Play houses and barn!

So I am too excited not to post these now, even though they're not quite done!  I don't think I'll have a good photography chance after I finish them because they'll shortly be going as gifts to my kids and one of their friends and they'll be well-loved (I hope) and no longer in pristine condition.  I found this blog here, which led me to the tutorial here.  If you are interested in doing this, check out the flickr site with all the uploaded photos of people's projects.  So now I present the projects I've been laboring over for weeks and weeks.

This one is a gift for my good friend's daughter, who just turned 2:

Here is a view from the end, with the shutter detailing:

Those tabs you see are velcro, and when you undo them, you can open up the house to play inside:

I got her a little L.alalo.opsy doll with a sleeping bag to play in the house.  I've actually never heard of these before, but I thought they were much cuter than the traditional b.arb.ie or di.sney princess dolls.

This is the barn I made for my kids.  It still needs some work, but from this view it's essentially finished:

From this view, it's not finished.  I glued on that beehive, but I need to sew on the little bee buttons that came with it:

Inside, there is a vegetable garden, a fence, and a pond, plus some animals.  I also ordered a few mini wooden tractors from etsy, but they haven't arrived yet:

And this house is for my kids, too.  It's definitely not done yet.  The front needs a little something more.  And I need to finish the fence.

The back is mostly done.  I would like to string a laundry line with mini-clothespins between the trees, but that won't happen for a while yet.  I also have ladybug and flower beads to add to all sides:

 And the inside.  Still needs work as well.  I made that little wooden bed with a mattress, blanket, and pillow.  I've also found some neat furniture online (including this), but haven't decided on anything yet.  My husband thinks I should have a little bathtub, but I'm not totally sure how to do that yet. I would totally take suggestions for what to put in the house as well as outside on the grass.

I did make a few changes to the pattern, obviously.  The original pattern called for sewing up two sides of the house and using a button with elastic to secure the other two sides.  I wanted to be able to completely flatten the house for easy portability (i.e. the ability to pack it in a suitcase), so I left it all open.  However, this led the problem that it was too floppy to stand up just using a button and elastics, so I ended up using velcro tabs.  I also made the barn with a three-part roof instead of a two-part roof.

So there you go - Christmas gifts 2012!

What Christmas gifts are you giving this year?

Travel felt boards

I made these travel felt mats for my kids and my nieces and nephews for Christmas.  They are super easy to make, and if you're making more than one, they're even faster to make assembly line style (i.e. do all cutting first, then all ironing, etc.  The only part that gets to feel like drudgery is cutting out the million little felt pieces.  I found the travel felt mat tutorial here, and got more ideas for little pieces to play with here.

I'm hoping these will be another great toy for our trip to Italy.  Here are some pictures of the mats that I made, including some ideas of my own:

I made 5 mats, 2 for girls and 3 for boys.  In the future, I would not make them so gender-specific, probably, and I also would use a blue felt background for all of them.  It makes for a more realistic background, and the other pieces look better and are easier to see because it's more contrast.

Here is a little dress-up person with some clothes.  I still want to do a few more clothes, including some dresses.  I've found patterns for making these people and their clothes on various sites and blogs, but I actually made these myself:

Butterflies - I'll probably cute out a few more body pieces.  I got this idea from the second link above.

Here are a few trees, plus some weather pieces, which are always useful to throw in for use with various other pieces and scenes.  I also have stars and a moon, which I didn't picture here.

Another tree and some flowers.  Would like to do more of these.

Houses!  These can be a lot more creative and fun, but I made these a while ago when my kids were pretty little, so I just did the basics.  You could also make other buildings like a church or a store or a school.

Cars and other vehicles!  I could get a lot more creative with these now, too.  Nothing is glued together here, the kids have to assemble the cars themselves, but if I made something more elaborate (like the tractors that Turtle is currently obsessed with) I'd probably have some pieces be fixed.  And see what I mean about the weather pieces being useful?

Pizza!  I've actually made a whole variety of fruit and vegetable pieces for our big feltboard, but I don't know how much fun they'd be for travel play:

And there you have it!  A nice mix of ideas from the internet plus my own ideas.  Have fun!  And let me know if you have other ideas, too, I'm always looking for more.

