Upcoming pencil cases: SOMETIMES you win, SOMETIMES you learn

While making those pencil cases I suddenly noticed that at this very step there's a rare opportunity to see the BOTH sides of them in ONE picture - when the zipper is already sewn in, but the sides are not closed yet. 

And you know what? I guess those ones (not precisely those, but pencil cases in general) might be the only ones I'm gonna focus on in next months to fill my shop, which is still terribly empty. In small editions of four to six per design/colorway.

I'm gonna change designs, colorways for my cases, but neither the general idea, nor the look. I like the format, I like how I can easily make my favorite surface design techniques work together for them, I like that there're no complicated sewing operation once the surface is ready. There're LOT of "I like" about them, so be prepared to see more.

There's only one thing I'd like to improve about: I'd like to find the way how to plait my recycling principles into. Yes, of course I can simply put a patch here and there, and maybe that's what I'm gonna do, but for now I feel it could be something other than that. Stay tuned!

Canvas, paint, stencil for a quick craft project WITH kids

Today a little tutorial about how to keep the kids busy for like half an hour with some ordinary acrylic paint, canvas, stencil, bubble-foil, glue and kitchen sponge.

There're FOUR steps:

• coating the canvas and bubble-foil printing - let dry a couple of minutes. It's just THAT easy, using the kitchen sponge - kids LOVE it.
• painting banana paper in necessary colors (this step I made alone, banana paper is fragile, so kids can easily tear it, when it gets wet because of paint).
• sketching flowers, cutting, gluing on the canvas. In our case the kids applied the glue and I helped placing the flowers, because kids would be tempted to make a bouquet all over canvas. For this project flowers had to be in the bottom part, to leave the space for a coming bird. And honestly, I've been so tempted to help them sketch nicely rounded flowers. See, the ours are edgy, irregular and actually not what I'd have expected. But if that's what and how they draw, so why not?
• after the glue is dry, print the bird (golden paint + stencil + kitchen sponge) and call it a day. The glue from the previous step has to be dry, otherwise, your stencil sticks to the canvas while applying the golden paint.

An the end I wanted to put a message on that canvas. Since this canvas had to be offered to the mum of the kid, we wanted to put something like "For my dear mum", but we hadn't time.

If it's appealing to you, or you're making this as a gift, go consider let you kid write a message on a piece of white silk paper, that you'd glue later when the message is dry. Silk paper becomes almost transparent when dry, and it looks like the message has been written directly on canvas.

New truck of recycled materials

RECYCLED MATERIALS this time: plastic caps, plastic bottle from liquid soap.

The last car I made had the wooden trunk, this one has a plastic one. Why actually spend time making trunks if you can easily re-purpose an old plastic bottle - the bottoms of them are just PERFECT for trunk making.

And this is how it evolved - white trunk needed white wheels, but then the whole piece just looked drab, so I stained it with walnut stain so that the white details pop up.

There's also another pic so that you can see what the wheels look like when I bake them. As long as they are hot, I dismantle them, glue and joint them back. Done.

Moomins are evolving

You know what's a bummer about working with little plan? That's that: you may create something you actually do not need, and it's sort of wasting time, right? That's what happened to me working on Moomins: I made Snufkin (Snusmukriken) and Little My both in the same technique, because 

• Snufkin is the best friend of Moomin, so he just has to be;
• I didn't want to crochet all the guys, so those ones were great opportunity to try out some doll making other than knitting/sewing/crocheting;
• and they are pretty similar in construction. 

They were almost ready as I realize, that I actually have no scenes with Little My. And Snufkin is actually not that important either.

And here we come to a bummer turning into the stroke of luck - I still have no plan how to integrate those, and it'd be difficult to act them all in one piece with our four hands (mines and my little girl's). 

BUT! I love how they fit into the picture how it all of the sudden looks alive. Many adjustments have to be made yet,  we need backdrops, of course, and details, and finally the place to stock, but it start looking like something interesting and inviting to play.

Making gift wrapping paper - DIY tutorial

Sometimes you can easily pick up some nice gift wrapping paper. And sometimes all you see around is pink princesses, or cars, or you've already attended so many children anniversary parties, seeing all the same gift wrapping papers, that you can hardly imagine going to buy another roll of one of those. Well, that's me, my friends, sick of commercial glossy pink princess gift wrapping paper.

That's how it came to making a piece of my own paper, based of some old pieces of brown paper (yes, recycled) we had around. Pink, colorful, bold and with simple and fresh patterns. 

It was quick, easy and gratifying. It would be even more fun if we'd made it with my little girl, but I didn't have time. Next time we need gift wrapping paper, she'll certainly put her own twist on it. Stay tuned!

Moomins - Snusmumriken and Pikko Mu from SCRATCH

I've bought recently a wood-burning pen. I wanted it since awhile but didn't have any idea what I I'd use it for. Until I had to make Snusmumriken (swedísh) and Pikko Mu (finnish) to complete our Moomin story. 

Yes in my book there're instructions how to crochet them, but as much as I do enjoy crocheting Moomins, I I knew I'd try out another technique for both aforementioned just for a change. And that's how I got to buy this wood-burning pen - to "draw" the faces on wooden spheres which I'd take as heads.

And as I've written recently I'm a bit behind my working schedule, so now I'm just sharing pics of how-to without much detail and only with this short description. Here's what I did so far:

1. cut cardboard circles
2. made/glued "layer cakes" with circles of different sizes, each size was cut three times, with intervals of 0,5 cm between different diameters (6 cm, 5,5 cm, 5 cm and so forth). Eight different sizes were made for Snusmumriken, six for Pikko Mu (and that was fast - a very quick way of making cones from scratch)
3. drilled holes for legs and necks in dried cones
4. made shoes of FIMO modelling clay, put them on pieces of wood sticks, baked
5. burnt/drawn faces on wooden beads
6. put together, checked, adjusted balance and applied some strong glue into holes to hold better.

That's all, come next week to them all!

REcycled pixie - DIY tutorial

RECYCLED ITEMS this time: package cardboard, lace.

Today I'm sharing another short tutorial how to make use of package board and thrifted lace pieces to create some nice pixies/angels or whatever, you name it!

This time it all got started with a piece of old lace (not so old, but thrifted, something synthetic and cheap, but lace-y). The idea was to make advantage of the transparency of the lace, hence make the wings look airy and delicate. 

I tried out ironing the lace pieces between rhodoid plastic sheets.

Ironing them ONTO rhodoid with iron-on fusible interface (like bondaweb) didn't work, lace gets peeled off quickly and doesn't hold. I put the lace IN BETWEEN of two rhodoid sheets, ironed through the baking paper and called it a day. Not bad, my friends, not bad! A bit shiny though, because of rhodoid nature, but it's not bothering me so far. The first idea was getting them rigid with cornstarch, but I wanted it to be more play-proof (because my little girl is constanlty rearranging everything we create, so those pieces need to be torn-resistent).

And another important point is working with different materials:

1) the body of cardboard layers with chalkboard foil, 

2) wings in lace and plastic, 

3) head made of wooden sphere, FIMO, glass and wooden beads (eyes and nose). 

I started with two of them, but the second one is not coming out as I expected, so I have to adjust. Stay tuned, I'm going to get back with more of them.

Next step would be to try out making them with my little girl and seeing which twist would she put on them!