A few weeks ago I picked up a decorative Indian corn at the grocery store. I got to thinking it would be fun to do an Indian Corn craft with the kids. This is what we ended up doing.
I cut "fall colored" tissue papers into squares. We didn't have any brown so I watercolor painted a bit of white tissue paper and let it dry. Next year I will let the older kids watercolor their own sheets of white tissue paper to get a "marbled" effect, much like the real kernels of corn.
We placed the eraser part of a pencil in the center of a piece of tissue and gently twisted the tissue. Then dipped the tissue in glue and placed it on our corn cut-outs.
These are the beautiful corns that we made.
For the leaves, we took a large sheet of cream colored construction paper, spritzed it with water, crumpled it up, then laid it flat to dry. After it was dried, we then cut out corn leaves and glued them to the back of our corns.
The kids had fun with the different colors of tissue paper!
That's all for today, until next time have a happy, crafty day!
Back in July of 2012, darling daughter and I dyed some white Sugar-n-Cream brand yarn. It was such a fun project and we were very excited about how the cute little balls of pastel colored yarn turned out.
Since then, the little balls of yarn have been living inside this large, glass, pickle jar just waiting to be used for something....but what?
Well, the other day I saw a colorful place mat in a store and it dawned on me...I can make my OWN colorful place mat for spring decorating with our little balls of yarn!
So I grabbed my Grandma's old crochet hook and set to work.
Well, the finished project is pretty crooked on one side (I'm not very good at crochet), but I think the colors are kind of pretty.
If you would like to see the blog post about the yarn dying that we did, click HERE, and
Now that Christmas is over, I can post some of the gifts I worked on in November and December. One of the gifts I gave to a few special friends was this needlepoint tree.
The pattern for this tree can be found in the November/December Stitch-it Today magazine on pages 44 and 45.
I hadn't tried needlepoint before I found this project, but my daughter had done a little bit. She showed me how to start and stitched a few pieces herself. It was so easy to do, and now I love needlepoint!
The easiest way to transfer the pattern onto the plastic canvas, was to use a permanent marker, then cut out the pieces.
These are the little yarns I chose to create the ornament French knots.
After the pieces are finished I traced the pieces onto felt and trimmed the felt to fit the back of each piece (mostly to hid all of the stitching mess). I hot glued the felt onto the back of each piece. For a moment, I thought of gluing sheet magnet onto the backs of each piece, so that they could be put on a refrigerator, but didn't do it. Maybe next year.
It was a fun project!
Until another day, have a happy stitching day!
This past weekend brought quite a few inches of snow over Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We were "snowed in" with no travel advised in the area, and therefore spent the weekend watching vintage TV (Lucy, Andy Griffith and Bewitched), embroidering and crafting.
Autumn switched from one thing to another (gee, I wonder who she gets that from) but she did do quite a bit of coloring in her new color book.
And here is what I worked on...
A little blue bird singing with musical daisy notes.
I zipped into Hobby Lobby Thursday night to get a craft to keep Autumn busy through the snow storm. This 1/2 yard of daisy fabric was my treat! I think it matches the embroidered picture pretty well.
I spent some time practicing Bullion Knots by making these little Bullion Roses.
Here is a nice tutorial on how to make a Bullion Knot. The tutorial is from Mary Corbet's Needle n Tread site and is probably one of the best video of how to make a bullion stitch that I've found so far.
Here is another video showing how to make Bullion Roses. She uses yarn and embroiders the roses onto a sock. She shows how to make a French Knot and Bullion Rose. It's kinda fun to watch.
A little more practice with roses and tiny flowers.
On Sunday, I did get my snow boots and parka on and walked Autumn down the block to the neighbor boy's birthday party. It wasn't so bad going, but coming back I faced the cold, west wind. I was reminded of my childhood in Epping, walking the two long blocks to school every morning, with my little brother. Then once inside the school we'd put our mittens on the big antique radiators to burn...I mean dry. Walking to school on the plowed roads in Epping was nothing compared to the distance our grandparents had to walk through fields of fresh, deep snow. They talked of having to walk at least two miles in snow up to their knees. If they were lucky they got to ride to school in a sled. Thinking about that made walking down the street to the neighbor's place seem like a piece of lemon cake.
How easy we have it now! Back when I was first married I had a car starter. I'd point the little remote out the window and in five minutes my car would be nice and toasty warm and ready to roll. And now they make cars with seat warmers...really?
Horse drawn sleds didn't have heaters, and they especially didn't have built-in butt warmers. However, I have heard stories of kids taking baked potatoes, fresh from the oven, and putting them in their pockets to keep their hands warm. Then, they could place them on the stove at school to stay warm until lunch. Yum! How delicious that would be as a mid-day lunch. I'd eat mine just like an apple. (I actually do that from time-to-time, skin and all).
My niece's birthday card this year, was a stitched card. The idea and pattern came from that fun magazine that I love so much...Stitch, Craft, Create.
The first step is to trace a design onto the card using a pencil. Try to make the pencil marks very light.
Then, you take a pin or needle (I just used my needle as I went along) to poke little holes following your pencil designs. Try not to make the pin holes TOO close together. I practiced before hand and determined how big I wanted the stitches to be. The magazine says to place the card on a self healing mat or thick cardboard to poke the holes, but I just held it in mid-air and poked the needle through.
Using a back stitch, I stitched the card and then placed a matching piece of card stock over the back side of the stitching to hide the messy back and knots. Here is the finished card. It was fun to do and it will be fun to experiment with different designs in the future.
For the past month or so I've been listening to a lot of Patsy Cline. Here is one of my favorites.
She's Got You-Patsy Cline
I like bluebirds. Especially embroidered bluebirds tee-hee-hee.
