Crafty Christmas #2 (The final saga)

Yeah, yeah, it's a bit late for me to still be recapping the events of Christmas. Sue me. (Really, don't. Though we don't have much to be taken from us...a half-renovated home and two vehicles with 130,000 and 230,000 miles. Pretty disappointing, I'd say!) Anyway, here are a few details of some of the other gifts I made for Christmas.

Ceramic tile coasters
I was mainly waiting to post about these because I didn't get to see my bff while I was in Alabama for Christmas, and I made Katie a set of coasters that she didn't get until sometime later in January. I didn't want her to read about her gift before seeing it!!

Using this Tutorial, I made four sets of four coasters. All you need are tiles, scrapbook paper (or napkins, cards, etc), mod podge and a clear acrylic spray that is waterproof. I went to Home Depot and bought 16 ceramic tiles for a whopping $0.16 each! I had mod podge, bought the spray and also gathered some new scrapbook paper that I felt would match the living rooms of three of my friends. I've never seen Katie's current living room, but since she loves purple, I figured going with a purple/lilac theme was a safe bet.

All you do is mod podge the tile, put the paper down, mod podge on top (several coats) then do several coats of the acrylic spray. Again, check out the tutorial, but this was super easy. I've since made more and I actually like cutting the paper to have a border. The tiles are 4.25 inches square, so I found cutting my paper to an easy four inches around allows me to get the cleanest, neatest look.

Tea wreath

In the first Christmas post, I showed pictures of the enormous rag quilt I made for my friend Sarah. Because that was supposed to be her gift for Christmas 2010, I also made her a tea wreath. Sarah lives with three other women, and they are near the women's college so they have a ton of girls at their house all the time. They drink lots of tea, so I thought this was a cute idea to display your tea offerings. This was the Tutorial I used. I cut out a big circle of cardboard to start:

The tutorial says you can glue scrapbook paper to the wreath for this project, but I made a mess with that. Plus, my 12x12 paper wasn't large enough. I half-panicked and looked through my fabric scraps. I found one that would work and plugged in my hot glue gun. The fabric worked so much better and was much easier to glue and stretch around the cardboard. 

I then glued scrapbook paper to the clothespins and glued the clothespins to the wreath. I added some tea and voila!

Oh yeah, I also added the twine to hang it. I glued it in place between two clothespins so it wouldn't move.

Book letters
For two of my friends I decided to cover wooden letters with book pages. One of these women just finished her master's degree in secondary education and wants to teach English, so I figured it would be the perfect thing to hang in her classroom. Here's the Tutorial for those of you who want to give it a shot.

I needed scissors, an old book, a glue gun and a letter, which I bought at Michael's using a coupon.

Rip out book pages and cut them in strips that are close to the width of the part of the letter you are working on. Roll the strip, gluing at the end, then glue the roll to the letter. I hope Buffy and Ashley didn't read too closely...I used pages from a book Andrew and I had to read for premarital counseling. We didn't love it and decided to recycle it into Christmas presents :)

Book art!

Moisturizing hand scrub
For my step-sister-in-law I made this lemony moisturizing hand scrub: Tutorial.

I had olive oil, sugar and Kosher salt, bought lemon extract really cheap at Wal-Mart and grabbed some lemons at the grocery store. Follow the tutorial for amounts, but I decided in the end using a little less olive oil and more lemon extract worked best. If you cook a lot, this helps rid your hands of smells from chopping garlic and onions and keeps them soft and smelling nice! You can keep it in a jar under the sink or in the fridge if you might not use it often. My friend Kristin made some for friends and herself and found it goes pretty quickly though!

I also made an ice cream sundae basket for some friends and sewed an apron for my mother-in-law. You can find the basket on my Pinterest, but basically, package up goodies that can be used to make ice cream sundaes!! Cones, candies and I made a chocolate sauce, too. Just don't include the ice cream...unless you are running by the store on your way to gift your present!

Crafty Christmas post #1

So the plan was to post about the different presents I made for friends and family in the days following Christmas. And like most of my plans, it clearly fell through :) For some reason, whenever I go back to Alabama--even with my computer--I fail to find the time or reliable wifi to take care of my technological projects. Then on our drive back to Mass I got a phone call for a temp job for the month of January. That started Jan. 3, and I spent the first two weeks letting my pregnant self get reacquainted with working full-time. My cousin Steven also came for a visit at the end of last week, so look for a post with several pics on that coming soon.

I think in this post I'll include the three gifts I made for the toddlers in my life. I have a niece (5) and two step-nephews (4, 1...almost 2). Let's start with the boys. I began subscribing to a newsletter called The Happy Housewife (with accompanying blog) back in October. Everyday I got an email with a homemade Christmas gift idea. The two ideas I latched onto for the boys were a memory game and beanbags. I tagged them on my Pinterest account and came back to them in late November/early December.

Homemade memory game
Here's the link to the tutorial I followed.

I decided to make Kris, the four-year-old, a memory game with a dinosaur theme. I found scrapbook paper at Michael's, printed dinosaur pics from a free clipart site and had one of my teacher friends laminate the cards for me at school.

These are the supplies I needed besides paper and pictures: glue, pen/pencil, ruler and scissors. I used the bottle cap to trace around the four edges of each card, then cut a rounded corner to make them look more finished. There are scrapbook tools that do this with a punch, but they cost about $10. My way took longer but was free!

I glued my dinosaur pictures to the paper on the left. I should note here that I used two-sided paper. I put the picture on the busier side of the paper and used the other side for the backs of the cards. This way each card looks more uniform when the game begins.

