Shhhh....

I never made a quiet book for my kids... I thought it would be too hard... huh... Well, I got the bright idea of making a quiet book for my sister-in-law's Dr. Seuss baby shower.  I ended up making most of it myself and it was kind of fun... but it was a LOT of work!

 I got the idea for the cover from Serving Pink Lemonade.    I made it fairly similar.  I used eyelets to make the holes in the book and used rings to hold it together.  I have the flap close with a large button.  I thought it would be fun to have the cover a little different, so I just appliquéd the letters "shhh" on the front rather than having it say "quiet book."

 I didn't do a ton of pages... there are only 3 front and back.  But I figure my sister in law can add more if she wants.    I made the pages out of Pellon as was suggested by Serving Pink Lemonade.  I think it was a wise decision.  I glued everything to the page first with a felt glue, then I sewed everything with clear thread.  I thought that would be easier than changing colors all the time.  It worked out great.

 The first page is the art paint pallet.  I got this pattern from Serving Pink Lemonade as well.  I did make a slight change.  I thought it would be fun to have the colors come off and on with a button.  (It was very difficult for me to figure out how to sew the button hole exactly where I wanted it to go, so I finally got smart and sewed the button hole in the felt first before I cut out the paint swatch.)

 The car page also came from Serving Pink Lemonade.  She had cute signs on hers, but I didn't quite get to that part... I think it's okay without them.

 I also got the tree idea from Serving Pink Lemonade.  I changed it just a bit.  I thought a less detailed tree would be easier.  There are flowers, fall leaves and summer leaves that snap on and off.

My favorite page is the tent page... my family are big campers.  I loved the idea of having a barn with animal finger puppets from Serving Pink Lemonade, but I really liked the tent idea on Laura Thoughts. So I combined the two ideas and created my tent.

When you open the tent zipper, there are forest animal finger puppets inside.  Aren't they cute???

I created a pdf file with the template for the tent and finger puppets.  You can download it here.  (I'm not sure the best way to share files, so let me know if the link does not work)

I got the shoe template from Made by Me... Shared with you.  Her's was a lot more detailed and way cuter, but I think mine looks okay:)

It turned out great and I'm excited for my little nephew to be able to use it... he finally came into this world on Oct. 2nd... but I'm sure it will be awhile until he's old enough to enjoy his quiet book!

A new approach to scrapbooking (for me)

I've totally been in the mood to scrapbook lately... so I've been sneaking down to my craft room every spare second I get... usually early in the morning. My usual technique of scrapbooking is to "Scraplift." I almost always get my ideas from someone else. I usually use cardstock as my background, lots of scraps and embellishments. Usually I got straight to my "scrap" box to find the papers I'm going to use on a layout... I very rarely use my full sheets of patterned 12x12. This week I decided that I wanted to try something a little different. I have some 12x12 papers that I have purchased because I love them. So, what I decided to do was to pick my PAPER first, then find the pictures that I wanted to scrapbook. It was fun to do. I didn't scraplift. I used my own sketch. And the result was a couple of pages that were totally different than what I usually do.


So, I need your HELP! Where should I create a "gallery" for my layouts? Should I use an online photo gallery like Picasa or Flickr? Or should I use a scrapbooking gallery like Two Peas in a Bucket or Creating Keepsakes? I want to have a gallery where I display all of the pages that I create for all of you to see, but I'm not sure which would be the best place to display them!

-Anisa

Birthday and January Banner

A couple of months ago, I made these cute banners. Well, I need to keep making one for each month. So, here are the last two that I made.
The "Celebrate" one is mostly for birthdays. I didn't get it made in time for my hubby's b-day in December, but it was finished for my little boy's birthday in January.
My favorite so far is the January banner. I had some fun die cut felt that I was able to use and I did a lot of stitching!
I love the colors... red, turquoise and gold... and I love the stitching.
A couple of close ups...
I've got my paper for February... now let's see if I can some up with something creative to do with it! --Anisa

Tooth Monster

We have our first loose tooth at our house:) This is so exciting for us. But being the crafty mom that I am, I had to find something for my little boy to put his tooth in for the tooth fairy. So, we went blog searching to see what we could find. My favorite tutorial was on mmmcrafts. Totally cute, but super girly. So, I used the idea and the pattern... but then I saw this idea on instructables.com and my little boy loved it.

I wanted him to help. So, I cut out the white fabric. Then I handed him my stash of felt and told him to cut out his eyes and teeth and anything else that he wanted. I then sewed the felt onto the tooth for him. I wanted to have the tooth go into the opening of the mouth like on the tutorial, but the mouth was too low on the tooth and it just wasn't going to work. So, my husband suggested making a pocket for the back of the pillow!
So, now we are patiently waiting for this tooth to fall out:) By the way, what's the going rate for a tooth from the tooth fairy these days? -Anisa

Kid Gifts

Continuing with our theme of Countdown with Crafts, I thought I'd let you know of a great sale at Michael's craft store this week. 1/2 of the front page of their ad was great gifts for kids. My kids love craft kits so I plan on heading over there this week to get them something for their stocking. They also have kids stocking stuffers for $1 and up.

I wanted to show you what I did as a gift for my kids that was super easy and super cheap. I bought these adorable striped hats for my kids at the $1 store... Dollar Tree. I then raided my stash of many felt colors and cut out stars for my sons and their friends....

... and flowers with layered circles in the middle for our little friends that are girls.
I used the Sizzix to cut my felt shapes, but you could easily hand cut them with a pattern as well. They girls hat also has a layer of mesh. They are held together with the button in the middle that is sewn on. I used a dab of fabric glue to secure the ends of the flower and stars to the hat. My boys love them and they fight over who gets the blue one... I made them in several colors!

1 Craft 3 Ways: Little Monsters

I was a little nervous doing something with monsters for October. Not that I'm scared of them. ;) I couldn't think of anything to make that had to do with monsters. Until this morning. My kids and I were hurrying home from running errands so we could play with a little friend of ours. A playdate....hmmmm....(Can you hear the wheels starting to turn?) The light bulb went on-a way to get my craft done and entertain the kids. They would do my monsters for me! Brilliant!

First I had my son and his buddy each draw me a fairly large and simple monster. This is what I got:

Next, I opened my overflowing box of felt scraps and started cutting, sewing, and adjusting as needed.

Let me introduce you to Fire Dragon and Hem:

And Fire Dragon with Hah (Hem's other side):

The boys loved them. Using the kids art work to create crafts was such a fun way to capture their little imaginations for a long time!

Ang

I was so excited to do Monsters. I just recently bought monster bedding from Target for my little boy's room. But I hadn't gotten to the decorating part yet. So, I thought I'd do a little paper piecing.... It's not like I haven't done it before!

-Anisa

I've got a couple of monster projects going on at the moment, but this is what was done in time for our post today.

Do you remember those ATC cards I mentioned a bit ago, checking for interest? Well I found an excellent site that regularly does card swaps and I joined a few of them. This is my first card for the theme of Monsters. It's a baby monster's first portait. How nice it is to kill two birds with one stone!

I might toss another one of my monster-themed crafts onto the blog later this month, but in the mean time, come up with your own! October is an awesome month to immerse yourself in creepy-crawliness.

--C