Waldorf Craft Fair

 A few days ago I got an email with a reminder about the Waldorf craft fair that was happening today and a little teaser that there would be activities and singing for the children while we were there :)

 When we arrived we found that they had all of the classrooms set up as different little stations. There was one room full of all the wonderful bits and bobs to buy with playsilks, crowns, wands, felt playmats, candles, wooden toys and so much more. Then there was the craft room where the children took turns at the tables sanding and polishing wooden tree rounds for candle stick holders and then rolling sheets of beeswax to make candles for their holders. In other rooms there was singing, puppet shows, snacks and an enchanted cookie house where we went into a dimly lit space with twinkle lights while we were sprinkled with faerie dust and sang to while we picked out our favorite gingerbread cookie to eat :) So much fun!!

 There just happened to be oodles of activities going on in the city today while we were there so we had a chance to go to the farmer's market, another craft fair where I got a funky burl candle holder and if we had stayed long enough we would have even been able to see a parade but I wanted to get home before it got to late and even so I ended up driving in the dark *grin*.

So after a late dinner and quick moment to put my feet up I realized that we had to get our advent countdown calendar out. I had nearly forgot that today was the 1st!

 

Luckily I had saved the maple branch that we had cut and used last year so I retrieved it from its hiding place in the laundry room and brought out some ribbon to tie it up so it is now dangling beneath the mantle. Each day one of the children will be able to find a little felt ornament with the day's number needle felted onto it to be hung up on the branch as we count down the days until the 24th :)

Thank goodness no one seemed to mind that Mama was a little behind on the decorations this year *grin*. 

Hugs,

Rosina

Blue Ribbon Rosette ~ Tutorial

My daughter has a fun little my first pony book that she was given on her birthday a few years ago and inside was a game to play and little paper award ribbons to give to the first, second and third place winners. Well over the years the paper rosettes have grown rather worn and we've replaced a few ourselves but this time I thought it would be fun to make a really nice one out of felt that would really last and share the tutorial on how we did it with you :)

As this was supposed to be her project with just mama supervision I got her to do all of the tracing and cutting so you might see in some of the photos that there is a little bit of black ink showing on the tips of the felt ruffles :)

We started with a glass that was 3 inches in diameter, using it as our template for our ruffled rosette and traced twelve of them to be cut out of our felt.

Once our circles were all cut out we moved onto the next step of folding them into little triangular sandwiches by folding the circle first in half and then in half again just like in the photo above for just 10 of them....

and then started to space them as evenly as we could around one of the leftover circles.

This part is a little tricky so I helped her out and to make it a little easier on myself for the spacing I took four of the folded circles and placed them onto the base at the north, east, south, and west compass points so that I had a rough idea of how far apart to put the remaining pieces.

As you pin each one down you want it to overhang your backing by about a 1/4 to 1/2 an inch. You definitely don't have to be precise! But you do want to have that extra space so when you sew on your final backing at the end it will hide any embroidery stitching and so on that will be visible on the underside.

With all of the pieces pinned down she used a bit of regular cotton sewing thread and hand stitched all the way around the base of each of the points to tack them down in place.

DON'T remove  your pins yet! Trust me keeping them in will keep your rosette nice and stable as you continue to work on it :)

So with everything stitched in place we used a smaller glass, this time 2 inches in diameter, to make our rosette center. It really doesn't matter what sizes your glasses are as long as they are both roughly 1 inch different in diameter from each other.

She thought it would be nice to use a darker blue felt for the center and I agree that it really did make the rosette pop! 

I helped again with this part, embroidering the first place onto the felt with white embroidery floss and just using a running stitch to secure it to the front of the rosette.

You will notice that you still have one of your 3 inch circles from the very beginning left over and this is going to be your backing. You will also need to cut three strips of felt 5 inches long and 3/4 of an inch wide for your ribbon tails.

Position your three ribbon tails how you would like them to look and pin them onto the backside of your rosette with their ends far enough towards the center that they will be fully  hidden when the backing is stitched on.

To finish we just used regular cotton thread again and my daughter used a simple whip stitch to secure the backing to the underside of her rosette hiding all of our knots and not so pretty stitch work *grin*.  The final touch was to add a brooch pin that I luckily had but you can easily find them at any hobby/craft store or even your local dollar store may have them down the craft isle.

