Felt coaster for kids

I was making felt coasters as gifts when Á asked me to make him one with his doggy's face on it.
He was not happy with the first one I made because the ears and face of the dog were of the same color, so we made another one which he"colored" with embroidery yarn. It turned out really cute:

I used a CD as a template for the felt part and the coaster and the top brim of a tea mug for the fabric (a leftover scrap of IKEA Gunilla fabric).

 

DIY gifts for teachers/hand-made soap with kids

Our class is buying my son's teachers a larger gift, but I wanted to make something special to give them too. My choice fell on handmade soaps. We used the melt and pour method with glicerine soap. I just bought some glycerine soap at the drugstore and we cut it up and melted it (over stream), and we poured it into Ikea Plastis ice trays (they say that the trays are for water only--- but I'm a badass crafter:) ).
It was super easy and lots of fun.

 You can buy glycerine blocks to make soap out of at craft shops but glycerine soap is actually cheaper than the craft kind.  I tried melting cheaper/harder glycerine soap, but it did not melt.

You can also add stuff like poppy seeds, cinnimon, dried lavender to make soap more interesting. I could not figure out what would smell good with olive.

Melting the cut up soap cubes

The cubes start to melt

We filled the trays and let the soap harden in the fridge.

"Put a bird on it" be-birded mirror and wooden flower pot

 Ikea Malma mirrors are ideal for crafts projects, especially painting. They are inexpensive, have a relatively large surface and have a useful function. This is my first completed mirror but I suspect there will be more to come!

 Clearly inspired by Portlandia's "Put a bird on in" sketch (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHmLljk2t8M) I did just that a couple of months ago, when deciding on the decor for this IKEA Malma mirror that I made for my cousin's birthday. I made a template for the birds' bodies (by cutting the shape from paper) to make them even. I used acrylic paints. The actual colors in the bottles of the pink and green were super bright, so I added a bit of tan paint as well as some of the bronze paint  and mixing them. These new colors matched very nicely and were much prettier. This is not rocket science, but I'd not understood mixing colors until I did this project... I also used an finish as the brown paint rubbed off on the wall.

As I had quite a bit of mixed paint left over I searched our home for other wooden surfaces in need of a bird... in the end I found this wood flower pot that we use to keep nick-knacks in.