Knight in Shining Armor tutorial

Once Upon a Time there was a fair maiden who was sick of sitting in the castle all day waiting for Prince Charming to come and…do what she could do for herself. So, armed with a BBQ spatula sword, she crafted her own armor and went off in search of dragons and adventure. Today, class, we will learn how to make a quick and easy suit of armor for your Knights and even Damsels. You will need:

1. 1/3 yard of sequin fabric
2. fabric for the crown appliqué – scraps will suffice
3. Gems to glue on each tip of the crown
4. hot glue gun and sewing machine with thread

Find your scrap and a stencil for a crown. You can cut one out freehand, but I used one I had in my PSE7 software. Cut out your crown. 

Cut off the salvage edge of the fabric to use for the belt. You can also use a different belt, if you choose. You should have a long piece of sequin fabric 44x12 and two salvage strips 12x2 or so. 

Sew the two pieces of belt together. 

Cut out the hole for the head. DO NOT make it too big. If you do, stretch a piece of knit fabric around the hole and sew it in. This screw up actually looks more professional, a happy accident, but we aren’t going to bother with it for this tutorial.  

Sew the belt down to the back of the armor. You might also want to make two belt loops for the front so that the front of the penny (that is essentially what this is, right?) won’t flop out. Ooohhh…IDEA! You could sew four ribbons, one on each side of the waist and tie them together. I get good ideas when I write.  

Here is the tricky part: Appliqué the crown onto the armor. You could use some fusible webbing to stick it on, but be careful not to iron your sequins. I just used pins.

Next, hot glue on the gems.     

Grab your sword, go slay some dragons and rescue a handsome Prince from a tall tower.

Eye-Spy scrap pillow

After cutting out all of our blocks for the eye-spy swap, we had several scraps left over. What good would a quilt be without a matching pillow? Right? (probably still a decent quilt with many uses, but who argues with children when they have a good idea?) Just kinda pieced them together willy-nilly and can't complain too much about the result. I meant for it to be the first in a set of place mats, but after putting it together, decided that it would be my last and we stuffed it instead.

As a bonus, here is a pic of me in my everyday state. At the dining room table, rushing to finish my project before I have to cook dinner, baby on my lap, no make up, in front of my sewing machine (complete with Tinkerbell sticker), Kindergartner with a camera, and clipped threads and fabric pieces all over the floor a beautiful, freshly mopped floor without a speck of a mess.

How to make crayons (well, how we did it anyway)

I was at church, making copies of our ward newsletter and the librarian was sorting through all the crayon boxes and dropping all the broken pieces in the trash. I bit my tongue as I stapled the copies together, watching out of the corner of my eye. Then finally I couldn't take it any longer! "Are you really THROWING all those away?!? Can I have them?" She seemed awfully surprised that I would want these tiny bits of useless wax. "You want them?" "Yes, the kids and I can melt them down and make new crayons out of them!" "Oh, you can do that?" Okay, so I'm going on faith here, because I've seen it done on various blogs, but I have never actually done it myself, but I knew we could do it.

We brought all the crayons home and went through our bag or crayons to find all the broken pieces. The girls and I crowded around the table and got to peeling. I discovered this was a much easier task if I first sliced the wrapper lengthwise with the tip of a steak knife.

 We sorted all the crayons by color (a great activity for preschoolers) and placed the pieces in silicone tart molds and a muffin mold for the smaller ones. The oven was heated to 300 and the crayons were heated for about 15 minutes. I don't think it really matters how cool or hot, or how long that you leave them in there, just keep an eye to see if they are melted yet. After that, they went right into the fridge to harden.

 They came out of the pans quite easily. It might have been a good idea to spray the insides with vegetable oil, since the mold with the brown crayons now has a brown ring. Also, I think the cheapy crayons from the restaurants separated. The tops of the green, red and blue crayons don't write. The wax on top has no pigment in them. I don't know if stirring it right when it came out of the oven would have helped or not.

 I found another mold at a thrift store this week ^^^like these^^^ from IKEA that would be perfect for this kind of project, but they wouldn't sell it to me because the tag came off. I was totally bummed.

Our Valentine's 2010

These are the valentines we made this year for the homeschool kids v-day party. It was a few weeks ago, but I thought we would share. We got our ideas from familyfun.go.com hosted by Disney. There were tons of great ideas there! Katie chose these airplanes and we made labels for each that say "Come fly with me, Valentine!" It was really hard to find rubberbands at the grocery store and I think I would have had better luck at an office supply store. She cut each lifesaver out of it's wrapper and stuck the smarties in when I got the lifesavers threaded. 

Sarah chose to make flowers like these and made a label for the bottom with her name on it. the label helps hold everything together. I cut everything out and she threaded the petals and leaves on the lollipop sticks. She had a blast.

For the boxes we just decorated some plain gift bags, but I have to say that these were the cutest boxes at the party. I was so in awe when I saw two brothers carry them in. They used bigger boxes and many eyes. SO CUTE!

Day 10: Letter book template

You have 10 days to put this together and print it out so you can give this to a kid you love. I received a book like this for my baby shower from Amy and I loved it so much I stole her idea and made one for my secret santa on the baby forum I'm a part of (which doesn't include any babies anymore since they have all grown into toddlers). She loved it too! For some of them I used pictures of her family members.  The template enables you to put whatever pictures you like on the left and change the letters on the right. Send these off  for printing, throw them into a 4x6 size album and voila! For under $5 you can have a unique, awesome, useful gift for any kid you have on your list!

DOWNLOAD HERE

Halloween Bag Topper Freebie!

I whipped up this little gem for you today. It's a bag topper for Halloween! It will fit well onto a sandwich or snack bag. Download the PDF, cut it out, fold in half, and staple on top of a bag of treats. You are now all set for those trick-or-treaters, or your kids' classmates. There is a spot for you to put who the bag is from. Here is the link. Enjoy it! THIS FILE IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY.

(This is also a little sneak preview of the belly band fabric I bought today!)

Kids Craft - spools and scraps

My daughter pulled out her sewing machine this week after I gave her an empty bobbin to play with. Her sewing machine is an old one of mine that broke. It's been quite beat up since she inherited it. She pretended that she was sewing and that all the empty spools she collected were filled with beautiful threads. We got out the box of fabric scraps I have under my desk and went to town making those spools a little more fun. We found a purple scrap, which was one of the colors she was pretending that she already had. I butt the straight edge along one side of the empty spool and then drew a line along the other edge with a pen. Then she cut along the line and made a rectangle.I had her put glue on the spool. It would probably hold up better over time with hot glue.
We wrapped the rectangle of fabric around the spool and squished the fabric into it. Then we put more glue on the end and pasted it down, too.
Now she has more realistic thread to play with. My other kids like to stack the spools or pretend that they are cars. I knew she was on to something.