Make This: LEGO Accessory Valentine Tutorial

Yeah, I'm a little late in delivering this valentine tutorial to you.  So sue me.  It has been a week of many extra homework projects around here--dioramas, book reports,  a 100 days of school poster, and then of course, the usual spelling word practice, math story problems...blahblahblah.  The point is--here is a valentine tutorial for you, just a little later than intended, okay?  If you have some of the supplies around your house already--great--go to it, you can make this right now--if you don't, well, you will probably have to wait to make it until next year since it may require ordering some special LEGO pieces.  So just know that and deal.

But LEGO + jewelry + valentine's cards = a pretty cool project for the kiddies for Valentine's Day.  This is like accessory playtime--jewelry meant to be kept, worn, and played with over and over using the extra LEGO bits.  Necklaces and rings that can be endlessly redesigned--out of sheer boredom, or just to match that special outfit of stripey tights, plaid shirt and a hot pink tutu your kid showed up at the breakfast table wearing this morning.

It's pretty damn easy to make too once you have assembled all the required pieces--although, personally, I would not recommend letting the kiddies do the work with the uber-strength craft glue or you may end up with  LEGOs permanently bonded to his or her body.  Sure, it might be cool for a day or two to have LEGO pieces attached to your hands ("Look at the colorful LEGO tower I built on my hand, mom!"), but it would start to impede simple tasks like eating, bathing, using toilet paper--and that would be not so cool after a while.  

The best thing I discovered through the process of sourcing our LEGO bits was that there is a WHOLE WORLD of used individual LEGO parts to be found out there, in every color, shape, size--and most to be had for 3-10 cents.  BrickLink is pure genius, I tell you.  There is more about that in my tutorial.

Here's the link to my downloadable tutorial and printable templates:

DOWNLOAD LEGO VALENTINE TUTORIAL

And if you are interested, I have some other Valentines ideas from years past you can have a look at here and here and here--none of which require ordering special LEGO parts and probably could realistically be made between now and Valentine's Day.

Make This (and give it away): Breakfast in a Box

Here's a little tutorial I actually put together last year--but I really did not even get these made and sent out until after the holidays (yes, I admit I am sort of notorious for belated gift-giving--I like to tell myself it is a positive thing because it is a nice surprise to get a little something unexpected after the initial glut of gift-giving) so I ended up saving this project for you for this year.    As you may have noticed by the number of breakfast-y recipes I share around here, I love breakfast.  Especially weekend breakfasts when I have time to make a little something especially warm and tasty.  I think weekend breakfasts are like a celebration of the start of the day and all the possibilities that lay before you.  I also think it is one of the most comforting meals and is as close to being love in your tummy as anything else you can eat.  So, I put this together as a way to share the love with family and friends.  

Last year was actually the second time I made this as a gift--the first was several years ago for our friends, and then last year we gave this to some of our family members.  It is a box of nourishing, home-prepared and cooked ingredients that help to fill you up for the day ahead--like a hearty vanilla almond granola, an oatmeal pancake mix, and another mix for a whole-grain Irish Brown Bread (first discovered and fell in love with while I was living in Galway, Ireland many years ago).   This is food that feels good to eat after all the sweets and excess of the holidays.

A friend we gave this to a few years ago told me that she really appreciated the fact that we included the recipes--she described it as us not only giving them fish, but teaching them how to fish.   That made me smile.  And she and her family still make the granola for themselves to this day.

I also love that this is very customizable as a gift.  The first year we hand-delivered this to friends in the city, so we also included a frozen log of ground homemade breakfast sausage, as well as a bottle of real maple syrup produced locally.  I think we also actually baked the Irish Brown Bread and gave loaves as a opposed to a mix.  Last year though, we included a jar or two of our homemade jam canned earlier in the summer.  But you could include a bag of your favorite coffee or tea blend, tuck in a jar of marmalade (which is delicious with the Irish brown bread, by the way), a block of some European style butter...put your thinking caps on and make it representative of the kinds of breakfasts you and your family love.

As for this tutorial, included are all the instructions on how to prepare the foods and package them, printable templates for the labels and other packaging, copies of the recipes, and links to some sources for the jars, lined food bags, etc.  This is a great holiday gift project for "assembly-line" giving--meaning, you make multiples of the same thing to give.  I often take this approach to gift-giving with our friends and family.  To me, it is an easier way to give a little something handmade from your home without the chaos of making too many different things.  

Here is the link to the downloadable tutorial and templates:

DOWNLOAD BREAKFAST IN A BOX TUTORIAL

Happy holiday gift-giving.

