crayon valentine's cards

We received a note in the pre-K folder last week that said we could start sending valentines on Monday, and that there needed to be either one for everyone or none. Which makes sense. Nothing stings more than being Pig Pen with one valentine, or worse, Charlie Brown with none. This being my first year as a mother of a child in school, I was scrambling. Do I make? Do I buy? What the hell?

I checked out Pinterest and saw a lot of tutorials for homemade valentines. I preferred doing that, but also didn't want it to be insanely hard. Beezus and I looked through a lot of ideas together. She did wonder why so many people post pictures of boys on Pinterest. Yuck. Boys.

We do like to riff on other people's ideas and create our own thing. So, go ahead. Open up your Valentine!

Shoot, kraft paper came with the sticker. Sorry about that.

Yes, that is a circle crayon. (I couldn't find heart-shaped silicone pans. DAG! I am too impatient to wait for Amazon on this one.)

ANYWAY, this valentine was so super easy to make, and really a lot of fun to do with Beezus. This morning, we made swirly circular crayons. The tutorial for that is right here. Those take half an hour at the most. And that time is mostly removing paper from crayons.

Basically, you need the crayons you are attaching. And this:

I found those felt heart stickers at Michaels in the sales section for 15% off, or something. I thought it would be a good sealer for our valentine. So, I cut cardstock Kraft paper into 4" x 6" rectangles. I created a very simple document that read "color the world with love. happy valentine's day. love," and printed it on construction paper. I used red, but I think it would have looked great with black ink. I liked the organic and faded feel of the construction paper. It looked earthier, if that is possible, than the bright cardstock I had. I did have to trim the construction paper before loading my printer. I printed four copies for each sheet. I then cut them to 3" x 5". We then glued the paper to the kraft paper with glue stick. Now, we just dotted each corner, which was important for attaching the crayon.  Then, we attached a foam sticker to attach the crayon. The crayon bottom was a little concave, so that is why only gluing the four corners was helpful. We could press the paper up into the crayon. Then pretty much we were done. Bea signed her name on each of them. I did half and Beezus did the other half. So this is definitely a craft that you can prep and then have kiddos help. I cut everything while Beezus was at school, and we put them together when she got home. As you can see, she inherited my sense of balance.

 We created a lot of different color combinations. Purple/pink/peach, orange/red/yellow, green/blue/teal, magenta/purple/pink. And in the same way, we used different color construction paper and matched them up with the crayons as best we could.

I thought I would do a close up of the different color combinations.

Then we sealed them up with a kiss and sent them to school.

Button, button, who's got the button?

I have been struggling to start this introduction, because I am just so dang excited. So, as most of you probably know, I have an identical twin sister named Sweetie Pumpkin Kitty, SPK, otherwise known as KellyAnn. You may have seen her comments around town. I am blessed to share my life with someone who loves crafting, art, sewing, and finding funky shizzle as much as me. We have literally been hitting thrift stores together since we were walking. (Thanks, Mama!) We are always collaborating, talking craft, getting together to do stuff, and bouncing ideas off each other. Interestingly, she and I have very different styles that intersect beautifully. We like much of the same stuff, but have totally different aesthetics. For example, we noticed that in her house, she has a lot of curved furniture and items, and everything in my house is straight lines and boxy. Hmmm...genetics are cool. ANYWAY, since I started this blog, I have been trying to convince her to share her cool crafts on here. So, today, I am so excited, because my sister finally finally agreed to share something on this blog. I'm hoping she will do this more regularly, but for now, I'm just excited about this one. Please give her lots of love and a very warm welcome.

Hey Y'all...Ang told me I should guest blog and do a tutorial for my infamous button flowers that I totally ripped off from Pinterest, which let's face it, is the whole reason Pinterest exists for me...inspiration and blatant thievery.  So I love love love flowers.  Let me just put that out there.  Except that most everyone in my family is allergy-ridden.  I buy flowers every week from Trader Joe's and 7 times out of 10, someone is allergic.  Sigh.  What's a flower-loving hippie to do?  Well, I say break out those buttons and let's get to it.

Yeah, that is what it looks like now, but how did it get that way?  Okay let's start with the very easy button/paper flower...find some interesting paper.  I used some old collage paper I had.  I was trying to do a black and white theme, but there is no reason not to use whatever appeals to you.  I cut all my flowers into four petals, but I think it would look great as a circle or pointy petals, really this ain't science.  Whatever works for you.  I cut a piece of floral wire about 6 inches long.  It's kinda pointy so I just stuck it right through that paper.  Kinda angry like.  It was freeing.

Now, Audrey, my daughter and Angie's spirit animal, and I picked some buttons in white and some in black and stacked them.  I tried to use interesting buttons that looked good together.  But one cute button will work as well.