DMC 3838 for the bluebird. DMC 3608 and 3609 for the roses and DMC 703 for the leaves
I cut a long rectangle out of an old cereal box and covered it with blue gingham fabric. Once again, I used the glue gun to fasten the fabric to the cardboard. I used pinking shears on the piece of fabric on the inside to give it a more finished edge.
I glued the little bird onto the cover and stuffed it with cotton.
I added a bit of Velcro to each side and this little pocket with a button onto the first page of felt. The pocket will hold a floss bobbin!
Added a few of our fancy bead pins and a needle and some safety pins.
If I do this again, I will fold the cardboard to make a little spine. The needle book ended up pretty thick. I'd also like to figure out a way to keep a scissor in the book as well.
One of my favorite things (among many) is my Mother Goose Shoe Box from the early 1950's. It is a bright, cheerful yellow box with colorful pictures on the top and sides.
I'd be surprised if many of these survived. I can imagine if I were a kid in the 50's, I'd keep the empty box and fill it full of treasures: acorns from the trees, bird feathers, pine cones, pretty leaves, and clams found down at the creek. OR maybe I'd fill it with my crayons, jacks and marbles.
I'd guess this one sat up high on a shelf, untouched for years (with shoes in it).
Here are some pictures!
The little box sits on my desk where it holds my pins, rick-rack and calligraphy supplies. The little shoes in front of it I believe were my dad's from when he was a baby.
Would you believe this is the only Youtube entry of Hop, Skip and Jump By Artie Shaw I could find!? Oh how I miss my play list! I drive around to this in my car...yeah, I'm that nerdy. Can I just pretend I'm driving around town in a cute little 55 Chevy with this cranked up?
Anyway, onto today's post...
I have a weakness for cute little jars...and not just jars but any kind of cute little container. I keep
boxes too (like the ones cell phones and ipods come in) I turn them inside out and paint them. I'm a collector and a "concealer" and am not sure where the sickness comes from (Grandma Eva perhaps, she saved everything in little margarine tubs and Schwan's boxes.) Maybe there is a 12 step program I could go through to rid myself of this container saving habit.
Until then, I will decorate and use them to my hearts content.
Here are a couple of my favorite little jars.
There is a reason they don't have lids....they hold stuff for me.
Tah-Dah! Maybe I should add some glitter to my little bluebird friends before I clear coat them. I just love the little boy bluebird's flat cap! This bluebird couple was runner-up to adorn the top of my blue spice rack, but Autumn liked the bluebirds with roses better. So I glued these birds to a jar instead.
Later........I found some inexpensive little daisy appliques at Joann's!
The daisy appliques make the jar a just a wee bit cuter.
That's all for today, 'till tomorrow,
Have a Happy Day!
Here is another craft project Autumn and I did over the weekend. We transformed boring 'ole stick pins into pretty little embellished pins to decorate our pin cushions.
We started with pins, beads and a hotglue gun. We also used seed beans (not shown).
Here are some of our favorites when we finished.
The pink and green one below is my favorite one.
Who knew we could have so much fun with pins and beads?!
First, a little music to start the evening. I truly miss my blog play list!
This past Saturday night Autumn and I attempted Yarn Dyeing. I'd found a simple step by step article in the awesome craft magazine below. Yes, yes, I DO realize one can buy just about any color of yarn imaginable on the craft store shelves, but where's the fun in that? There's something artistic about choosing and mixing the different colors to produce one of a kind skeins of yarn. And little jars of Wilton Food Dye gel makes my heart skip a beat.
This is the coolest craft magazine and it's chocked full of "neat-o-frito" ideas. It's only available until the beginning of August so if you want it, get your behind to the bookstore and grab it soon (the magazine, not your little behind). I just hope there will be another Stitch Craft Create issue to replace this one!
We started with our beautiful Wilton Icing Colors, some Vinegar and a two balls of Sugar 'n Cream cotton yarn in white. If you've ever used Wilton colors to tint cake frosting, then you know they are amazing. The color they give is so much brighter than regular food coloring.
We used about this much of the colored gel and mixed it with 3/4 cups water and 1/8 cups vinegar.
We did the dyeing outside on the deck, just in case of spills. Bonus: It was a nice night to be outside!
Pouring on the dye.
We soaked the small skeins of yarn in water for about 20 minutes (that's them in the shallow spaghetti pot) before setting them in the dye. Once they were fully colored, we placed plastic wrap over the dish and put the yarn in the microwave for a minute and a half. Once the yarn had cooled (BTW, nuked in the microwave gets really really hot) we rinsed it in a sink of warm water. It usually took three rinses to get all of the excess dye out of the yarn. The magazine says not to let the water run onto the yarn because it will ruin the fibers, just give it a bath.
By this time the neighbors probably thought we were makin' a bomb, so we hung the mini-skeins on the deck railing until nightfall, then transferred them into the house. They took almost 24 hours to dry completely.
Here are all of the little mini-skeins of yarn all wrapped neatly into little balls of yarn. We think they turned out to be quite pretty!
We had a blast with this project and hope to do it again someday. We divided the yarn between the two of us. I will display mine in a jar and Autumn is going to crochet something with hers.
This little spice rack called out my name at a garage sale back a couple summers ago and I've had big plans for it ever since. I've been kinda bored and blue lately and have needed a project to bring me out of a creative slump. So, I decided to dig it out and paint it a cheerful blue.
I printed out a vintage iron-on transfer and colored it with colored pencil.
I cut the two birds apart and tilted them inward so it looks like they are talking to each other...see below.
Tah-Dah! Here is the finished product! And I even have little daisy buttons in one of the jars. I will add more little odds and ends to the jars as I go, but they look pretty empty too.
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