Make This: Halloween Shadow Puppets

Inspired by Kate's shadow puppet tutorial over at Minieco, I designed a dozen shadow puppets of my own to give to the kiddies along with some mini flashlights at our upcoming Halloween party.  I essentially used Kate's tutorial to make these, except I painted my wooden dowels up in black stripes (using the same method I used to make my stripey pick-up sticks) because I love all things stripey, and made my shadow puppet designs just a little bigger with a few different designs.  You can download my shadow puppet templates here, if you care to make some for yourself:

DOWNLOAD SHADOW PUPPET TEMPLATES

You can also find Kate's tutorial with her own downloadable templates here.

Make This: Simple Skelly Men

Look: simple little skeleton plushies.  Inspired by their kinder, gentler, more edible cousin--the gingerbread man.  They are a family of skellies, really.  You can see that: papa skelly, mama skelly and baby skelly.  Because even skeletons need love.

It's just a nice little embroidered something you can make for someone who might have a thing for skeletons (ahem, Beeper).  They also function nicely as Halloween decor in between being played with.

Just know this: most of your time spent making these will be spent embroidering them.  I happen to love that because it means I can get in my jammies, sit on the sofa, feet up, Mad Men on, and embroider away (in between sips of wine and periodic bouts of cussing when I draw blood because I've pricked my finger again-- damn you, Don Draper, and how you distract me!).

You can download the tutorial here:

DOWNLOAD SKELETON MAN TUTORIAL

Happy Halloween.

Harry Potter Magnetic Play Set

I made Beeper another magnetic playset, at his request--a Harry Potter themed set.  I used my tutorial here to make it.  Making it was easy-peasy--finding all those Harry Potter images via Google image searches was the hard part.  But still--not that hard.  Although he does keep asking me to find other characters and creatures I neglected to include like Lucius Malfoy, the Basilisk, Professor Trelawny, and Buckbeak...oh, and also scenes from each of the Triwizard Tournament challenges...and maybe Honeydukes...and some spell books...and, and.... 

Make This: Nature Explorer Bag

This is the little nature explorer bag I designed and made for all the kiddies who joined us at Tettegouche Camp last week.  Yes, I made 5 of these in less than a week, then stocked them all with a bunch nature explorer goodies to keep the kiddos busy.  And it worked.

The bags actually were a big, big hit and the kids carried them around all weekend and did things like captured worms and a sluggish wasp in the bug jars, sketched wildflowers in their field notebooks, gathered treasured rocks in their tins, chased each other in the dark with their flashlights, and blew their whistles CONSTANTLY (yes, think twice about including a whistle that can be worn around the neck and carried with you at all times--especially if you are trying to have a peaceful, bucolic wildife experience.) 

You can see I made them each in differently colored cotton-linen blend fabrics, then lined them each in constrasting homespun plaids.  Don't let all those sweet smiling faces fool you--they were all evil whistle-blowing wraiths.  Also snack-demanding beasts who moved in packs.  And don't even ask about the platypus game and the dangerous hijinks that involved....but at least the differently colored bags kept the spats about whose bag belonged to whom at bay.

I designed the bag with several handy pockets, inside and out.  The inside pockets were sized to hold little notebooks, a magnifying glass, a small set of colored pencils or crayons and other handy nature stuff. 

I made the flap pockets on the front with accordion folds so they could expand to hold their bug canisters when they have some precious cargo to tote around and didn't want to jostle their insect friends around in the bag with all the other junk.  I also designed the bag to have that easy fold-over top so the kids would not have to fuss with opening and closing the bag and could have quick access to their bag contents--I think I maybe love this aspect of the bag more than anything--so laissez-faire, so unstructured in the best way.  Maybe this is why I want to make one for myself--only with a wider, adjustable strap--and why a couple of other big people asked me to make one for them too.  I may have to open my own nature explorer bag making sweat shop.

If you like the design as much as me and the kiddies, you can make your own too because I have a nice little downloadable tutorial for you.  Right here:

DOWNLOAD NATURE EXPLORER BAG TUTORIAL

Now, I have to warn you that making those accordion fold pockets can be a little confusing--I did put some detailed photos out in a Flickr set, here, and there is also a photo mosaic of all of the steps right here.  While I love the accordion fold pockets and after making 6 of the bags now, could probably make them blindfolded with a full cosmopolitan in one hand, you should know there is always the option of just making flat, patch pockets and I will not think any less of you for it.

The tutorial, of course, has the usual detailed instructions with illustrations, but it also has links to all the places I bought my nature explorer supplies you see in the photo above, as well as copies of the labels I made to put on the tins and little notebooks if you want to customize some of your own.

Did I mention this is one of my all-time favorite designs and tutorials I have made?  It is.  I like it.  I hope you will too.

