Holidays are coming, holidays are coming

Even thinking about that advert makes me smile.  I am a complete diet coke and Christmas addict, so its my idea of heaven.  Clearly its June so no coke truck is heading my way and instead we're off on our first family seaside holiday.  Milly is almost falling over herself with excitement and the idea of having her own pool so getting her to do anything other than talk about swimming has been a task and a half.  Unfortunately for fish girl its fathers day and my mums birthday when we are away so she's had to do something not related to water.  For me, the problem was finding something that wasn't baking and wasn't bulky, so we went with the card that doubles as a gift by creating a fridge magnet...

Smile please

You will need:

1 willing child

1 sheet of magnetic paper

1 card blank

A camera

A pc and printer

Assorted embellishments

A way of attaching the magnet to the card - we went for a mini peg

Ask your child what they want to say in their card.  Ideally you're looking for 3 or 4 words that aren't can we go swimming, are we going swimming now or I can swim with one armband.  Clearly that's far too many words.  We settled on I love you daddy.

For each word decide on a picture that represents that word.  You can go for the easy option of holding signs, go for YMCA style cheerleader letters (Give me an I), act out the word or use props.  When I told the small one that I would be taking a picture of her making an I, she grabbed her magnifying glass.  Kids will often think of something much more interesting than us mere parents.

Once you have your pictures, shrink them to about 25% (or they will probably be too big to do anything with unless you have a super duper uber amount of memory), and line them on top of each other photobooth style

Print on to your magnetic paper and cut to size. 

Then you just need to attach to the front of your card and decorate as you wish.  I had some star beads so wrote daddy on the front with a sharpie.  Mill is very excited about reading at the moment so this appealed to her.  

We've also gone for a useful home made gift.  The hippy in me is rather in to upcycling as those who follow me on pinterest will know.  Unfortunately the things I find that look great would require me actually buying the products brand new to upcycle, which probably defeats the point of this exercise (hanging monkeys bowl I'm looking at you).  Since I have zero ability to let go of the small ones baby clothes I decided to do something useful with those.

When is a dress not a dress?

Now, I made a bit of a faff of this I admit, so there will be a round two with real instructions.  But here is the theory...

You will need:

2 / 3 different fabrics - I used a pair of the small ones jeans and her old dress

A sewing machine and cotton

Fabric paint (I used dylon 3D)

Dressmakers carbon paper

Snap fastening or velcro

Fabric 1 (outside main colour) : 6 inch x 4 1/2 inch square (x 2), 3 inch x 2 1/2 inch square 

Fabric 2 (outside border colour ) : 2 1/4 inch x 4 1/2 inch square (x 2), 3 inch x 2 1/2 inch square

Fabric 2 or 3 (lining) : 8 inch x 4 1/2 inch square (x 2)

hem width : 1/4 inch

 

Sew together the two small squares of fabric.  Trim the bottom corners and turn the correct way around.  This will form our fastening.

Sew each of the three types of fabric together.  The fastening should be sewn in place so it sits on the outside of the case and flaps down.

If you want to make a padded case, you will need a piece of fusible bonding or lining fabric and place behind the lining fabric.

Once you have two long pieces of the case place face together and sew around 3 edges, leaving the top lining edge open.  Iron the hemmed edges and turn the right way around . Sew the lining edge. 

Iron the top edge of the case so the lining sits correctly and add the fastening to the edge of the fastening square so the glasses are secure.

Once you have all of that you can decorate it (or not - the next one I make will be for me and wont have kiddy pictures on it).  I asked the small one to draw a picture of daddy which I then transferred on to the fabric with the carbon paper and painted over.

Holidays really are coming!!!

I made that

I need to start a new pinterest board.  I've been pinning on there for quite some time and I've built up collections of some very nice things.  Unfortunately most of them remain unmade - a mere possibility that gets pushed further down the page.  A new board will be the incentive to actually do some of these things.  It starts like this...

Its been raining for approximately forever.  We're confined to the house by a combination of illness, lack of facilities and the fact that we don't own an ark.  So, I've decided to face my fear and actually make something.

I pinned this tutorial a while back and I've always loved this dress (how cute is that little girl!)
http://prudentbaby.com/2010/09/baby-kid/snap-wrap-dress-2/

We're off for our first family sun holiday in a few weeks and I wanted something easy and lightweight that I can throw in a bag and easily dress her in when she's covered in beach.

I changed the pattern slightly.  I wanted the lining to be a different colour, mainly because I'd bought it already, and I decided on narrow straps.  This was a mistake!  Not the lining part because I rather like that, but I think I spent best part of Lilo and Stitch pushing those babies inside out.  Definitely go wide!  The other massive mistake I made was using a little coffee table to not only cut the pattern but also to sew.  My back officially hates me and my hems are a little, well, out shall we say.

For my first effort at big girl sewing, I'm pleased enough with the result and the small one likes her dress rather a lot.  Next time I will definitely use a table large enough to actually lay out the material.

I'm thinking of adding a little felt flower on the fastening at the top but this depends on time more than anything else.  In the mean time, Milly has decided on her own accessories.