September 2009 – Page 2 – the long thread

September 22, 2009September 22, 2009

Ice Cream Parlour

playdough-ice-cream

It’s play dough! I made some homemade play dough with my four-year-old today from this recipe. We even added some iridescent glitter and fragrance to it. Even though my daughter knew it wasn’t real, when she first saw it scooped into the tea cup she asked if she could eat some. I know, tempting. Luckily we had some actual ice cream in the freezer. So we enjoyed pretend eating and playing ice cream parlour.

I think this would be a fun craft for an ice cream themed birthday party (for children old enough to know not to eat it). You could make plain play dough and have the children add color and fragrance to make their own flavor, then you could scoop it into a jar for them to take home. Oh, and you could make little labels for the jars. Could be really cute.

September 21, 2009September 21, 2009

Wrist Pincushion

make-it-monday

wrist-pincushion1

Attach your sewing pins to your body and you’re pretty much guaranteed not to misplace them.

I’ve had pincushions on the brain after this post, so today I made a handy wrist pincushion. Simple to sew, it’s made from one fabric scrap, some filling and velcro. Easy! The measurements should be correct for an average sized woman’s wrist, but you can measure your own wrist and make necessary adjustments. The pincushion in the center takes up 3″ of space, so be sure to account for that. I thought about adding a cardboard piece to keep you from poking your arm with pins, but decided to leave that out as I found that I didn’t have any problems. But use caution!

Instructions are below. And if you make one of these, we’d love to see it! Add your photo to the Make it Monday Flickr pool here.

wrist-pincushion2

September 19, 2009

Bats in my Belfry

bat-window-clings

More bats! I made these bats for the front door by editing the template from yesterday’s project. I printed them out on window decal paper (available at your local office supply store). Here’s the bat file for you. Then just cut them out and press them onto the glass. Spooky. My husband thinks it’s too early for Halloween decorating, but bats year round, I say!

September 18, 2009

Bat Mobile

This is not a vehicle for the caped crusader, but rather a hanging mobile! I’ll be periodically featuring recycled projects for Halloween over the next month. In addition to my disdain for plastic crap made in China, I am just frugal.

So here’s an easy project made with thin cardboard. You can use cereal or cracker boxes, or save chipboard from packing materials, like I did here. I think these would also be pretty cut from patterned paper, if you are so inclined. I just cut these from cardboard, poked holes where the eyes should be and hung them to a branch using clear thread. This clear thread looks completely invisible and is light enough for the bats to fly around a bit.

I’m feeling for bats these days after hearing about the decline in the bat population along the east coast. We need these little critters. I’ll try to post some more batty projects over the weekend.

Just click on the image below and print out the template.