“At the end, I want my life to be unexplainable apart from the Gospel and Holy Spirit.”
This past Sunday’s sermon was particularly inspiring to me. A good reminder that the fruit of a Christian’s life isn’t necessarily measured by how many people you’ve been able to lift out of poverty or orphans you’ve managed to save, but rather:
“…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control… Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.” Galatians 5:22,26
Along with the handful of scheduled (academic) activities Calvin and Charissa do each day (tracked with the awesome sticker chart), I’ve been helping them memorize Bible verses. I decided that the Romans Road to Salvation would be a good starting point (Romans 3:23, 6:23, 5:8, 10:9-10). The theology is a bit too deep for them to completely comprehend, but as it says in Psalm 119:11
“I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”
…which prompted me to make this heart pocket pillow to literally “hide” their verses inside. A sort of “hands on” literal reinforcement of the importance of knowing God’s word.
The process of making the heart pocket pillow is similar to making a lined tote bag. And the uses for something like this extends beyond memory verses: encouraging or thoughtful notes for someone special or small toys for infants. Or substitute the heart with a tooth for a tooth fairy pillow! Click here to download the PDF tutorial.
This past weekend, we brought the kids to a local farm to play:
jump on a giant bouncy pillow:
and play some miniature golf. Calvin’s got the hang of it:
Charissa is definitely showing potential… in the sport of kitchen-floor-broom-sweeping:
Poor baby Stephen; Still too young to join in on the fun:
I also managed to make a second holiday dress for Charissa and the shop:
Seemingly nice and sweet… until you see this outtake:
Yes. I quickly removed the wooden box prop. So… un-lady like. Totally not the look I was going for!
Music & Bible camp/VBS is over and I can finally get back to blogging and making stuff! (By the way, have you guys been to Crap I’ve Made? I wish I thought of that blog title… ) Anyway, here are some things I’ve been working on:
A “Montessori” bag for Calvin (Charissa’s is still in progress):
Room enough for 12 markers, folder or notebook, Goodbyn lunchbox, and water bottle:
A new dress that’s got me thinking about when I want to start the kids on piano and violin:
A cardigan that’s been floating in my head for a while now:
And another upcycled project that I will share with you now:
I remember playing with something similar to these when I was little. You stand and balance on the top of the cans and pull/move with the “ropes”. My mother-in-law had given me a bunch of empty Shaklee cans and I’ve been waiting for the right project to use them. The “ropes” are just strips of fabric braided together, and if you feel inclined to make a pair for your own children, here is a quick tutorial:
1. You will need a power drill with a 1/4″ drill bit.
2. Drill two holes on opposite sides of a sturdy can (the shorter the can, the easier it will be for kids to use. Formula cans may work well too.)
3. Using pinking shears or a pinking blade, cut three 1″ by 88″ strips of fabric (you will need to sew strips together end-on-end to get the length you need.)
4. Layer the ends of the strips together.
5. Roll up the end as tight as possible,
6. and thread it through the hole.
7. Tie a knot,
8. and pull through.
Then just braid the strips together and secure the other end of the strips in the same manner.
Calvin had a lot of fun practicing walking on them:
And for those of you who know my kids, here’s a recent clip of them dancing away. They were much less reserved when I didn’t have the camera on them. Once they knew I was recording, they toned it down a bit
Everything I know about drugs I learned from movies…
(To my children in the near future: Please don’t do drugs. Please don’t do drugs…) The relevant snippet to this title is further down in the post, in case you were wondering
I finally finished my wholesale order, so now I’m freeeeeee! (Except I still have laundry to fold. Have I mentioned that I hate doing laundry? There are weeks where we just live off the floor, clothing-wise…) Anyway, I’ve been working on this order for a month and can finally check it off my list!
Today’s post is a tablescrap creation (a term I use to describe stuff created from the really tiny scraps I like to hoard… you know, the scraps of scraps… things that we normally would throw away. A challenge to “think outside the [trash] bin” )
You know the line, “watching tv and eating bonbons all day”, often used (more in the past than now) to stereotype the wife who stays at home. Well, to THAT I say, “Don’t EAT the bonbons! MAKE the bonbons!” Out of scraps. And with rainforest-fresh baking soda to make it more than just eye candy . Make multiple candy bonbons and place in a glass jar, or make half a dozen of the truffle bonbons and place in an empty candy box to make a cute little gift set. Either way, here’s another crafty idea to help maximize your fabric usage!
