have to get over the sense that i was somehow cheating...)

i wanted to use wool felt, and after some research, i ordered from prairiepointjunction.com because they had a really big selection. after ordering, i discovered from their FAQ that the felt isn't terribly colorfast, and i was concerned, since i was making this for a baby, and babies chew on everything. i contacted prairie point junction, and they were very helpful, putting me in touch with the manufacturer. in the end, the answer was that the dyes are the same as what is used for clothing -- so, probably not the best thing for a baby to eat, but not really dangerous either (note: i'm paraphrasing here; if you're concerned, don't take my word for it...). the colorfastness of the felt varied tremendously from color to color, and in surprising ways. (one purple shade bled like crazy, the other not at all. same with the greens. odd...) oh, i was also pleased that prairie point junction offered embroidery floss for purchase that was preselected to match each color of felt they offered. that saved me having to make a trip to the local craft store after my order arrived (key during a the busy month of december).

so, all that was about locating the patterns and supplies, but nothing so far about the process. i guess that's because after i had everything (including the freezer paper for transferring the patterns -- who knew, they don't just sell that in every grocery store anymore?), they really just fell into place. easy, pretty fun to make, and turned out really cute... the hardest part was choosing which veggies to make, knowing i wouldn't have time to make them all. i still plan to make more for my little one... but now that i've already figured it out, i'm in less of a hurry to do more. they're worth the time, though, so this will reach the top of my queue sometime soon...

do you have other sources for felt or patterns for felt crafts? i'd love to hear about it in the comments.

snowflake cake

while up north for the holidays, my mom had a milestone birthday (she's not the type, i'm sure, to care if i mentioned which one, but you know...) i'm rarely around for her birthday, so i wanted to take the opportunity to make her a cake. i had a big idea for a far more complicated very personalized cake, but every single person i told paused, then said: "oh. hmm." turns out that translates as "i'm pretty sure you could do that complicated cake, but that in the process, you will become a stressed out crazy person who is insufferable to be around." turns out they (husband, sisters) were all likely correct. so, plan B.

we were experiencing record snowfall during our visit. as in, 33 (or more) inches of snow in one month, the most ever on record. that in combination with temperatures such as 15 below zero (yes, farenheit!) kept us from leaving the house more than once a week or so. i grew up in this northern extreme climate, but this was just ridiculous. so rather than fight it -- my sister decreed that no one was allowed to complain about the weather unless they were actually outside in it -- i thought we'd embrace it as inspiration for the cake.



the hardest part of this cake was making the royal icing snowflakes, and honestly they weren't that hard other than that they were very prone to breaking. predicting this (wow, i'm a genius!), i made about three times what i thought i'd need. turns out i only broke about half. um... success!

sadly, you can't see it in the photos, but larry wired up some LEDs to go under the glass cake plate. they were six independently-controlled strings he set up in a wave effect that looked like the light in blustery, blowing snow. it was really impressive and went perfectly with the snowy theme. always fun when our interests can combine into one project. :)



i think perhaps the snow cake didn't appease the gods of winter. as it turns out, we may have angered them: the day of the party, yet more bad weather moved in, and half the guests couldn't make it. and in fact, *we* couldn't really it the 10 miles to my aunt's house, so we changed the location at the last minute. (as a kid, half my winter birthday parties we canceled, so i think a half-cancellation is probably considered a success with those odds?)

my mom seemed a bit "who, me?" regarding the cake (insisting i not go to any trouble, surprised i was bothering to cover it with fondant). well mom, for you i'd happily make a cake as big as a real snowdrift. okay, not that twelve foot high monstrosity on your patio this year, but you know what i mean...

egg lathe

egg lathe, originally uploaded by kelanew.

merry christmas to me! my thoughtful and resourceful husband made this egg lathe as a gift for me. now (when i find the time again) i can make super-straight divisions on my pysanky. i can hardly wait to give it a try on a real egg (this was just a test, as we're away from my egg supplies right now). check out those closely-spaced parallel lines! and the coolest part is that unlike many egg lathes, it works for vertical divisions as well as horizontal ones. neat.

true to form, he made it from random objects found around the house, but yet you can hardly tell it's repurposed unless you really inspect it. this uses a synthetic wine cork, plastic rings from target pharmacy bottles, and a little acrylic make-up pot as well as wood and hardware. (it needs a few finishing touches yet, because he was waiting to get some input from me.)

