hundreds & thousands: crafts

Showing posts with label crafts. Show all posts

rags

I don’t think I will ever have the time to do this, but I like think about projects I can’t actually do sometimes. Moroccan Boucherouite rag rug kneel & mercado via bud pnq, pinterest and a pretty comprehensive how-to from chawed rosin.

year of the snake, postscript

I took Auggie birthday party shopping a couple of days ago at collage collage. He picked out this wooden snake as a present and asked to paint it for his friend. We used the leftover paint from the banquet snake. Then he made up meanings for all the colours for his friend. These are the meanings: yellow means the sun will be out; blue means there will be a blue sky, green means it is summer because there is green grass in the park and brown means there are cars and trucks outside. (I don't remember what red and gold mean because I didn't write them down right away.)

don't forget

I went to a lovely little crafting hen night last night and before I left my son, the soothsayer, pointed at me and said,

I put up a simple tutorial for paper snowflakes up on windy today. We had a lot of fun making these yesterday, as school was cancelled and we were footloose and fancy free.

mini wallpaper

ferm living blog has printable mini wallpapers from their collection to download and print for a dollhouse + a tuto. Ferm patterns below: In the Rain, Rush hour and Dotty.

sunshine

Update: the shower is past and the baby is here — look at this little one.

I've been going through online knitting patterns for babies for a bunch of baby showers this year. This it the third post. The first one is here and the second one is here.

I tried out a pattern via pinterest from pickles — small and clever baby set (free pattern). The bonnet is very sweet and a pleasure to knit. It fits a little small, so I added in a few extra rows.

But midway through the booties from the set I ran out of yarn, and I couldn't find any more from the original dye lot (which was mission falls superwash merino).

Snufkin, the vagabond and philosopher, arrives each spring to Moominvalley to set up camp, fish, and comfort the small creatures of Moominvalley. He is always wearing a green hat, sometimes decorated with flowers and sometimes with feathers.

If you would like to make your own Snufkin hat, you can use this Pilgrim's hat template, using green paper instead of black. Then decorate. Instead of gluing the headband, we cut notches like this.

Ringo atelier is a creative studio, and resource, for children and their blog is lovely, too. Lots of their drawing activities have a PDF to print out and do at home. They have loads of pages to colour and develop, like this invent the fruit that goes with this leaf (below; above is Auggie's rainbow fruit), which we tried yesterday during a rainy day

and this construct a city (this one is meant to be for collage, but we painted and scribbled them)

There are also some really great projects that we haven't yet tried, like the à la manière de section, with projects inspired by the work of artists like David Hockney or Sonia Delaunay. I think the David Hockney one is perfect for July, and I will put in a little translation here (find the original project here). Observe water (in your bath, swimming pool, by the sea or edge of a lake...), in the style of painter David Hockney. Have fun trying to reproduce the waves, the reflections, the colour of the water. To do this, use watered-down paint, sponges, tissues and different papers. Look carefully at this painting of a swimming pool (below, left)

The 1 livre—1 book section has a nice library of books, too.

Lucky star necklace

Noodling around with lucky star necklaces and garlands with black and kraft paper strips ordered from the origami resource centre with knotted linen thread. These would be pretty at Christmas, too.

neon & knit

It's been so grey lately: outside where it's rainy and inside where I am knitting a whole series of little baby things for the many summer babies arriving soon (not mine, but to 5 good friends). I like to knit baby things in neutral colours, so it's grey and tan everywhere. It was starting to get me down and so I picked up a set of neon + nude polishes from sephora and painted my nails neon pink. I have been as delighted as a 6-year old girl since. It makes knitting way more fun, too.

For many years I avoided bright nail polishes because I thought I couldn't apply them without it being a complete disaster. But I realized last week that I was basing this on the last time I applied dark nail polish: cranberry-coloured dime-store polish when I was about seventeen. I couldn't chop an onion cleanly when I was seventeen. All I ever did with my hands at that time was hold books! So, I gave it a try, and although I'm not likely to get a job as an esthetitcian any time soon, it turns out I can apply it well enough to leave the house with. So, if you are one of the many ladies who has agreed with me over the years that applying a dark colour is impossible, then give it a try, you probably can do it now ^_^

The Augs has requested some, too, so we can be 'pink twins'. He is not the only little boyish boy I know who loves pink. I think they're going to get together and reclaim it.

The very first poster I designed was Pantone Warm Grey 11 & Magenta, and I still love that colour combination.

I'm a bit tempted to get some neon yarn, like the Madeline Tosh in Edison Bulb. I love the cowl they made at purlbee (pattern at link) with it, too. Image purlbee via pinterest.

The pineapple bird

Ooh, ok, I think this is a pretty good one. We found a video on youtube called Jim Henson on Making Muppets, 1969, from Iowa Public Television. Jim Henson shows children how to make puppets from household objects like socks, potatoes, spoons and tennis balls. It is great!

Augs and I watched it together and then gathered up some materials and made a handful of puppets and little movies.

The dish mop lion, Auggie was very excited to make a pink scarf for the lion because "he was cold".

Wooden spoon puppet.

The pineapple bird. I put on the eyes and Auggie did the nose with a sharpie. By the way, he was horrified by the feeling of his finger in the potato, so we poked a pencil in the bottom and he could hold that instead. I don't have a picture, though — this is my finger. The pineapple bird is the only one who received a name from the Augs, he is special.

Here's a version of the shoebox guitar activity (instructions at link) from Sunny. We used a sturdy little giftbox and some paper straws. Auggie had some trouble with the elastic bands so I did that for him, and I cut out the hole with an exacto knife. I think within a year he could tackle this project on his own with safety scissors, but not today. He really loves colouring on black paper so lucky for us we had a black gift box in the closet.

Penguin

Penguin turned three today so we held a party (and simultaneously a sand party on the bed, which involved digging in the bed covers and going to the "meta" place with a jeep — I still don't know what we were talking about, but it might have been really deep, heh). For some reason Penguin inspires a lot of hats, which I find funny because I think he looks quite put upon. Above is his "rainbow hat".