Halloween skirts & tees

I made these two Halloween outfits  (candy corn & spider) for my daughter and a skirt for my niece in Utah for some Halloween fun in their wardrobe selection.  Earlier this year, I came across Riley Blake's fun & really cute trick or treat fabric line and knew I wanted to make some things out of it.  I also have some of the fabric for a Halloween quilt, but I might not get to that this year.  It's a cute line for kids, but in the future I can see myself using a nice, "softer" orange, cream and black to sew with/decorate some things (I want to make fabric roses in those colors, but probably won't get to those this year either).  I enjoyed sewing these, and it was fun sewing with colors I wouldn't normally make something out of for K*.  I made the outfits big so hopefully they'll fit for a Halloween or two (or three).  Although it wouldn't be the worst thing though if I had to buy cute Halloween fabric again soon. 

I used the Pinkfig girly skirt pattern for the two green  black skirts and studied a few patterns (mainly Pinkfig's nie nie pattern and a free tutorial from Izzy & Ivy) to make the orange & yellow candy corn skirt since I don't have a pattern for a two ruffle layered skirt.  I'm happy with how the t-shirt appliques turned out, I was having a bit of trouble with the candy corns at one point and had to cut new ones out, but in the end it seems to have worked out.  My original plan was to use a bat, but I'm glad I went with the spider dangling down with a bow, so fun.  Another fun thing I've never done before: tags.  Last time I made some skirts, K* told me she couldn't tell which way was the back and that I should put a tag.  I think they look cute out of Halloween print ribbon.

DETAILS Yellow fabric: what a hoot by exclusively quilters; Orange fabric: scrappy and happy baby #3530 by Jane Selck; Black & green Halloween prints, green dots and tag ribbon: trick or treat by Riley Blake; Black fabric: from my stash; Spider and candy corn shapes: silhouette shapes; Tees: target and the children's place

And a wooden witch hat:

This wooden witch hat is from the wood connection in Utah.  They don't ship, but fortunatley I have family who is willing to send things to me. 

I used black paint, some Halloween paper I already had in my stash, purple paint for the moon, green tulle for the "bow", black glitter over the black paint on the bottom of the hat, a plastic ring spider {since I misplaced the one that came with it} and three gems from some Halloween stamp packages my mom sent me.  I spent the good part of one morning start to finish.  I also kept bugging my sister over the phone about how did she make hers.

Rapunzel is finished too!  Thanks to the school trunk or treat on Friday, I'm ahead of schedule for Halloween as far as having costumes done.  Yay! Pictures soon.  And {hopefully} my tips for braided yarn Rapunzel hair after some trial and error.

happy HAUNTING

Idea from here and here.
Made three of these recently.  Vinyl shapes by Deena Rutter are from here.  Cut the vinyl out with my silhouette.  For this one, I used paper from Circa 1934 by Cosmo Cricket.  I used various Halloween papers I had for the other two.  The vinyl is on the front of the glass and the paper is modpodged onto the back of the glass.  The frame is from Walmart ($3).  After riping the back off, I hot glued the glass in place (hope it holds).  Another easy crafty project once you have all the supplies.  Seriously, picking out paper (and fabric) can take me longer than making the actual thing sometimes.

On top of all my other projects I have piled up/stashed away, I have a Rapunzel Tangled costume to sew, a Halloween skirt or two to sew, a wooden witch hat from the wood connection in Utah to finish and this batty wreath found here on Carina Gardner's website.  I think I have most of the supplies I need, I just need to get going.  I did have my wisdom teeth out on Friday, so I'm not back to my usual self yet, dry socket on the right side is no fun.

Pencil Roll

This is a pencil roll I made last week for my daughter as a birthday present.  There are a lot of ideas online, I mainly used directions from a book, Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson, which I borrowed from a friend.  The fabric is Hoo's in the Forest by Riley Blake.  I LOVE this fabric.  I have a whole stash of it waiting for me to make projects out of.  The pencil roll is 9" by 20".  There are 27 pencil pockets and the pockets are about 3/4 of an inch. The book had the pencil pockets at an inch and a longer length, but I didn't want mine to be so long.  The pencil pockets stitching is one continuos line of stitching; down, across 3/4", up, across 3/4", down, repeat. If that makes sense.  It really went together quickly.  Other than picking out the fabirc and the pencil pocket stitching, it took about 20 minutes.  I had a few issues getting my pocket lines straight when I first started, so I lost track of how long that part took. But once I got going, it was pretty quick too.

Flower Clips

I finally got around to making these two flower hair clips.  I've had the flowers for a few months and finally figured out that I can use buttons for the decorative center.  I had been searching for cute centers to no avail in the jewelery making section, and then if dawned on me to use buttons. Duh!  Basically, I cut the flower off the stem, took it all apart and then glued it back together with my glue gun using a circle of felt and a clip as the back base.  I made these two flowers to go with a few specific shirts, one peach shirt and about four yellow shirts that I own.  One day at Hobby Lobby I happened to pass the peach flower and knew I had to make it into a flower clip.  Each stem has two usable flowers, so I can make two more in the future.  I have a handful of other flowers (black, cream, berry, purple, pink, turquoise) that my cousin made that get regular use.