And that's it!

A super cute blue ribbon rosette for the winner in your household :)

You could personalize these with pretty much any little saying. They would make great birthday boy/girl ribbons, or don't forget about Mother's day that is coming up this weekend. I can see this with #1 MOM on it just for me *grin*.

Have fun making some :)

Hugs,

Rosina

Easter Bunny Masks

My daughter totally loves to dress up. Full length princess gowns, ballerina tutus and hand me down halloween costumes from her cousins. She especially loves all sorts of masks but somehow I don't think her hairy beard and moustache disguise or her bandit masks are going to cut it on the Easter scene. I was going to have to come up with something new and preferably of the 'bunny' variety *grin*.

So what I did was take one of her old masks and traced through the eye holes on to the center of a plain piece of paper so I got them spaced pretty much where they needed to be and then just winged it and drew some bunny ears and a simple face shape to go with the eyes. A little trick to getting both sides of your drawing symmetrical when you're finished drawing your pattern is to fold your paper in half so both halves of your drawing are back to back and then pick your favorite side that looks the best and cut out your pattern while folded with the good side up so you end up with both sides exactly the same :)

After pinning my pattern onto some felt and cutting out two pieces for our bunny mask I had some worries that the ears might flop over my daughter's eyes when she was wearing it because they were so narrow where they met the rest of the mask.

So to remedy that I sewed in pieces of stiff clear plastic onto the ears on the inside back layer of the felt, putting in a few stitches at the very bottom of the plastic. I also made sure that I placed the plastic far enough down close to the eye holes so that it wouldn't still flop because it wasn't far enough past the brow line of the mask. The plastic we used came from some of those 'windows' they put in some boxes. That's why there are still some strips of cardboard leftovers still stuck to them :)

With the ears reinforced, I sewed on some contrasting white for the centers of the ears, added a little triangle nose and some elastic to keep it on her head and then pinned the front and back pieces together to finish sewing it together which I fully intended to do until L asked to do it herself. Of course I said yes! I love that she wants to join in and do more and more sewing. Her growing confidence in herself and her budding skills are so heartwarming to this crafty mama :)

So slowly and surely she made her way around the mask keeping a close eye on her seam allowance and getting a good lesson on how to maneuver curves *grin*. She did an awesome job and kept it darn straight. Atta girl!

With the threads snipped my little girl transformed into a fuzzy little bunny and promptly hopped away LOL.

I wish I knew how to take my paper pattern and turn it into a PDF for you! Maybe someone reading this will be able to share the secret with me *grin*. And in the meantime I hope you'll grab your pencils and whip up your own bunny version :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Counting Down

The magic of the Christmas season is building at our home :)

Yesterday I bundled up the children, grabbed a hand saw and we all headed out for a little trek in the frosty fresh air. I love to keep everything a secret so they had no idea what their mama was up to except that I needed them to spot a nice thick tree limb that we could cut down for something special *grin*. When they finally decided that a nearby maple tree had the nicest limbs, my oldest cut off one for us to bring indoors.

You can just imagine the puzzled looks on their faces when I proceeded to hang it up with a couple of ribbons below the mantle over our fireplace....

but it all started to make sense when I pulled out the very first little felt decoration with a number one on it for them to hang :)

The maple limb is going to hold each of our little stuffed creations that make up our advent calendar this year :)

In previous years we have occasionally had those store bought calendars where the doors pop open to reveal a little chocolate and some really sweet paper ones with Christmas scenes beneath each little flap but this time I wanted to use one that we made ourselves.

The children helped sew and stuff some of the decorations and others I made after they went to bed so they would be a surprise and to number each of the decorations I needle felted the numbers onto the fronts of each one free hand using some pretty colored corriedale rovings that I have. I can't wait until a few more days have passed to see them start to line up all down the maple limb :)

I don't think I have been this excited about the holidays in quite a few years and I have quite a list of little crafts to make and special outings to take each day with the children as we grow nearer to the 24th :)

Our favorite Christmas books have been pulled from the shelves and placed within easy reach with more coming that I've ordered from the library and I pulled out the pretty linen with its red Scandinavian border in the above photo from my special stash for sewing a table runner to be placed on the coffee table beneath our advent candle holder and manger scene. The mantle is ready for fresh greenery and paper snowflakes and soon I think our tree will make an appearance to *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina

