star wars diy gifts

Alex has a great teacher this year (she has had great teachers every year thus far actually.) His favorite movie is Star Wars! and obviously, we just love Star Wars as well, so we made a few items to give to Alex's teacher as part of his holiday gift. you can't see it in the picture except for a corner of it, but I also designed and printed and sewed an R2D2 tea towel for him. I drew a cute little Chewbacca and had him printed and I sewed him into a bean bag doll - Alex likes to help me pour the bean bag pellets into the dolls when I make them. I also poured some concrete death stars. I glued on some little rubbery feet on the bottom and painted the bottom half silver. I think that will make a nice little desk adornment or paper weight. and finally, Alex and I made him a little Star Wars terrarium in a ball jar. we used little micro machine Obi Wan and Darth Vader characters for the scene. we do have a couple of other small items to add to the gift, but for a Star Wars fan I am hoping he will love this handmade gift set.

new nephew gift set #2

a couple weeks ago i showed you a very hungry caterpillar sleep sack and cap that i made for my new nephew: http://boogiebeans.blogspot.com/2015/01/new-nephew-gift-1-very-hungry.html and here's the set i gave when he was actually born. i hand lettering and screenprinted 3 onesies for him. we're in ohio hence the locally grown design: i think that's my favorite one. although i thought i was pretty funny making the "full of shits and giggles" - haha get it? babies are full of shits and giggles :) and then there's the "i wake up awesome" which is just fun (it could have printed better; the fine lines didn't work great, but i still like the design.) and i made him another crocheted cap - this one is sized for a one year old though so he can get to it when he's bigger. i thought it was a fun hat, but let me tell you before you venture into making one that those fringe are a pain in the ass. they aren't hard to do, but they took forfreakingever. i seriously almost gave up several times because i just did not enjoy making the mohawk part. but i did it, it's cute, and i added one of those awesome "this took forever" labels on the inside. i love those labels (got them on etsy) and i am going to be adding them to almost everything from now on :)

holiday hand warmers

for the past couple of years (at least), alex has made her own holiday gifts for family and teachers and friends. last year, she made those cute wood peg snowman ornaments. i think before that she made some ladybug clothespin magnets. and this year, she made hand warmers. we waited a little last minute on this project, but somehow got them done in time to gift for the holidays. i just told alex to draw some holiday art and she came up with this cute little elf baking gingerbread men. she drew a front and back view. i then scanned in her art, made a background using the elf stockings she drew, and set it up to be printed on fabric. i used spoonflower.com to print the fabric; i printed these on kona cotton. once we received the fabric, i washed them, ironed them, cut them out, and sewed them. alex helped me fill each one using a funnel. we filled the hand warmers with rice scented with cinnamon and cloves (so when heated up you get a hint of those gingerbread cookies the elf just baked.) and then i designed and printed labels instructing how long to warm them in the microwave. i think these were such a cute gift and i love using my set. the winter has been so cold and i used fingerless gloves all season, so it was really nice to reach into my pockets and warm up my fingertips. alex was really proud to gift these to people: her teacher told her that was her favorite present because alex made it herself.

wine bag stamps

my husband makes wine almost every year, so we gift a lot of wine. for some reason we never had a stock of wine bags on hand. and to be frank, there aren't a lot of wine bags out there that i like. so i bought a bunch of plain kraft paper wine bags and decided to design some stamps to personalize them. so i sketched out two designs: "cheers!" for the anyone wine gift; and "screw it" for a funny, edgier gift. i drew them out on paper, scanned them in to the computer, cleaned them up and then ordered a couple of stamps. they turned out great and now anytime we go to gift some wine i'm ready with a unique bag.

boy's 1st birthday presents

my nephew just turned one! and of course i wanted to make his first birthday present. i went with a trucks theme for the collection of gifts. and alex helped out making her part of the gift, too. i decided to make something out of felt - it's so soothing for me to hand stitch plush things. i came across a cute set of patterns on etsy to make these three trucks: a cement mixer, roller, and dump truck (which lifts.) my friend suggested making traffic cones to go with the set, which i think was a fantastic idea and they turned out super cute. there were a lot of pieces and parts to the trucks, but once they were cut out (which is my least favorite part of any sewing project i do) it was easy to watch t.v. in the evening and sew. i made the patterns for the cones, which are just a simple cone shape attached to a square. i did use thin cardboard in some of the pieces to stiffen them, like the dump truck flap and cone bases. and for alex's part, i got more of those plain wood peg people and let her paint the truck drivers. they're super cute, she even made one of them balding, haha (that's all her idea - silly 6 year old.) the peg people are the perfect size for these trucks. then to round out the gift, i got some washi tape that are decorated to be roads and railroad tracks; a cloth ground map - grass and tree tops; and some truck pajamas short set. my nephew is a little young still for parts of this gift, but he seemed to enjoy chewing on the traffic cones right away :)

