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.

Felt bowties aka Wife-beaters with felt bowties

After a number of complaints by readers (ok the number is one and the reader (sans s) was my sister) that I have not posted in a while, I made some fancy tops for my sons to wear to my dad's name day party. I saw a onesie with bowtie on it on the web, but it is too hot for onesies at the moment and my elder son does not wear them any more.

They were surprisingly easy to make!

I cut out a rectangle shape of felt in the size  I wanted and clipped the corners for a less severe look.

I pinched the rectangle in the middle and secured it with a couple of stitches 

I cut a narrow bit of felt and wrapped it around the middle of the bow and sewed it onto the bow. I could have used a glue gun for this and the previous sewing as well.

felt bowtie makes all the difference! :)

 

More letters!

I made some more letters for my friends'  kids. I kept the baking paper cutouts from the first batch and it was much easier to make these! See previous project here: http://thefeverishfeltist.blogspot.hu/search/label/alphabet

I gave the bear a ribbon for a more girly effect!

Eskimo child with penguin painting

I painted this picture of an eskimo child and penguin on a piece of ply-wood I bought at the crafts store. I used acrylic paints and a matt finish. I found similar illustrations in a djeco catalogue, so the design is not mine...

Dr. Who pencil box

I wanted to make a Dr.Who themed gift for a friend, but do not know anything about the show. Unfortunately it is one of the few geeky things that my husband is less engrossed in :) So I searched the  web to find what the emblematic characters or symbols Dr.Who universe are. I came across the Tardis or Police box. It seemed to be a good image to use on a plain wooden pencil box that I bought at a crafts store the previous day.  I found a great cross stitch design for a Tardis here http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/projects/cross-stitch-tardis

 

I traced the front side of the pencil box onto  a grid notepad page. Then, I copied the cross-stitch design onto the grid paper.

 

I did not copy the cross stitch design exactly, but the design helped me get a sense of the scale of a Tardis, how big the windows are etc...

 I sanded the box, painted it with blue waited until it dried and sanded it again, and repainted it. Then, I traced the cut out tardis onto the box and painted within the lines with a slightly lighter blue color (difference cannot be seen on photos). I then painted the whitish windows, light, sign and than used black for outlining etc. When it was all dry I added a matt finish for acrylic paints.

Elderflower syrup

Fruit syrup or squash is a drink that was popular during my childhood and is experiencing a renaissance- at least in our family. I am more of a "let the kids drink water" type of parent myself, but my husband comes home with a bottle of syrup increasingly often- to a great delight to all of us, I might add...

photo from http://www.laundryetc.co.uk/2009/05/24/the-elderflowers-are-coming/

 I decided to make our own syrup, but as we do not have any fruits growing in our garden, I decided to use elderflower blossoms. There are several elderflower bushes in our area (which are in bloom from May to June), but it is important to pick them from bushes located far away from traffic. My aunt picks them at a cemetery...
It is also important to pick the blossoms when they are in bloom and if possible after it had rained.
There are several recipes for making this syrup, but here is the one I used: (I ended up with 3 wine bottles worth of syrup)
25-30 elderflower blossoms (take the dried bits off)
2liters of water
2 kgs of sugar
75gs of lemon tablets/citric acid tablets (a combination of ascorbic acid and apple acid- possibly replaceable by actual lemons)
1. Let the blossoms sit in water for 24 hours with half of the tablets. Cover bowl but stir the liquid once or twice.
2. Remove blossoms from liquid
3. Add sugar and half of the lemon tablets and cook for 35 minutes. Stirring ocasionally and making sure the syrup does not caramelize.
4. Pour syrup into disinfected bottles.

I put the syrup into wine bottles for a rustic feel and decorated the bottles with vignettes.

I  used leftover scraps of wrapping paper, and letter stamps I recently bought. (So glad I got to use it for something :) )
After finishing with the letters, I rubbed a candle over the paper so that the ink from the stamp would not rub off later on hands or clothes:

The end result:

We delude this syrup with water ( I prefer sparkling water) and lemon/lime slices or with lemongrass or mint leaves. The vast amount of sugar used as well as the citric acid preserves the syrup, however it is best to store it in a cool, dry place. It makes a good present for foodies, families and families with children or with sweet teeth. Despite the sugar, it is probably much more healthy than coke, sprite ect...  Having said that, I plan to try a honey based recipe next year.

FELT STAR WARS FINGER PUPPETS

For my husband's name day my son and I made a special surprise. As he is a Star Wars fan and my son is a massive wannabe Star Wars fan (he hasn't seen it yet) we made him a Star Wars themed gift. I sewed some of the Star Wars characters and my son made the Millennium Falcon (or as my son calls it 'Milano Falcon')  out of a shoebox, a bottle cap, a toilet roll and some pudding cups. My hubby was so impressed!

