Pinterest Inspired Projects Day 4 : A rainbow of hearts!

  One of my favourite pictures on my Pinterest Valentine's Day board, is one of a 'forest' of felt hearts-on-sticks. You can see the original post here - this crafty lady sewed up a bunch of brightly coloured felt hearts, stuffed them with a little polyfill, and used a glue gun to attach then to wooden dowels. I didn't like the idea of gluing them to the sticks, as this would give them a distinct front and back. But my sweet friend Georgia from Love and Lollipops recently made heart pencil toppers where she left a little opening at the bottom of the heart to push the pencil into. So I combined the two ideas and now have a pretty rainbow of hearts brightening our dining room!

Why not whip up a batch of these to brighten your rooms during this month of love?!

You will need:

Scraps of felt in any colours you like
Needle and embroidery thread
Wooden skewers (I used kebab sticks)

1. Cut a heart shape out of card.

2. Using the pattern, cut two felt hearts of every colour you are using.

3. Starting just a little above the bottom of the heart, sew the two pieces together using blanket stitch. Do not work all the way around, but stop just a few millimeters before the bottom, thus leaving an opening for your skewer to fit through.

4. Pop onto the skewers.

5. Collect a few empty glass jars and arrange your hearts inside. You may now decide to trim some of your skewers to make them shorter, or keep them all the same length. Have fun arranging them on your windowsill...or kitchen table...or surprise your children with a bouquet of hearts on their bedside tables!!

I had such a LOVE-ly time making these hearts! It was a lazy Friday afternoon, and we worked on the living room floor where Baby Rosebud could watch us sew all the pretty colours. The older two wanted to join in, so I gave them a needle and thread and cut them a set of their own hearts to sew. They did so well!! Here is Sweetpea's version - she used an overhand stitch!

While we worked, we told stories and laughed and I delighted in their questions and comments. And every time I look at these felt hearts, I cherish the memories of the time spent making them with my sweet, precious children. Truly a heartFELT project!! :-)

Linking this to

  ABC and 123's Show and Tell

It's Playtime on The Imagination Tree

Pinterest Inspired Projects Day 3: Chair Envelopes

One of the most delicious joys in life for me is receiving a letter or a parcel in the mail.

And with 

Valentine's Day 

just around the corner,

 I thought it the perfect opportunity to share this joy with my children.

 But instead of letters in the mailbox, they'll be receiving little 

love notes from their Mama

in cute 

felt envelopes

tied to the backs of their chairs at the breakfast table! 

I was smitten with this idea from the moment I spotted it on Pinterest. From the picture I had seen I thought the pin might be for instructions on how to make your own, but it turned out that the one I saw was a store-bought one. It was featured on Blonde Designs Blog where Angie Gubler, a mother of two gorgeous little girls wrote: 

A few years ago, Pottery Barn Kids sold the most darling oversized felt envelopes that are meant to be affixed to a child's chair and filled with goodies on Valentine's Day. It seemed a waste to let the envelopes sit with nothing in them until February 14th. Hence, my husband and I decided last year, beginning on February 1st, to write little notes for our girls at night, leaving them in each of their envelopes. 

Isn't that just the sweetest idea?? 

Anyway, you KNOW how I love felt, and this really didn't look too complicated, so here's a special treat for you: I came up with a tutorial for making your own.

CHAIR BACK VALENTINE ENVELOPES!!

NOTE: Please do as I say, and not as I did - I took many of the pictures after the envelopes were nearly finished, so they are just a rough guide!

You will need:

* One piece of white felt (the size will depend on the size of the chair you use. See below.)

* A small scrap of red felt for the heart-shaped 'seal'

* Red embroidery thread

* A small piece of velcro

* Two pieces of red ribbon, each approximately 80cm long.

* A fabric marker

How to:

1. Measure your chair: Using a tape measure, measure the width of the back of the chair that you will be tying the envelope to. I made mine just slightly narrower than this measurement.

2. Now measure the height you want your envelope to be.

3. Draw he pattern: Using these measurements, draw a pattern onto paper. The length of your pattern will be twice the height of the envelope, plus 3/4's of the height (for the flap, which will be just a little shorter than the height of the envelope. I really hope this makes sense to you? Hope the picture helps!) Note: My completed envelope measures 19 x 32 cm, and the flap is 14 cm.