Felted Mushrooms with a Secret

Last December I made a couple of these wonderful little felted mushrooms to send to my seasonal swap partner and I have been meaning to make more ever since and I finally got a chance to do it :)

I found a lovely tutorial for creating a secret mushroom with a great hiding spot for a message or poem to be hidden within the wooden tree limb stem. I just happened to have some alder limbs that I had cut into smaller chunks drying in the basement and used hubby's power drill to drill the hollow spot in the center and it was just perfect for a rolled scroll to fit in :)

I didn't have any sheets of red wool so instead I used some of my dyed merino wool roving that I had and created a felted circular shape. To create the wavy mushroom cap I actually put the felted wool circle on top of the wood limb and wrapped an elastic band tightly around the cap about one inch from the top. As the elastic pulled tightly around the wool it created a gathered and ruffled sort of appearance and then I through the whole thing into the dryer for about 10 mintues *grin*. When I pulled it out the heat had dried the wool up nice and tight and held its shape perfectly when I pulled the elastic band off :)

Of course since we are jumping head first into spring and we spotted our first dandelion today I thought it would be very fitting to hide one of our favorite dandelion poems inside :)

O' DANDELION

O' Dandelion, yellow as gold, what do you do all day? "I just wait here in the tall, green grass, 'till the children come to play."

O' Dandelion, yellow as gold, what do you do all night? "I wait and wait, while the cool dew falls, and my hair grows long and white."

And what do you do when your hair grows white, and the children come to play? "They take me in their dimpled hands, and blow my hair away!"

~ by Marlys Swinger

I can't wait to hide more little notes inside them for the children to find!

Hugs,
Rosina

PS. Looking for more crafty ideas or inspiration? Pop over to Natural Suburbia's Creative Friday and see what others are up to :)

Sewing By Hand

I love the rythmic movement of sewing by hand. The pierce of the needle and the constant motion of pulling the thread around and through. I could do it for hours on end letting my thoughts wander and ripple like waves... constantly moving, free and fluid. So soothing to my soul :)

I've been spending many evenings lately quietly stitching after the children have gone to bed. Quick little projects that bring near instant gratification. Seeing the fruit of my work come together with ease makes my heart sing. Especially when it's little surprises for the children to enjoy in the morning.

In past years we've had an abundance of pussy willow buds that would put on a fuzzy spring show. The children would have fun picking some for bringing indoors where they could stroke the soft little blooms again and again, usually until they popped right off their branches *grin* but these days there are less and less of them to be found.

Spring is calling every bone of my being these days so I wanted to bring some of that newness indoors even if I couldn't find it wild in nature :)

I've been cutting wool cloth and twirling little snippets of rose and cream colored wool rovings to create our own pussy willows. I found a lovely little tutorial quite some time ago and have been meaning to make some ever since but just haven't made the time. So these past evenings I've been puposely collecting my sewing box and creating little woolen versions that we can place on our nature table. They are coming together so wonderfully :)

Hugs,
Rosina

PS. Looking for more crafty ideas or inspiration? Pop over to Natural Suburbia's Creative Friday and see what others are up to :)

Handmade Holidays

We had a wonderful Christmas together with family but I gotta say I'm sort of glad all of the pre-christmas mayhem is over! *grin*. I really planned to be ahead of the game when it came to all of my gift making and baking but somewhere along the way my schedule fell totally apart but now I can just sit back, relax and enjoy watching the children play with their new gifts :)

I had promised you more photos of the fairy house my son was making for his sister and here they are. I am SO proud of all the hard work he put into making it special for her. He keeps teasing me that it was really my project but I was just the creative director and he really did all the figuring :)

He rigged up the elevator so that when you crank the little handle on the outside of the house, the dowling on the ceiling spins and the ribbon winds up on the wooden thread spool lifting the elevator up through the hole in the floor and then there is a ladder that takes you up into the attic space :) LOVE it.

