Toilet Roll Windsock

This is another one of our 30 Days Wild activities. We made our own windsock from a toilet roll, some tissue paper and some craft tape. Totally low tech and absolutely not weather proof but when the rest of June is forecast to be like this...

... it doesn't really matter. So, we made it and hung it high in our Cotoneaster. Now we have to wait for some actual wind because we made it on Monday when it was stifling and there was hardly a breeze in the garden.

Paper Bead Snake

So, our chicken pox crafting continues...

Yesterday we make an upcycled paper bead snake! We cut out large triangles from an old magazine and made them into long beads or tubes by rolling them around a pencil and gluing together. Next we found a polystyrene egg, a pipe-cleaner and some googly eyes for the head. We threaded the tubes onto some embroidery thread and used some beads for the snake's tail. Finally the snake needed some star markings on his head. Voila, one very long, satisfyingly bendy snake to play with.

Jess was pretty pleased with it wrapped around her neck!

Simple Homemade Bird Bath

Jessica and I have made a couple of bird baths now, both using terracotta saucers atop an upturned terracotta pot. They are so cheap and really easy to personalise. We use acrylic paints to decorate outdoor pots. This is the one that we made for our own garden...

We introduced it to the garden while we still had nesting blue tits in our box but I don't think they ever found it. However, this week we're regularly getting a pair of magpies using it. They are fascinating. They're bringing in bits of bread from somewhere and dipping it in our water before eating it themselves or (I suspect) taking it to young in their nearby nest.

Cardboard Tubes, Yoghurt Pots & Lots of Tape!

My little lady is now really beginning to embrace my stash of junk and come up with brilliant ways to upcycle our cardboard and plastic. We happened upon some leopard tape in Home Bargains and at the crazy price of 50p for 10m there was no way that it was staying on the shelf so Jess started scheming and this is what she came up with...

One Cheetah tail for her and a Leopard-Giraffe model, which has a matching tail. The tails are toilet roll tubes cut into a spiral and covered in tape. Jess has worn hers all day and even sneaked out of bed to put it back on before going to sleep!

Junk Modelling Cat

My collection of "junk" is extensive. I just can't bring myself to put coffee tins, toilet rolls, plastic lids, yogurt pots or egg cartons out for recycling. It just sits in the conservatory waiting for inspiration to hit. Today the lightning bolt hit Jessica and she decided to make a... wait for it... oh yes, no surprises here, a cat! She chose four toilet rolls and two egg cartons from my collection. We cut out the central pieces from one egg carton to make the ears. After raiding my craft cupboards for tape,  glue, acrylic paint, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, a pompom and a feather we set to work and created this...

Here's a side-view to showcase the feathery tail...

As you might imagine, Jessica is very proud of this model of Nala, the cat from down the road!

Toilet Roll Castle

One of this weekend's crafting exploits was to make a kitchen and toilet roll tube castle for some of Jessica's characters. The rolls are wrapped in coloured paper and stapled together. The turrets are made from self-adhesive stuff (I really don't know what to call it!!!) from Home Bargains. Once I had cut the doors in, Jess added sticker windows and a few beautiful gems from her endless supply. Who doesn't love a toilet roll craft?!

Toilet Roll Fairy

This year we've had to have a Christmas fairy rather than an angel on the top of our tree - Jessica insisted! I bet no-one else has one like ours!!!

Toilet Roll Dragon Marionette

Introducing "Fire", Jessica's fire-breathing dragon marionette made from two toilet roll tubes. I wanted to give her spikes on her back but Jessica would not sanction it. She's too friendly for spikes apparently...

Paper Towel Roses

We're getting ready for Mother's Day at Toddler Group tomorrow. This week we'll be decorating upcycled toilet roll vases and making paper towel roses. 

There are two types of rose here. The first one has kept us busy with watercolours and pipette painting. We've been dripping watercolours onto kitchen paper and then leaving them to dry all over the house!

Once they're dry we separate the two sheets of paper on each towel and then cut each one in half to form rectangles. You need two rectangles for each rose and they both need to be folded twice to create long, thin rectangles with four layers. Attach one end of one of them to a straw (we used plastic tape) and then keep wrapping. At the end of the first piece I have just carried on with the second (no need to tape together) before using the plastic tape at the base to secure the rose to the straw.

The second type is made from unpainted kitchen towel in the same way and then coloured in using felt-tip pens. They're quite striking.

I have glued cotton pads to the base of the toilet rolls so that the flowers don't fall through the bottom and have covered them in coloured paper ready for the little ones to use stickers to decorate them. Here is the trial one that Jess made...

Hungry Caterpillar Costume

Happy World Book day everyone!

This time last year we hadn't been going to the Baby and Toddler Group for very long but when we found out that they would be celebrating World Book Day by dressing up I decided to embrace the idea and hit the sewing machine. I hadn't tried anything like this before and I spent days trying to work out how what I was going to do and how I was going to do it myself. After a few sleepless nights and one full day at the sewing machine I came up with this. I'm biased but I think my little girl was a beautiful caterpillar!

The body was made from a couple of pillow cases cut into strips and stitched together with elastic in three of the joins. I made the top like a pinafore and used KAM snaps as the fasteners. The bottom panel was stuffed before stitching. When sewing the back up I attached lots of ribbons like little prickles. The legs are made of sparkly felt and attached with KAM snaps again as I wanted to be able to remove them to make Jessica turn into the butterfly too.

 

The hood was also removable and attached with a snap at the back. I used felt for the embellishments and attached them using Bondaweb before machining on some extra details.

Jessica helped me to create the huge cardboard wings. We used paint and glitter on one side using the traditional fold and print technique to get both wings to be the same. 

