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Daniel Tiger Theme Party in the Works

March 24, 2015 by admin Leave a Comment

I really thought we’d be doing a Peppa Pig birthday for Miss Elliott, who turns 3 in May, but she insists she wants Daniel Tiger. So, Daniel Tiger it is!

PBS has a page with some really cute party ideas, free printables and graphics so I’ll be using some of those resources to create more great things for her party. I loved the trolley so here is my version, which just needs a few more finishing to be complete.

I didn’t think a box wrapped in wrapping paper would hold up very well so I decided to cover ours with flannel and felt. I used cardstock for the roof and as I was gluing the roof and the top yellow piece I discovered the plastic container I used is entirely too flimsy to hold any kind of weight on top of it without buckling, so we will not be using this as a dessert plate holder. But we could still put cupcakes on top I guess. The PBS website didn’t give dimensions for the box so I found one I thought looked like a good size. While it is a decent size, it probably should’e been about 5″ longer…if you compare my trolley to the one on the PBS site you might notice mine only has two windows on the side. Not a huge deal, but I was a little disappointed. LOL Oh well.

P.S. I know sorta fell off the grid after Halloween, and for that I apologize. But, I promise to share all the fun Daniel Tiger birthday party printables with you when they are ready. Will you forgive me for being such a terrible blogger?! =) I’m more active on Facebook and Instagram if you want to hang out with me there!

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Felt for a Good Cause: {Awareness Ribbons}

April 4, 2014 by admin Leave a Comment

Today’s Felt Fun Friday post was inspired by a Facebook fan who shared these photos with me. Blue felt awareness ribbons were used as part of a centerpiece at a fundraiser for a dear friend of hers. (You can read his story here. If you are in a position to help financially please do, every dollar counts!)

I thought it was a fabulous idea! Felt comes in soooo many wonderful colors and patterns, you could use it to make ribbons for any cause. You can look up the list of awareness ribbon colors to find the right color(s) or pattern if you’re unsure which ones to use.

I put together a printable template for you too, in case you would like to make your own felt awareness ribbons.

The ribbons are 6″ tall, but you may be able to resize on your computer as needed. I included two styles – a single color ribbon, and another with a contrasting outline, or to be used for multi-colored awareness ribbons.

Let’s raise awareness and help one another! Live well, be strong, fight hard.

Felt Bookmarks

March 28, 2014 by admin Leave a Comment

I did a little experimenting with today’s Felt Fun Friday post. I found these felt bookmarks and thought it would be fun to personalize them. Of course I could cut my own, but these came in assorted colors in a package of 16, so I figured I’d give it a shot and report back to you.

Cute, right?

Of course you could cut other felt pieces to decorate, but this is also a perfect opportunity for those of you with cutting machines, whether you have an actual vinyl cutter, or a Cricut or Silhouette machine. Grab your scraps of heat transfer vinyl (you DO save all your scraps so your work space looks like an episode of Hoarders…It’s not just me, right?!)

Make your cute little design or quote. DON’T FORGET TO FLIP THE DESIGN IN REVERSE BEFORE CUTTING!! (Yeah, I’ve forgotten to do that once or twice.)

Weed the vinyl, lay onto the bookmark, press and remove. Easy peasy, right? Well, not exactly. Take a look…

The bookmark with the strips must be painted or something because the coloring sort of melted. :-/ Then on the bottom photo the felt was sort of, um, warped I guess is the best word I can come up with to describe it. And it smelled like burnt plastic.

This is when I realize they must be made of some different kind of felt than I normally use because this has never happened before. But I kept experimenting. I decided not to use the painted/striped felt if I was going to heat press it. So I cut a new iron-on decal and pressed it on one of the solid colored felt bookmarks.

I’m sure the majority of you use a standard household iron, and while I do use that sometimes, I often will use my commercial heat press since it’s already turned on. Either way, if you’ve ever worked with heat press vinyl and different materials it usually takes some testing to find the right temperature, pressure, and length of press time. I found that I did not need to press very long, which worked great so I didn’t melt/warp the bookmarks. The other key is to let the piece cool before peeling…sometimes the vinyl peels better hot, sometimes warm, sometimes cool. This application worked best once it had cooled off a bit.

So I kept experimenting. I had these little reject iron-on logos I made awhile back. They were rejects because do you see that little tiny bit at the bottom of them? Yeah, that drove me nuts. I didn’t cut them in complete circles. But as we all know I hate throwing anything away when I might find SOME use for it someday. Today was the day.

I put them on the backs of the bookmarks, pressed for a few seconds and voila! It worked great!

I had been using ribbon to tie to the bookmarks but I thought the bookmark that has the really pretty sparkly pink lettering needed a little something different, so I made a quick yarn pom pom and tied it to another piece of yarn tied to the bookmark.

Making a yarn pom pom is very easy…wrap it around your three fingers many many times, slide it off, tie a knot around the middle, snip the loops on each side, fluff and trim.

I love it!

So here are my finished bookmarks:

I REALLY loved using the sparkle vinyl. I only have some small pieces of that on hand because I never know what to make with it, but I love it so much!

This was the second “Oscar” bookmark I made…the first was one of the melted/warped ones because I had iron-on adhesive on the back of the purple layer and I pressed it too long. The second time I heat pressed the white lettering to the purple layer, then hot glued it to the bookmark.

It really wouldn’t take long to cut your own bookmarks, these were approximately 2″ x 6″. But, if you want to buy a packages of pre-cut bookmarks I would highly recommend using felt or hot glue to decorate these as opposed to using iron-on adhesive, it just wasn’t working so well with this application. Or you could sew or embroider design on them…so many options, really!

So what do you think? What would your bookmark say? How would you decorate it?

Braided Felt Dog Toy

March 7, 2014 by admin 1 Comment

Today’s Felt Fun Friday post was inspired by our recent situation with our dog, Lucy. :-/ It’s not like she doesn’t have a hundred OTHER dog toys from which to choose, but she didn’t have one of THESE yet!

It’s a VERY simple project, so simple that you don’t even need a pattern or anything. Just choose your color(s), cut your pieces, knot, braid and knot. Fringe the edges if you want to get fancy, and you’re DONE!

I chose three colors: purple, dark pink & light pink.

I cut my strips about 2″ x 14″.

This was a big clunky knot I started before braiding.

I knotted the other end a bit differently, and decided I preferred this one to the former.

And here’s the finished toy. Lucy is still recovering, but hopefully she will get some use out of it real soon. This is actually the first time I’ve ever seen these made from felt, I more frequently see them made from fleece, or old t-shirts, and you can make them any length you like.

BONUS:

Here’s my first Felt Fun Friday FAILURE!! (At least the first I am sharing, haha!)

Since I cut way more felt strips than I needed for my rope I thought I might try this project I saw on Pinterest, originally from CraftedNiche.com:

Easy enough, right? I’ve got this. Or so I thought…

I stacked my felt strips, then I ~~simply~~ tied them with

~~embroidery thread~~ (that snapped)

~~another felt strip~~ (which ALSO broke!)

ribbon (FINALLY WORKED!! Sort of…)

And I tried to fluff the pieces, which resulted in this hot felt mess:

Bahahaha!

My felt strips were too long and thick. I was too lazy to cut them down and try again, so I scrapped that idea and decided to show you anyway, just to prove that I’m not perfect, not all my projects work out as planned. =) But that’s okay.

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