thanks, larry! now i'm feeling a bit sad that you are nearly the only exception in my "all handmade christmas" plan. (though you seem to be enjoying your kindle just fine. that, and the added gift of a slightly less-crazed wife who was not trying madly to finish yet one more gift in time for christmas. :)

more on handmade christmas as i find the time to post -- i've been making a ton of gifts the past few months but couldn't post many of them lest i spoil the surprise. so now i'll catch up.

delayed holiday traveler boarding pass paper chain

not much of a craft, but i thought i'd share...

our flight was canceled in minneapolis on thursday (the best part being that the flight just disappeared from the screen without explanation, and no one even came to talk to us for 20 minutes. stay classy, northwest airlines.) (okay, the other best part was that i was sick, larry had zero sleep since we had to get up at 4 a.m., and we had two kids along for the ride.)

throughout the day, as we waited standby on various flights for 8 hours before finally making it on board, we were handed more and more sets of boarding passes. my ticket envelope ultimately held quite a thick stack of papers -- so i decided to turn a holiday inconvenience into holiday cheer! it's now a lovely paper chain adorning our doorway.

and to VPI student amanda who was attempting to make her way to glendive, MT... i hope you found your way eventually. i felt so sad for you as my family boarded off the standby list, leaving you and 27 others to yet another round of waiting.

kid craft: felt ornaments

felt ornaments, originally uploaded by kelanew.

eva made these ornaments for her cousins and such this year. i traced cookie cutters (mostly in a holiday theme, if you count the Holiday Cat, right?) and cut them out for her. well, she cut out the gingerbread man herself, which is how we discovered that kid scissors don't really work on wool felt, and i was fearing for the safety of that useful bit of skin between one's thumb and hand when helping her with the kitchen scissors.

she then decorated with glitter glue and sequins, sewed around the outside, and stuffed them. together, we added a hanging loop and a few jingle bells. [i will caution that once stuffed, the glued-on sequins tend to pop off easily, so beware if your ornament will be going to a household with a little one -- or use stronger glue, or stitch down the sequins?]

the nice thing is that you can customize this project to suit the needs of your kid -- or even make it work for several kids of different ages. an older kid can trace, cut, decorate, sew and stuff themselves, and a younger sibling might just do the decorating part.

my other discovery with this project: i came across some very inexpensive craft felt from the kunin group that is made of ecofi (or ecospun), which is made from 100% post-consumer recycled plastic bottles. hurray! that assuages my slight guilt of not letting eva have at my brand-new wool felt stash and giving her synthetic instead. :)

[warning: rant ahead..]
oh, and i found this felt at joann's -- why oh why, i ask myself, was i at joann's yet again, despite my oft-sworn (and occasionally shouted out for the benefit of other customers) oath that i Will Never Shop Here Again. *sigh* i really have issues with that place, their staffing policies designed to keep a minimum of 5 people in line at the cutting table *and* the check-out counter, their deceptive pricing, and on and on. but yet, i find myself there because it's closest to my house and adjacent to the grocery store, and i'm loathe to drag two kids in and out of car seats an extra time if i don't have to. despite the location, though, i would probably still save time if i drove across town and went to a real craft store. do other people have this problem at joann's, or is it just my local store? (well, i know i'm not the *only* one -- this woman received the worst customer service ever there.) [sorry, end rant. wow, calm down, there, grinchy...]

ahem.. where was i? yes, this project is perfect for little holiday gifts for your kid's friends, teachers, grandparents, etc. easy, inexpensive, green(ish), and makes for a fun afternoon. yup, those are pretty much all the criteria.

recycle bin advent calendar

it may sound silly, but i was recently freaking out about advent calendars. i'd say it officially kept me awake at night (once). i wanted to make just the right kind, something we'd keep and use year after year -- but i didn't have the time to make the sort of thing i had in mind. i meant to start on it this past summer, but then -- oh yeah -- i went and had a baby. i guess that took some of my free time.

but then i was filtering through the dozens and dozens of catalogs in our stack of mail that was held during our recent month away... and i knew just what to do. i decided we'd make an advent calendar entirely from the recycle bin (okay. plus some glue and tape). bonuses: 1. eva gets to help make it. turns out she's a whiz kid at cutting out squares. 2. it's cheap. 3. it's green. 4. it can be completed in fewer than four months.