Then you bend the floral wire and poke that sucker through the other hole of the buttons and through the paper flower.  

Now that the wire is through everything, twist it tightly around the longer piece of wire.

Now here is where I decided to go a little different.  By all means you can be done with your flower at this point, but I bought these really cute floral stems at the craft store.  They were all wrapped in a pretty green paper, and they were really sturdy.   So at this point I got the floral stem and made a loop.

Then I twisted the floral wire around the loop so the flower was secure and standing up on the floral stem.  As far as the fabric covered vase goes, Audrey and I found an old, empty Pringles can sitting around so we washed it out.  We found some pretty black and white fabric to go with our flowers.  We measured the can and added a half inch to top and bottom to fold it under so we wouldn't have fraying.

Then I applied some Mod Podge around the can, and wrapped it with the fabric.  Then I added some hemp rickrack with fabric glue because I love me some rickrack.  Small, large, pink, hemp.  It doesn't matter.  If I can add rickrack to something, I generally do.

And done...pretty button flowers for all those sneezers out there.  Unless you are allergic to adorable!!!!  Thanks, Angie for letting me share!  And thanks to Cooper Satterfield for taking pictures for me!

"Someday, I'll be a real flower."

v.d. t.p. f.y.i.s

In the last few weeks, perhaps because I find so many brilliant crafts for children on Pinterest which leads me to  blogs I have not seen and crafty mamas working with toddlers, I have been keeping our toilet paper cardboard rolls for crafts. It's not that this hasn't occurred to me before, but I just couldn't think of anything cool to make with them. I found these very cool yetis made with toilet paper rolls.

After I did the birds on a wire, I was thinking that toilet paper rolls might be cool candle holders. So Beezus and I kind of brainstormed. Beezus rushed headlong into hers, but I wanted to plan it a little more.  More on Beezus' craft in a bit. The candle holder was a fun one.

As you can see below, I cut a heart out of the roll and kept a strip to hold up the heart. Then I cut another heart out of the center of the original heart. Using kite paper and newspaper, I mod podged newspaper print on the cardboard. Using kite paper, I glued the transparency onto the inside of the heart. That is my pre-newspapered heart there on the messy desk.

After everything dried, I then cut the back in a snip.

I have many yarzheit candles for Lucy, so I used one of those.

I then put the heart around the candle and lit it. Hard to see the candle here.

And all lit up in the dark, it has a lovely effect.

This was the first one, but I am pretty sure we are going to make more in different shapes, like Waldorf stars, or maybe even birds. I would think this craft could be made without a toilet paper roll.

Beezus on the other hand drew the heart and cut it out. And without looking back at me...

started putting heart stickers all over it. She had no desire to make a candleholder herself. So, she invented her own craft, which I thought was quite clever.

Then we cut the back of it.

Punched holes in each side...

Braided three pipe cleaners in two strips, tightened them into the holes.

And created a little Valentine princess crown.

birds on a wire

Today, we took a break from Valentine's Day to do this craft from lilla a's blog. I just love the way these look. Actually, I love stained glass projects, or fake stained glass projects. I did this Waldorf star last year, and still have it up in my window, though this time, I was determined not to repeat the errors of last year, which was simply that we only cut one star, so it looks cool from the inside, but not from the outside.

Anyway, the process was very easy. All of my glue sticks are out of stick, because little people steal them and leave them open. Harumph. But that was actually fine, because I used two-sided tape, and it was easy to work with.

First, I took an 8" x 8" piece of black card stock, and folded it in half, then I drew two birds in white.

Then Beezus and I cut them out like so.

Then I opened them up and lined it in double-sided tape.

That is just one bird, whereas the previous picture is two birds. (Did that make sense?)

Then I pulled out my kite paper. I love having this kite paper. It was more expensive than other kid craft supplies, but I have also had an entire book for three years. Kite paper stands up BEAUTIFULLY to all kind of crafts that tissue paper doesn't. I have some other crafts in the pipeline that Beezus and I wanted to do with kite paper. The cool thing about Lilla's birds was the beautiful way the tissue paper laid on top of each other, creating new colors. Beezus and I used red as the connector color.

After we were done, and taking down our snowflakes, Beezus said that they should be birds on a wire, and I loved that idea, so we used double sided tape and sock yarn to create a wire, and the lovely birds watching the world go by.

button and yarn hearts

I love buttons, but I do not sew. One of my favorite things in the world is a jar of buttons. I don't know why. I keep a jar full of buttons I have purchased for various crafts, or ones I have found. I really should buy a jar or two of vintage buttons, but for now, these are just a shitload of very colorful buttons.

So, combining my love of buttons with Valentine's Day, Beatrice and I decided to do a wee craft today. I guess it wasn't so wee after all. First we sorted out all the red, pink and orange buttons.