Letters

My younger son is nearly 15 months old and still doesn't have his name on the door he shares with his brother...that is he didn't have his name until two days ago. The change was triggered by my broken angle and lots of free time to browse the internet without any  feeling of  guilt whatsoever.
I was googled the name of a really great illustrator Geraldine Cosneau and found her blog (http://geraldine-cosneau.blogspot.com/) she posted about a foam animal alphabet kit she designed. It was so adorable that I asked my sister to buy me a pack (actually two cause my friend wants one too) the next time she is in Paris. But since I couldn't wait, I decided to make larger letters for the boys' door.

I used a cereal box, acrylic paint and an matt acrylic finish as well as decor paper (or scrapbook paper). Due to the paint and finish the letters are hard, but the cardboard is rather thin, which helps precision. To make sure they stay flat, I put them under a heavy book right after the paint (and later the finish) dried, covering the painted side with a plastic sleeve.

My older son liked the letters so much he asked me to make the letters for his name as well, with lots of dogs!  Because hos name starts with "Á" I added a frankfurter above the first doggy's head.

 They turned out nice but not as wonderful as Geraldine Cousneaus. Her kit can be ordered from amazon.fr:

http://www.amazon.fr/Ma-Boite-Gommettes-Lettres-Animaux/dp/2244066231

FELT HAIR CLIP HOLDER

 I made this hair clip holder out of felt, reused (or upcycled) fabric and ribbons. It will be a gift for our niece's 8th birthday. I had seen some really cute clip holders a couple of months ago and had been planning on making one, but was uncertain about the design.  I saw some strawberry ribbon at the store and fell in love and decided use it for this project. My sister-in-law mentioned that my niece likes fairies and as I was combing through my stash I found the pink dotted fabric (formerly a t-shirt) that I used for the first batch of Easter eggs and thought it would go well with the dots on the strawberries.

MONSTER TOOTHFAIRY PILLOW # 3

I made this monster tooth fairy pillow for our nephew for his upcoming 6th birthday. The body is made from the weird red sweater that was used to make the valentines day makeup bag.

http://thefeverishfeltist.blogspot.com/2012/02/felt-makeup-bag-with-hearts-i-bought.html

 The photo of the monster does not show it, but instead of a loop I used two separate pieces of ribbon at the top so that he can attach it more easily to where ever he wishes to.

PORCUPINE HAIRPIN

Porcupine hair clip

This hair clip was my first hair accessory comission! :) It was requested by my super-cute goddaughter... well one of my super-cute goddaughters to be exact. She wanted a porcupine hairclip after she was the porcupine bib scarf I made for my son   (http://thefeverishfeltist.blogspot.com/2012/02/fleece-bandana-bib-scarf-with-felt.html).

I used two felt circles as the base and sewed the porcupine on one of the circles first, attaching first the brown to the body then the body to the circle

I snapped a pic of her wearing it! :)

EDIBLE EYEBALLS

EDIBLE EYEBALLS

Super-sweet and Super-gross these babies could be perfect Monster-party / Halloween/ David Bowie fan club meeting treats!

My son got a Horrible Science book from her godparents

In it there was a recipe that really captured his imagination: edible eyeballs. It seemed a bit complicated at first but once we started making it wasn't that bad.

Recipe: 
25g Rice Crispies
75g chocolate
8tbsp powdered sugar (mix it w water to make icing)
M&Ms
clingfilm

Step 1: I melted the chocolate over a bath of boiling water (I actually used the leftover choc from the candied oranges).

Step2: We mixed Rice Crispies into the chocolate

Step 3: We spooned out the goo onto bits of clingfilm and wrapped them like so (see above). The amount spooned out should be more or less that of an eyeball :)

Step 4: We placed the wrapped balls on a tray/plate and put them in the freezer or fridge to set.
Step 5: When they have hardened we unwrapped them and place them on baking paper

Step 6: We put icing  on eyeballs, stuck an M&Ms onto each and put a small dollop of brown store bought icing for the pupils (should have been black) 

Here is Daddy indulging in a freshly hardened eyeball with Simon looking on. :))

P.s. Thank you F and É for all your help!

PAPER-AIRPLANE MOBILE

One of my sons latest and most enduring obsessions is folding paper airplanes. He loves folding and throwing them about. So for his birthday his grandma bought him an adorable Origami Airplane kit by Djeco (www.djeco.com)

I liked the design of the planes so much, I wanted to use them for decor, so I came up with the idea of making a mobile for the kids' room.  So I took some thin ribbon, tape and two wooden sticks and got to work. It is all pretty straight forward, the only tricky bit was finding the spot to attack the ribbon to so the planes would be in balance. 

I had a lot of fun photographing the mobile :) Enjoy!