Candy Bonbons
1. Grab a rectangular piece of scrap (approximately 2″ wide by 3″ long).
2. Fold it in half, RS together, and stitch down the length.
3. Pin a safety pin through one layer…
4. and thread it through to turn your tube right side out.
5. Center the seam.
6. With embroidery floss (or thread if you don’t have any), tie a tight knot at one end.
7. Drop in either a round magnet or vase pebble (um, the magnet for if you want to stick your final product to the fridge. I used the pebble.)
8. Now this is where the post title comes in… It seems popular to use small pieces of paper as sniffing devices and to transport tiny amounts of stuff to tiny bags. It makes sense seeing how it would look pretty ridiculous to shove a kitchen funnel in your nose unless you have huge nostrils, most people dump a little of whatever-white-powder-stuff onto a small piece of paper
9. and then bend the sides to funnel the stuff into whatever orifice, bag, or in our case, fabric candy wrapper-tube. (Note. I am in no way promoting or instructing drug use. I’m simple stating how I’ve seen it in movies.)
10. Use floss or thread to tie off the other (open) end and trim the sides to the desired length.
Truffle Bonbons
1. Cut two circles of equal size (mine measured about 2.5″ in diameter).
2. Set your sewing machine tension and stitch length to the max and sew around the perimeter of the candy circle (mine is white chocolate!)
3. Use the paper technique again…
4. and funnel in the baking soda, enough to round out your truffle.
5. hand stitch the opening shut (pull on the upper thread to gather the open edge close).
6. Repeat step 2 for the wrapper piece.
7. Turn your filled truffle upside down into the wrapper.
8. Hand stitch secure the truffle and wrapper, then pull out the thread from step 6.
9. Use a fabric marker (or any marker) and draw a chocolate swirly.
So I have this “collection” of recycled/upcycled/re-purposed crafts that’s been sitting in my blog queue for a while now and decided to start sharing them with you, along with my usual updates on our family life, which is more for my own sake than anybody else’s
I’m not sure why, but ever since I started sewing nine months ago, I began collecting empty/used thread spools in hopes that someday, I would find a new use for them. And I finally have! I give you, the citrus slice stamp! I’m sure others have probably already thought of this, but no matter, here is my mini tutorial on how to make… er… use them.
1. Gather your items: an ink pad, a brown paper bag (or blank card, paper, fabric etc.), and an empty spool. 2. Stamp one end of it. 3. To get the “citrus” slice marks, you will need to press in on the other side (the slice marks are slightly recessed). 4. Stamp, color, and tada! You have a fresh slice of lemon, lime, or orange! 5. Stamp on the blank side of an old business card, cut it in half, color, make a slit in the middle, and freshen up some drink glasses for a summer party. 6. A random shot of… stuff
Since I was “one of those kids” who liked to disassemble Barbie dolls and give my stuffed animals “haircuts”, it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise to see this:
…or this:
Sigh. Life must be hard for a stuffed animal. Especially one chosen to be some child’s favorite…
But continue we must to the actual content of this post, my crafting “equation”.
I rarely make anything “just because it’s cute” and that requires more than a couple hours. Usually, several components have to come together before I sacrifice hours of my life where I should could be doing laundry or cleaning the bathrooms It goes something like this:
need + inspiration + takes less than 2 hours to complete + materials on hand = Jen makes something
This is how my “All Ruffled Up for Spring” wreath came into being.
need
Shortly after I hung the very pink wreath I made last summer, I found the beginnings of a bird’s nest:
I didn’t want the birds to actually settle in considering that we’re starting to open and close the front door as the weather gets warmer. So, a need for a new, less-twiggy-and-bird-attracting wreath.
I immediately bookmarked it with intentions of making it someday…
Then about a month back, I was pleasantly surprised to see daffodils popping up in our landscaping:
At that time, Jeremy’s dad had parked his yellow viper in our driveway. Yellow is such a happy color!