First 8 quiet book pages

I've been really busy working on crafts lately, so it's going to take me a while to catch up with blog pages and photos.

The first major project I finished recently is a series of quiet book pages. I had set a deadline for our recent trip to Mexico, and finished 8 pages before we left (well, technically 9, but one is a 2-page spread). They are almost entirely made out of felt, which is great because the edges of the pieces don't fray, and the felt pieces stick together well.


The first page I did was this rainbow page, which I found on this website. I made a few changes - I used star beads, and I used a different number on each color of the rainbow, so this page can be used for both counting and colors. I also added a button-on sun and a snap-on rain drop, since those are the fundamental makers of rainbows! The kids love sliding the beads up and down the ribbons and counting them.

My favorite page is this sandwich-making page, which I got inspiration from here. A few changes I made were to have a one-door fridge, a blue plate to match the plates we use, a basket for the bread (which I would have liked to make more basket-like), ketchup and mustard bottles, and a jar of mayo, which is open at the top. There's also a knife I made by sewing a gray and black sleeve that fits over a jumbo popsicle stick that I cut in half.

A big favorite around here is the yellow school bus page. I came up with this one on my own, although when I searched later I found a few similar pages online. I used vinyl to sew 4 windows, into which I slid pictures of our family, and which have flaps that the kids can lift to reveal our faces. The wheels can turn or be unbuttoned. I would have liked to add something else, but I couldn't think of anything.

I came up with the autumn leaves page on my own, as well, after an afternoon spent outside raking leaves with Turtle. He loves helping me rake the leaves into piles, steering the wheelbarrow, and piling the leaves inside. The felt leaves stick to the felt pages and can be raked up with the dollhouse rake, which I purchased from amazon. I originally made a rake out of pipe cleaners, which might work for an older child who could be more delicate, but did NOT work for a toddler. The leaves can be raked up and stored in the wheelbarrow.

I got the pattern for these sock-matching pages here. I think these pages would be better for slightly older kids, and actually, the machine should have buttons that I haven't added yet. This page was more work than it was worth, I think, since making the socks is very time-consuming, but if that's your cup of tea, go for it. Also, I used magnets inside the socks to get them to stick together, but they're not strong enough to work through two layers of felt. Luckily, since they're made out of felt, they stick together anyway. That blog has many excellent ideas.

The number page was inspired by this blog. This is another one that will probably be better when they're older. I did not do the double-sided numbers with velcro, since it was becoming a lot of work and since the felt will stick anyway. The matching colors help the kids match up the numbers.

Another big favorite is the barn, which I have seen many iterations of around the internet. I used these two blogs for inspiration. It's quite simple, with a cute red barn and doors that open to reveal finger puppets. I wanted to do something with the hayloft window that would be more interactive, but in the end I couldn't think of anything. I added the fence and the grass, which I thought made the page look more "finished".

And the last page I made is for creating an ice cream cone, for which I took inspiration from this blog. I started hand-sewing this one, and then ran out of steam, so technically it's not finished - I wanted to have a little bucket for toppings, too. I can always add that later.

At some point, I will put them together to make an actual book. I bought grommets and I will make a cover and the idea is for it to be able to be taken apart so multiple kids (i.e. twins) can play with it at the same time. For now, having separate pages works just fine for me.

I have lots and lots more ideas, many of which can be found on my pinterest page. Considering how thick the book already is with only 8 pages, I probably won't be able to add too many more.

I would love to hear your thoughts and any other ideas you might have. And if you've made anything like this, please send me a link!

VERY late Christmas presents

I have so much to write about and never enough time or motivation to do it.

But I wanted to write a quick note about the Christmas gift I finished for my husband last night. I know, I know, it's a bit late but hey! It's not a MONTH late. Barely.

Anyway, I wanted to make him a tray because in the summer we eat outside and it takes forever to carry everything in and out of the house before and after meals. I saw a beautiful sunflower tile tray, but it was expensive, and I thought, I can make something as cool as that! No problem!

Well, I did get knocked down off my high horse by this project - it was tough. The first problem was to actually construct the tray. I decided to tile it using tile samples from my sister's office which would otherwise be thrown away (hooray for reusing perfectly good materials!). So I would need a solid base able to withstand some heavy tile and grout, and I would have to figure out a way to frame it and add handles.

