Fast Felt Puppet - Craft a Day #2

My kiddos LOVE puppets (so do I!), but, some of my ministry puppets just aren't able to be played with by little ones, so, I decided to make another one that they COULD play with! I'm sharing it here for my "Craft a Day" series for National Craft Month.  So here are the "ingredients" for the little puppet I "cooked up":

Felt, glue gun(and glue, hehe), ribbony stuff, magic marker, old buttons , and snaps

Here are the puppets I used as a pattern shape:

1.  I cut out the shape (larger for seam allowance) in two pieces of felt

(messed up on this one, had to do it again in green)

stitch it down all around(except the bottom) and turn it rightside out

2. Start adding pieces of felt, buttons, ribbon, etc.

3. Move stuff around and chop it up...get messy!

 3.  When you get it figured out, glue it down!

The kids call him "Mr. Police Man"!

We've added him to our collection!



Monday Excursion!

I'm SO excited!! WOO HOO!!!! WHOOP WHOOP!!!! YEEEHAW!!!! OH....maybe I should tell you why? hehe

Here goes:

I'm going to HOBBY LOBBY tomorrow! AND....better than that...>BIG LOTS!!!! Do you have ANY idea the things you can get a Big lots for crafting? And...its WAY affordable!

You can get small skeins of funky yarn for a buck each. There are racks and racks of awesome scrapbooking supplies for cheap. Most items are between 1 and 5 dollars, including super cute scrapbooks! There are tons of jewelry making supplies for around 1 to 5 dollars each as well!  There are cute dishtowels for cheap if you like upcycling.  Adorable socks for upcycling.....TONS o FUN at Big lots!

 A lot of the fun of tomorrow is also that I am taking my two oldest daughters, my friend, and her daughter as well. It is destined to be a girl's DAY OF FUN! I promise to come back with a bunch of new crafty ideas to post!

Upcycling Jeans with my daughter

I have passed my love of upcycling jeans to my oldest daughter, Raegan (she is 14 now, but was 13 when we made these). I thought I would post a couple skirts that we did together.....

This skirt was a lot of fun to make.  I had cut the pant legs off another pair of pants that I just wanted the waistband from and saved them because of how pretty the white embroidery was.  I was unsure of what to do with it as yet.  Then, Raegan decided she wanted a skirt, so she took some blue jeans, chopped off the bottoms(she likes t-length skirts) and started looking for fabric to put in it.

I then stepped in and told her I had something that would work...the bottoms of the other pair!

So, We attatched them...and VOILA...an adorable skirt! People usually ask what store it came from! (One question, Raegan...what's it like to be so skinny?)

On this skirt, Raegan did most of the work herself.  I helped by finding her the cute camo fabric with blue embroidered butterflies in my stash as well as the butterfly sew-on patch. 

She did the leg chopping, seam ripping, fabric cutting, and most of the sewing.  Her sewing machine was getting ready to bite the dust, so, I did help her with the top part and the hems.  (this skirt is a little tight  now, so she's going to give it away to someone else)

I will be posting a basic tutorial on these soon......as well as some fun variations!

Blog hop Most Embarrasing Moments....

When my Oldest daugher (14) was two, I had her with me while waiting in line at a check out. The woman in front of us happened to have a noticibly large posterior (butt, if your a redneck like me!)and, much to my dismay, my daughter noticed it....I was horrified as she reached up, patted her butt twice and yelled "BUTT-BUTT!" .......Um, ma'am, which isle has the holes to crawl into?

Your turn! Wanna join the hop? Follow me/leave a comment and go here:

A visit to The Frugal Family Fun Blog

(If you have a tutorial you would like us to try, leave a comment with a link to the tutorial and we'll check it out!)


Whew, the kids and I are WORN OUT!  We traveled all the way from I'mSEWcheap-ville to The Frugal Family Fun Blog!  It took us a while, but it was worth it when we got there!

In all seriousness, Valerie's site is AMAZING!  She has tons of fun kid friendly activities and  everything well categorized and easy to follow! 

Today, the kids and I decided to follow her tutorial labeled : Easy Crazy Crayon Party Favors .   What a great way to repurpose broken crayons! It seems like every time my children color they break at least one crayon!  And I'm SEW cheap that I can't stand to throw them away and buy more all the time!

