DIY Christmas ornaments for kids

Can you believe that Christmas is 16 days away? I always feel like it sneaks up on me. I had every intention of making an advent calendar this year, and completely spaced it thanks to all the business I've gotten at my shop. (More on that in another post.)

I put up our little tree, which is just a tabletop version. It's white with pre-strung white lights and I wrapped two blue garlands around it. Simple and easy, which is what we wanted when we had a busy baby and cats in the house. Now that all the cats have been rehomed and Micah is going to four in four months (WHAT!?), I should probably make some ornaments for it. I like the idea of making making ornaments to add every year, so I decided to make a little collection of fun ideas from my beloved Pinterest of ornament ideas for kids to make.

Personalized name mugs

I'm sure you've seen those Sharpie mugs all over Pinterest. In case you haven't, here is the one that I liked the best.



I kept looking at them, wondering if I should make one for my parents for Christmas. Half of the pins on Pinterest have comments on them about how the Sharpie didn't work though - they would wash them, and the Sharpie would just wipe off. The heat of the oven was often pointed to as a culprit, but also the quality of your mug. Cheap mugs worked better because the glaze was more permeable. Or maybe you should use a certain type of Sharpie, the kind meant for porcelain. Or maybe you should glaze them after, just on the part that's painted so they are still safe to drink from. So many opinions!

So instead of trying the Sharpie at all, I went to Michael's and bought a six pack of paint pens, the kind you shake up like spray paint and then press the tip to get the paint flowing. Then I bought five mugs, also at Michael's, that were meant to be painted and even came with a tiny brush and a few paint pots. At $1.99 for each mug and $5.99 for the pens, a pack of stickers in letter shapes, and a 40% off coupon at the register, I spent less than $16 on the whole lot. Not bad for knocking out five Christmas gifts at once! And they hold up in the wash and the microwave, too.

And they came together super fast. I stuck on a name, tapped around the letters with a different color paint pen, and in less than five minutes they were dry and completed. The stickers I chose were not the best choice - they were 3D, which I thought would make them easier to trace around, but it also kept them from laying flat enough so the paint bled underneath. I just went in with a white paint pen (thankfully already in the pack) and colored over the bleeds a bit. It didn't make the edges sharp and crisp like I wanted, but it did give them a pretty marbled look I had hard time capturing on camera. And best of all? My recipients loved them. We had an early Christmas with my moms family since they were in town from Kansas and wouldn't be back for awhile.



Have you ever tried this particular project? How did it go?

Eight DIY snowflake tutorials

In the last two years at my desk job, someone has organized a day at the beginning of December when we get to make some kind of decoration for our cube land. When you are in a tiny box for so many hours a day, you're kind of limited when it comes to decoration. And this year, we are moving to a new building at the very end of December, so no one is really feeling the holiday magic this time around. So I decided I would look for something small, easy and pretty that I could make for each desk that no one would feel bad about tossing when we move.

Enter, paper snowflakes! I have collected a mix of the some of the best paper snowflake tutorials out there, ranging from easy enough to do with your kids to true works of art.




This is what I did last year, in a previous department. I think this year I may do it in a fun paper. So easy!


A twist on the previous snowflake, but still in the realm of possibility for kids, maybe just a little older.


A little fancier, but still do-able for kids.


I like that this one is not the typical 8-point star.


Out of toilet paper!


Using pipe cleaners. So fun, and double sided wrapping paper would be gorgeous.


For the inner nerd - Star Wars snowflakes! I'm thinking you need an Exacto blade for these. But I won't lie - I plan on trying them!


And for the truly talented - a quilled snowflake! I can't imagine how long this took.

Are you making any snowflakes this year?

Easy DIY boy gifts

Every year for Christmas and his birthday, I try to come up with some fun ideas for Micah that I can make myself. Last year I made him a play mat with roads he could drive his little cars around on. I expected it to be a big hit and it sort of wasn't. Thankfully it was a cheap dud, but still, kind of disappointing.