I figured out my tile design, laid it out, and measured, so I knew how big the decorative surface had to be. Then I had to figure out the frame. This was hard. I wanted not only for the sides to be high enough to frame the tile, but also to form a bit of a lip to keep errant dishes and such from sliding off while being carried. A simple corner molding wasn’t tall enough – after tiling and grouting it would be flush with the tile rather than forming a lip. I ended up deciding on a bigger corner molding that would create a lip, and bought a long, skinny piece of wood and cut it down to act as a filler between the base and the molding, to create the height for the lip. That took some serious calculations, especially as my sister and I were deciding how to construct this “on the fly” at the hardware store.

Since my dad’s tools are rusty and under mounds of crap in my mom’s garage, I had to cut the molding with my trusty hand saw and miter box. THAT was a royal pain – I’ve never used it to cut molding, which I wanted to line up perfectly at the corners to form a frame. Luckily, everything fit beautifully, and in a relatively short time, I had glued the filler and the frame together around my base. Whew!

Next, I had to attach some handles. I bought some cabinet handles that I really liked, only to realize that they were a bit small to comfortably carry a heavy tray with a heavy load – and that was for my hands. It would probably be even harder for a man. Finding large enough, stylish handles was a neat trick, and it was expensive. Drilling holes through my frame in exactly the right spot was an even harder trick, which took me several days of attempts, several moments of almost-swearing, and one episode of me nearly crying. I won’t go into details. Let’s just say it was really difficult.

Finally, I glued down the tile. I didn’t actually mosaic it – just picked a random pattern of colored tile with two large terra cotta stripes, and I also didn’t realize that it would be so hard to line up the square tiles so that they were all even. I didn’t worry about it too much, and in fact you can see that they’re not in perfectly straight lines, but I think that just adds to the charm. It looks handmade.

Last night I grouted it. I got some grout on the frame, so I’ll have to lightly sand it, but it’s DONE. HOLY COW!

Pictures to come. I hope.

Whoops, did I say "quick note?"

Mosaic

Finally! Pictures of my mosaic.

After the first phase - the tree is finished, and I've started on the background:



In this one, the tiling is done, and I only have to grout it. I'll have a picture with the grout soon.



And here is the awesome mosaic bowl I made for my sister for Christmas. The moon is a large bead made of - mother of pearl? The stars are small, clear beads. The mountains are grey and pale purple, with snowy caps.

Craftiness

I haven’t talked much about crafts on this blog, despite including it in my header, but I actually really love crafts and artisan-ship (is that a word?). I often look through the courses offered at the UC Davis craft center and Davis Adult School, and I can’t decide which one I want to take, because I want to take too many of them.

I’ve been crocheting for about twelve years, and in that time I’ve made tons of stuff – mostly blankets, but also hats and other little things. I can also do some really basic knitting, but I never really picked it up and so I’m slow and incapable of being creative or fixing mistakes.

When I tore a ligament in my knee almost two years ago, I took glass fusing. Now THAT was a great class, although I didn’t make anything super useful. I made a beautiful set of sushi dishes, gray with red and green maple leaves. I made my sister a really cool dish with a purple dragonfly. For my mother-in-law, I made a dish with a mosaic-style sun on it, and for my friend’s wedding, I made a small trivet (or tile) with a Native American turtle design.

The problem with glass fusing, though, is that glass is EXPENSIVE. And I never got any good at cutting out circles. Those things are hard.

So now I’m signed up for a mosaic class, and after just two lessons, I don’t like it. I love the idea of mosaic, but I think one of the reasons is that it can be useful. Or rather, it can be a way of decorating useful things to make them unique and beautiful. I don’t really like doing art for art’s sake, partly because I’m just not very artistic. Crafty, yes; artistic, no.

But also, I'm trying to declutter my life, and having beautiful, useful things seems like a better idea than having beautiful, useless things. And we only have so much wall space.

This class requires making a decorative mosaic to hang on a wall. I'm struggling for ideas, but I think I have one now. It's going to be a "Tree of life" theme, really simple. I don't have time to make something complicated, and I want to use my new mosaic skills to make some really cool gifts for Christmas, too. I'll post some pictures if I ever manage to get started.