FAMILY

Becca bought a poster to put in her dorm room at college that shows the whole alphabet out of pictures of items that look like letters!  It’s really cool and she’s gotten a lot of compliments on it.  I did some searching and found a site that offers personalized gifts in the shape of words made from photographs.  The company is called Letter Perspectives.  They have quite a few examples on their website showing different words spelled out in nature.

This would be a great project for a Girl Scout troop!  Send the girls out with a camera and a list of letters they need to find.  They could make up all kinds of posters to give as gifts to their families!

I found the directions over at FamilyCorner.com and thought I’d share them here.

What you need:

Old Jeans, needle and thread or sewing machine, trim or appliques (optional).
What to do:

Cut the legs off an old pair of jeans. Cut the hem off the legs. You’ll use one leg for the purse and the other leg for the strap and decoration. Sew across the bottom, about 1″ from the edge. Snip up to the sewing line every 1/4″ to make a decorative frayed edge along the bottom of the purse. Snip along the top in the same way.

Cut half the other leg into nine 3/4″ strips. Tie the ends of the strips together so you have three strips of three tied together. Braid. Stitch the braid ends to the purse.

To decorate, cut out two heart shapes in the remaining denin. Stitch to the purse leaving raw edges to fray. Stitch on an applique between the two hearts.

This may be used to hold any number of small items.

Supplies needed:

baby food jar
flat buttons
paint or window markers
paintbrush
quick setting glue

Glue several buttons on the outside of the jar to represent flowers. Hold the buttons in place until the glue is set. Paint stems and leaves on to the jar for the flowers. Add any other decorations you may want.

They are small wooden boxes that they first painted with colored paint, then after it had dried, they took a strip of felt and glued it to the rim of the box lid.  Then they each had some felt bunnies and chicks, as well as a variety of flowers to glue onto the top of each box.  They turned out so cute!

I love making Easter crafts!

She loves black and white, and anything zebra.

She wanted a black strip across the top and bottom, and the slot for the rod is pretty big so if she wants to take them to college with her, she can.

On her bed is her laptop, and it even has a zebra skin on it! lol! It’s a little hard to see with the big flowers on her bed, but it’s there.

She’s got pictures that she’s taken all through her room, and several of them turned into posters. It’s a very typical “teen” room! lol!

I’ve been looking for a cute bunny to put on my front door for Easter… and I only have a little over a week to make it! I better get on the ball!

They include the patterns and all the directions on how to make it. It looks like a fairly simple project. Hubby Frank has a lot of wood scraps around so he should be able to come up with enough wood for me.

I love the face on this bunny! I hope I’m able to duplicate it!

Make sure you stop over at Craftown.com to check out all their Easter crafts from easy to Advanced ideas!

Hoppy Easter!

<><><><>

“Grubby” is the word I kept hearing around the craft circuit. To me grubby meant grimy. So I decided to get to the bottom of this and find out the big deal with grubbing a doll and what it really meant in crafters terms. So I decided to ask a fellow crafter “What Is Grubby? To my surprise I found out that it’s another word for aged or old and that it gives your dolls that dirty look. Now at first I thought to myself “Why would I want to make my dolls look dirty”. Then I did a few of my dolls and realized they are not really dirty looking but a bit more primitive.
So to get “The Grubby Doll Look”, you can use a tea mixture, coffee or Walnut Ink. I decided to go with Walnut Ink, since I seem to drink too much coffee or tea to keep any left over for my dolls. Where do you purchase Walnut Ink? Try various craft sites and also E-bay sells them. Now this does not mean to go out and make all your dolls look grubby, has you may or may not like the look. Trust me; I was skeptical in the beginning so it’s best to start out with 1-2 dolls at a time.

Once you have grubbed up a few dolls, try selling them at your next craft show. This is a great way to introduce a new doll to your customers and also find out if they are acceptable. It is always good to test your market before going overboard with a new product.

Now of course I don’t listen to my own advice and have done well with making these sort of dolls. I even sold a few on Ebay. So if you decide to jump in and just go nuts with making grubby dolls, remember I warned you.
Also know that each target market area is different and some people may not know what grubby is so be prepared to answer the question “What is Grubby”?!

Author: Talena Bacon tdsewcutedoll@gmail.com
Bio: © 2008 –All Rights Reserved~~~Talena Bacon is the owner of Sew Cute Dolls & More and Mulberry Creek Mercantile She is a doll maker, pattern designer and advertising specialist. Talena specializes in Primitive/Country dolls, home décor and low-cost advertising for all businesses.
http://www.sewcutedolls.com
http://www.mulberrycreekmercantile.com

The pattern is from Lazy Girl Designs and was very easy to follow. You can make two wallets with one fat quarter. I used two fat quarters of two different materials to make the contrast between the pockets.  You can see the Walmart card in one pocket and a quarter sticking out of the change pocket.

I plan to make quite a few of these and give them to friends. Becca wants one out of the same material since she loves black and white so much! I’m going to make one for myself to match the purse I made last weekend. I still have to post pictures of it…. I’ll try to do that tomorrow.

Next I plan to work on the curtains for Becca’s room. She picked out the material a while ago and we haven’t gotten around to making them yet… they’re zebra stripes and will match her black and white comforter. Should be interesting, but she’s excited about it! lol!

Now I’ve got to come up with a design.  I found a neat pattern called a braid that would be nice, but I’m not sure if it would be too busy for this fabric.  I’m debating about whether or not to make this a surprise, or to have her pick out what she wants for a pattern.  I guess that will depend on whether or not she catches a glimpse at the material! lol!  If she sees the material, she will definitely know it’s for her!

I think she’ll be excited by  it.  I’ll have to see if the lady that I bought it from has any extra yards of the material so that maybe I can make her a pillow or something to match it too.

I’m anxious to get started now!  Can’t wait till it arrives!

I found the pattern and directions on how to make this adorable little coat over at Sewing @ Circle of Crafters. You can even resize this pattern to fit your dog! That pattern is very simple and should take no time at all to make. Let me know if anyone uses it to make their pet a nice coat!

Stop on over at my brand new blog,  All About Our Pets.  I plan to feature all kinds of information about our pets, and pets in general.  Hope you enjoy it!