What to Do With Scraps of Felt, Part VIII: Make a Mobile

Today's How-To is an expansion of my What to Do With Scraps of Felt Part VII: Make a Festive Garland. It starts with strands of felt shapes weighted by jingle bells and attaches them to a simple frame to create a mobile.

Materials

• Scraps of felt
• Fishing line
• Scissors
• Glue
• Jingle bells
• 20 gauge brass wire
• Needle-nose pliers
• Wire cutter (most needle-nose pliers are also wire-cutters)
• Flat-nose pliers

Steps

Follow the directions in my previous post to create three or four strands of felt shapes weighted at one of their ends with large jingle bells, but make them shorter than you would a garland; for example, 3-4 shapes per strand.

Next, cut a length of brass wire about 9 inches long for each strand of felt shapes. Gather them together in a bunch and twist them together at one end using the flat-nose pliers to hold the bunch still and the needle-nose pliers to do the twisting. Twist the bunch enough times for a length of twisted wire long enough to create a hook or loop. 

Straighten out the individual pieces of wire and loop them at their ends.

Attach the strands of felt shapes to the loops. Set your brass-wire frame on a level surface so it isn't swinging around while you work. 

Hang your frame from something stable and adjust the top hook/loop and individual arms of the frame to balance the strands of felt out. (Clearly, my mobile still needs a bit of balancing!)

Stand back and admire your work. Wait for a breeze and watch it come to life.

A few tips

Leave yourself enough length at the top of your strands of felt shapes so as to be able tie them onto the brass-wire frame with ease. 

Enjoy!

Until next time,

Linda

Purty Bird

Make Your Own Lip Balm!

First, I would like to be honest…I am OBSESSED with lip balm. I have quite a number of them strewn about my apartment. There is one in all of my handbags, and I collect at least 5 of them from various pockets on laundry day.

Everyone asks me if it is difficult to make lip balm, and the answer is no. You can make a lip balm with just three ingredients! Making a lip balm that feels nice on the lips, goes on smoothly, etc. can take a bit of work. My formula took about 2 years and many, many trials before I was happy with it.

If you love lip balms like I do, then I am happy to help you get started!

The basic formula for a lip balm is 1/3 hard oils (oils/butters that remain solid at room temperature.) 1/3 soft oils (oils that remain liquid at room temperature) and 1/3 wax.

Some examples:
Hard Oils: Shea butter, Cocoa butter, Kokum butter, Mowrah butter, palm oil.

Soft Oils: Olive oil, Canola oil, Almond oil, Avocado oil, Grapeseed oil.

Waxes: Beeswax, Soy wax, Candelilla wax, Carnauba wax.

Creating a recipe by properly weighing your ingredients can avoid a lot of confusion down the road. A tablespoon of olive oil will not weigh the same as a tablespoon of beeswax, so weighing ingredients as you add them will help create an accurate recipe. This will help when making changes and taking notes. You can find basic kitchen scales at your local hardware store, supermarket, etc.

So, you will need your soft oil, hard oil, wax, a small saucepan (preferably one with a pouring lip,) a scale, pipettes, lip balm tubes, rubber bands, a clean plastic container w/a lid, popsicle sticks, toothpicks, and flavor oil (optional.)

Let’s start with 1oz olive oil, 1oz cocoa butter, 1 oz beeswax…

In the saucepan, melt all three ingredients on the stove over low heat. Mix well (I like to use popsicle sticks to stir,) remove the pan from heat and leave it to harden up. You can place the pan in the fridge to speed things up. Once it hardens up, scoop a bit off with a toothpick and try it out. If you want to add more olive oil, melt everything again on the stove, mix in (and take notes!) a bit more olive oil (maybe 1/2oz,) wait for the mixture to harden up, and try it again. It may take a few trials, but once you get the consistency that you are happy with, then you are ready to pour the balm into tubes.

Pour the mixture into the plastic container, leaving 1oz in the pan. Set the plastic container to the side. Lip balm mix can harden pretty quickly, so if you need to, place the saucepan back on the stove and melt again. Keep a close watch on the pan to prevent any scorching! Once melted, remove the pan again, wait a few minutes, then and add any flavor oils. If you are adding flavor, using your pipette, measure out 1/2ml and add to the 1oz mix in the pan.

1oz of lip balm mixture will fill 6 standard lip balm tubes. Take the 6 tubes, and gather them together with a rubber band. This will keep them steady and upright, making it easy to pour the ingredients in the tube. Slow and steady wins the race! Take your time and carefully pour the mix into the tubes. Don’t try to move the tubes, and leave them to harden up. Later on, you can clean up any spills with rubbing alcohol and paper towels. If the mix hardens up before you finish pouring all six tubes, just put the pan back on the stove, melt again, and continue.