A couple days ago, I got this perfectly ruffled carnation:
Well, the yellow daffodils have since dried up. The viper is no longer gracing our driveway. And that carnation won’t live forever. But that wreath…
takes less than 2 hours to complete
But that wreath does not take less than 2 hours to complete. According to the lady who made the wreath, it took her 12 to 15 hours… not to mention cutting out 286 circles… I don’t know. I really like that wreath (and kudos to the lady who made it!) but I just don’t think I have the patience to see it through. However… I do know how to make ruffles… and make them fast…
materials on hand
No felt. But I have plenty of fabric. So much so I think I need an intervention. I’m so addicted to pretty patterns… and it doesn’t help that there’s a designer fabric store within walking distance from the kids’ school…
So a need for new front-door decor, a desire to have something yellow in place of daffodils, a beautiful model to keep me inspired, and plenty of material on hand, my own version of a ruffled wreath was born:
This took me a little less than an hour to do. If you feel so inclined to make one too, here is a quick tutorial:
The “All Ruffled Up for Spring” Wreath
You will need:
- 1.5 yards of fabric (I used 42″ wide quilter’s cotton)
- scissors or rotary cutter and mat
- ruler
- 18″ wire wreath (I got mine at Jo-Ann’s for $3.99)
- needle and thread
- sewing machine
- hot glue gun
1. With your fabric still folded selvedge to selvedge (the way it comes right off the bolt), cut 2-inch-wide strips across the length of the fabric. (Your strips will initially be folded in half.) For my wreath, I cut a total of 26 strips:
2. Open up your strips, and two-by-two, with ends matching, sew the strips together:
3. You now have a very very long strip (Mine measured 91 feet long! I didn’t actually measure it. I just used my calculator…)
4. Now set your sewing machine’s tension and stitch length to the max (e.g. tension set at 9 and stitch length set at 5.0) and sew straight down the middle of your very long strip. It should ruffle up nicely as you go along:
5. Take one end of your ruffled strip and start folding it back and forth, about 2 inches at a time (similar to making a gigantic squiggle and then squishing it together) until you have a small ruffled-flower-like thing:
6. With your needle and thread, secure the layers by passing through a few times:
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 a small section at a time until you reach the end, placing your ruffled flower bunches in the wreath frame as you complete them:
8. With your hot glue gun, secure the ruffles onto the frame. Alternatively, you can hand sew/secure the ruffles onto the frame.
9. If you’re like me and ended up with some uneven spots, you can fill in the gaps with some pretty fabric flowers! (I’ll be posting tutorials on how to make some next week!):
And here are some library totes that came about through the same crafting equation:
Calvin and Charissa love going to the library… a mini Wednesday ritual for us
I love hoarding and looking through catalogs (especially, Land of Nod, Room and Board, Crate and Barrel, just to name a few). Not for the sake of making a purchase, but for inspiration and ideas.
I came across these cute hanging books in PBKids:
They don’t actually sell these, but were adorable enough to garner some of my attention and creative juices. I toyed around with the idea of recovering some old books, but then the Asian side got to me (”Whaaa?! That better not be your Calculus textbook ah!”) Plus, they would too cumbersome to hang (can you imagine a book falling on some kid’s head while they’re reading next to that floppy green frog?) Reconstructing cereal boxes? Nah, too big. Things seem to be cuter when they’re mini. But I liked the idea of reusing/recycling something old, just needed something smaller…
A SOAPBOX! (Which I discovered while taking a shower.) And a few pages from all those phone books that keep on sprouting up next to my front door…
So if anyone is interested in making something similar, here is a mini tutorial.
You will need:
- scissors
- empty soap boxes
- scrap fabric (or pretty paper, construction paper, newspaper, brown bag paper…)
- old phone book
- glue
- ribbon, string, or thread (I used thread)
- tape
1. Grab an empty soap box… 2. and your stash of fabric scraps. 3. Open up the soapbox. 4. Cut off all the tabs. 5. Get coordinating fabrics for the spine and main cover. 6. Cut a piece of fabric to fit the spine (forgot to take picture) and glue it on. Put some glue on the “cover” area of the box and put it face down on the fabric. 7. Trim off the edges and cut squares at the corners. Fold and glue down the flaps. 8. You now have an empty book. 9. Grab the phone book. 10. Rip out some pages and cut and fold them to size. Then put some glue on the folded edge and place in your book. Hang, with a piece of thread looped through the spine and taped to the ceiling, to dry.
Easy and fun Took me about 30 minutes to complete all 3. And they are light enough to hang with Scotch tape… and not kill anyone if they decide to fall…
So in an effort to teach my kids a little something real about Easter, I wrote a little ditty in conjunction with our craft yesterday. Here is how it goes:
So not only does it teach uppercase AND lower case “T”, it hopefully relays a little gospel too! Calvin really enjoyed singing the song. And so we spent a good amount of time, me playing on the piano, and him singing along using the printout I created. If you’d like to do something similar with your children, you can download a copy of my “The Letter T” song.
