Quiet Book- Clock - Page 16

Since I wasn't really sure about the sewing, and Wonder Under paper, I figured I'd start with an easy page first.  That meant skipping to the end of the book and doing the last page first which is a clock.  

Since my background is already white, and I wanted this to this a really easy page, I picked the color turquoise for the clock. 

I ended up tracing a pot onto the Wonder Under because it was the right size circle for my page.  I cut out the Wonder Under circle and ironed it onto my turquoise felt for about 5-10 seconds to get it to stick.  Using the already cut wonder under as a guideline, I cut my felt clock out.  Then I pealed the paper off of the Wonder Under and placed it onto my Pellon page.  Placing a damp cloth over it, I ironed slowly on high for about 15 seconds each time I moved the iron.  The key is to have it hot enough and iron long enough for your damp cloth to dry.  This fuses the felt to the Pellon.  

The next step was to sew around edge of the clock.  I got out my sewing machine and prayed that the settings were right so I wouldn't have to change anything.  I used white arts and crafts thread (it's a little thicker than normal thread) in hopes that it will hold better.   I'm still working on being able to sew in a straight line (or a circle in this case), so my stitching isn't always the same distance from the outside, but it'll do.  Hopefully I'll get better as this project continues. 

The last time I went to Michaels, I found a package of peel and stick white felt letters and numbers that I figured would make my life a lot easier, so I stuck the numbers around the clock  (I also found some hearts, lady bugs, flowers, and butterflies so I will be able to dress some of the more plain pages up.)

Next, I cut out some hands for the clock making sure that they weren't so long that they would reach and overlap the numbers.  I snipped tiny holes in the clock hands and in the center of the clock and put a brad through.

Of course I had to add a couple of the hearts that I found at Michaels just to finish it off.  

I'm pretty pleased with my first page.  I just hope that my sewing machine skills get better.   

Quiet Book

I found the idea of doing a quiet book on Pinterest. We're flying across the country in the near future so I thought having one for my little girl would be great on the flight.  I did a bunch of research and found some great ideas for the pages in my quiet book.  Unfortunately I found so many ideas that I had trouble narrowing them down so I'm going to attempt to make 16 pages for this quiet book before we leave.  It's going to be a HUGE undertaking though, so we'll see what I can get done.  

I have been using a lot of suggests from http://servingpinklemonade.blogspot.com.  She has a great shopping list of the items that she got for her quiet books on her site.  To start mine, I got 2 1/2 yards of Pellon (it's almost like a super stiff felt material) to make the pages with.  I got almost as much of the Wonder Under which is really cool stuff.  I had never used it, but I'm totally loving it now.  Then I got several sheets of different colored felt.  I have a feeling I'll be back to the store multiple times for this project because each page has cool features.  

I wanted to cut my pages to 8in x 10in. The very first thing I did was make a huge mistake.  I bet many of you already know that sidewalk chalk isn't good for arts and crafts projects, but I didn't.  And it was the only thing I had in the house when I went to go cut my pages that wasn't permanent ink.  Oops.  Now all of my white pellon pages have yellow marks on them, but at least most of them have one clean side.  I even washed the pages after I had cut them.  With bleach.  And they're still yellow.  Oh well.  

So having gone shopping and cut out my pages (and washed them and bleached them), my journey of making my very first quiet book is underway.  I feel like this project is going to be fraught with mistakes...

Hair Bows

Once I had several hair clips, I attempted to make some bows to attach to the hair clips.  They're definitely more involved and a bit more frustrating to get to look nice.  There are a ton of methods out there for making the bows as well.  Here's what I did: 

You'll still want to cover the hair clip with ribbon like you did before.  To make the bow, I cut out a piece of cardboard the width of the bows I wanted to make.  Then I cut a little chunk of the cardboard out in the middle of the top like this:

Then you wrap the ribbon around your cardboard so it pass the front 3 times like this:

You can us some extra alligator clips to hold it in place if you need to.  
Take a piece of thread and tie it tightly around the center (using the open spot in the cardboard).  Then wrap it around several times to make the center even smaller.  

Ten take a short piece of ribbon and fold it in half.  Wrap it around the center of your bow, covering the thread and use your glue gun to secure it in the back.

Glue it to your ribbon covered alligator clip and hopefully you'll have a very cute hair bow.  I have found that they look better with the same ribbon around the clip as you use for the bow, but I'm sure there are some cute pairings that you could experiment with.  