He used popsicle sticks to create the little shutters outside the windows...

and here's the little doorway with one of the crocheted rugs I made inside :)

In the dining room we put a small table covered with a little crocheted doily underneath the chandelier :) We just need some chairs now and I'm going to let her help me decorate the windows with little lacey curtains and flower swags. She is so thrilled with it :)

For my mom this year I made her a batch of Canadian Mincemeat using cranberries, maple syrup, port and other goodies and it turned out delicious! I was a little worried that it wouldn't turn out like the one she usually buys since I had never made it before but it was awesome :)

All of the kids got felt bandit masks which hubby is so graciously modeling for you *grin*....

and an assortment of fun mustaches.
This is the crazy wooly one that I made looping thick black wool across the felt making it quite amusing :)

They also got hot lips and full beards to go with their pirate crowns I made them last Christmas :)

Along with all of the homemade gifts we always get them pajamas, socks, one book each and one gift that they really want within reason. So this year my little guy got a lego man flashlight that doesn't require any batteries. You just wind his arm around and around and it charges up the battery inside so he can fall asleep with it at night and we'll never have to replace any batteries! My oldest son got a model airplane to build and my little girl got the fairy house as her big gift because she actually had seen a plastic one that she liked but I thought wood would be so much better *grin*.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas as well and I can't believe that it is only days and we will be ringing in 2011!!

Hugs,
Rosina

Gnome Snack Mats

I love crafting with felt!

The creative possibilities are endless when you get going with it *grin*. In the winter edition of Rhythm of the Home is an article on making snack mats and I just fell in love with the idea of a special little mat for each child to enjoy a snack on :) So out came my giant stash of felt and linen fabrics and I set to work cutting out little Tomten.

Applique is sort of like a jigsaw puzzle as your fit your pieces together, overlapping edges, stitching them together...

and watching the images appear :)

The original pattern called for a 7 x 9 inch square of linen but I decided to make it slightly larger at 8 x 10 inches because my tree and gnomes were a little bit larger than I had anticipated *grin*. Another thing that I did differently was that I stitched all of my felt pieces onto one single layer of linen so that all of my stitch work on the backside would be nicely hidden inside the layers of the mat and not visible on the backside of my finished mat like in the pattern. I just thought it looked tidier that way if someone happened to flip it over to check it out as all of the little stitched pieces made for quite a jumble :)

I just love how they turned out!
So far I have just finished these two but I have one more boy gnome cut out and ready to be sewn and then I will have one for each of the children. I just know they are going to go crazy over them :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Looking for more crafty ideas or inspiration? Pop over to Natural Suburbia's Creative Friday and see what others are up to :)

Pretty Potholders

Look at the gorgeous potholders that arrived in my mailbox yesterday :) My lovely swap partner ended up being from right here in Canada and I just LOVE what she created for me. The cute little quilted christmas tree is actually made with same fabrics that I used for my partners potholders! Great minds must think alike *grin*.

I adore the stitching on this potholder, the way it created hills and valleys around the little squares of fabric... so crazy creative!! It actually reminds me of a game of pac man *grin*. They are perfect for my kitchen as it is red and the polka dot binding is just fantastic :) I don't think that I can bear to use them though in fear of staining them so I think that I'm going to use them on my coffee table for resting a candle jar on. That way I can enjoy them all throughout the holiday season and they won't get any pot roast or pie stains on them *grin*.

Along with the potholders came this super cute little felt christmas tree decoration to. Again more stitching so lovingly placed all over it. It will be a perfect addition to the handmade ornaments that the children and I have made for the tree :)

Thank you so much Val!!!
Hugs,
Rsoina

Acorn Goodness

My little stumpwork acorn turned out fabulous!! I was a little worried that the threads I wrapped the felt core with were looking a little disheveled but I think it turned out pretty good for a first go at this kind of needle work *grin*.

The pattern called for hand stitching around the top of the thread acorn to create the cap but as it happens I have a cup full of dried acorns from last fall :) So I pried apart a few of them taking the nuts out of their caps until I found one that was a perfect fit. With my trusty rusty glue gun I glued the cap on.

LOVE it!! My mom is working on some leaf collages that she's framing and we were playing around tonight with them and my little acorn fit in just perfectly. You know what that means though... yup, she wants one to *grin*.

I think I'm going to have to make LOTS more *grin*. I'm a little nutty for acorns LOL.
Hugs,
Rosina