Fabric Barn

I was going to make Emily a dollshouse still having some of those cute iron on patches but when I keep falling over her horses and then the other day she told me when she was big she wanted a farm with horses I decided to make her a barn.

I made a couple of mistakes so I am not satisfied with it and will have to make another til I get it right 😉  Emily seems pleased and is currently trying to put her trains in there with her horses.

First the horses needed to be brushed.

Here is the barn with her ponies

More ponies – I meant to include something like a pocket to store their brushes but I forgot

And the outside… still debating adding detail such as the barn door.

Lego Box

I finally found the link!! I had to scroll through No Time for Flash Cards pintrest site and I had trouble putting the right words in google but I found it.

http://www.finleyandoliver.com/2012/03/diy-lego-travel-box.html

I saw this and thought perfect for the kids to make for their cousin’s birthday.

I went to spotlight and bought two boxes (thought either one for the other cousin for his birthday or for Alexander’s birthday).  Emily painted one and Alexander the other.

Big W supplied the stickers which we stuck on.  Emily’s didn’t stick properly but I went over them with a layer of craft glue and they stick beautifully now!

I didn’t get any photos while painting, too obsessed about not getting paint on  us because it was not our normal craft easy to clean up paint.

We found a small box of lego and put it inside and voila little cousin liked it!

I ended up with enough of the lego board to cover the tops of the two boxes and two little pieces that went inside the box for extra building on.

I had the children write their names inside the box and I wrote their cousin’s name on the outside of the box.

 

Cake Decorating

My family are staying with me and my nephew turned 9 yesterday so I offered to make him a cake.  Consulting with my sister I decided to make the cake in the shape of a number 9.  I found some chocolate aeroplanes when I was looking for cars (I was thinking of doing a race track) and since we had an airshow 2 weeks ago I decided to make an airport.

 

Now my other nephew is vegan so I had to look into making a vegan cake. I pulled out my old trusty red velvet cake recepe and just omitted the eggs and used my kids’ rice milk.  It still tasted pretty yummy.  I didn’t have a  cake tin with a hole in the middle so I just used my round cake tin and cut out the middle (I think I destroyed my egg ring.  The cake was still frozen when I tried hammering it in to cut out the middle).

I made “cream cheese” icing using 2 tubs of tofutti, some non-diary butter and 2 cups of icing sugar.  I probably made too much and could have done just one tub of tofutti.  I divided it into two bowls, coloured the smaller amount green for the grass and then used white to ice the airport building and then used cocoa to make it brown for the runway.  I used “writing icing” to make the runway marks and decorate the building.  Small choc chips made the runway lights.  I think it turned out pretty good, albeit a little messy.

Now the cupcakes are cooling and the rest of the chocolate icing will decorate them.

Portable play mat

Whilst browing pink lemonade I saw their dinosaur playmat and their car mats and I thought about my nephew who is also going on the plane trip.  He is too young for a dollshouse and I didn’t have all the material for one anyway and I thought a play mat would be better for him anyway being less than 1.  It is a bit too big for an aeroplane tray but they can drap it over their laps, the pull down tray or put it down on the floor.  I decided to make it two sided.  One with roads and one with a general looking landscape based on the dinosaur layout.  I didn’t have a lot of felt so I used felt and fabric odds and ends.

I used black fabric for the roads and sewed it on with white thread to make the lane markings.  They are only wide enough for one car but I still put the middle lane markers anyway for aesthetic reasons.  I then placed them right sides together, added some ribbon, sewed together leaving a gap to pull them right side out, sewed that out with a bit of ribbon to and voila!  I wasn’t sure whether to add the ribbon or not and I think I will advise my family that it is a play mat for supervised play.

At the ends of the ribbons I sewed on two silohettes.  One a car and the other a basic looking animal with zebra print felt.  I put a stick on velcro on the back and so now it sticks to the felt.  Unfortunately the whole mat is not felt so they only stick to the felt bits but because I used fabric it folds up to a good size and will be able to fit in a take on luggage bag.

I didn’t take photos as I was making it up as I went along.  It took me a couple of hours.

I decided to make it a red tree as it needed some colour with all the blues and greens.  I should have designed it and made it bigger, I cut with pinky shears free hand.  The animal was from pink lemonade and I used the felt that is supposed to be for the zebras for Emily’s Noah’s Ark (oops will have to buy some more).  It is supposed to be a giraffe but well mine has stripes.

