Kenna's Fairy Party- 2 years old

I love planning parties!! I love doing as many of the details as I can on my own. I love the craftiness, the personalization and the originality that comes with DIYing. For Kenna's second birthday, I realized that she could care less about the theme- so I picked fairies.With a winter birthday, we had to do an indoor party, and at 4 months pregnant, I was NOT hosting at my hosue. TheHickory Museum of Art offers party packages, and one of them is fairy themed. Sold.

At first my thought was to do a woodland themed party- garden fairies, and earthy things like mushrooms, river rocks, and moss would be great decor.

But when I went shopping for the first time, I somehow got swept away by all things neon green and pink. hmmm. My earthy party turned into a hot pink fairy party in one day!! That was fine, though. I embraced it and got to work making some simple crafts.

Cupcakes from Walmart. I made the flowers out of candy melts using this tutorial. **LINK, where are you??** Super-easy. (No, I do not bake. I do, however, covet the delicious icing that Walmart uses on their cakes, and buy from the bakery as often as my diet will allow.)

The weekend of the party was a little insane. We had just taken in a 10 week old foster child, my 18 year old sister had moved in 7 days earlier, and my parents had just driven up from Florida the day before. Oh, and I was pregnant. Needless to say, I was a little frantic getting set up- the art museum only allows 30 minutes for party set-up- so someone else had the camera. This makes me sad since everything was so pretty, and the pictures came out soo badly. :( No offense, anonymous relative.)

The Birthday Girl! (sporting her fairy costume, and matching light-up fairy high heels. Oh my!)She's wearing one of the art projects included at the art party- they made Fairy Crowns, Fairy wings, and fairy wands. It was fun, and each craft waseasily modified for all ages, which was good since we had a couple 6 and 7 year olds mixed in with our 2 year olds.

DIY treat bags- I simply used brown paper bags and printed off each child's name (in a woodland fairy font). Then I used my mega-scrapbooking skills to embellish the nameplates. The clips on the bags are wooden clothespins with fairy decals I made- another super-easy craft. (The fairy clipart was repeated on the invitaitons and some of the other decorations.)
Seriously wish we had gotten better pictures- this looked amazing in person. Weeks before the party, I visited the space, and realized that the "party" was staged in a cavernous room that doubled as storage. It was icky taupe colored and the ceilings were 25 feet high. Can I say ugly without hurting anyone's feelings?? It didn't feel particularly "artsy", and I was freaking out that a little table for 10 kids was going to get swallowed up in that space.

My solution was this: I stole some giant sticks (some might call them limbs...) from a neighbor's yard and hot-glued some pink and green silk flowers to them. Then I hung some of those round fairy disks I made (along with some that simply had a "2" or a "K" on them). I stuck the sticks in large glass vases with river rocks. It looked really natural and pretty. They were really tall, so it added height to the tables and drew the eyes upward a little. I put two on the main table and one on the gift table.

I also spruced up the table by making some pretty Napkins, fan-folded and secured with silk flowers glued to ribbon. The pink flufy pompom was so easy to make with tissue paper and floral wire!
We also tied balloons to each chair, and a cluster for the birthday girl. (can you see the hideous furniture in the corners? Not very party-like...)
Did I mention that this space was HUGE? We took advantage of the ceiling height and strung a bunch of huge, homemade pompom chains (so easy to make!!) around the entire room. It was so festive and brought color to the otherwise dreary art room walls. I think I (and by "I" , I mean my reluctant sister) made about 25 of these. I am pretty sure the art lady wanted me to leave them at the end of the party, since they made the room feel so much cozier and kid-like!

Other details about the party- I'll try to find pictures:

treat bags:

*fairy playdough

*fairy bracelets

*fairy erasers

*fairy tattoos

*fairy dust (pixie sticks)

Food at the party:

cupcakes

rice crispy star wands with pink sparkles

more details to come... my brain is fried!

Willa-Eve Photography

I am delighted to have been offered the chance for Willa-Eve Photography to take pictures of a few of my products. She did a fantastic job- much better than I have done to date. (Felt food is wily! HOLD STILL, Carrot!) Here' s her blog- click here

Here are a few of my favorite shots. You'll find her work all over my Etsy site now http://www.kennasfeltforest.etsy.com/, and I have plans to mail her more items to photograph (Because of course all her great photos are making my lousy ones look even worse!)

quiet book page, picking flowers

Quiet Book page- Matching Shapes

Yummy Felt Sandwich Set

Fresh Garden Veggies Set

I'm trying to find a link to WillaEve- as soon as I do, I'll edit this post! :) She's awesome to work with and will make your products look great!

toddler Christmas- First Painting

Kenna and I have done lots and lots of painting. We've used water colors many times, and we've painted with just water more times than I can count. (She's not even two yet, and she loves dipping, and definately hasn't missed the "paint" part of painting!)