Lego Zip Pouches--Make Your Own If You Want To

 I actually went sort of simple for Beeper's birthday party this year--just a little party outdoors at a favorite local playground with lots of friends and some balloons and cupcakes.  Since it was still supposed to be a Lego themed party, I made these little zip pouches printed with multi-colored stacks of Legos as favors--I figured the kids could re-use them as pencil pouches, or just to hold a few Legos for building on-the-go.  I stocked each pouch with a tiny set of markers I found in the $1 section at Target, a small half-moon envelope I made and filled with a few Lego-themed coloring cards, and one of the Lego mini-figures (dang, the kids love those figures).  

 Of course, there were some games.  I bought a couple of large plastic bags of Legos secondhand at the thrift store and put them in a large jar for use at the party--then I dumped them out on a picnic table and had the kids work in teams to build as tall of a lego tower as they could in 2 minutes.  In order to win, the tower not only had to be the tallest but it also had to be able to stand on its own--extra mini-figures went to the highly-envied winners.

I also had them build their own lego creations and present their creations individually to the group, describing what they had built and demonstrating any special functionality.  This game was fantastic because they were each so proud of their creations--we gave out glassine bags of those lego-like candies you see in the first photo as prizes for each of them.  

Other than that it was a lot of running around willy-nilly at the playground, eating loads of watermelon, playing with caterpillars that were falling from the trees, and spitting sunflower seeds at one another--or what I think may be the perfect party for a 7 year old.

As for you, well, if you are interested in making any of the above, here's what I've got for you:

1) Lego Zip Pouches--I have put the image of the lego stack I printed on the fabric out in my Flickr account if you would like to use it in whatever creative way you desire--you can find it here.  There are also several Lego mini-figure images out there if you would prefer to use those too.  I made the pouches using the same downloadable tutorial instructions I made a while back for the art supply pouches--you can find it here.  These particular pouches were all made using a single 8.5x11-inch piece of fabric that I printed with the lego design (more about printing on fabric here too), and lined it was a nice bright lego-ish solid color that matched the zipper.  Each pouch probably only took me about 30 minutes to make.  I also uploaded a copy of the exact design I printed on the fabric, with the lego image placed for printing on a 8.5x11 piece of fabric which you can then turn into a zip pouch.  You can download that here: DOWNLOAD LEGO POUCH.  Both designs you see above are in there. 

2) The Half-Moon Envelopes with the Coloring Cards--I put a template out for you to download in case you want to make some of those: DOWNLOAD HALF MOON ENVELOPE TEMPLATE.  The coloring cards were all made from stuff I downloaded from the Lego website or from this website and this website--I just resized them so they fit 4 to a page.  I also put the Lego-Man graphic--found here--on the front of the envelope, which you can customize with your own headline before you download it for printing.  Incidently, I buy all my paper from Paper Source, if that is of interest to you--they make lots of nice bright sturdy papers that are good for printing.

3) The Invitation: while I never did post a photo of the actual completed invitation, I did share the photo I used for the invitation with you--see it here.  For those I just printed the photo out and attached it to a bright yellow post card with red photo corners and sent it out in blue envelopes (again, Paper Source).  But if you want to use the photo I made for the invite, please feel to use that as well--you can also find that in my Flickr account, right here.

So, there you go.  Go forth and build you own Lego birthday party, if you want to.  Or maybe just make one of the Lego-emblazoned pouches for a little someone special who has a soft spot for Legos.  Whatever, do what you will--I'm just the hired help here.

Birthday Counting Cards

I have been making these Birthday Counting  Cards for Beeper for his last 3 birthdays and he still loves them.  In fact, I was informed by another parent that while Beeper was at another birthday party this week, she overheard him proudly telling another kid, "My mom makes the best birthday cards."  Nice.  

And here is this year's set of counting cards, with this year's loot.  Yes, I put an i-Tunes card on the "1" card because he loves music but I was told that what he loved most from the cards were the 7 little photos of his friends--and then the 6 Star Wars mini coloring cards (downloaded and resized)--and then the 4 puffy bug stickers--and then the 2 sticks of fruit stripes gum--and then the 3 tattoos.  Yes, the money and the gift card ranked last which just goes to show you do not need money or anything fancy to impress with these cards.  

So I thought I would just remind you about my tutorial for these--in case you never had the wherewithal to dig all the way back in my blog archives 2+ years and so never caught this tutorial.  It is still one of my favorites--and Beeper's too, apparently.

Over at Whip Up Again Today: Make an Art Supply Pouch

Hey.  I am over at Whip Up again today--Kathreen invited me to come on over for another round of guest blogging and tutorial-sharing--she's crazy like that (which I only mean in the nicest way because how can you not love the woman behind the genius of Whip Up, my personal one-stop-shop for all the best craftiness going on in blogland).

