Tutorial: Upcycling cereal boxes into carboard mailers

This is so easy I can't believe I haven't thought of this before.   It is brilliant if I do say so myself.  I wish I had thought of this when I was bothering with all of the promotions and whatnot to get a tiny bit of sales with my etsy shop.  Though they will be useful for the new printing run I'm doing of my Ted book.  Just in time for the season of gifting and shipping everything.  Either way I am super happy that I found such a great use for the waste from the grotesque amounts of cereal my children consume.   I will certainly never need to buy another small mailer again! 

 

See, totally easy!  I know I'm going to be using them from now on.  Are you?

Kid Project: Upcycling old broken crayons into swirly coloring sculptures

I did this last year with my kids for their friends, and since it was for gifts, I didn't blog about it then.  That and I'm pretty awful about blogging.  But in honor of the upcoming gifting/making/shopping madness, I wanted to get more homemade gift ideas out there and in my tutorials.  So, this random post which was half written (and of course not finished) was dug gingerly out of the pile of my squandered molding ideas, and with a little spit polish here and there, I present it to you for your crafting pleasure.

These were from candy pretzel molds, so I had to tape up the end so the wax wouldn't run out, but overall it made a great shape for coloring with.

Upcycled Fancy Crayons

Step 1: Peel old crayons.  (kid step)  Perfect job for kid helpers.  You (the adult) can make it easier by taking an exacto knife and cutting through the length of the crayon paper wrapper.


Step 2: Sort out the colors into like piles.  (kid step)  I used a ton of leftover crayons, all different brands.  Some of which had different wax and sparkles and whatnot other components, so it wasn't all totally homogeneous.  Not the best thing, so I would suggest maybe sticking to the same brand.  It still worked though, but next time I think I'll go with all the same sort of crayons.

Step 3: Melt them double boiler style.  (adult job)  You can use a variety of things for this purpose.  But just know it will probably ruin whatever container you use.  So think recycled.  You can start collecting rinsed out tin cans, or I used glass baby food jars.. anything that isn't going to melt with the crayons.  (don't use anything plastic)  And put them in a shallow pot of boiling water.  Make sure the water doesn't go into the crayon containers.

Step 4: Pour the molten wax into molds.  (adult job)  Use tongs or oven mitts or something, because I guarantee whatever you used to house the molten wax will be super hot.  Be careful when you pour!  You can use all sorts of different molds to shape the wax.  I used candy molds this time.  But you can use old ice cube trays, or muffin tins, old prescription bottles or even hollowed out egg shells.  The possibilities are really endless.  (you could get real fancy and make plaster casts of objects and fill it in with wax..)  I also like to swirl and mix two or more colors together.  I try to stick with colors next to or close to each other on the color spectrum (or mix with neutrals, white, brown, greys and black) to avoid really ugly combinations, like what happens when you mix complimentary colors that cancel each other out.  Because they will mix up a bit.  The mixing colors is my favorite part.  Go crazy and have fun with it though!

Step 5: Cool them off completely.  Cool off in freezer (where the wax will contract, making it easy to pop right out of the mold!)



Step 5:  Remove from the mold and color.  (kid step)  Make sure it is totally cooled off and cold, and not even slightly warm at all.  If so it should come right out and be ready to color with!

re-purposed glass baby food jars work great for gifting and/or storage (as well as for melting) can you tell I did this when Liam was still eating baby food?

 There you go!  Enjoy!  It is really fun, and they make fantastic gifts.  If you want more gift making tutorials let me know!

On patched jeans and other atrocities

I can't decide if this makes me a nice, loving and clever Mom, or a total dork Mom (or probably both).  But I am really bored with jeans being rendered useless after a month because my kids are.. well, kids.  Their knees are constantly hitting pavement, trees, carpet, furniture, gravel, you name it and surrendering their thread count.  I hate waste, and not so much in the trendy, crunchy, reduce your carbon footprint kind of way, but a deep mental aneurysm sort of way.  Call me cheap, or a tight wad, whatever you want, because its true.  But just don't throw something salvageable away in front of me.  I'm probably only saved from serious hoarding by the fact that I'm not a big shopper.  All mental issues aside though, I've officially declared war on the pesky lower appendage ventilation duct.  In honor of the weather starting to cool off I pulled out last years leg wear in all its tattered glory.  And then got busy.