So this year, I have been showing Micah the things I come across that I thought he would like, to get kid approval. I know how hard it is to make things for boys, when it is so easy for girls (or maybe it's just that there are more DIY options out there for girls), so I thought I would pick out the things Micah showed the most interest and excitement for and share a list!





This is something I was looking at for ages. The pediatrician I take Micah to has a HUGE white board that is magnetic, covered with fun letter and shape magnets, at a lower height from the floor so the kids can play with it. He absolutely adores that wall. I think for this project, the most expensive part would be the magnets you add to the board. Maybe thrift shops or Craigslist could help there!



This one is best if you know you will reliably get snow at some point this winter. Since we live in the desert, I don't think this will be a gift, but just something I make one day if it snows.



This is a big favorite, and I am definitely making Micah some of these. Little stuffed fish with a magnet in the "nose" area (do fish have a nose?), and a corresponding magnet on a string attached to a stick. Tons of fun, plus a bonus way to get rid of scraps!



What kid doesn't like play dough? And this is an easy way to color them exactly how you want, without the mess of food coloring dying things you didn't intend on dying. Plus, it smells pretty good.



This would be fantastic for cold days when you make living room forts! Added bonus - if your kid goes to daycare, perfect for naptime. Micah hasn't napped in almost two years, but I know other lucky moms get the occasional nap!



For the truly adventurous - a marshmallow shooter! Maybe just add the caveat that it has to be used outdoors.



Micah really liked this idea. I was thinking I could start working on money with him. He gets a quarter every time someone says a bad word, and loses a quarter if he says a bad word. Thankfully there isn't much money passing back and forth, but it was a good way for him to see money. Maybe we can start talking about how four quarters equals a dollar this way.

What do you plan to make for gifts for Christmas this year?

How to create your own double fold bias tape from scraps

Now, I will say first thing that I did this out of scraps. So I don't know if it counts as "real" bias tape. Typically, you cut a square of fabric and fold it, point to point, to make a triangle, and then you cut strips and sew them together to make your bias tape. I rarely have the patience or the need to make so much, so when I was working on a little project (which I will hopefully be posting about here soon), I decided on a whim to create my own bias tape from a few excess long pieces I had left over after cutting the main pieces.

Now, part of the reason you cut bias tape on the bias is because of stretch and flexibility. So the type of material you use to try this is going to affect it a great deal. Keep that in mind.

Now, I had two long strips about four inches wide and around two feet long, and one side was the selvedge, which made life a lot easier for me.



Time to break out your iron. Mine is older than I am (probably) and has two settings - hot and hot with steam. Hah. I went with no steam for this, but hot is good because it makes the process faster. Use appropriate settings for the material you're using.

Fold your strip in half and iron it flat, making a sharp crease. Then open it up to see that crease, wrong side up.





Fold one side in so the raw edge meets the crease in the middle, and iron it to make another sharp crease on that side.



Repeat on the other raw edge.



Now fold it in half on the original crease, and iron it one more time. I usually put a little more weight on my iron when I get to this point to make sure all three creases are sharp and defined.



Rinse and repeat until you have the amount of bias tape you need, or you run out of scraps. Admire your handiwork.



And then you can use it just like store-bought tape.





And that's it! Have fun!

When was the last time you saw a sewing fail?

If you never have, I'm not surprised. Who wants to post stuff they made that didn't work out? After all, the way to keep people coming back to your blog is to show how incredibly awesome you are with your sewing machine.

Me? I'm not afraid to admit I am a total novice with my sewing machine, despite how very badly I want to be brilliant. You remember this post, which I wasn't able to finish because my white thread went awol? Well...I found my white thread a couple days ago and spun out those two shirts in record time. Micah was with my dad that day so I wasn't able to try it on him until the next morning.

Epic. Fail. I won't even share pictures because it's just ridiculous. I haven't tried the white shirt on him yet, because I am a tad disillusioned, but the green and white striped one was just sad. If you recall, I took it in from the middle, both front and back, because of the deep v-neck. Despite taking out a total of 4 inches, the neck is still too wide. If he was a girl I'd put it on him with a tank top under and it would look like a ballet top. That tells you exactly how wide it was. It touched his shoulder bone on each side .It dipped down the front of his chest to an indecent level.

