T-Shirt Painting with Toddlers

Our 3 year old had a distinct lack of summer clothing in this unseasonably warm weather. We picked up some t-shirts from the thrift store--some cute, but some very plain. I immediately  made plans to spruce them up, then got the idea to include our daughter, hoping she was old enough to handle it. She was, in fact, absolutely wonderful.

She even had her own idea about how to decorate one of them.

 She had her heart set on the flowers and fairy from Harold's Fairy Tale.

 I cut freezer paper to the size of the front of the shirt and traced the pictures straight out of the book using a sharpie. The moon was the finishing touch--also suggested by my daughter.

 I cut the shapes out going along the outside of the lines. Then I went back and cut along the inside of the lines. I ironed the main shapes onto the shirt first, then carefully added in the inside shapes so that only the space that used to be lines would be painted.

 Then I managed to spill a bunch of water on it and I had to take some time to cry it out. The blowdrier worked pretty quickly. :)

 Finally! Time to paint! I set her up outside with some nice purple paint and let her go to town.

 She was so excited.

 She decided she was done once she got here, but she came back later and filled up the rest of the white space, just for good measure.

 She really layered on the paint, but it barely soaked through the other side. The newspaper in between the layers of the shirt was just in case it soaked through badly.

 It turned out wonderfully! Here's the fairy...

 And the flowers!

 Sooo cute! Our daughter did such a great job. :)

~Regina

Tissue Paper Suncatchers

Our front door has three funny little windows. These windows face due east and let the very bright morning light shine straight down our hallway into the master bedroom. This is quite annoying to me, so I have tried to find ways to cover those windows so that I'm not woken by the glaring light. I finally found an idea that is beautiful and effective! I did fall leaves for the season, but once December hits, I'll be making more of these with more Christmasy type shapes.

What you'll need:
-cardstock, two sheets per shape (front and back sides)
-tissue paper
-contact paper
-X-acto knives (or some sort of razor)
-rulers
-glue (not pictured)
-print-outs of the shape you want to make
-a cutting surface safe for razors

Cut your card stock down to the size you need. Or just cut it in a pretty shape if you're just hanging these in the window (not filling a specific space).

Tape your shape to cut onto the cardstock. I found it easiest to tape two sheets of cardstock together and cut both sheets at once.

As you can maybe see, the second layer of cardstock was only scored by my brand new x-acto knife. I had to go back over the lines on the second sheet, but it was much easier than starting fresh each time.

Both layers are cut out! They aren't perfect, but they're certainly close enough.

I took the two layers of cardstock apart and put 4 layers of tissue paper down.

I ran a glue stick along all the edges to help secure the tissue paper. I also added some dabs of glue between the layers of tissue paper to help keep it together. However, you probably want to leave one layer of tissue paper unglued until the last minute so that you can easily align the cut-outs.

I put the second cardstock cut-out on the back and held the whole thing up to the light to make sure they were aligned. This was a bit difficult because of the glue.

Next, I cut my contact paper out to the right size and laid it out.

I put my cardstock cut-out onto it, flattened it down, then did the other side.

There were a few wrinkles, but that was just fine for the leaves.

Then I checked my fit in the window and trimmed the sides a bit. It really frustrated me that the tissue paper shows through the cardstock. Next time I will make sure that the tissue paper is the full size of the cardstock so that you can't see the edges like you can in this picture.

Otherwise, I love how these turned out! Here they are at night...

And in the morning! So much better than the ugly construction paper I had up there before. :)

~Regina

Summer Fun

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Between keeping up with our 2 1/2 year old, completing some much-needed sewing projects, and having my parents come to visit, I'm pretty exhausted. :) But on to the goodies...

Every afternoon, I've been trying to do some "big" activity with our daughter. Three times a week, it's swimming, but the other days it's something creative outside. Stuff like sidewalk paint...

 To make sidewalk paint: combine equal parts cornstarch and water, mix well, add food coloring or liquid watercolors...

 Regular painting on big sheets of paper...

 And liquid water colors...

 Which can be turned into fun things like butterfly garlands!

I've also had some fun sewing projects, like my husband's Father's day present: a "Don't Panic" beach towel! I learned how to machine appliqué with this project--time consuming, but not difficult.

 A new nightgown for our daughter. I had a pattern for this style, but the sizing was too small, so I used a stretchy fabric and used the pattern simply as a shape guide.

 I think it turned out wonderfully and can't wait to make another one for her! :)

 And curtains for our living room. I've had this fabric for over a year (lived in 3 different houses since buying it) and finally used it!