Ok, without further adieu....here is how our visit to Valerie's site went!

First up, the list of necessities :
                                                                    1. Broken Crayons

                                                                   2. baking tin

  (Valerie uses a heart shaped on....SEW cute....but alas, I only have the round one and I'm too cheap to buy more!)

The FFFB suggests having an adult use a pocket knife to score the wrappers to make it easier for the kiddos to remove them. Twas a very good idea...however, I'm a bit inept with sharp utensils, so,  I used a serrated butter knife.

Now, time to start the project!

                                    Step 1.  The kids helped me peel off the crayon wrappers..

                                   Step 2.  We separated the crayons by color (maybe not a necessary step,            but the kids loved it!

Step 3.  We picked out the colors for our crayons and put them in the individual cups.

Next, Valerie at The Frugal Family Fun Blog says to put your crayons in an oven at 275 for 10 minutes, so, thats what we do!

Here they are melting in the oven:

Here they are about 3 minutes after I've pulled them out...

And then, I put them into the fridge, as suggested.

30 minutes later I pulled them out and .....

VOILA!

This was so much fun!  The kids each picked out their favorites!  Now they want me to find a heart shaped tin like Valerie's so they can give them away to their friends for valentines!

Thanks again to The Frugal Family Fun Blog for this GREAT Easy Tutorial!

This was a fun trip......I like it here......I may stay a while and do another tutorial......or come back again another time!

Family Blog Travels

I love to travel.  I enjoy driving or riding down the road, exploring new places, touring points of interest, learning new things, taking home souvenirs.....you name it, I love it!
BUT.....I have 5 children, two dogs, and a cat. This, coupled with a limited budget,  makes travel a little difficult these days.  However, thanks to y'all, I can still travel! 

I just pack my laptop,  hop on the Blog-train and take off!  Maybe my first stop will be SCOTLAND where I can learn how to make a cute purse/bag from Julia D. Art, or maybe the kids and I will stay right here in the USA and learn from a girl who's ORIGINALLY from the UK, but moved to good ole' California ,and learn how to make her Lazy Crayon Roll.  Who knows where we'll go first, or after that!  It'll be a blast! 

Don't worry, I'll keep in touch as I travel, right here in my blog! The kids and I will have a ton of fun trying out all the tutorials you bloggers have posted!  We'll post what we've done, all of it!  The good, the bad, AND the ugly! 

Keep checking back...maybe you'll find a site that makes you feel like traveling there too! AND...by all means, if you have I "blogville" you want me to travel to , go ahead and post a comment with a link to my site!  If I like one of my points of interest.....I may just have to post it in "I SEW love these sites"!!!

I already went to RavenzTarot Mindless Sewing Rants and I get to bring home a souvenir....I WON  a GIVEAWAY!!!! Thanx Ravenz!

FIRST STOP:  We're visiting Valerie at The Frugal Family Fun blog!  She has a GREAT blogville and....She shares her name with my youngest daughter! Hmmm.....lots of stuff here....might have to stay a while..........

Stamping out boredom

The kids and I sat down together today and, as a team,we stamped out boredom....literally!  No, seriously! 

                                                          I got out my alphabet stampers
(which are usually paired with water and construction paper for some fun alphabet learning with my 5yr old)

Some acrylic paint and paint brushes,

AND...fabric from old jeans or khakis.

We poured some paint into old Tupperware lids, 

cut some more stamps out of potatoes

and started stamping!

We monogrammed:

We stamped nicknames:

We made pictures:

WE HAD A BLAST!

I even had my daughter stamp up a piece of t-shirt fabric that I had.

They didn't have to be perfect.  In fact, the imperfections were what made them cute!

Then I started attaching those monograms to things!

These are a couple of my different lunch bags:

and This is an apron (tutorial posted on this site!) I made for a friend.

We haven't used all of the stamped fabric pieces yet. There weren't really any projects planned for them. We just put them into a Ziploc for later use.  This way, we had fun as a family while saving future monogramming time as well as saving MONEY on paint by not having wasted, dried out paint by getting the stuff out every time we need something.  

In the future, if I realize we need another stamped item, we'll just "Stamp out Boredom" together AGAIN!

This was an project in my book!