The most important thing is to keep track of how much additional oils/wax you used. Let’s say you added an additional 1/2oz olive oil and 1/4oz cocoa butter. Now you know that your final formula would be 1.5oz olive oil, 1.25oz cocoa butter, and 1oz beeswax.

Of course, you still have more lip balm mix in the container, this will be the final lip balm base. Place the lid on the container, and store in your craft cabinet. When you are ready to make more balms, just scoop out 1oz, melt in the saucepan, add your flavor oil, and pour your balms…that’s it!

You can label the tubes with a permanent marker, or print a label on paper, cut to size, and attach it to the tubes using clear packing tape.

You can pick up some ingredients from the supermarket or health food store. Or, here is a site with just about everything you need to get started: From Nature With Love

You can make your balm with many different ingredient combinations, so have fun and experiment. Just make sure you keep proper notes, so if you come up with a winner, you will be able to make it again. You can use a combination of oils too, so let’s say you want your 1/3 liquid oils to include grapeseed oil, olive oil, avocado oil, and almond oil? Instead of using 1oz olive oil, you can start with 1/4oz of each. The possibilities are endless, so enjoy making your lip balms!

Nordea
nordeasoaperie

Tutorial: Repurpose Kid Art for a Mother's Day Gift

 
First of all, I want to thank Sarah of Sarah Jane. Her blog post of 2009 was the inspiration for this tutorial, which is a play on her original idea. Three years ago, Sarah decided to display her children’s art by cutting it into whimsical shapes and framing them.

I've always wanted to do something like this and I finally tackled a project that originated when my now fifth grader was in pre-school. In 2006 Elizabeth and Fiona were best friends. They did everything together including painting this masterpiece that used to hang on their classroom door in pre-school.

While the girls have gone their own ways, I wanted to preserve this piece in a way that they both could enjoy by turning it into TWO wall decorations.

Materials

• Artwork
• Stretched Canvas 
• Acrylic paint 
• Mod Podge or other decoupage medium 

Steps

Paint the top and side surfaces of the canvas in your preferred color.

While the canvas dries, cut up the artwork into a shape that you like. For this project, I used this stencil for the butterfly and this one for the cat. Sarah generously provided templates for a swallow, an elephant and a seal on her blog. You could also have your child draw a shape and use that.

When the canvas is dry, apply Mod Podge to the back of the image you cut out and glue it onto the canvas.

Then proceed to varnish the image by painting it with three coats of the Mod Podge. Let each coat dry (approximately 20 minutes) before applying the next layer.

If you decide to further decorate this piece and add the shape’s name like Sarah and I did, you can practice your penmanship while the glue dries and test out what you want to write on the canvas to complement the decoupage.

Once the decoupage is dry, finish of your piece by writing something fitting with acrylic paint using a very fine brush.

The butterfly will go to Fiona’s house and the cat will stay with my girl. This way they both can share a piece of the fantastic work they created when they were four.

By the way, Sarah is the designer of the Children at Play fabric line. Her work can also be found on Etsy at SarahJaneStudios.

Simone
groundsel.etsy.com

The Secret to Successfully Blowing Out an Egg

A couple of weeks ago Leslie from Astor Knot posted a wonderful tutorial on the art of Pysanky. After reading through the tutorial, I was curious to try blowing out eggs as I've never done it before, and after doing it I thought I would share some tips with all of you who might want to try it. 

1. First, I found out that it is easier to blow out an egg that is room temperature rather than one right out of the refrigerator. Leave your carton of eggs out for a couple of hours first. Another thing that I discovered is that fresher eggs from healthier chickens have a stronger shell that is less likely to break, so spend the extra dollar or two to get better eggs.

2. To poke the holes in the eggs, I used a couple of needles, one small sharp one and one slightly larger one. Using the smaller needle, I gently poked one hole in each end. Then I used the larger needle to make one of the holes slightly larger. Then, I used the larger needle to stir up the inside of the egg, piercing the egg yolk and scrambling the inside.

3. The next step is blowing out the inside of the egg. You can do this by just blowing using your mouth, but I used one of those runny nose sucking tools designed for babies that came in a baby medical kit. It's much more fun to use this on an egg than on an infant. In this case, the egg doesn't scream bloody murder and look at you with betrayal. I put the sucker thing on top of the smaller hole, then pressed the bulb to push out the insides of the egg through the larger hole on the bottom. Do this as gently as possible so you don't break the egg. Keep repeating the process until nothing else comes out.
*Note: In this project, I used a whole carton of eggs and ended up dividing the egg innards into separate bowls which I then used to cook and bake with. Thankfully my family enjoys eggs!

