Under the Sea

In the past week, Clara has been to 3 birthday parties (she's 5). I hate birthday parties, ugh! I guess what I really hate is that my budget for gifts is not that big and there isn't much to find in the stores for that price. Since we had 3 so close together, right after Christmas (read--I don't even want to go into a store let alone look for a present), I decided to make them instead.  Here's 2 out of the 3 presents (forgot to take pictures of the first one finished). The bendy woodland elf/gnome and mermaid idea came from here (I had actually seen these made before, but this is the tutorial that I used to refresh my mind). 

 The rabbit pattern and the idea for the whole "scene" came from my lovely friend Valerie. She's my crafty guru and a lover of wool, so she's really good at these kind of things. The other elf/gnome (not sure what to call him) was different as dictated by Clara. He had a little messenger bag with a little scarf in it, because her friend Andrew is always cold. This guy has pockets (on his pants and shirt) because her friend Shawn likes pockets.
(Excuse the rushing out the door to get to the party which made these a little crummy photos:)

So the other two parties were back to back over last weekend and the third is tomorrow, which means I had a little more time to work on this one...which was a lot of fun. 

 Each set was gifted in a little muslin bag, but for this one I added some embroidery (really just an excuse to stay up and finish a movie after the kids had gone to bed).

 Each set included some play cloths as well...this one had a couple more. All a little silky feeling except the cotton shell one in the front.

 Here's a close up of the mermaid. Again I used this little tutorial.

 Clara helped me pick out some shells from our collection to add to the scene and I made the little seaweed plant thing.

 The little critters were a lot of fun to make. Clara dictated the colors and the type of animals. The starfish pattern I made up, but I got the dolphin one from here.

And here is a little set up...I've had a hard time keeping Clara from playing with it, so I guess I'll be making a couple more for my girls to play with. Which is fine by me. I like this kind of little hand sewing projects.