Crafts – a hippie with a minivan

Making Paper…

Annie introduced me to the blog Unplug your kids recently and I am now hooked…

Each week there is a theme and then you blog with a craft/post with that theme… and then leave a comment with your link…

I am definately going to try and keep up with this…

This week’s theme is “Square” and it took me a while to figure out what I was going to do and then yesterday I got an idea… I have been wanting to make paper again with the boys and I just needed to make it square to fit!

First I needed to find a frame… and since square frames are not too common, I went to the hardware store and got one quickly made which put me back 4$… I stained it last night and let it dry…

then this morning I got a piece of a screen and stapled it to the frame…

and then a little duct tape to keep the water out and to keep it neat…

the boys and I then ripped some paper that would have otherwise headed into the recycling…

next was to put water in the blender and add the paper…

and pulse until a smooth pulp…

paper making time!!

dip the frame into the bin with the pulp water…

turn over onto a towel (with newspaper underneath to soak up the water)

and with another towel, cloth or sponge press the the excess of water off on the opposite side on the frame…

carefully peel away the paper from the frame… and cover with another towel, or fold over the excess towel and press the water out (we had seven layers or towel, newspaper and our paper and then put a cutting board ontop of it all and then sat on it.. )

Then I took each piece and put it up on the window to dry…

our own homemade paper!

a playdough day…

For a while now colin has been wanting me to make a new batch of playdough… Khéna is now at the age where play dough doesn’t look like food as much anymore so this morning I finally decided to do it…

I made two batches… one blue and one green… both with a vanilla scent…

here is the recipe I use…

1 cup water
1/2 cup salt
2 tsp cream of tarter
1 tbsp oil
2 tsp vanilla extract (I use the cheap clear stuff)
1 cup flour
colouring

Mix in a pan on the stove over medium heat until thick…

The boys watched while I made it and then ran down stairs to get the play dough toys while it cooled…

They sat down at about 9:30… and their imaginations just soared…

Khéna smashed and bashed and pressed and mashed… Colin made toast with butter, pizza and Anakin Skywalker…

Xavier made cookies and cakes and spaghetti and meatballs… I cut a kleenex box and they had an “oven” to cook things in…

Cookies

at noon I asked them to put it away while we ate lunch…

After lunch they went and played in the snow for about an hour and a half and then got inside and soon after got the playdough out again and played for another 2 hours with it…

I have a feeling that we will be playing with playdough quite often in the next few days…

Some mistakes turn out for the best…

I have issues when it comes to sewing…

I can’t do patterns… I have no patience for them… they always look much more complicated than they should be… maybe they aren’t… I don’t know… but I just I can’t use them….

So I wanted to make some pants for Khéna…

I had a semi pattern that I cut out a few months ago when I made a pair of cords for him… the problem was that back then no pattern would fit him… the waist had to be a size 3-4, the crotch had to be wider than the pattern for that size because of the cloth diaper and the legs had to be WAY shorter…

So I adjusted the pattern to the way I thought would work… and it worked… in a way…

By mistake I adjusted the pattern upside down… I figured out my mistake after I had cut and “tried” to assemble them… and finally after a lot of frustration and puzzle making…. I ended up with a pair of pants that fit him… but was nothing like the pattern I had made…

This summer, I made the same mistake… again…

So yesterday I decided to try again… I got the pattern out and got some Jean material that I had bought for this…

I looked at it and thought “omg I am not going to make that mistake again” so I erased the words “top” at one end of the patterns and wrote them at the other end… then cut the material making sure that I added more length…. sewed the outside seams and then realized that I had already corrected the pattern the last time I had made the mistake.. so again… I cut them upside down… arghh!!!

I did the puzzle thing again… I didn’t want to waste the material so I decided to cut what was too much at the top and then add a bit of corduroy to fill the space that was missing and add that to the bottom… of course then the brown cord looked a bit out of place so I thought about some pockets on the side with appliqué’s to compliment the colours… and it worked…

I am SO happy with the way that they turned out!!!! I think that I am going to make more of the same… (well… this time on purpose!!)

I wanted to make them a little longer so that they fit for longer… So at the moment they fit Colin perfectly… so I now need to decided to hem them for Khéna or have Colin wear them and make another pair for Khéna (I would make them a bit less baggy for Khéna also)

Two new dresses…

There are two new dresses up on my site…

I put a lot of work and detail into these dresses….

One is a 24m/2y in green tones…

the other…

4y in pinks..

both can fit a bit larger and smaller because of the shirring and the adjustable straps…

custom recycled pants..

With Khéna’s “weird” shape… finding pants that fit has been a task to say the least… I knew I could make some but I was a bit scared of patterns… but I finally decided to try… however… just like pants don’t fit… patterns don’t fit… so I found a pattern that I had bought at the thrift store and like I get the general idea from a recipe… I got the general idea from the pattern and made my own…

Because I didn’t know how it would turn out I used an old pair of Simon’s pants for the material… I am pretty happy at how they turned out and they fit him so well and look so comfortable!