Last Minute Stocking Stuffers [Made By Joel]

I discovered Made By Joel last week, and I absolutely love everything about him. His designs are simple, but oh-so lovely and creative. Explore his site and be sure to check out his crafts by age.

I stapled together the Thaumatrope, Tumble Bunnies, and Paper Woodpecker Toys, with Straw, Skewer, and two marbles in a bag. Several projects are printed two per page, so I cut them apart first. 

I printed a few of his projects (Paper Woodpecker, Bird Thaumatrope, and Tumble Bunnies) onto cardstock for stocking stuffers for my kids and my nieces and nephew. Then I assembled them into kits, with the other materials needed to make the projects. That way, the kids can help make them later - double fun! I should have added instructions to the kits, but didn't get to it - maybe we'll do it together at Christmas - otherwise, hey sis, check out the links above!

As I was assembling the kits, I realized two of the kids in our family were really too young to be given [ahem] marbles and skewers in their stockings, so I just assembled the thaumatropes using plastic straws for the little ones. Whew, that was a close one. His coloring pages are great for little ones, too.

For the cousins: Tumble Bunnies and Thaumatropes, with two marbles and a skewer in a bag. The assembled Thaumatropes with plastic straws for the little ones.

Below is a playlist of several Made by Joel youtube videos. He definitely wins for best use of a pop-up puppet ever! Enjoy!

 

Book Review and Give Away

If you haven't gotten a copy yet, there's another Flip Dolls and Other Toys give-away going on and Sew Can She, along with a book review. Caroline made my Gulp the Whale, and Owl and Pussycat Flip Doll, and they're so delightful! Head over to check out her pictures and sign up for the give away!

A Litte More Spoonflower, Wall Paper, and a Whole Lot of Wood

I've been playing on spoonflower again. Oh, I love it there. I just discovered the wall paper feature, and just fell in love with my cheater print as a wall paper design.

Of course, my walls are all made of wooden planks (not to mention I don't know how to put up wall paper, and that's a lot of color for a wall, yo) - but I've been enjoying looking anyway. I thought maybe I could just do wall paper on one side of my kitchen island? Hmm... something to think about.

Or okay, something to design a print for... How's this?

I put this together using some of my favorite fiesta colors. With my woodsy house, I like folk-y designs. I could print matching fabric to use for the curtain in my pantry, too! Or is that too matchy-matchy?

My designs for my house are here, and my cheater prints are here. I saw that one of their upcoming contests is for cheater quilt blocks with a floral design and a limited palette. I edited my flower garden cheater to use their palette, because I just can't resist a contest. 

And I've been meaning to beg for help from all of you clever crafty folks about my interior design. We have beautiful wood walls... and wood ceilings, and wood floors. It's a lot of wood, folks. I need some color, and some light. But I'm afraid to paint anything - because its beautiful wood. So to recap: its beautiful, but there's too much. 

Here's the one wall I've painted:

before

after

 I was disappointed that my pretty staircase had a big ugly vent. I felt pretty confident that if I painted this bit of wall white, the vent wouldn't stand out so much, and the white would make the wood around it prettier. It also reflects some light from the windows to brighten up the kitchen a bit. I feel good about this.

The rest of the walls in the main room are super tall. And even in the smaller rooms, once you paint it you can never go back. So basically, I'm chicken.

What do you think friends? Paint a smaller room or two? Put some giant white paintings on the wall? Help a girl out. 

More Spoonflower Swatches: libraries, cats, upholstery and more!

I just received a whole bunch of new swatches from spoonflower! It's happiness in a soft paper package.

First, is a Library Collection I made, complete with John at his desk, bookshelves, chewed on pencils and a library cat. I don't like the house plant fabric very much, but that sure is a nice yellow.

six prints

the complete library scene

library cat

I don't have any plans for these, they were just fun to make. Some of these are much nicer when you can see the repeat. Like this one.

This set was meant to be some simple designs for upholstery in our new house.

I haven't made any changes to my Sea Creatures Collection, but I got some swatches for a little swatch - stocking stuffer - project I have in mind. More about that coming up in a few days. In the meantime, you can check out this collection from a few years ago here.