father's day screenprints

here are the shirts i made last year for father's day gifts. i designed them in photoshop and used my yudu to create the screen and print them. i have to give credit for the idea to my sister-in-law: she didn't come up with the saying, but the idea to put them on shirts for gifts. the saying...well, my husband started that one. i'm not sure when it started exactly, but when tooting his own horn he liked to joke and say "busy being right." he thinks he's hilarious, and of course his brother thought it was great too. somehow it started turning into a thing. then, one day on vacation, my husband did something really nice (not sure if he caught a fish or fixed the causeway or what exactly) and my daughter responded by saying "daddy is busy being best." haha, so cute, but of course that sealed the deal on that phrase. so then my sister-in-law thought it would be a fun idea to give our husbands shirts that say "busy being right." and give the kids shirts that say "my daddy is busy being best." it was a great idea and really sweet for the kids' shirts. now, i should think of a good one for the women :)

snowmen ornaments

i'm just now getting around to showing you the ornaments that alex made for gifts this past christmas. these actually aren't the finished snowmen, i can't seem to find a picture of a finished one. after this shot, we glued on some red gingham or red satin bows above the buttons and tied red twine to hang. i love these little natural wood peg people for crafting. alex painted the bodies, it's a winter white color. i added the metal screws in the top to hang. alex and i both did the eyes and noses and buttons - she'd do some and get a little too creative with them when she got tired so i'd help do some. i thought these made for such cute little handmade gifts from alex for the holidays.

Custom made suitcases

this year for christmas, i decided i wanted to make the gifts for the three young children in the family. i found this super adorable and fun pattern for children's suitcases by sewfearless.com. this is probably the most complicated sewing project i've ever taken on, and i was going to be making three of them. i wanted to take my time with them so i started early in the calendar year. first, i designed custom fabric for each of the three kids in different colors. alex's favorite color is green, so that was an obvious choice, and then since the other two are too young to have a favorite color yet, i went with pink and blue. it was a long process in sewing the suitcases, and i had to redo the zipper parts several times. of course, i had the wrong style zippers at first, so i had to trash the first try, buy new zippers and recut some pieces and try again. i still had to resew the zipper several times to get it right. other than that, all the other sixty something steps went fairly well as long as i took my time. i barely finished them in time, but they turned out fabulous. they have a vintage feel to them, with little elasticized pockets on the inside and accent handles and corner patches on the outside with coordinating zippers. along with the suitcases, i made each child their own ragdoll that was designed and illustrated by me. abbey got a girl ragdoll with reversible dress, carter got a super ted with reversible cape, and alex got a detective fox with reversible capelet. you can find any of these ragdolls as cut and sew fabric on spoonflower in my shop http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/kfay
alex loves her suitcase and fox ragdoll; she wants me to make her all three ragdolls and i expect her to fill her suitcase with doll clothes and accessories or squinkies - we shall see.

carnival party goody bags

alex had her first friends birthday party last weekend and the theme was carnival. i posted a while ago about how i screen printed the goody bags: http://boogiebeans.blogspot.com/2012/10/carnival-goody-bags.html with the ferris wheel design. then we filled the bags with carnival themed goodies. we included a mini skeeball game, an animal eraser (there were lions, tigers, elephants and zebras), a clown nose, a four color pencil (i love those pencils), a glow bracelet, carnival graphic temporary tattoos, cotton candy fluff stuff candy, and the retro packaged cracker jacks box. alex really enjoyed handing out a goody bag to each of her friends at the end of the party.

Santa frame

at work, we had a secret crafty gift exchange this week. we all received a plain white 5x7 photo frame to do whatever we wanted to it. when done we put them all on a table, wrapped up, and when your name is picked out of the bag you go pick a gift. this is what i made. i painted the frame in a glittery candy cane striped design. then i printed a vintage music sheet of "Up on the House-Top" with a creepy little santa on the chimney smoking his pipe and i stitched on it. i like how it turned out, i might even have to craft one for myself. i chose a gift with fun rudolph wrapping paper and it turned out to be a couple of black and white photos, printed in the old school film method way a few decades ago by my friend. one is a photo of an old train station in Boston and the other is the Spanish aquaducts - i love them!

life is better at the lake

life is better at the lake: so true. and in helvetica. i made this wood sign as a birthday gift to be hung at theIR cottage on the lake in canada. i have helvetica stencils in 2 sizes; i think 2 inch and 4 inch. so i plotted out what size i needed the board to be and my husband cut me a piece of nice plywood at 15x15 inches. i painted a couple of coats of blue stain - which is harder to find colored stain than one might think. i saw a tutorial on pinterest about drawing out your letters with a pen first and when you painted the letters you'd have perfect edges because the paint would basically well up in the pen line ridge. that did not work well for me at all. seriously, i would recommend against that technique. the well of the pen line did nothing for me and worse than that the ink from the pen bled into the white paint. so i had to do extra coats of white paint in order to cover up the blue ink bleed, and even went over the edges with a white paint pen as well. so i used white acrylic paint for the letters and carefully painted within my templated pen lines. after i did several coats of the white paint is when i went over all the edges of the letters with the paint pen. in the end, the letters look pretty good, however not perfect, but oh well, handmade has character. i wanted the sign to be indoor/outdoor ready since i didn't know where it would be hung. so i painted several coats of mod podge outdoor sealant on all sides of the sign. you have to be super patient here because the layering of this thick sealant takes forever to try, and the humidity in ohio does not help that along at all. it was still somewhat tacky to the touch a month later when i went to wrap the sign (so i wrapped it in freezer paper first to be safe.) the sign is hanging on an outside wall of the cottage now and i believe holding up well.