4. Pin your pattern to the white felt and cut the envelope out.

5. Sew on the velcro: Fold your envelope in the correct way and use a fabric marker to mark where your velcro needs to go. Now sew the rough part of the velcro to the inside of the flap, and the softer part to the outside of the envelope.

6. Add the decorative stitching:. Using your fabric marker, draw a faint guide on the bottom part of the envelope and using red embroidery thread, sew the lines as shown. For the lines on the flap, measure in about 1 cm from the edge and draw a faint line with your fabric marker to guide you.

7. Attach the seal: Cut 2 red heart shapes out of red felt.Stitch together using blanket stitch. Sew the heart onto the outside of the flap. (I made a smiley face for ArrowBoy as a more boy-friendly alternative to the heart)

8. Use your fabric marker to mark the place where the ribbons should go. Sew the ribbons in place on the back of the envelope. 

9. Stitch the sides of your envelope using either a straight stitch on your sewing machine, or a running stitch or even blanket stitch if you are choosing to stitch it by hand.

10. I trimmed the side edges of my envelopes with a sharp scissors. (I really, really want a pinking shears for projects like these, but for R442 I can feed my family for three days!!)

Now tie to the chairs and fill with sweet valentines! Voila! What pretty way in which to bless your little ones with affirmative and tender words! 


Linking this to ABC and 123's Show and Tell
and
It's Playtime on The Imagination Tree

Drawing butterflies

   This morning Sweetpea wanted to make a gift for her daddy, and we decided to decorate a blank wooden key chain for his house keys. We talked about what she could draw on it, and she asked if I'd show her how to draw a butterfly. I did a simple drawing and handed her the pencil. She did a good job of the head, but when the oblong for the body came out square, she got really upset and wanted to throw in the towel straight away. (She's a bit of a perfectionist that way, and I often have to guide her gently towards taking her time and practicing something if she can't do it perfectly right from the start.)

So I showed her that I don't think a rectangular body is such a bad idea...and when she tried again, she actually did beautifully. This gave her the confidence boost she needed and she promptly flipped the paper over and began covering it in butterflies.

We chatted about how colourful butterflies are and I offered her the felt tip pens, again just gently guiding her towards using different colours for the different parts of the butterfly, as she generally tends to pick only one colour and do the whole drawing in that. She was so taken with her drawings, that the rest of the morning was spent drawing butterflies and flowers!

Here is the key chain she decorated: (the ink bled a little into the grain of the wood)

She was so proud of it, and her dad loved it!

Envelope houses

A row of envelopes glued down on a strip of green cardboard 'grass' and decorated with foam stickers and oil pastels - so fun and cheerful!! We worked on this one together - I drew the road and most of the features on house number 3 - Sweetpea loves it when we do art together!!

Sewing up a storm...Matryoshka style!

Two years ago we had the privilege of being the host family for a lovely young lady from the Ukraine who participated in a year of spiritual equipping at our church. On her first visit to our home she surprised me with a lovely, hand-painted matryoshka key chain, and I have been in love with these sweet-faced Russian lassies ever since.

So when the pregnancy hormones recently drove me to a sewing frenzy, everything I touched smacked of matryoshka loveliness, and I thought I'd show you what I came up with:

Above: A rainbow fleece scarf. I actually made two, one for Sweetpea, and one for a dear little friend who had a birthday in June. Lesson learnt from this project: not all fleece is created equal. In fact,

 only the orange fleece I used on this scarf is the really nice, non-pilling kind. What a pity that our local fabric shops do not make an effort to stock the good quality stuff!!

Above: Two hairclip holders - again, one for Sweetpea, and one for her friend. I LOVED sewing these!!

Above: A while ago I bought a whole bunch of brightly coloured shopping bags on sale at Pep (seriously - they were R2, 99 each!! I couldn't resist!!) This merry little felt  lady sure spruces up this bag, don't you think?

She now accompanies us on our trips to the library and is very helpful in carrying our books back to the car!