And this was supposed to be a whole fairy tale collection for my sister, the storyteller - but I got distracted and never finished it. I did put together a little Baba Yaga House in the Woods, which I think is kinda cute. It's begging to be developed into a collection. We'll see.

I also made these two sort of random prints that are now in my Uncollected Collection. I think this nature walk print might be one of my strongest ever. We're really into nature collections around here, so I had a shelf full of things to draw from. When I received the swatch I noticed a fine white line on one side of the repeat. I was able to quick fix the image and upload the revision. Thank goodness for swatches!

A lot of the detail in this one is lost when you look at the pattern on the fat quarter scale. I think that's my only complaint with Spoonflower - prints on a smaller scale don't look as good on the website as the larger prints. So I'm more drawn to the easy to see large prints, but practically I rarely sew with large prints. I wish they had a zoomed in small scale print option!

The other uncollected design was a pretty little fall print just for fun. There were two visible white lines in this one. They're much harder to see on the computer, but obvious in print. Now I'm stretching my background color beyond the edges of the art board to ensure that doesn't happen again.

More fun with Spoonflower! Check out the rest of my designs here. 

Spoonflower swatches: Girls and Dinosaurs, and Cheater quilts

A few spoonflower posts coming up...

I made this collection of prints of girls with dinosaurs sometime a year or two ago, when my girls were really into dinosaurs. Somehow I never got around to sharing them here - or using the prints in a quilt as I intended. I still really enjoy them, so maybe they'll come back around.

I also printed a few versions of my flower garden cheater print.

I have since edited the colors of the multi-color print to match some of my fiesta and house colors. I still really really really really love these. I was disappointed when I realized I couldn't make a twin blanket without a giant seam in the middle, and so I gave up. But maybe I'll have to make a throw for myself, eh? Dang, why am I not doing that right now? [wandering off...]

St. Lucia Day

On the heels of St. Nicholas day, comes St. Lucia day! We've enjoyed learning about these people of both history and legend, whose memories have become so closely associated with Christmas in various countries. We like to keep Christmas about the nativity, but learning about these special people who loved Christ is a fun way to prepare for Christmas.

Lucy of Syracuse, according to the stories, carried food down to the Christians hiding from persecution in the catacombs. With her arms full of bread, she put candles in a wreath on her head to light the way. She was martyred for her faith during the reign of Diocletian in 304 AD.

Lucy Cats

We made bread the day before so that we could have them for breakfast this morning. I was confused why the buns, called Lussekatter or Lucy cats, were shaped like an S, or what cats had to do with St. Lucia! Quite the mystery, until I read this:

The Lucy cat is an interesting little cake. If you look closely it has the appearance of two eyes. We remember that Jesus told us how the eye is the light of the body. Yet, in the tradition of St. Lucy, her physical eyes were gouged out. Yet, she saw the light of Christ with her spiritual eyes. And so, in the Lucy Cats, she reminds us that we need to open our spiritual eyes so that we can also see the light and not fear the darkness.  During the longest night of darkness, and with a simple pastry, she tells us to have faith and to rejoice and sing. As St. John wrote, “And the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness could not overcome it.” (John 1.5) - source

 What a sweet story for the weeks leading up to Christmas, while we are anticipating for the coming of Christ the true light!

Materials: felt cut in squiggly-leafy shaped strips,
green and yellow (and orange) pipe cleaners,
white pony beads and a bit of fabric glue.

The girls and I made St. Lucia wreaths from pipe cleaners and felt. I don't use pipe cleaners often, but a friend suggested this activity and we thought we'd give it a try. The original tutorial is from here, but I used felt cut into leaf shapes instead of fabric. 

fun with beads and pipe cleaners. 

The girls really liked twisting the pipe cleaners and putting the beads on. Getting the bead-candles to stand up was definitely the hardest part. I let the girls go play while I wound the leaves on, and was able to prop the candles of with the leaves. Then they came back to help me glue the berries on. 

We were pretty pleased with the results. :)

They make a cute table decoration as well, and will store nicely for next year I hope. 

Happy St. Lucia day! May your eyes be full of light!

The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. - Matthew 6:22

A happy St. Nicholas morning

Happy St. Nicholas Day!