4. After the egg blowing portion of the activity, my daughters and I set off to paint and decorate our new eggs! We decided to paint versus dying so we could get brighter colors, but I think we'll also do some egg dying later this week. Don't want to deprive the girls of tradition.

5. I poked some glass head needles into the top of an egg carton for the eggs to rest on while they dried.

6. Finally, we ran some brown grocery bags through the paper shredder for a "nest" and settled the newly decorated eggs in the basket. The great thing about blown out eggs is that will last as long as your kids will handle them carefully. In our household, that is about three minutes, but you may have better luck in your home. Enjoy!

Until next time,

Karina

Windows of Agate

How to Make a Checker Set

I've been wanting to make a checkerboard for some time. My older daughter just turned four and is starting to learn how to play games, although we can only do it when my younger daughter (2) is asleep because she likes to collect all the pieces we are playing with and hoard them in her lap. Take a look at the tutorial below, and afterward enjoy the game! (*Note: This tutorial originally posted here.)

How to Make a Checker Set

1. First, make handmade clay by combining 2 cups of flour, 1/2 cup of salt, and 3/4 cup of water in a medium mixing bowl. Stir until combined, then knead for 10-15 minutes.

2. Roll the dough out to about 1/4 inches thick.

3. Using a cookie cutter, cut out 26 pieces (you will need 12 for each side, but we did two extra just in case some get lost under the couch). We made two sets, one with stars and the other with circles. We made the small circular cutter  by cutting a strip of plastic from an old yogurt container and taping into a small loop.

5. Take shapes out and set on baking sheet with the back facing up. Poke a few holes using a toothpick to prevent the pieces from bubbling up.  Bake in the over at 300 degrees until hard, flipping every 20 minutes. It should take about an hour, but it could take longer depending on how thick your pieces are.

6. While baking, make the checkerboard. I used white fabric as the base, cutting two pieces to 17x17 inches. I also made a square of batting at 16x16 inches. On one side of one piece of white fabric, I used a ruler and a fabric pencil to draw out a board. First I drew lines 1/2 inch in on each side, and then used those lines as a starting point to draw 2x2 inch squares. That should give you eight rows of squares across and eight rows of squares up and down; sixty-four squares total. Then I cut out thirty-two 2x2 inch squares of colored fabric. I used my sewing machine to sew the colored fabric in a checkerboard pattern, making sure to line the pieces up with the lines I had drawn. Once I sewed all the squares in place, I put the two white fabrics with right sides facing in (so the fabric squares are facing in toward the other piece of white fabric) and then put the batting on top. I stitched all around the three pieces of fabric (two white pieces of fabric and one piece of batting) using a 1/2 inch seam allowance, leaving a 2 inch gap at the end. I turned the piece inside out so the batting was tucked on the inside and the checkerboard pattern was facing out. I pressed the seams flat, then sewed around the entire board again. 

7. Back to the checker pieces! Once they are out of the oven and cool, paint them using acrylic or poster paints. Paint 12 (or thirteen in our case) in one color and the other 12 in a contrasting color. Kaela painted her round pieces and I painted the star pieces. 

8. Let dry completely.

9. Get ready to play!

I found a useful set of simple checker rules at this website, although I'm sure if you dig around you will find other great resources. Enjoy!

Karina
Windows of Agate

Ice Cream! Get Your Ice Cream!

There is nothing better than a nice, delicious, ice cream cone in the summer. Or the autumn. Or really, anytime. Last week, my two daughters and I decided to make fake ice cream to include in our food play; read more to find out how we did it.

My father gave my kids a set of ten shaped hole punchers, which they LOVE... We made plenty of paper punches, some of which we used later in this art project, most of which were eaten by the vacuum cleaner.

Next we cut up egg cartons and painted them in pleasing, ice cream-like colors.

We named the different flavors as we painted twelve of these "ice cream scoops", and added some "sprinkles" from the hole punches. Flavors included strawberry lemony goodness, green flavor with pink cupid sprinkles, and purple grape yum yum.

The ice cream scoops were then set on the windowsill to dry while I cut some manila folders to act as the cones. The dimensions I used were 10 inches at the widest point and 6 inches at the tallest point. Then I wrapped the paper into conical shapes and taped them together. I would suggest that grown ups do this party, since it involves sharp tools.

Phase one complete!

But to be a proper ice cream vendor, you need some place to store your cones where they don't fall over and drip ice cream all over your clothes, so I used this small packing box to create a little stand. I just cut circles into the box for the cones to rest in, and added a little rectangular area to store extra ice cream scoops. Then I poked holes in the side and threaded a ribbon so the girls could wear the box and sell their very delicious ice cream.

We ended up painting the ice cream box using acrylic paints. 

And there you go! Ice cream for all!