i bought a rosemary topiary (shaped like a baby-sized christmas tree), and i've chosen to fill our advent calendar with tiny ornaments for our "tree". (what? no chocolate? i'm catching flack from everyone about that... everyone but my kid, that is, because she doesn't know what she's missing.) i'm making tiny ornaments out of scraps of things we have around, like a pipe cleaner candy cane, a peanut shell painted sliver, some jingle bells, craft pompoms strung on a twist-tie to make a little wreath, cardboard star covered with scraps of foil, etc. i've only made seven or so thus far, but i like that i only have to stay a few days ahead, and can complete the rest at my leisure. :)

so here you go, a mini tutorial of how we made our advent calendar. sorry, no photos of the process itself, but it's not terribly difficult. (in fact, sorry for the state of these photos in general -- the camera fell off the roof of a car on a mountain highway a few months ago, and the various rubber bands and wedges of paper are no longer sufficient to keep it working... it's no longer able to focus, manually or otherwise. hmm... guess what we're buying each other for christmas?)



supplies & tools
catalogs/magazines
2-3 brown paper grocery bags (one with handles if possible)
ad circulars/newspaper inserts (optional)
glue/tape
scissors
a holiday-obsessed preschooler, if you have one handy

1. collect and peruse catalogs
unless you're conscientious like my mother and have called the 800-number of every company that sends you junk mail to get off their mailing list, you probably have stacks of catalogs and magazines arriving in your mailbox this time of year. rip out images you think might be useful -- beyond the obvious holiday and winter scenes, look for areas of solid colors interesting backgrounds. (most of my pockets are decorated collage-styls, even when it may look like a single image -- a person has to get creative to cover up ad copy. :)

2. find those ad circulars in your recycle bin
you need numbers. large numbers! catalogs are far too tasteful to list their prices in giant yellow 48-point font -- so you'll have to look in the ad inserts. these show up in my mailbox, or if you get the newspaper, that would be helpful. cut out all the numbers you think you'll need, but don't stress that nothing seems to cost $17.23... you may have to hand write the 17 and 23 (but i promise you'll find endless options for the 9).

3. create the backing of the calendar
to make the backing, you need to open up a brown bag (the one with a handle if you have it) into a long strip. cut down the two narrow sides of the bag, veering out to the corners at the bottom (basically, just cut along the upside-down Y-shaped fold lines on the side panels). flatten bag with "wrong"/printed side facing up. roll the side flaps until they are hidden on the back of the bag and tape in place. you can choose to cut them off or simply fold & glue them to the back, but i found rolling them provides more structural support along the sides, allowing the advent calendar to hold more weight without bowing and bending. cut a strip from another bag, roll it up, and tape it along the top edge of your calendar to create additional reinforcement there. if your bag has handles, you can remove the one from the bottom if you like.



4. cut dozens of pockets (two dozens, to be exact)
next you need to cut out 24 pockets from the additional brown bags. i made my pockets 3" wide and 3.25" tall because that's what fit on the paper bag i had (8 rows of three), but you can adjust this as needed. i found triangular-shaped gussets on the sides of the pockets allowed larger items to sit comfortably inside -- to form these, i flared out at a 30 degree angle from the bottom corner of the pockets (see template -- you can eyeball this if your protractor isn't handy). don't forget those flaps around each side which allow it to be glued in place. cut out one pocket the way you like it, then trace and cut the rest. (i stacked & cut five layers of brown paper at once to speed this up.)

5. prefold the pockets
it will make your life easier if you prefold your pockets before decorating them. to do this, cut a piece of cardstock (magazine reply cards are perfect for this) the size of your finished pocket. lay it in position over one of your pocket pieces, then fold against the cardstock template. (this is much faster than tracing lines in place then carefully folding each one.) then fold up the gluing flaps, and finally fold each gusset into place behind the pocket (along the dotted line in my template).

6. decorate your pockets
now the fun part! decorate the pockets with the pieces you tore out of the catalogs. tip: find that piece of cardstock you used to help you fold the pockets. place it behind an image you plan to use and hold this up to the light. position it where you like, then trace around the cardstock and cut out the image for a fast way to get pieces just the right size. add more images until you're happy.

eva had a grand time helping me with this part, doing much of the cutting and a bit of the gluing. she selected images i never would have thought of (like the hopscotch girl, or the flowered rug). and surprise, surprise -- the whole project was more fun and the end result is far more special because i followed her lead rather thank staying overly invested in a picture-perfect result (see? i'm learning, slowly but surely...)




