Swaddle Baby

When I stumbled across BeccaMarie's tutorial for a swaddle baby, I knew I had found not only the perfect gift for my just-turned-one-year-old niece, but also another idea for Operation Christmas Child boxes! It's a little more involved than the Nubbie dolls, but it's still pretty simple. I made it more complicated by adding arms.

BeccaMarie also has a wonderful tutorial on how to paint the face. I went with a more anime style eyes but I think I'll try the smaller, round eyes next time.

See the cute little arms? I totally cut those out free-form and they turned out great. I don't recommend doing that, but it worked this time.

The back.

And the layers still separate!

If you haven't done yarn hair before, then BeccaMarie also has an awesome tutorial for that! I've looked all over the internet for simple tutorials on sewing on doll hair and this is one of the best I've seen. :)

Hope this gives someone some good ideas for crafting!

~Regina

Simple Spit-Up Cloths

...And, well, I'll show off some pretty spit-up cloths, too. :)

I'm sorry for posting late, we've been taken out by seasonal allergies. I've hardly done any sewing this week.

I finally finished my friend's spit-up cloths for her baby girl. I had tons of fun picking out fabrics and playing with the gorgeous colors. This sweet baby girl is going to have not only great, practical spit-up cloths, but also soft terry-backed cloths with ruffles and ribbon tabs. She also got the chenille cloths I made a while ago.

These more practical spit-up cloths are made from a panel of flannel sewn onto a cloth diaper. How big you make the flannel is up personal preference, but I like to cut my flannel to 19 inches long by 7 inches wide. This is just big enough to cover the center, extra-layered part of the cloth diaper after all the raw edges have been turned under.

 Iron the long sides under and attach a ribbon along the edge. I like to use satin 3/8inch ribbon, but wider ribbon could be fun and grosgrain works well, too.

 Then attach the whole thing to the cloth diaper. Easy as pie! Make sure your bobbin thread matches the cloth diaper's color. If your tension is balanced, then neither should show up on the other side.

 Pink on top!

 White on the bottom!

 All done! So easy and cute!

 Here's my stack!

 The other set has ruffles and ribbon tabs--perfect for little hands to enjoy.

 So fun!

Which one is your favorite?

~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

Fall Leaf Stained Glass

A fun project to do with a little person!

We went out on a walk and collected a bunch of pretty leaves. Then we ironed the leaves between pieces of wax paper (iron on high, no steam--make sure to cover the wax paper with cloth on both sides!). Once the leaves were nice, flat, and dry, we were ready to use them.

I laid out a nice sheet of clear contact paper, sticky side up, and taped the edges down with painters' tape. We laid the leaves out on it.

Then we took off the painters' tape, stuck the contact paper to the window, smoothed it out and we were done!

Our little girl was so proud of herself!

The leaves look gorgeous when the rising sun shines right onto them.

I did end up cutting off some of the contact paper with an X-acto knife to form a more rounded outline of the leaf sheet because the straight edge was very stark.

~Regina

The Grand Play-Dough Experiment: Baking Soda Play-Dough

This week I completed our evaluation of the Traditional Play-Dough recipe. Why it's called "traditional" I'm not sure because I had never seen a recipe similar to this one. It's just baking soda, cornstarch, water, and food coloring. Most recipes that I consider traditional are salt doughs, but that's just quibbling. ;)

Adding in the recipe here, since there are no guarantees that the link will work forever:

Traditional Play-dough

2 cups of baking soda
1 and a half cups of water
1 cup of corn starch

Mix with a fork until the mixture is smooth and boil until thick. Takes about 4 minutes.

It was super easy to make: just mix the cornstarch and baking soda (Note: I did a half recipe since we don't need a boatload of play-dough).

 Add water, mix well, add food coloring. My daughter requested orange play-dough (her current favorite color), so orange it was!

 Warm over medium heat until it boils. It will heat VERY quickly, I wasn't prepared for that and almost burned it. It came together extremely quickly. It took fewer than 5 minutes from mixing the water in and starting heating to the picture below.

I kneaded it and loved the texture, but I also noticed lots of residue left on my work surface:

 And that the play-dough's surface seems to dry out easily:

The drying slowed down as the play-dough cooled.

Summary of initial impressions:
-very easy and quick to make
-boiled at a low temp, make sure to not burn it!
-nice texture
-unusual ingredients
-outside dries out while sitting
-leaves a heavy residue on play surface that is tough to clean
-don't think it's going to last long

Week later:
-Nice and soft
-Smooth
-Kind of wet, but that may be from storing it away while it was still warm
-Leaves a LOT of residue; I feel like I have to wash my hands almost as soon as starting to play with it.
-Surface dries out a bit but not nearly as badly as at first (more humid day?)

Looking good so far! I am surprised, but pleased.

Almost two weeks later:
-It molded! Gah!!!! Nasty! Guess I either stored it wrong or it was just too moist. The recipe contains no specific storage instructions, but this might be one of the play-doughs that needs to be stored in the fridge.

Gross, gross, gross!! Into the garbage!

Final verdict: I do not plan to make this play-dough again. It left too much residue to be easy to clean up after, it still dried out a bit which just isn't nice to feel, and then it molded!

~Regina

Other posts in the Grand Play-Dough Experiment Series:
Kool Aid Play-Dough
Coffee Play-Dough
Gingerbread Play-Dough