Above: Another Pep treasure! This beanie cost me R6 (for US readers, that's not quite $1), and I just added a friendly felt lassie to dolly it up a bit! It's a hit with Miss Sweetpea, of course!

And my favourite Matryoshka-inspired piece of handiwork is a little pillow I embroidered..maybe for the new baby? I haven't quite found a spot for it yet, but it makes me smile every time I look at it!

Linking this to Tea Rose Home's Link Party!

Pastel coloured egg cup wreath

O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?  
~Percy Bysshe Shelley

We have been playing around with 'colour families' and are currently having fun with pastels!! Think marshmallows, cotton wool, babies and spring, and you'll get the general idea!

Spring is still a few months away and the dismal greyness and wetness of a Cape Town winter sometimes threatens this Joyful Mama's joy in a serious way...so we decided to create our own spring time cheer in anticipation of what's to come! The result: a merry little wreath made of painted egg cup flowers! (I got the inspiration for this wreath here).

We started by cutting loose the cups from some empty egg cartons...and then turned each little cup into a 'flower' by slitting the sides and pushing them open to form petals.

Next, we painted our flowers in pretty pastel colours,

...and painted a cardboard ring light green.

Then we glued pom-poms for the flowers' centers...

and stuck all the flowers onto our cardboard ring.

Spring is nature's way of saying, "Let's party!"  ~Robin Williams

If you've never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom.  ~Terri Guillemets

The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day he created Spring.  ~Bern Williams

Linking this to ABC and 123's Show & Tell

Frederick - collage

We are LOVING the story of Frederick by Leo Lioni ,which we currently have on loan from the library.


Since we've been sick sick sick for the past week or so, heaps of time were spent reading together in an attempt to chase away the swine flu blues!!  And although this Mama was fairly limited in terms of range of intonation due to a horrible throat infection, we still really enjoyed reading this sweet story about five little field mice. We could SO relate to their misery when winter came and they were stuck in their ...in the cold stone wall, but like them, we were thrilled that Frederick had faithfully done his share of 'gathering' during the summer months, and now he cheered us all with his memories of warm sun rays, and the colours of the meadow in summer, and his beautiful poetry about the seasons!

And now that we are all over the worst of it and feeling a little stronger, I thought it would be fun to do a very simple Frederick collage. Sweetpea really likes using her scissors and glue, so I just drew the basic shapes for our picture on scraps of coloured paper and asked her to cut them out.

The raggedness of her toddler-cutting echoes the torn paper edges of the original illustrations! Good for practicing cutting, and just a fun little activity to enhance our delight with this darling book!

Adding details with a black marker.

..and a bright, yellow sun!

Her masterpiece!! :-)

Using what we have 2: MAGAZINE PICTURES - Flower Girl greeting cards

I've been collecting scraps from magazine pictures with interesting designs on them and keeping them in a plastic sleeve. So when I saw this cute idea on Giddy Giddy, I pulled out the scraps and a glue stick and Sweetpea and I spent a rainy afternoon crafting these pretties!

I used a sharp craft knife to cut out the areas where the girls' clothes would be, and Sweetpea had SO much fun choosing the 'outfits'. She opted for flowers every time, so we have a sweet little collection of Flower Girls just waiting to bring cheer to the happy recipients of these cards.

(We have a little friend whose birthday is coming up soon, and Sweetpea wanted to draw in the face on her friend's card herself - isn't it so sweet??)

Bubble Bears

Sweetpea and her friend Little E love to paint, so when they took a break from water painting the outside walls during a recent play date, I got out the Real Thing and they had fun making bubble bears! 

I stuck two rectangles of bubble wrap to the small table, and the girls then painted it brown.

Then they pressed cardboard teddy shapes onto the wrap and carefully lifted it off.

They used foam circles and googly eyes to decorate their teddies. Since Little E is not quite two yet and was heading the right way for glueing Papa Bear's eye onto his foot, I put a little drop of white glue where the eyes and 'buttons' had to go, and she just had to aim and stick down! They were very impressed with their teddies and was tickled pink when I used them as 'puppets' to tell the story of Goldilocks!