The finished product! I picked 12 different dinosaurs, two cards each, making this a 24-card memory game. Like the tutorial says, you can punch a hole in the corner and keep the cards on a binder ring for easy travel. I didn't have a ring, so I just laminated the 24 cards plus one more with directions and put them in a box. My step-sister-in-law can carry them in her purse to appointments or other places where Kris might need to entertain himself. The entire project cost me about $3.

Beanbags 
I decided to make Landon eight bean bags, using four different fabrics. I have some great fabrics that an international student brought me from Nigeria so I chose those. My friend Kristin that I mention frequently also made some of these, and she used an old plaid shirt for some of hers.

Here's the link to the tutorial I used. I think I cut out 5x5 squares for this, and I bought dry lentil beans at Wal-Mart for the filling. I think Kristin used beans and rice for hers.

My fabrics 

Place two of your squares together--WRONG sides facing. Sew around three sides of the bag.

This is sort of blurry, but it helps to cut the excess fabric at the corners whenever you make a bag of any kind, or basically anything you plan to turn inside out.

The tricky part came next for me. I filled the bag with beans--I can't give you an exact amount, but I put fewer beans in my second bag after I had a small accident with the first one! You could do one of two (or probably more if you're a better seamstress than me) things now. One is to just sew straight across and not mind that there's an unfinished edge. Your toddler surely won't. Or you can turn the two sides in and sew across. You'll still see the seam, but you won't have the unfinished edge. I tried the second idea, but I couldn't hold it all together and lost some beans. I also fought with my machine over the Nigerian fabric. So I then went to the first idea. 

Tada! Beanbags for small children to throw at each other or put in their mouths! The project cost me maybe $5 for bags of beans. I could've gotten them cheaper if I'd bought in bulk at Whole Foods or the local co-op, but I wasn't sure what I'd need, and I was at Wal-Mart when I remembered I needed them.

Homemade Tutu
Andrew's sister has a five-year-old daughter, and we usually give her books for Christmas and her birthday. I wanted to give her one book in a series that Julie Andrews helped write called A Very Fairy Princess, but I also found a book called Talulah's Tutu about a girl who takes ballet and desperately wants a tutu. My idea was born. We would give her the tutu book for Christmas with a tutu to wear! We gave her the other book for her birthday.

The initial tutorial I found for this can be found here, but I looked at several blogs and videos to see what each one did.

For this project you need tulle, elastic and ribbon (optional). You also need scissors. I initially bought a yard of pink sparkly tulle and another yard of purple. I didn't have enough, so I went back for more purple and a regular pink. The tutorial said two yards of each color, but I thought since Ava was small she wouldn't need that much. I was wrong. You need more to make it fuller. 

If you can see in the top of the picture above, I laid out the tulle, then folded it up into a long strip. I made my cuts, then unrolled them. I saw this in a video, and it made it so much easier to cut. You don't have to be exact, but what you want to do is cut similar-width strips to tie onto the elastic. I had my mother-in-law measure my niece's waist, then went about an inch smaller so it would sit snugly on her. The only sewing I did was to sew the elastic together into a circle.

Once you have your fabric strips, you just tie them on the elastic. Fold the strip in half, loop it around the elastic, put one end in the other and pull tight. (This is the same way you put a luggage tag on a suitcase.) I found it somewhat easy to put the elastic around my knees and work my way around. However, here is my advice to not do what I did and not buy sparkly fabric...I was covered!!!

Once I got all of my strips tied on, I took some ribbon and wound it in and out between the tulle knots. I also added some long strips of ribbon to hang down. Once we got to Alabama and our niece had opened her gift, I took scissors and cut the ends to the length she wanted. She already had a shorter tutu, so we made this one knee-length for dress-up games.

I bought all of the tulle on sale and used a coupon at Joann's for the elastic. The project was less than $10.

I think I'll put the rest of my crafty gifts in a second post, so stay tuned!

Merry Crafty Christmas!

Merry Christmas! I wanted to share some pictures of our minimal holiday decorations, including our concolor fir that we love! We chopped one down last year, and they last forever! They have a more unique look than other Christmas tree types, but you have to be careful as they are not the best with heavy ornaments. This was the first year I put out any of my Dept. 56 houses my mom and others gave me growing up. I put a few under our tree and some in other places in our living room. 

I mentioned it is a crafty Christmas in my title, and over the next few days my plan (the best laid plans...) is to post on the different homemade gifts I made for people this year. I'll link to the tutorials I followed for most and offer any tips or ways to avoid disaster that I found. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas! On to the pictures...

Twas four days before Christmas, when under the tree

All these presents had vanished, packed up to leave

The stockings were hung under the TV with care

Precisely perched, the remote sensor not to ensnare 

Alright, I'm done with the poem thing. It's far too long to continue :)

And because I already gifted this item and have no plans to tell you step-by-step how to create your own, a picture of one of my gifts.

This is the largest rag quilt I've made--11 rows of 8 squares--and I won't make one this large for awhile! I actually started it for my friend Sarah for Christmas 2010, then her birthday 2011...finished for Christmas 2011! I've made about five or six of these before, but I always made them for babies or toddlers. Sarah really wanted one her size (she's a grown-up) yet still made of "little kid fabrics." I'm happy I was able to deliver this year. And don't worry, I also gave her a second present to make up for the lack of gift last year--it will be included in a later post.

I'll leave you with the tutorial my friend Jana found when making some of these for her daughter. There are several out there, and instead of using batting for the middle layer, we both used more flannel. Enjoy!