7. number away...
arrange the pockets on your calendar backing the way you like before adding numbers -- this way you can find an arrangement you're happy with. add the cut-out numbers you found, or hand-draw numbers, or both.

8. glue and tape pockets in place
i found it worked to use tape for the sides of the pockets (where the tape could be hidden inside the pockets) but glue for the bottom edges (where tape would show).

9. fill and enjoy
hang up your calendar by the handle (if it has one), and fill with whatever you like. if you're worried about a wee one sneaking ahead a bit, you can secure the filled pockets closed with decorative stickers or tape. or just hang it really high up on the wall.

i can't even describe how excited my three-year-old is about her advent calendar. and it has a very practical purpose as well -- i don't have to try to answer "when will it be christmas?" on an hourly basis. now, just daily. :)

and maybe next year i'll create the heirloom advent calendar i seem to think i should be making... or maybe this is it? as eva would say, "we'll just have to wait and see."

cindy lou who & the grinch

sometime in february, several months and a hundred or so readings into "how the grinch stole christmas", i told eva that if she still loved cindy lou who that much when it got to be halloween, that i would make her a cindy lou who costume. she was thrilled. shortly after hazel was born, she suggested that she could be the grinch. and somehow or other, baby cousin lilly ended up as max the dog.

the cindy lou who costume consisted of a wig hat, a pink dress, and a giant christmas ball.

the pink dress was made of pink costume fur -- for added warmth, since we're visiting in the north for halloween, and there's nothing worse for a kid than being forced to wear a winter coat over one's costume. the dress is loosely based on a pattern for a nightgown with a raglan sleeve (butterick #4910). i added scallops at the neck, sleeve, and hem, and stuffed them with scrap fabric to make them cartoonishly puffy. the hem was tapered, but i couldn't taper it in completely around her feet, obviously. i fashioned what amounts to a puffy apron to tie around her waist under the dress to add to the effect by widening the dress around her middle.

the wig hat (as i've come to call it) is crocheted out of bernat glow in the dark yellow yarn. i thought i was worth a try -- and especially for halloween -- but i'm not overly impressed. the yarn has a pretty awful texture, and you can't discern much of a glow, unless you charge it up directly under a light then immediately head to a very dark room. but, it was enough to entertain her, so i guess it was worth it. i basically shaped a regular crocheted hat, then added extra rows down the back to make it approximate her hairline. i made separate triangular pieces that i attached around the front hairline to look like locks of hair, and added a few chains of stitches to fill it out. cindy lou who has little red hair bows, and as the last fun detail, squiggly seuss-style antennae. i formed one pipe cleaner (ahem, excuse me, they're now known as "chenille stems") in to a circle, then attached the antennae and poked them through the wig from the underneath. they stayed standing upright perfectly with this method.

the red ball... well, we were planning to make one from scratch, but happily, we found a giant novelty (shatterproof) christmas bulb at a local home improvement store. hurray for the christmas creep that puts christmas decorations within my grasp prior to halloween! (eek.) all i had to do was add the little topper part and the seussian hook. that consisted of a painted small plastic food storage container and more pipe cleaners.






and for the grinch... oh, the grinch. you can't very well paint a baby's face green, nor can you give her green furry gloves that she'll just eat. so as a result, she mostly looked like a tiny somewhat demented christmas elf, i'd say. but, whatever it was, it was plenty cute. the coat was a tiny, shorter version of the same basic pattern i used for the cindy dress. the hat and shoes were just quickly mocked up, and on the third try, i actually made the shoes big enough for my baby's chubby feet and ankles!



to minimize future angst along the lines of "oh sure, i had to be the grinch for my first halloween!", i was sure to make her the happy grinch from the end of the story, the one after his heart grew three sizes. thus the embroidered detail of the heart that grew so big that it broke right through the fancy gold measuring device (i based this off a screen shot from the movie).





and speaking of future therapy bills, my baby niece lilly looked very cute as max the dog. my sister bought her a dog costume, and i fashioned a reindeer horn (with what inside? more pipe cleaners, of course!).



like usual, i went a little more nuts than i intended. but i will always make my kids homemade halloween costumes, for as long as they want me to do so. eva was so very pleased, her face just lit up when she finally saw the completed costume. (though not so much in the photo below... this was taken the day after, when the sugar high had dissolved into a massive cranky sugar crash. :)