On the other side we cut lots of coloured shapes and glued them on as close to symmetrical as we could manage. I threaded two bands of thick elastic through top and bottom of the centre of the wings and stitched them into loops so that she could wear the either way round.

Here's an idea of just how big they are...

It was a lovely day at the group and there were some fabulous costumes. Jessica was thrilled to be named joint best dressed, especially as that meant she won this fantastic book...

I cannot tell a lie - I was pretty thrilled too! :-)

Tepee

I ran this tepee up in one evening last spring. It is constructed for function rather than aesthetic appeal so I really didn't worry too much about care and precision on this occasion. It's a bit rough around the edges but Jessica spent many a happy hour in it with her books and teddy bears last year.

I cut out isosceles triangles from a duvet cover and some other fabrics I had stashed away. I don't know what possessed me to make a hexagonal tepee rather than a square one, which would have saved a fair amount of time. It does give Jessica a lot more space in there though. Anyway, I stitched the door first, using three pieces stitched to form a triangle the required size. It has a top panel and the two side flaps. Next I started sewing the sides together creating channels for the bamboo canes to be threaded through. I found that my purple fabric wasn't as wide as I needed so decided to leave those two sides short, which ended up being a positive as Jess uses those sides to peek over...

At the top of each side panel I attached a KAM snap to be connected to three ribbons that also had KAM snaps attached the the ends of them. I can't wait to get it back out of storage again this year.

Child's Pinafore Dress

I have only made one dress in my time crafting and this is it...

Jessica loves it and wore it a lot last year. I'm hoping that she won't have grown out of it by the time the weather picks up. Mind you, she has already chosen some new fabric and requested another dress for this summer.

This was a cut and hope affair. I didn't follow a pattern and I definitely didn't really know what I was doing at the start. I made the skirt and top separately, both fully lined with some blue cotton from my Nan-nan's old sheets. The top opens over the shoulders using KAM snaps, which I still think are magnificent! I played around with the shape of the skirt a little, trimming and restitching until it hung satisfactorily. The only important thing was to get the bottom of the top and the top of the skirt exactly the same width. After I had stitched them together I decided that I'd made the top too long so I added a satin sash to cover the join and marginally improve the balance. 

The question is, will I follow a pattern next time?!

Toilet Roll Marionette Puppies

This was one of Jessica's special requests. My Facebook feed is full of wonderful ideas from places like Red Ted Art and just occasionally one catches Jessica's attention, her wide eyes fix on me and before I know it we're getting everything out and having a go ourselves. 

As you can see, Jessica is currently favouring pink above all other colours (even insisting on a pink cat cake for her birthday) and so we currently have a couple of pink puppies living with us. They have been named Singie and Dancie. She thinks they're brilliant!

Who knew a few toilet rolls, craft sticks, googly eyes, some wool, beads and pink paper, a couple of pompoms and a pipe cleaner could provide so much pleasure?! I must admit there is also a certain degree of imagination required from Jessica, not to mention my willingness to follow her orders, to have quite as much fun with them as we manage.

Pompom Skirt

This is my first attempt at making clothing. I have upcycled some curtain lining and net curtain to create this pompom skirt for my little lady. I found it quite challenging to machine stitch the elastic whilst stretched but I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it with practice. I created six pockets to enclose the pompoms in but had to cut it down to five once I’d tried Jess in it. I think it’s a cute little piece and Jess seems to be able to move around in it pretty well. It’ll make a nice Christmas day outfit if she hasn’t grown out of it by then!

     

     

Socktopus

Jess loves playing with socks so I thought I’d make her a socktopus. I followed the tutorial on Cut Out and Keep. David claims it needs a more elaborate face but I’d got bored by that point. I suppose I might break the felt out another day but here’s the socktopus at the moment. Most importantly, Jess loves it.

 

  

Funky Shelf for under £2

Katryn needed a shelf to put her TV on so I got another one of those cheap shelves from IKEA and funkified (upcycled!) it for her. Her bedroom is pink but I distinctly remember her telling me that she wasn’t a big fan of pink anymore so I went for something that would last longer. As it turns out, I couldn’t drill more than a centimetre into any of her walls so the shelf has not even been used but nevermind! This isn’t really decoupage because I didn’t use small bits of paper but the general principles are the same. I used PVC glue to attach left over bits of wrapping paper to the edges and then top and bottom before varnishing the whole thing to seal it. I’m confident that it would have looked great on her wall but c’est la vie.

Cow Bag!

Here’s the bag as promised yesterday. It’s about 45cm by 30cm from memory, so quite large. I used one of my bags as a guide so that it didn’t look too weirdly proportioned. I really hoped that I was on safe grounds with this present because Sarah does love a funky bag and animal prints. I fully lined the bag with some upcycled sheets and as you can see, I placed a red popper at the top to keep the bag closed. I effectively created two identical bags from the two fabrics then attached the handles to the outside of the lining before sewing the two pieces together. The letters used the same template and technique as on the cushion. I am really pleased with how this one turned out.

Curtains for Jessica’s Room

Time is flying by and Jessica only just fits in her moses basket now so it will soon be time to move her into her own room. We had awful, floor-length, thin, green curtains up in her room, which did absolutely nothing for the room and were certainly not suitable for our funky little girl. This could mean just one thing – project!

So, off we popped to Ikea for some fabric followed by John Lewis for ruffling and fittings. All in, these curtains have cost me £15 to make and I have upcycled the lining from our old duvet cover. Can’t be bad although they are certainly not the most accomplished piece of sewing I’ve ever done – I struggled to find the space to handle that amount of fabric in our flat. As long as you don’t look too closely they will do very nicely. They are my first attempt after all!