 The curtains turned out nice, but the slightly stretchy crinkle cotton was a pain and a half to work with. BUT I did learn how to use my rolled hemmer foot while sewing them, which I'm thrilled about.

And, finally quite a few cooking or baking projects, like homemade strawberry jam using apples and lemons for pectin rather than store-bought pectin.

 Mmmmm! I made this jam a month ago and we've already eaten almost 3 out of the 4 8oz jars.

And a totally random zucchini coffee cake using bisquick. I put 3 cups of grated zucchini into the bisquick recipe for an 8x8 pan. Next time I'll only do 2 cups of zucchini.

 I even put zucchini into the topping, too, which made it really wet...

 So I swirled it into the batter.

 I also had to bake it 15-20 minutes longer than called for (totally expected). So it bake for a total of 40-45 minutes. Oh, and yes, this is a 7x11 pan and I wouldn't use a pan any smaller for the zucchini-added cake.

 Yummy! The very bottom of the cake has that slightly pudding-y feel to it, which is nice, but I think that means I put in a bit too much zucchini.

So, there's a sampling of what I've been up to over the past month. Busy, busy around here!

~Regina

Advent Calendar: Part 2!

Part 1 of this tutorial is here!

So, you have now washed and dried your socks--maybe more than once.  I found as I worked with the socks that the red dye hadn't been completely washed out of the socks, so I got a few red marks on my ironing cloth later on. It wasn't a big deal, but next time I dye something I'll wash it twice before using it.

 And you have your stencils--if you're planning on painting your numbers onto your socks. In the original idea (from Martha Stewart), number stickers were stuck to the socks so that they could be re-used. I didn't care about re-using the socks, so I was going for permanent.  I made my stencils out of freezer paper.  Amy over at naptime crafters has a good explanation of how to make and use freezer paper stencils.  I just cut my paper to 8.5x11 inches, printed the numbers onto the non-shiney side (very important!) and then cut the numbers out with an exacto knife.  It didn't take as long as I expected it to.

 I laid my socks out on my ugly ironing board and rearranged them until I liked what I had.

 Then I laid out my numbers...

 ...and ironed them on!  Now, as you will see later on, I used too hot of an iron OR freezer paper doesn't do well with sock fabric.  I'll show you later how the plastic-y part of the freezer paper didn't want to come off of my sock.

 Back to our current activity: line up the socks in whatever way works best for you.

 Squirt out some fabric paint and get to work!

 I used my finger to put the paint down--it just works best for me.  Normally I would recommend putting a protective layer of something like paper between the two layers of the fabric, but the sock fabric was thick enough that the paint didn't soak through.

Here's the first layer of paint:

 Second layer:

 Again, first layer:

 Second layer:

 I stopped at two layers of paint, though some of the red socks could have handled a third.  Hung up, they look just fine.

Now, on to 24 hours later, after the paint has dried.  I tried to pull off the freezer paper...the paper part came right off, but not the plastic! (Note: please see the update farther down in this thread--or read on if you're looking for how to remove iron-on appliqué plastic.)

 Uh oh...

 So I tried the blow drier. It didn't work.

 What I ended up doing (and managed to not take any pictures of), was heating my iron up to its hottest setting (cotton) with no steam.  Then I laid an ironing cloth over it--mine is just a light weight "flour sack" dish cloth--and ironed the heck out of it.  When I lifted the paper off of the sock, some of the plastic-y stuff came away, but not all.  So I put the cloth back over the sock and ironed more. The ironing cloth lifted some of the plastic-y stuff away from sock and eventually the socks looked pretty good (and my ironing cloth got a bit stiff).

 You can still see a bit of residue where the freezer paper was adhered, but it's much, much better than it used to be. (Oh, and notice my new ironing board cover--thank you Black Friday!). :)

 It took forever--an entire naptime--but I eventually got all of the socks looking pretty good.

UPDATE: I figured out what went wrong with my iron-on stencils. I thought I was using freezer paper, but I was not. I mindlessly grabbed the paper roll stored next to my freezer paper, which happened to be my Heat-n-Bond No Sew Iron-on appliqué paper! No wonder the plasticy part didn't come off--it wasn't meant to! What's even worse is that I started to do it again and thankfully caught myself and saved that project. *headdesk*

So we hung them up!  I used some of those metal ornament hooks. I just hooked them through the sock fabric and squeezed the end shut. I secured a ribbon to the wall (the ribbon ended up being about 60 inches long) and spaced out my socks as evenly as possible.

 We will use candy canes to mark the days that have passed.  I can't wait to start using it!

That's all for now!

~Regina