New Years Resolution

I'm not one to normal set New Years Resolutions and I have set this one for myself a few years ago and only got a few months into the year before it failed, but lets try again shell we! It's not anything like loss weight, eat better, exercise more or get a new job. My resolutions is that every gift I give will be handmade or homemade, with the exception of a few things for the kids I'll explain those later. So wish me luck, I hope I can get further than March this year. There will be a lot of hunting on pinterest and maybe sometimes thinking outside the square.

I'm thinking of making things like, dresses for little girls, aprons or quilts/wall hangings for ladies, printing on t-shirts for boys or roads for match box cars, bibs or taggies for babies (need to thing of things for men). In the next few days I will get a list together of all the birthdays and babies that are on the way, and start thinking of what I can make them

I will also put together a list I things I could make easily for people for unexpected things, like engagements, house warming and anything else I may have forgotten. I'll keep you all up-to-date with what I make. The first birthday I need to make something for is on the 3rd of Jan so no rest for the wicked.

reclaiming clothes

I want to start reclaiming clothes weather it be ones that no longer fit me or hubby, or ones I found at the op shop. To get the ball rolling I thought I'd start on something easy. The boys don't have a lot of singlet tops and with this hot weather we are having I thought now was a good time to do something about it. I'm not a big fan of buying licensed clothes, but if there from an op shop and only a few dollars then I'm happy to.

These two tops only cost $1 each and Mr 5 loves Angry Birds so that's his and I love the 'Jammin' dude so Mr 7 can have that, now both of these are far to big for my boys so I turned them into tank tops for them

And here they are.
 

This was very simple as I kept the original neck line for both. On the Angry Birds I kept the same side seams and just shorten the hem and with 'Jammin' I shorten the hem and took in the side seams. All in all I'm very happy with how they turned out and they both fit! stay turned for more to come

Pillowcase dress

I was very luck and got my hands on a pile of pillowcases and since Miss 3 loves dresses and will wear one every day of the week if I let her, it seems like the best idea to make some dresses out of them. Now I know there are a lot of tutorials out there for pillowcase dresses, but I wanted to show you how to use part of the case to make the binding for the arm hole (so no need to have any other fabric on hand) and it will always be in coordinating fabric. So if you new to sewing this is a very easy and simple project to do.

What you will need.
A pillowcase
ribbon
scissors
pins
ruler
measuring tape
iron
sewing machine
overlocker (optional)

Lay out your pillowcase and cut all the way across the opposite end to where the opening is (this will end up being the top of the dress). At the top you need to cut an arm hole on both sides, once this is done you can run the top seam through your overlocker or if you don't have one set your machine to zig zag stitch and stitch across the top to stop the fabric from fraying.

 

Now turn your pillow case inside out and cut away the small section that would tuck over the end of the pillow, this will be turned into the binding for the arm holes. The trickiest party of this project is making the binding which need to be cut on the bias but it's not that hard and when you do it once you be fine doing it again and again (because you'll want to make lots of these).

To cut on the bias means to cut on a 45 degree angle to the grain of the fabric, when you cut the fabric this way there is 'give' and makes it easier to fit around the curve of the arm hole. Lay out your section of fabric length ways and grab your ruler and cut 2 inch strips at a 45 degree angle (you should get 5 strips).

Attach all the strips in one big long line and press the seams open.

Now it's all a big long strip, you'll need to fold and press it so no raw edges are showing. To do that fold and press with a hot iron one side of the strip into the centre (watch your fingers with the hot iron) and then do the other side.

 

Fold it in half so that the raw edges are facing inward and give a final press. Cut the strip into half and you will be using one strip of each arm hole.

Pin each of your strips over the raw edge of the arm holes and stitch down, go slowly and take care sewing around the curve

 then trim off the excess of the bias strip. 

All that is left to do now is to make the casing for the tie around the top of the dress. With your hot iron and measuring tape press down 1.5 inches along the top on both sides, when that's done sew it down along the overlocked/zig-zag stitch. And you have finished! (and it only took me about 45mins give or take, I needed to break up the kids fighting)

 

I've seen patterns that make their own tie but I find it easier to use ribbon, you'll just need to attached a safety pin (or I use a bobby pin) to the end and feed it though the casing on both sides. I take my ribbon out before washing and just leave them in the laundry and feed it back though after washed and dry.