Here is the other side.

I didn’t sew up the garage door all the way around so it is the perfect pocket for either storing the fabric car or two little matchbox/hot wheels cars,

Here is the mat in use.

And here it is folded up, the top ribbon with no attached figure ties it together.

This just used left over material and felts from Emily’s Noah’s Ark project.  Super Easy to do!

Portable Fabric Dollshouse

When I saw this dollshouse I was in LOVE!!!! I knew I had to dust off the sewing machine and get going!  It has been a bit slow here crafty wise.  I’ve been busy and a lot of my craft stuff was packed away while family has been staying with us and I haven’t been inspired since I made Emily’s Noah’s Ark (which is still awaiting animals).  Anyway I was rapt when I saw this dollshouse and in awe at seeing what other people have made.

I decided to keep it simple for my first one.

My niece is going overseas soon and I thought I would make something for her to take on the plane and play with and have to play with while o/s.  I followed the directions on UK Lass in US but I followed some of  Serving Pink Lemonade’s alterations.

I used spray adhesive to attach the mesh to the batting.  I accidently bought quite thick batting but I pulled it apart, sprayed adhesive and sandwiched the adhesive in between.

I adjusted the measurements into metric and so wasn’t quite sure how it was going to work out.

I was following Pink Lemonade’s ideas by having the 4 loops at either end but I only put them in at one end and forgot the other so had to hand sew them on later which makes them obviously hair ties but oh well.  Things to learn for next time.

When UK Lass declared this project was easy I was still trepadatious but she was right.  Definetly handy having my sewing machine but I managed to cut out and sew during ad breaks on MasterChef.  This is how far I got the first evening after the kids were in bed.  ( I had cut templates out of cardboard previously in the day but the cutting of material, batting and mesh were done once they were in bed).

I was over the moon when I was at Sportlight and found the patches.  That made life a bit easier, I didn’t have to cut out or design any furniture.  Best of all they were on sale and the mouse is actually on a ribbon and moves up and down.  I made my sister in charge for ironing on the patches.  That also made our life easier.

I was following pink lemonade in not sewing up the sides so that it can be packed to take on an aeroplane.

Because I had forgotten to sew the blue loops on I was hand sewing on the four blue loops and the buttons to loop them on so I gave up after I sewed one side.

 

The next day I had buttons to sew on on the other side.  Then I debated what to put on the outside.  leave it plain?  Have a door and window?  I decided to sew on the tree (I sewed the trunk on but used spray adhesive for the green leaves and then sewed the buttons on to hold hold it on).  I then used the spray adhesive again to attach the “rick rack” (?) and sewed on either end to make a tile effect for the roof and then I was done.  It took almost as long on the second day because of all the hand sewing.

I did some fancy stitches in the garden and you can see they went a bit wonky.  The dolls I found in a $2 store.  This is not for children under 3 or for those who put things in their mouth.  The dolls are very basic and have swallowable bits and I had sewed the buttons on so they are secure but not greatly so.   The buttons are not so large so I ended up having to tie knots in the hair ties to make them fit over the buttons better.

Here is Emily waiting patiently for me to finish taking photos so she can have a little play before we wrap it up to take up to her cousin.

And a cute shot of the mousehole…

Can’t wait to make another, I want to make a barn for my daughter for her horses.

Collecting Treasures

Ever since I saw this post from No Time for Flash Cards I have been wanting to make these Nature Gifts.  one day I went to make them and realised we had no salt to make the dough with.  The other day I bought some and I have just been waiting for a day for collecting treasures to make it.

 

Yesterday was PERFECT.  It was my nephew’s birthday and we went to Kiama to look for sea glass on the beach and sea glass we found!

 

After dragging the children off the beach we headed home and we mixed the salt dough (1 cup of salt, 2 cups of plain flour and 3/4- 1 cup of warm water) and began kneading the dough.

Adding our sea glass and shells

Alexander and I made “pizzas”.  He also made a face. Emily liked making snakes.

Very excited to finally get to try this out and we have more dough left in the fridge to make some more another day.

 

Anyway after a quiet hiatus the children and I have had a flurry of creativity so more posts to follow later!