And in case you were wondering what I am up to over there, well, it is a little tutorial on how to make an art supply pouch--I know there are no shortage of tutorials already out there on making pouches, but I had my own reasons for creating theses specific pouches with the printed images of their art supply contents--which you can read more about over at Whip Up when you finally get around to going there.

Also, I just want you to know that putting together this little project involved me learning to create my own printable fabric sheets using Bubble Jet Set (and their recommended rinse), as well as some precut freezer paper (but you could cut your own if you are more industrious than me)--and as a result I am a now a life-long believer in making your own printable fabric sheets, people.  It is pretty simple, way more cost-effective, and the quality of the homemade sheets beats all others hands down (and I have tried many--but if you really want to purchase some ready-made, the best quality can be found here, in my opinion)--so that is just my personal plug on that crafting front, even without any sponsorship from Bubble Jet Set (although if they want to send me more of their product I will gladly accept and find good use for it--how shameless was that?).

Anyway, I offer several variations on the pouch (some above, but even more over at Whip Up) for those amongst you fearful of inserting zippers, or for those who might find a drawstring bag more to your liking.  I would also mention that if you want to create a pouch, but are just not in the mood to go through the additional step of taking photos of your art supplies to print on the fabric--well you are in luck because I have uploaded my own art supply photos to my Flickr account and you can download them for your own fabric printing, right here.  See?  I'm nice and I can share (even if I do pander for free products).

So, c'mon on over to Whip Up and download the tutorial in my usual PDF format--you can find me here.

Celebrating the Boy: Make a Magnetic Play Set

Oh, hey.  Hi.  Did you know that I am officially Celebrating the Boy over here today?  I am--it is all part of Made by Rae's and Made's annual tribute to crafting for boys--a full month of it, actually.  I know, it is cool.  The line-up of guest bloggers and projects Rae and Dana have going on over at their places is pretty amazing--I already have 3 projects I want to make from Rae's guests alone.  But wait--where are my manners?!?  Welcome to those of you who have taken the time to stop over here from Rae's place.   I am so happy to have you here.

So, let's get to the good stuff, shall we?  In honor of Celebrate the Boy month I have a little tutorial for you on how to make your very own magnetic play set.  This one is pretty simple to make--no special crafting skills like quilting, quilling or anything else starting with a "qu" required--really all you need to know how to do is search the internet for images, put those into a document, print them, cut them apart and stick them to some adhesive magnet sheets.  Yeah, I meant simple when I said it.

What I also love about this project is how endlessly customizable it is to whatever your boy's interests may be--dinosaurs, cars, monsters, robots, animals--or super heroes as the case may be at our house (specifically, DC Comic super heroes--because Beeper actually segregates his super heroes by comic book strain--DC or Marvel--and the twain shall never meet).

I got to thinking about putting together a project like this because I am always trying to come up with new things to keep Beeper distracted when the situation requires it--like when we are at a restaurant and Mr Beeper and I just want to drink some wine and have at least 10 minutes of uninterrupted adult conversation (did I hear someone say, That is what date night is for?  Yes, good point--but that would require having a babysitter that is nearer than 60 minutes away for us to pick up which is where our closest babysitter is located at the moment), or when in the car for longer trips (like when we need to pick up our babysitter)--you know the situations I am talking about.

Well, I am mildly obsessed with having a bag that is stocked with interesting distractions for him that I feel good about (i.e. no video games)--so this project was meant to contribute to that stash of stuff I keep in a small backpack in our coat closet.  And if you are interested, you can download the tutorial right here so you can make your own:

DOWNLOAD MAGNETIC PLAY SET TUTORIAL

 I also thought this might be a good time for us to swap some info about what sorts of things you find particularly handy to distract your kids when the place or situation requires it.  Here are some of my favorites we have in our bag of distractions at the moment:

(from top Pop Zolo [mini creative building set], Monster Doodles [erasable creative drawing cards--pure genius], Knights Toob, a selection of Little Dover books [most of these are $1.50 per book and they are fantastic for distraction because they can literally fit in your pocket and the options are mind-boggling], Wild Toob, blank sketch book and a set of soy crayons)

Oh, and if you are in the market for a new bag in which to stash your own kiddie distractions, why not make the scavenger bag from Sew Grown or the messenger bag from Punkin Patterns--both are  Boy month projects over at Rae's place.  

Thanks again to those of you who took the time to stop by--it was nice having you and I hope to see you around here again. Oh, and if you have any favorite kiddie distractions, please do leave a comment and share--would love to hear about your favorite tricks.