Zipper Flower

Tuesday night, my church craft group got together to make fabric flowers and zipper flowers.  It was my first time makeing either one.  I like how my zipper flower turned out.  Not bad for a first try.  I won't even try to explain how to do it though.  I will say that we used hot glue to secure ours, not a needle and thread.

 There are tons of pics for inspiration here, and more ideas at craftaholicsanonymous, rileyblakedesigns, and I really like this one on a headband.  Putting them in a container for a flower display is so cute, fun as a bracelet too. Just do a search for zipper flower tutorials or pictures and you'll have all sorts of ideas to look at.  Have fun!

July 2011 crafts

Copied the basic idea for these two wooden crafts from somethings I came across on etsy last summer. I'm really happy with how they turned out (once I finally got around to them last week). For the white blocks, I used vinyl as a stencil with blue paint for the words and glued on two rusty stars I bought on etsy. The red board lettering is white vinyl, and again rusty stars from etsy. The red board is about 12 by 7 1/2 and the white blocks are a 2 x 2 (so it's 1 1/2 x 1 1/2) cut at about 7 and 10 1/2 inches. I mixed the red paint up from two other red colors and the blue is a modified navy. I like using magnolia white paint, it's not too bright of a white, but not cream. The fonts are susie's hand, annabelle, and modern no. 20. I have some ideas for other boards too, I could just make them even though it's August tomorrow and be ready for next year, or procrastinate again.

And now, for the mess up craft....,

I used modpodge to glue a bunch of red, white and blue paint chip samples (free from lowes) onto a canvas. It was late at night, so the picture isn't great, but after getting the paint samples glued on with a few coats, I then spread dark walnut minwax stain all over and wiped it off. I was pretty happy with it. Had plans to put 'AMERICA land that I love' along one side. It's not my usual style of decor, but it's seasonal and cheap to make. Then the mistake. I wanted it to have a little bit of a shimmer, but I got the modpodge shimmer paint (metallic sahara gold) ratio wrong. I did four parts modpodge to one part shimmer paint, but it was too much shimmer, at least too much for the look I was envisioning. I guess a smart person would have tested the shimmer out on a scrap first. Oh well. I could always make another one.... Could be something fun for the kids to make something along these lines too.

Inspiration here and here.

Monkey skirt

My niece A* turned two in the beginning of July and had a monkey themed party. While at Jo-Ann's I noticed this cute monkey fabric and decided to make her an outfit. I used the PinkFig girly skirt pattern that I've made for K* a few times and bought a white tee shirt at Target to embellish. In the beginning I was going to make a monkey applique, but I was nervous about it not turning out, so I went with something simple.
Which reminds me, I still need to make a flamingo applique for K* to go with her pink skirt......

Parade Banner 2011

J* helped me make & adhere lettering for two parade banners our stake used on a float in the Kingwood Fourth of July parade this year. It took about 6 1//2 hours to do two of them, so glad I had help. We used the Printing 101 cricut cartridge & black vinyl. I really like the font, I've never used that one before.

Framed Crayon Monogram

While browsing blogland for teacher gift ideas, I came across this one here using crayons and knew I had to make it for K* preschool teachers.
I ran out to the store while both kids were at school and found black frames on sale at Hobby Lobby and bought crayons at target in case I didn't have enough at home in my stash. I printed the S and M in like 450 size font and lightly traced them with a pencil onto the textured card stock we were using. I used a knife and scissors to cut the crayon tips off, mainly the knife I think. If I scored one side a bit and then rotated the crayon, it cut pretty cleanly. I used tacky glue so that K* could help, I read on some blogs that they used hot glue. I maybe should have used hot glue, after 15 hours+ ours weren't dry yet. Must be the humid climate we live in. Some letters of the alphabet are definitely more crayon monogram friendly. I used my silhouette to cut the teacher's names out of black vinyl with the font pea kels bells.

I had planned to make marker vases for some mini carnations that K* picked out at the store, but I didn't have enough markers or colored pencils or crayons for obvious reasons (and didn't want to run back to the store). The plan was to use a rubber band and some ribbon to hold the markers around a small glass vase. Then, they could use the markers next year. Luckily, I remembered these plastic craft paint cans I bought at Michael's last year and never used. I cut the pretty designs out of vinyl meant to look like etched glass with my silhouette. This is the first time I've used this kind of vinyl and I really like how it looks. I may be putting snowflakes on every window and mirror at Christmastime this year. It was hard to get a good picture though. Hopefully, her teachers will have some use for a plastic paint can.

The finished product!

Funny comment: When my son, S*, came home from school and saw what we were doing, he exclaimed, "That's the biggest waste of crayons ever!!". I thought it was pretty funny. And since when is he worried about "wasting" something? Kids are fun.

See my second crayon monogram post here.