It´s A Tape Party!!

 

I meant to post this earlier but life with 3 kids under 5 years (at that time) can come in your way...

In November my little boy turned 3. He clearly remembered his sisters Fabric Craft Party and wanted something as fun as that. Well, with 3 year old boys you might want to choose some quick and easy crafts instead. So I turned to Washi Tape for help (and I always wanted a reason to get all those beautiful tapes anyway...)

Some ideas for craft projects I found on Pinterest as always.

And here is what we´ve done: 

 tape flags for cupcakes

tape candle wrapper

tape people made of craft sticks

tape city - streets, cars, tracks, trains...

tags and cards

straw labels

Crafty Tea Party for a 5 Year Old

We like to keep the kids´ birthday parties small but craft intense. After last years Fabric Craft Party it took me a while to come up with a new theme... but finally I had the idea to make it a Tea Party with cake decorating and dish towel stamping. For not getting to messy while stamping, I also made aprons for all kids to take home afterwards. 
This idea initially came to me because my kids like to play that the playroom is their house, so I thought why not make it look like a house and invite their friends over for a tea party. 

I´ve created a Pinterest board where I´ve collected some neat ideas that go with the theme. 

And here are some impressions about how it turned out: 

Tea cup invitations

 

Fabric curtain for playroom door

 Aprons from dish towels

Dish towel stamping

This was my own stamping version

Bake pop decorating

Happy Birthday to my not so little 5 year old girl!!

Bed Time Routine Chart For Toddlers

I hate tears at bedtime. And after the usual bedtime battles with my two kids each night, I was hoping for something (some kind of method?) to make the whole process more fun, peaceful, quick, and without tears. 

Even if I hadn´t seen toddler chore charts (I´ve heard of them though), I went google-ing for something like that for a bedtime routine. 

My daughter loves checking off to-do lists, so I was hoping to find something like a to-do list with a dry erase pen - even though I could already see the marker get lost somewhere or get used for something else... 

It didn´t take long to realize that I had to make my own chart to put in all the steps I wanted and I was lucky to find this awesome tutorial (how to make a chore chart for toddlers). 

• no marker needed, it works with magnets
• you choose your own steps/symbols
• easy to understand/use for little ones 
• and my kids were so super excited about it, they couldn´t wait for bedtime to finally try it out for the first time - and so far, I can´t hear any tears from upstairs...

Done, done, and done. Good night!

Picture Frame Into Chalkboard

I was looking for a chalkboard for our family to write down some family rules. I remembered that I still had some chalkboard paint left from this former project. 

So, I went to a local flea market and found a perfectly sized picture frame. After taping the edges I painted my chalkboard paint on the glass part (let it dry over night and re-paint). 

Next, I covered the chalkboard completely with chalk, because I remembered that I´ve read that somewhere (sorry, but the picture of that step is missing).

And here is the finished chalkboard, which will hopefully help us to establish some ground rules for our daily family life!

Freezer Paper Stencil - More Projects And Lessons Learned

I was very happy with the outcome of my earlier projects with Freezer Paper stencils on t-shirts so I kept going and made 6 (!) more.

Here is what I´ve learned: 

// The design should not be too intricate (the killer whale design didn´t turn out as nice as the rest).
// Don´t take too much paint. If it looks good after the first time, don´t paint a second time (I have the feeling that the paint cracks faster if the coating is too thick).
// If you choose glitter paint (like I did with my first project), it looks stunning, but the glitter will come off the more you wash it.

Two dinosaurs

Two more squirrels in the making

Have fun making your own!

Freezer Paper Stencil T-shirts

I was looking for a way to add images to plain t-shirts for a while now. I´ve tried screen printing and also thought about iron on vinyl.

And then, I came across another Pinterest project - Freezer Paper stencils! It sounded easy enough and I already had some Martha Steward Crafts Multi-Surface Acrylic Paint which works for fabric as well. 

And here is how: 

First, print you designs and transfer them onto Freezer Paper (plastic coated side down).  

With a craft knife, cut out your design. 

 These were my color choices.
 

And here is what I chose for my first two t-shirts.

The magic about the Freezer Paper is, that you can just iron it on your shirt! Please make sure, that the plastic coated side (that is the shiny side) is facing down toward your shirt. You can add another layer of Freezer Paper inside your shirt, at the backside of your design or you can put a piece of cardboard inside.

Now, you can start brushing your paint onto the fabric. I chose to repeat that one more time after the first paint was dry. 

After letting everything dry over night you can remove the paper. You might want to iron over your t-shirt with a protective fabric layer on top. 

And this is my result! Very nice looking, right?!

Rick Rack Flowers

Once more I found an interesting tutorial on pinterest that I wanted to try. This one though is not in English, or German, or any other language that I could roughly understand. So I had to let the pictures speak for themselves and add the rest myself. 

Here is what I´ve done: 
I took 2 pieces of rick rack and twisted them around each other (twist without turning - if that makes any sense to you). They kind of interlock with each other. 

They don´t necessarily want to stay flat but as soon as I started sewing on top (off center) they stayed in place. I put my seam on the right side of the center. I just started sewing and twisted as I went further.  

Here is what I got. 

By turning the string I got this nice looking flower. The flowers in the tutorial looked more open than mine though, but as I couldn´t read the instructions, I could only try a different approach. So I opened my flower again and turned the string the opposite way. I think it helped a little, but my flowers still didn´t turn out that much wide open as the ones I saw in the tutorial. But I still liked the way they looked!

Again, because I couldn´t read the tutorial, I had to come up with a way to fix my flowers after they were rolled. I decided to simply take fabric glue and glue the back side of my flowers (advice: you should look for your glue before you start rolling your first flower, otherwise you walk around your house looking for your glue with a fragile rick rack flower in your hand).  

Here you can see how I dried my flowers, by holding the edges with pins in my pin cushion (one has to be creative).

And here is how my flowers turned out. To attach them to the skirt I will glue a piece of felt on the back of the flower and hand stitch the felt to the skirt (haven´t done that yet). 

Footprint Calendar - The First Six Months

At the beginning of the year I had the idea to teach my kids about the months of the year in a creative way and so I decided to make our own monthly footprint calendar sheets - one each months. 
If you are looking for more footprint and handprint ideas check out my pinterest board here. 

My kids LOVE to do footprints (which kid doesn´t?) and they are very excited for each new month! In addition it will be a nice growth chart of their feet to keep and to put in their annual art folder! 

Stay tuned for the next six months!