Then we grabbed a piece of canvas from our canvas pad. Very useful material. We cut out a heart and drew a faint outline on our canvas, then began hot gluing the buttons to the canvas.

And then...

We achieved button love! We framed it and it is very attractive. I am going to keep searching for a cool frame for this, like a gold, swirly, lovely frame. And I might stain the canvas with tea, since it is very white. I just want it to look antiqued.

In other Valentine craftiness, I created this weird thing to hang on the door. I saw these cool Valentine window hangers. There were very small, though, and I had this crazy wire heart from an old conversation heart door thing that was gifted to me. It fell and broke one of the hearts, so I pulled the rest off and was left with this wire heart. So, I took sock yarn, and created this cool 70s effect with it. Or Spirograph effect. I loved Spirograph as a kid. One of my favorite things ever.

I took it down, incidentally. It looks better on a wall, or window, rather than a door. It needs light behind it. Our front door is all window, but I can't figure out how to hang it since a wreath hanger isn't working. I will report back when I have sorted out the details of the button heart and the yarn heart.

Happy Valentine's Day, soon!

striped shirts

I know they say people with a few extra pounds should never wear horizontal stripes. And yet, I have an obsession with stripes. I cannot stop buying them. All kinds of stripes. Most recently, Le Gap put out some gorgeous striped boat neck long sleeved shirts. I bought the white with black stripe shirt. It fits beautifully, even on a gigantic fat person like myself. Scoff at the horizontal stripe rule. SCOFF! It was so lovely that I wore it out to dinner that night for Indian food. And Thor flung navartan korma at my beautiful white with black striped shirt.

Yes.

There is a turmeric stain on the front.

I bleached with a little itty bitty q-tip. It was ruined. After one wear. And then I started thinking about how cool it would look if I could silk screen something to cover the stain. I don't have silk screening equipment, but in 1997-1998, I worked as an artist's assistant. At that job, I mostly cut amberlith/rubylith, which is a frustrating, precise job, but is the first step of silk screening. Amberlith is masking film. You literally cut the image out of the film on top of plastic to make a negative image for silk screening. It is very easy to try to pull up the amberlith quickly and then rip your entire image. And then you cuss and kick something. I really don't know why I am explaining it, but I guess the point is, sometimes I think in amberlith. Like I look at images as negative/positive space and think of it on top of other images. Maybe this year I should buy some damn silk screening equipment.

ANYWAY, I have been thinking about this since I ruined the shirt. What image would look good over my white with black striped shirt? I first thought of my Obey Frida image, then my husband reminded me that I would have a Frida over each boob, or relatively close to each boob.

In the end, I found a vintage anatomical heart, and decided to change the color to blood red. I bought some printer, iron-on transfer paper, and created this:

And since I have a trigger finger, and already printed the Obey Frida image, I cut it in half and put it on this weird stripe shirt I have with brown and pink stripes. (i heart STRIPES, PEOPLE!)

I had so much fun with this iron-on transfer paper. It just makes me want to silk screen shit, though.

crayon hearts

I found this craft on Pinterest. It is originally a Martha S. craft. I am just warning you that our craft looks nothing like theirs. I followed the directions and did not improvise. We just suck at ironing things, cutting out things, and hanging things. So, there's that.

I should preface this by saying that I forgot it was Valentine's Day in a few weeks, and we should be doing heart crafts. Beezus loves hearts, so this is like her favorite holiday EVER. If she got to go door-to-door and get candy, and then Santa came overnight, she would want it to be Valentine's Day every day. Everything is PINK! And RED! And PURPLE! And PINK!

Anyway, I thought this was beautiful, and looked like stained glass. The way they hung over each other in that delicate, becoming way. So first you get some crayons. We did this craft with six dirty crayons.

Peel the paper off and start shredding them. Using a pencil sharpener to shave the crayons into fine crayon-y pieces.

You then get a large piece of wax paper and put the shaving in them. Fold the wax paper over. Try desperately hard not to get it lumpy, but crayon shavings are a little like glitter, except not so contagious.

Lavender and deep purple. After you fold it once, MAKE DAMN SURE you fold the edges in. I did not do this for the purple and now have a purple towel. Which is fine, it looks cool, and I needed a new art studio towel.

You can see the results of my first iron. YAY. You put a piece of paper, or kraft paper, or paper bag paper, over the whole thing and lightly iron. Put the iron on low or medium, but it takes almost no time. You can smell the wax melt.

Here we are with our cool new colored wax paper. It is very pliable and lovely when it cools. Then you cut out hearts. We did decide not to use a cookie cutter for our hearts. Which is why they look nothing like Martha's hearts. We strung them with sock yarn, unlike Martha and her silk thread. And hung them on a dowel.

You can make this look much cooler than me. I just know it. Share your Valentine Day Crafts with me, please. Looking for cool heart crafts. xo