 

 

Here is Miss 3 with it on. I'm happy with it this long and it will still fit her for years to come, I will just put a pair of legging underneath.

TMNT Masks

As Christmas drew closer I was going through all the gifts I had put aside, and I had brought a book each for my nephew and niece. I wanted to put a little something else with them, for my niece it was easy I made her a pillowcase dress but for my nephew that was a little more difficult. He is older than our boys and is in that next age group so I asked my wonderful mother-in-law what he is interested and she came up with teenage mutant ninja turtles.

After some pinerest hunting I deiced on making him some TMNT masks. I went to my local fabric shop and brought felt in green, red, blue, orange and purple, and plain cotton fabric in red, blue, orange and purple. I drew a free hand pattern of half a mask on folded paper and cut it out (by drawing half the mask on folded paper you get a mirror image for the other side), then I got one of my handy helpers (AKA Mr 5) and held in up to their face and made any adjustments where needed. I also made a pattern for the coloured insert section in the same way as the main mask.


I cut out 8 of the mask patterns from the green felt (2 for each mask), and one insert from each colour.

                              (note red insert not pictured)

 
Then cut two 1.5 x 20 inch strips from each of the cotton fabrics for the ties. Once everything was cut out I then began to sew. I folded the 1.5x20inch strips in half width wise so it is now .75x20inches and sewed along one end and down the the sided and turn right side out. Place the opened ended part of the tie between the one of the green of the masks and the insert, pin and sew the insert to the green masks (so the tie is no longer showing) around the edge of the insert and the eyes. Now the tie will not have any raw edges showing.

lastly take the second green mask and sewed it onto the back just around the green section to cover up the sewing of the coloured insert. Sewing on the second green mask adds stability to the mask and adds and bit of depth to it.

 

Come Christmas day and my nephew (aged 8) loved it. I was so sew happy, as soon as the gift was opened my nephew and my 3 older children were all running around with them on (Miss 3 included) I loved that I made the ties nice and long, it make for easy tiring on wiggling kids.  

Thank you for stopping by, this is my first tutorial so I hope it makes sense and you can follow it. and have fun making them for your little turtles. 

Little Artist's Easel

After having two boys who never really did a lot of painting/drawing before kinder and even when they went to kinder they didn't do very much and preferred to play with building blocks or make something on the construction table. I have a little girl that would sit and paint, draw and colour all day long. So I wanted to make a free standing easel so she can paint to her hearts content.

It's very simple to make, you only need -
A lager piece of cardboard (I used and old box no longer needed)
scissors
packing tape

you can cut your cardboard any size you like but I have cut mine 30cm by 100cm the sides are both 40cm long and the base is 20cm, now all you need to do is fold the sides up and tape it altogether at the top and there you have it and quick and homemade easel. I just use pages to hold the paper on (I find this the best way as the kids can take them on and off themselves)

Weekend Painting fun

To get the kids creativity fix this weekend I set up something I've been wanting to do for a while now, shaving cream art. I wanted to make it a little easier for me and only got one child to do it and one time, that way I could help them every step of the way instead of trying to split myself in 3 and have 3 kids all calling out for me to help them. This may the whole process a lot easier and a lot less mess was made (I will make sure to do this any time we are doing something that they need a lot of help with)

So first we started with a baking tray (one bigger than an A4 piece of paper) then I covered the tray in shaving cream and spread it out so it covers it completely (the fist time I use way to much cream, you don't need a whole lot just a thin layer is enough) then it's time to add your colours. I used food colouring gels as I have a lot of different colours for cake decorating but you can use standard food dies and I've read normal paint but have not tired that.

Next hand your child a fork or tooth pick and skewer and get them to mix all the colours together and make pretty patterns, when they are happy with it take your paper and lay it on top of the cream and smooth it out making sure as much of the paper touches the cream. Lift the paper off and scrap off the excess cream, leaving your child's masterpiece on the paper. I love how these turned out and wanted to do one myself (maybe next time when I don't have to do a quick clean up and start making tea)

I do Project Life (memory keeping) and I have big plans for these works of art. I'm going to make them into Project Life cards and It's a way to keep art the kids have made themselves. The kids are so proud of these, this is a project we will be doing again. Until next time have fun.

