Christmas Crafting Round-up

 For my 4 year old, I came up with this barn.  She loves animals and has a lot of the plastic horses and cats.  This is already well loved.  I loosely followed the instructions here, but made it so that it folds out completely and has a mat that folds out on one side.  I'll do a post with more details on what I changed and with better pictures next week.

So our Christmas plan is always to do one book, one want (Santa takes care of that one) and one homemade gift by me.  This year we departed from that a little and added some 'needs', because these kids have been growing fast and they all needed something in the way of clothes.  

Anyway, a 12 year old and 14 year old boy are not the easiest people to craft for.  My 12 year old (math and all things related to 'pi' loving son) started me out on the idea of incorporating a quote somehow (Can you guess which one is his?). 

 I first thought of a shirt using the freezer paper stenciling method and then moved onto a canvas tote (the kind that cinches up) again stenciling the quote on.  In the end, I decided on just making them some "wall art" for their rather boring room.  I just printed out the quote, after messing around in word to come up with a layout that I liked.  Then I scribbled on the back of it with a pencil, so that I could transfer the lettering onto the canvas by tracing the quote.  Then I just carefully painted in the words, all the while watching 3 very cheesy Hallmark Christmas movies. 

My 14 year old did not volunteer any favorite quotes, so I went searching for one.  I wanted it to be by someone literary and famous, but wanted it to be slightly odd (that would be the payback for not being helpful), yet at the same time somewhat profound. 

Here is what I came up with: 

 What do you think?  Good choice for a quote?

For my 9 year old daughter I made her a bag to match her wool coat.

 I kind of combined these 2 tutorials (here and here) and added the strap and inside pocket.  All the fabric was left over from the 2 wool coats that I made.

 Another tradition is that the kids each get an ornament (the idea being when they get married, I will give them a box of ornaments and they won't have a bare tree their first year as newly weds).  Sometimes they are just cute ones I spotted in the store, other times they are ones from a vacation or ones that I've made.  This year over Thanksgiving break we went to the beach and the kids saw and played in the ocean for the first time in their lives.  I thought that was worth remembering, so I came up with this idea for their ornaments.  I found these little clear glass balls (with a flat bottom which were actually meant to be place holders) at JoAnn's.  I had gathered a bunch of small shells, so I filled them up and tied on a bow.  2 I filled with the same kind of shell and filled in full.  The other 2 have a variety of shells so I didn't fill those quite as full.

 Finally, here are the ornaments that I gave to friends, family and teachers.  I took the idea from here.  However, I don't have a fancy cutting machine and cut the nativity scene out with an exacto knife.  I just printed multiple silhouettes out, laminated them and cut them out in the shape of the glass bulb.  Then I slid it in and popped it out with tweezers.  Then I added some of the fake snow.  Again, I used the smaller glass bulbs I found at JoAnn's.

December Crafting

I did a fair amount of crafting in December. Actually, I was pretty proud of myself. Because we had visitors coming, I had resolved to have all of my crafting done before they got here (no separate craft room=planning ahead). This resulted in not having any last minute, stay up late on Christmas Eve projects to do. It was nice. I should do it more often. Unfortunately, I'm not very good at taking pictures. Here's what I have.

Gifts for teachers, friends, etc were these. I got the idea here and it was a fun project. I used an old German hymn book (Phil couldn't believe I would use that, but we had 3 of the old ones laying around collecting dust, so I figured why not). I also made them even smaller by cutting the size she used in half once more. I also learned that the messier the tear, the neater it looked so I didn't make very defined creases when I made the rectangles. One other ornament project, that I have no pictures of that I did is this.

Sadly, I don't have any pictures of a finished ornament. This is as close as it gets. I did free hand the letter on and I used silver glitter instead. I just liked the way it looked with the black and white of the music.

The project that was the biggest hit this year was this Angry Birds pillow. Clara had seen one in a grocery store and wanted one really bad. I'm not one to buy into trends so put my foot down. The kids each make a present for their siblings and Ethan came up with this idea. I had a round pillow form laying around and all of the fabric as well. He drew it out the face and feathery things/tail (you can't see those in the picture, but there are little black fleece "feathers" stuck into the seam for the head feathers and tail feathers). I used his drawing as a pattern, cut out the pieces and zig zagged them on in black to make them stand out. She loves the pillows.

Other things made: 2 ultra cuddly fleece blankets for the girls, 2 big ultra cuddly fleece pillows for the boys and pajamas for the girls. I think that is about it. Kind of a low key crafting Christmas.