Trying out new ideas all in the name of erring on the clever-mom I-did-this-on-purpose side as opposed to the point-and-laugh-at-the-dork-kid look.

now there are

Since discovering HeatNBond *cough, stupid name I am now re-in-love with appliqué.  And no, I am not being paid for giving them a blog shout out.  And since I was in a blog stupor at the time of the frantic baby-sewing, there are no pictures of said appliqué-love.

all two of them

I also recently started working as a sewing assistant for the incredibly talented fabric/pattern designer/artist  Sandi Henderson.  So I've matriculated back to some sewing projects, having sewing on the brain, but my Ted book illustrations are still forthcoming. 

Tutorial: How to make a baby headband from an old tee shirt

here is the tutorial finally, which I realized I'd already written ages ago, but only hadn't added the pictures... silly me.

So, I finally caved and made some headbands for my bald baby girl Lucy. I do normally get rather bored with her being mistaken for a boy, despite the bracelet she usually wears and/or pink clothing or dresses she may or not be wearing, but I am rather used to it. I had lots of practice getting used to it with my first bald baby girl Sohvi, who stayed that way until age two, at which point she started to BARELY have enough to tell it was curly.
So Lucy especially needed something feminine for our HUGE family pictures (all of my parents progeny) for which she was to be dressed all in black. So, I messed around and came up with a darling headband. My sister really liked them, so I offered to make one for my cutie niece and since I was on a roll I made a bunch more for Lucy. I love them, and am amazed and delighted that she usually leaves them alone. They are incredibly easy to make even for someone who has almost no sewing skills and most others could probably copy them easily WITHOUT the instructions.. well, here they are anyway. I still prefer to follow someone else's directions anyway (and most especially their measurements).

Supplies:
old tee-shirts -or- cute stretchy knit fabric
fake flowers
beads, or like adornments for the middle of the flower

Tools:
cutting mat and rotary cutter -or- scissors and measuring tape
hot glue gun
sewing machine

-Plug in the glue gun, so it will be ready to use later

-Cut open one of the side seams of the tee-shirt so it can lay flat.

-Cut off the bottom hem of the shirt.

-Measure and cut the fabric 3" wide for a narrow headband (smaller flower) 3 1/2" for meduim, and 4" for large. I used about 16" long for one of Lucy's, she was 14 months old then, and they still fit at 22 months (she has a big head too)... it also depends on how stretchy your shirt is. Fortunately being stretchy makes being exact not matter so much. Measure your child's head and if you're using normal tee-shirt fabric add an inch. If it has lycra or spandex in it, don't add anything.

-fold lengthwise with the right sides together

- stitch with a zigzag seam with a 1/4" seam allowance. (or serge it, if you are lucky enough to have one)

-turn right side out. You can press it if you are the kind of person who uses an iron while you sew, but its knit so you don't need to.

-fold in half

-sew the ends together with a straight stitch and a 1/2" seam allowance.

- open up the seam in the middle.


-over stitch the ends of the seam so they lay flat.

-trim off excess material.

Head band is done if you don't want to embellish it with a flower (like if you had cute material to start with)

Adding decorations: (you can also add a loop around the band and add flowers to clips and have the decoration be interchangeable, but for kids the more parts there are that come off, usually do)

-take apart your fake flowers (pull apart all the plastic stuff) so you only have the fabric 'petal' part. I usually use more than one set of petals even if they weren't meant to be that way, it gives the flowers more depth and they look fuller and therefore nicer.

-glue each set of 'petals' separately to the middle of the headband. (that way you can wear it on either side of baby's face)

-glue on the middle embellishment, bead, crystal, middle of the fake flower (cut off whatever you need to, to make it glue on flat) whatever.

-put it on your darling bald little baby girl and hope she leaves it on.


You're done... see, its really easy! And pretty dang cheap!