Kepping Stocked

When I was a child I watch a TV show called Play School and they always had a useful box. It had craft supplies, boxes, pencils and sticky tape. Now that I have a board jar set up I need to make sure I have the right supplies and enough for everyone. So I have made a supply, craft and useful boxes. With the list I made for our board jar I also wrote out a shopping list of items I would need to do some of the crafts projects and activities like waterballons, wooden spoons, face paints also making sure I had master copies of colouring pages, word searches a copy of the story assgnment  that I found on pinterest and most importantly recipes for things like play dough, moon sand and things to cook in the kitchen. I find if I have all of these things in the one spot then when the kids what to do something I can get it started straight away instead of waiting for me to look up recipes, search online, check to see if I have supplies for projects and so on. Once again I'm hoping this will all make it a lot easier.

I started by spreading all the supplies out on the lounge room floor before deciding how to store them. I soon worked out that they would not fit all in the one box so I opted for four boxes.  One box for all the empty boxes and things the kids can recycle like egg cartons, drink bottles packet cake mix boxes washed out yoghurt containers and so on. 

Box two is for all our craft supplies, for some reason our craft items were spread right though-out the house and once I got them all together we had quite a lot. Items in hear include pencils, pens, textas, paints, pipecleners, splater screen and so much more.  

 Here is a small selection of some supplies for pasting, I get this out for the kids (so I don't have to get out full packets of everything and just replenish when supplies get low. the container is just a tackle box/craft box with 17 individual spaces that hold things like coloured match sticks, goggley eyes, pom poms, foam shapes, mini patty pans and mini icy pole sticks.

 I also have a take-away container to put all the stickers in, for some reason our two boys hate, hate, hate stickers but our 3yr old girl makes up for them and will stick them to anything she can get her hands on.

Box three has activities like play doh, bubble blowers and specialised books like sticker activity book and those books that only certain makers work with. Also it has kits like pet rock painting and paper airplanes and felt animals. I have found some of these kits in the post office and Target. have a look in your discount stores also, I'm always on the look out for inexpensive kits the kids would like.    

and lastly the fourth box is for all the colouring/activity books, word searches cut out masks (once again I got these from the discount store) small canvases, paper, coloured paper, cardboard. I'm wanting to get a folder for put master copies of colouring pages and activity sheets in but just haven't got around to that yet but please watch this space, it will be coming soon. I hate it when the kids ask me do you a colouring or something like that and I have to make them wait while I search to found it and then copy it, so the folder wont be to far away.

I hope you enjoy my supply boxes, until next time have fun.

Board Jar

As mentioned in my last post I'm getting a board jar started. Not because my kids kept telling me that they were board over the holidays, but I felt I could have been more active with them. I found this idea on pinterest from whilehewasnapping.com and I loved how there was different categories, so I have gone with the same 7

• Things we can make
• Fun with food
• Quiet time activities 
• Things we can do
• Running off steam
• Outside play time
• Family activities

 So I made a list of activities for each group. I was going to buy icy pole sticks but I found lager ones (more like tongue depresses)

and I wrote down 1 activity per stick. Some of the activities are very simple like, find pictures in the clouds and others need a little more planning, do a science experiment or visit cousins.

I gave each category was it's own washi tape, and then wrapped it around the top of the sticks.

 

I also made a key for which categories corresponded with which washi tape

 

And there you have it the project is finished. I hope they enjoy all the fun things to do, and I'm looking forward to spending time doing the activities with them. I will be posting some of the projects that we do. depending on how this goes I will also try and make a 'Date Night Jar' for hubby and I (can't wait for that).

Thanks for reading and happy creating

   

Getting Organized

The school holidays have just finished and we are now in the first week of term 3. With Mr 6 in grade 1 at school and Mr 4 in kinder, Miss 3 and Miss 5months at home with me it can be a very busy house. So I have started this blog to try and help me get organized, I'm hoping that if I start writing about it I can be a better, more fun mum.

I'm planning to start a board jar and I have been looking at all sorts of different ones on pinterest. I'm hoping to have this finished well and truly before the next school holidays. The other thing that has started this term is chore charts for the 3 older kids and so far they are working very well, there's not to many jobs for each of them but they each have animals to feed and make their beds, it's a great way to monitor if they have done their teeth morning and night.