Sigh.

Let's move on to something a little more happy, shall we?

I am a part of a Christmas gift exchange this year with a group of online mommies I have grown close to over the past two years. They are the best for venting and sharing my mommy worries and woes, and my happiness. We are very close and share photos of our kiddos every Friday, with what we call BPF (Baby Picture Friday). I love these ladies. So when one suggested doing an Elfster exchange, I was all for it. The best part is that I drew the name of one of the members that I don't know terribly well, so I had to get creative for her gift and really start chatting with her, and figure out what she was into.

Being the Pinterest nerd that I am, I went straight to browsing my saved DIY projects. And I found two things right away that I had always wanted to make for myself that I thought she might like.

The first was this awesome camera strap cover. You can find a million variations of this tutorial, but this was the first one I found. It called for fusible fleece, which is not something I had on hand and I was far too broke to go pick some up (can I just say how excited I am to be starting my new job Monday?), so I winged it using plain white flannel on the inside. It was super easy, I didn't even really follow the tutorial. I sewed together three cut pieces of pretty printed cotton, then lay a piece of white flannel the full width of the cotton on top. Sewed them right sides together, turned it inside out, and then ran a careful stitch around the open ends to hem. Easy.



The second gift I made her was a variation on this tutorial for a very simple scarf. I decided to make mine into an infinity scarf, so I bought a men's XL shirt and cut it straight across just under the armpits. I didn't even sew the top edge since jersey curls up nicely.



I left the bottom sewed hem to add some weight, and to clarify top and bottom. Then using freezer paper and my exacto knife, I cut out a stencil that says, "I <3 my DSLR".



I ironed the freezer paper shiny side down onto the shirt in two parts so I could use red for the heart and yellow for the text.




I didn't make the paint thick so that it looks faded and broken-in. (The other two in the picture are ones I made for other people for Christmas. A super quick project, I couldn't resist those shirts on sale!)



You can't see the design very well once it's on if you drape it around your neck twice, but it still looks cute.



Have you made anything from Pinterest for Christmas?

The Case of the Missing Thread

Don't you hate getting started on a project, getting about halfway through it and then finding out you're missing some vital element you need to complete it? ARG.

I found this tutorial on Pinterest awhile back and hadn't had an opportunity to try it out until today.

Several months ago Walmart had some sort of crazy clear-out of a bunch of their clothes, pricing them down as far as $3. I wandered the racks, determined to find something that I could reconstruct. As someone that had not really done much with clothes at the time I wasn't sure what I was looking for, but everything in my size range didn't seem to have much potential. So I glanced through the Small to Medium size range for something I could use in scrap projects, and I found these two beauties.



Please ignore the wrinkles. I refuse to iron something that I will just wrinkle right back up again!

When I saw the striped shirt I thought of Micah right away. I love stripes on babies and in a size Medium I knew it wouldn't require much to make it fit. The moon and cow shirt was also obvious for him because he loves the moon and points it out every chance he gets, plus it wasn't too girly. So I brought them home and promptly forgot about them for about two months. Good job, slacker!

Today I had a bit of free time so I dug them out and brought along a new shirt I just bought for the baby to use as reference. I lay them out on my dining room table and started pinning them. For the green shirt, the neck was way too wide for an 18 month old, so rather than just pin up the sides to take out the excess, I pinned up the center to bring in the neckline.





Then I pinned up the sleeves, leaving some room for a small cuff.



I also pinned down the top of the shoulders to bring in the neckline even more and to help narrow the arms. It was about this time that I realized I should have turned it inside out, hah. So I turned it inside out and repinned, then I cut off the bottom at the length I wanted and cut off the sleeves to where I pinned.



And since I am an overachiever, I also pinned up the cow shirt. I put a row of pins down the sides and inside of the shirt sleeves to take it in. Of course, I also realized I didn't turn it inside out again. I think I'm having an off day.







And that's as far as I got because I realized I had no white thread. What a day I'm having. Stay tuned for the finished project!