Hair Clips

It's been only a few months since my daughter has had enough hair to put clips in.  I was so excited that she finally had hair that I made a bunch of hair clips that she'll only wear for about 10 minutes before pulling out and saying "uh oh".  

They also make great presents for baby girls, and once you invest in the materials, you can make a bunch of hair clips.  

Here's a small selection of some of the hair clips I made.  Unfortunately some of my favorites are missing like the brown with two pink ladybugs.  Guess I need to make another batch...

Hair clips are pretty simple to make, so it was a great way to ease back into arts and crafts.  

The only things you need are the single pronged alligator hair clips that you can get for pretty cheap from Sally Beauty, which just happens to be next door to our Michaels so we only had to get out of the car once - score! Then it's over to Michaels to pick out different ribbon and decorations.  You'll also want a glue gun, and something to clip the backs off of the button decorations if they have the little loops on the back.  

You're going to glue the ribbon around the clip.  I usually start with the inside of the top and I don't cut my ribbon until I've glued everything but the inside bottom of the clip so I can cut it to the exact length that I'll need. 

 

Once you're done with the clip, you can glue on a button or something else decorative.  I tried to make some bows to put on the clips, so I'll explain those in the next post.

Camera Lens Puppet

Since we had our daughter, my husband has gotten really into photography.  It's tough to photograph a 1 year old, so when I saw a picture of a camera puppet on Pinterest, I figured it would be a perfect.  I attempted to do Elmo.  I figured at some point, my daughter will know who he is.  

I got some sturdy white felt for the eyes, regular orange felt for the nose, and black buttons for the eyes.  (I think my black buttons were a little too large though.)

The next item to hunt down was a red scrunchie.  I looked at drug stores, grocery stores, Target, pretty much everywhere I could think of (except Claire's Boutique at the mall).  I guess red scrunchies (or any scrunchies actually) are not in style right now.  That means conquering my fear of my sewing machine that I had totally forgotten how to use.  

I happened to be at a store that was right next to Michael's so I went in there for supplies.  They don't have fabric, but they did have a few cheap bandanas on one of the aisles so I figured that would do.  Next time, I'll go to Joann's and get some thicker more sturdy fabric.

I cut a piece of fabric that was 1/4 of the bandana by a whole bandana.  (I'm guessing the bandana was 2ft x 2ft.)

I took a sturdy hair rubber band and pinned the fabric around it to look like a scrunchie and sewed very slowly with my sewing machine and then sewed the two ends together.  I put that part behind the eyes and nose since it's pretty ugly. 

 

As you can see, I did not make the scrunchie part gracefully, nor does it look very nice, but it's functional.  That's about all I can say about it.  And I now remember how to thread my sewing machine.
 
I then used my glue gun to attach the nose and eyes to the scrunchie.   

The biggest issue is that with the scrunchie made of such flimsy material, the buttons and eyes flop back pretty easily, but I think using thicker material for the scrunchie part would help.  

It sort of looks like Elmo although his nose should be rounder, and his eyes should be a little bigger.  

I think next time I'll try Cookie Monster :)

Introduction

I've always loved arts and crafts.  When I was a kid, I did so many projects - bead jewelry, hemp necklaces, friendship bracelets, potholders, dream catchers, needlepoint, cross-stitch, hook rugs, etc.  I had so much more time then!   After college I never seemed to find the time to do the crafts that I had enjoyed so much as a kid.  I went to a knitting class with a friend a while back and knitted a few scarves, then got busy with other things.  I could barely keep up with the buttons that needed sewn back on and the socks that needed darned.  

While I was pregnant with my perfect little girl, I had such great intentions of getting back into all of this.  At 6 months pregnant, I bought my first sewing machine.  I took classes.  I could have been a pro.  But then it sat in the corner of my dining room for the next 20 months.  Not a whole lot of time to sew with an infant in the house.  

Now that my "baby" girl is a year and half, I'm finding myself with a little more time than I had before.  I'm still super busy, but I can get away with an occasional project during nap times or after bedtime.  Sometimes I can even tinker away while she plays with her toys.  

It feels great to create things for my family and friends.  My finished products aren't nearly as nice as I'd like for them to be (I am a perfectionist), but I'm learning as I go.  My plan (as long as I can stick to it), is to blog about how I do my projects, what works, what doesn't work, what I would do differently next time around, and perhaps I'll mix in some cooking projects as well - I do like to dabble in the kitchen too :)

And maybe I'll get around to sewing on some buttons and darning socks too.  Maybe.