The other day, I confirmed something I sort of already knew: My kids hate getting their hands dirty.
I first saw this (in my mind) awesomely creative yarn bowl and immediately put it in my craft queue. I mean, how hard could it be? Yarn + glue + balloon + bowl. Got it all set up and even took “before” pictures in preparation for an awesome blog post:
One fingertip-dip in the tiniest dot of glue later…
“Mommeee! My hand is diirrrty! I need to go waaash it!”
Whine whine whine. Long story short, I was only able to get Calvin to do a few strands (Charissa was off somewhere playing with her balloon the second I finished blowing it up for her…) Not wanting to waste an entire bottle of glue I just sacrificed on a plastic plate, I proceeded to continue with mine.
There are no “during” pictures because I was too busy trying to help Calvin finish the project without getting his hands “dirty” (yeah…) and my own hands were all gooey and fuzzy. We waited for our yarn mess to dry overnight and popped the balloons this morning (which Calvin thoroughly enjoyed, so I guess, not a complete flop… although I can’t really say the same for Calvin’s end product, see below).
Here is mine:
Not horrible (I think it would have been better with “less fluffy” yarn), but not nearly as pretty or functional as these.
Then there was Calvin’s:
I’ll leave the captioning blank on this one.
This craft really is neat, just not “neat” enough for us. (I hope, for their sake, they won’t have to do too many of those papier-mâché projects we were forced to do in art class some 20 or so years ago…)
Ending my post here would be too discouraging (since, you know, blogging is like a mini self-esteem booster… oh yeah! I did do something else today besides catering to my childrens’ every need… and guiding, correcting, and harnessing their energy and natural “tendencies”…) So, to end on a happy note: chocolate covered pretzel rods with sprinkles:
We made (and ate) these for our church’s youth ministry team meeting. Very simple: Take some baker’s chocolate, melt it in a pot, spoon some over a pretzel rod, roll the whole thing in sprinkles, and put on a piece of wax paper to cool and harden. Not only is this activity yummy, it is also mess free (more or less… the kids didn’t seem to mind licking off the chocolate and sprinkles that “somehow” got on their fingers…)
… and grab their awesome silicone bakeware in their “dollar” spot for $2.50 each! I used them to bake some cookie crayon favors (as Charissa likes to call them) for her upcoming birthday party:
I love the snowflake mold:
The snowman mold is actually quite cute. But I would advise making them a uniform color so you don’t get a burn victim like mine on the left (maybe I’ll give it to one of the little boys at the party… they would probably appreciate it more than the girls…):
… and lastly, the tree mold:
Growing up with Charissa…
has grown so much since it opened back in September. It’s been roughly 2.5 months, and since then, we’ve been featured in the online magazine VivaLaModa (page 44):
and blogged about on several websites. And thanks to being spotlighted for my “Going Platinum” dress, I am now completely swamped with orders. My shop hearts jumped from 194 to 460 within 24 hours. It is all very exciting… but also very tiring. I’ve made and sold 125 items to date. I need a vacation… to not only get ready for my spring collection and very first craft fair in March, but also to organize myself so that this little venture doesn’t overtake my life and consume my every waking moment God first, family second, friends third, and then sewing
And by the way…
Thanks to everyone who sent lovely gifts for baby Stephen and hasn’t received a thank you card yet! I am working on them! Your thoughtfulness has not gone unopened, unused, or unappreciated
For those who read my blog regularly, you’ll remember the family tree the kids and I put together one morning with the randomly glued-on macaroni pieces:
As much fun that project was… and cute, with crooked pictures and all, I decided it was time for it to go and be forever only digitally “remembered”. (Plus after hosting playgroup last week, the picture was almost pasta-free, if you get what I mean )
So I’ve been eyeing this particular family tree for the past three or four years now. But the $100 price tag completely derails any temptation to purchase it, even as a gift (I mean, all it is is two frames and some paper…). With all my scrap fabric lying around, I decided to attempt my own version of the poshed-up family tree, but for much less:
For a more “organic” look, I zigzagged the edges of the leaves and flowers. But you can easily have done the project with felt and no sewing… or with colored paper… or even white paper colored in with markers or crayons… but I had fabric scraps…
I spent $8 on two framed cork boards. Why cork? Because I plan on pinning on some fun fabric flowers or little bugs for the kids to “discover”… when I get around to it
)