This is one of our favorite mornings each year, and today was quite sweet. We had a St. Nicholas party earlier this week, and so we already read our St. Nicholas stories, ate our St. Nicholas cookies, and found coins in our shoes once - but I couldn't resist doing a little something again this morning.

The girls put out their shoes last night, and found them this morning filled with quite a lot of gold (chocolate) coins, and a few stickers - each girl got stickers just right for them - ocean creatures and pink ponies. There was even spontaneous sharing! It was a simple treat, but enough to remember the secret kindness of the real St. Nicholas, the joy of charity and gift giving in this frantic season.

So we spent this quiet St. Nicholas morning coloring pictures for the stickers, nibbling on chocolate [and coffee], while listening to the last few chapters of The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe. We picked up on the joyous chapter where the stone creatures come back to life:

Everywhere the statues were coming to life. The courtyard looked no longer like a museum; it looked more like a zoo. Creatures were running after Aslan and dancing round him till he was almost hidden in the crowd. Instead of all that deadly white the courtyard was now a blaze of colours; glossy chestnut sides of centaurs, indigo horns of unicorns, dazzling plumage of birds, reddy-brown of foxes, dogs and satyrs, yellow stockings and crimson hoods of dwarfs; and the birch-girls in silver, and the beech-girls in fresh, transparent green, and the larch-girls in green so bright that it was almost yellow. And instead of the deadly silence the whole place rang with the sound of happy roarings, brayings, yelpings, barkings, squealings, cooings, neighings, stampings, shouts, hurrahs, songs and laughter.

This is a bittersweet day for me: reminding me of the joy of children and life, saints and loved ones in heaven, and the kindness and goodness that connects us all. This reading from C. S. Lewis seemed just right. Life, color, laughter returns with the king.

And I had my own little St. Nicholas Day miracle! I've been wanting an out of print book for a few years, but used copies are listed on Amazon for ridiculous prices in the $1,000's. I set up a saved search thingy on Ebay. Occasionally I get an email saying the book is for sale for something like $100, and I just delete the email. Last week, I got an email saying the book was listed for $5.98! I snatched it up before someone else did! A nice thick book arrived in the mail just in time for St. Nicholas Day, so this morning, I'll settle in with my coffee for some reading.

I'll share our The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe studies soon! In the meantime, wishing you all a happy St. Nicholas Day.

Find activities and stories at the St. Nicholas center, or read my other St. Nicholas Day posts.

Thanksgiving

I am looking out my window at the odd gray sky: it was warm yesterday, and today the temperature is dropping as an ice storm approaches, all while the new grass we planted is finally growing on my lawn. 

It is an awkward transition, as they so often are. 

My Thanksgiving Cactus is again blooming as Thanksgiving carries us into the Nativity season. I look forward to these delicate blooms each year: to the wonder of shocking color amidst all the gray, as if to say the cloudy skies, frosty mornings and early evenings can not stop the earth from bursting forth with thanksgiving.

I haven't taken care of my houseplants as well this year, since moving into our new home. I'm still finding the right window, and remembering to mend my disrupted routine. And yet they persist, they bloom. Thank God!

Wishing you all a beautiful season of joy and thanksgiving!

I'm thinking how so much so often
comes of showing up, comes of being
willing to arrive, regardless,
as our several mute anxieties subside, and now
I startle, blinking—so much so

that I am for the short term almost wide awake—
and see a bit more clearly how
this willingness or that
can make of the confusion yet
another likely scene, make of the troubled,

packed interior a zone of calm, which calm
avails momentarily a glimpse
to mark among so many frank,
unlikely revelations that I continue
to observe that I am blinking still.

 - From Scott Cairns' Thanksgiving Poem

Crocodile and Book Giveaway on Sew Mama Sew!

Psst... 

We're sharing my Smiling Crocodile pattern over at Sew Mama Sew today. Head over to Sew Mama Sew to grab the pattern, and leave a comment for a chance to win a copy of Flip Dolls and Other Toys that Zip, Stack, Hide, Grab, and Go.

If you're sewing from the book for Christmas, be sure to use the printable full scale templates to make it a little simpler.  And remember to have fun!