Yarn Wrapped Bottles from Penelope and Pip.
Woven Finger Knitting Hula Hoop Rug from Flax and Twine.
Truffula Trees from Zakka Life.
Needlepoint Purse from Danielle Thompson for CRAFT.
Paper + Straw Flower Tutorial from Just Lovely for Gussy Sews.
Garden Trellis PDF Quilt Pattern, $8 from Fresh Lemons Quilts.
And here are the ones we made with my seven-year-old. She drew the designs for these tattoos and we printed them on tattoo paper.
I ordered this Silhouette tattoo paper after reading the reviews on amazon, but you don’t need to have any special cutter to use this paper. Just an inkjet printer. I scanned my daughter’s drawings, reversed them (important!) and printed them on the paper. Then you have to wait for it to dry (which took almost an hour) and then ever so carefully apply the adhesive paper on top, and finally rub any air bubbles out. I was nervous since I only ordered two sheets, but it turned out fine and we were able to get 40 tattoos on two sheets.
So I took her drawings and added some typed text as I wasn’t sure how legible her writing would be on a small tattoo. Then of course she wanted to attach candy to the cards, and knowing how much parents love their kids to eat a teaspoon of colored sugar, I acquiesced and bought Pixy Stix, cut some slits in the card and my daughter attached one to each card. The heart paper clips came from Paper Source and were a bit of a splurge for me. As you can see below, the quality of the tattoo is just OK, but about what you normally see with temporary tattoos.
If you’d like the printable for this one, you can download the .pdf file here.
Today was Valentine Central at our house and the dining room table is now covered in bits of paper, ribbon, tissue paper and candy wrappers!
My nine-year-old and I got the idea a while back to make Valentine crackers (like Christmas crackers), and I found this tutorial over on Not Martha. Megan has also made them for Valentine’s Day now, so you can read her great tutorial for those as well. I could only find the poppers on ebay, but you may be able to find some in one of the shops that Megan recommends. They took a while to get here since they came from overseas, but they were inexpensive and since we used gift wrap tubes (which were sturdier and looked better than the toilet paper tubes that we thought of using), the project itself was reasonable.
For my daughter’s crackers, she chose to fill them with candy, cut out hearts, ribbon confetti and stickers. I cut the gift wrap tubes into 2 1/2″ segments using a craft knife and we used tissue paper for the wrapping, so it was easy for my daughter to roll them up on her own. And the twist ties that Megan used are genius and so much easier for little hands. I had these silver ones on hand, but looks like you can find some red and white striped ties here. Once I got out the supplies and made a sample to see how to put it all together, my daughter was able to make them on her own.
We’ll see how the popping crackers go over with the teachers! I am planning to give them some warning. Here’s a printable for the labels we used if you want to try these out in the future. This makes 1 1/2″ x 7″ labels, which work with gift wrap tubes, but if you are using toilet paper rolls, they will need to be a bit longer.
Peach Paisley Cotton Sundress, $120 from Cherry Pie Vintage.
Peach Baby Shoes, $24.50 from Hilary Frazier.
Porcelain Business Card Holder, $18 from Creative Works.
Lotta Jansdotter fabric, half yard bundle, $9.50 from Modern Fabric.
Heart Nesting Bowls, $30 from JD Wolfe Pottery.
Aqua Blue Post Earrings, $18 from Little White Dresser.
Pastel Sherbet Bangle Bracelets, set of 3 for $48 from The Glossy Queen.
Vintage Snowflake Glasses, $20 for set of 4 from Swan Vintage Finds.
Corals and Floral Handspun Yarn, $19 from Misterstilskin.
More fabric that I’ve been collecting for 1, 2, 3 Quilt. Liberty of London for me is the end all, be all of fabric. It was a massive splurge for me to buy these quarter yards from Purl, but I’m excited that my mother found some Liberty prints half-off at her local fabric shop yesterday. I can’t wait to get them in my hands. Liberty of London will turn you into a fabric preservationist, rather than a sewer. It’s just so beautiful on its own and it’s tough to cut up such gorgeous (and pricey) fabric. But I will try. You can see my love for Liberty over the years. In addition to the classic prints, I love the seasonal, modern designs as well. You can watch a video about the making of the Spring/Summer 2012 collection here.
Here are some online sources for Liberty fabric for those of us in the U.S.:
Etsy (various sellers)
Amazon even seems to be carrying it too. Note that the Liberty Art fabric is a different line printed on basic cotton fabric, rather than the flowing lawn fabric of the Tana Lawn line. See price difference. And you can often find bits and even yardage for good prices on ebay. Feel free to add any other sources of Liberty in the comments below.
I used two Liberty prints in 1, 2, 3 Sew for the Change Your Mind Skirt, which is reversible.
I think the stacked fabric before it was sewn is just as pretty as the finished result.