Shamefully, I have been too neurotic to allow actual paint in the house. now, it's too cold to take it outside, but I figured my Month of Christmas Crafts would be incomplete without some sort of real painting, sooo... I took a deep breath and brought out. . . the paint.

It went a LOT better than I expected. she's almost two and understood my two main directions:

1. we only paint on paper

2. we don't eat paint

I pulled out one of my old shirts for her official paint smock, got some chunky brushes and limited her paint selection to green and red (ho ho ho). I provided one brush for each color, and my neatnick child switched brushes each time without ever mixing them up.

I decided that for our first painting experience, I would just let her do her thing on blank paper, no parameters.

She tried lots of different techniques, including long strokes and stippling. I was very impressed. She kept oohing and ahhing at her work, and muttering things like,"No eat", and "So pretty." It was hilarious. She lost focus a few times and almost swiped me with the brush, but I came away unscathed, and cautiously feel like more painting could be in our future.

On my desk lies a recipe for homemade fingerpaint. Do I dare?

Toddler Christmas- stringing beads

I scored some shiny green and red pipe cleaners on clearance last week, and bought some red and irridescent white pony beads to go with it. If you've ever tried to string a bead on a piece of string, you'll know that it is hard becuase string is floppy and doesn't hold it's shape. Pipe cleaners are PERFECT because they stand up and you need less fine motor control to maneuver a bead onto them.
My thought was to make candycanes to hang on the Christmas tree. Kenna (22 mos) took one look at the pipe cleaner and declared it a bracelet. Ah, well.

It took kenna very little time to figure out how to get the beads on, and then to slide them down the pipe cleaner. She was very intent on her work, and chose each bead very carefully. At first, a color pattern was developing (w,r,r,r w,r,r,r) and I was kind of freaking out, but in hindsight, it was just a fluke. :)

She spent about twenty minutes working on this project and got 12 beads onto the pipe cleaner all by herself. I put it away to avoid boredom or frustration, but after nap, she wanted to do more! I am in awe of her determination- it was really hard to get those chubby fingers to pick up a bead, turn the hole towards the pipecleaner and then slide it on.

As any good Mommy would, I did my own "bracelet" and kept pace, bead for bead with her. She loved I had my own to work on and she had hers.

Anyone else had success with stringing beads? Has anyone tried bigger beads, like those wooden ones?

Toddler Christmas- tearing paper

So, I have a 22 month old who wants to cut with scissors and use a hot glue gun. Of course, she can't actually do those things (scissors in particular frustrate her to no end) which means I have had to be very creative in thinking up Christmas crafts that she can actually do and enjoy. My goal was to do one craft a day each day of December, but let's be real... I'll be happy to do one craft a week!

Today's craft started with the fine art of tearing paper- something that my 1.5 year old thrives on! I gave her a sheet of green construction paper and told her to go at it. That lasted about five minutes (a lifetime in toddlerland) and then she was ready for step two.


Step two was to dip each piece in some glue and cover a tree quickly drawn onto a piece of paper. Unfortunately, dipping flat scraps of paper was way too hard, so I changed gears and smeared glue all over the tree. Ahh- as easy as playing with stickers! She happily poked pieces of paper all over the tree, andI was amazed that she didn't place any outside the tree outline. My little OCD baby...

For the last step I whipped out some little red and yellow pom poms. "HOORAY!" she shouted, (pompoms are very exciting around here) and she lovingly stuck each little ball onto her tree as "christmas lights". Be aware, pom poms won't actually stick to paper with a light coating of glue, so while she napped, I securely glued each pom pom down with a big dollop of glue.

Not too shabby for the first toddler art project of the month! Next time, I'd let her color the white outline of the tree green first, or possibly paint it (silly me, I thought we'd cover the whole drawing with green paper! ha!) . I also forgot to let her decorate the star before we started- I'm thinking glitter!

Chunky Toddler Crayons

Kenna is a scribbling maniac these days! She loves to draw and color and write on anything that holds still. So far, she's decorated my flat screen TV, the mirrors, my wood floors, and the toilet seat. She's truly a budding artist.

Her favorite medium is marker, and I think I've finally figured out why. Markers are thick and easy to grasp. Well, arming a one and a half year old with markers is always a poor idea, so I googled around to see if I could come up with something better for her to color with.

I got inspired by the idea of melting regular crayons down into larger, chunkier crayons. Why not? She has such a hard time gripping those little crayons that she loses interest very quickly, so they're just sitting around taking up space.

First I soaked the crayons in cold water to loosen the paper. It worked like a charm- the paper slid off every crayon with ease (except one really really stubborn one that must have had double glue on it or something... grrr.)

I grabbed my mini-muffin pan and lightly coated with vegetable oil, hoping the crayons wouldn't stick too horribly. (oh, wouldn't those silicone ice cube trays in all different shapes be fun?)

Then Kenna and I sorted the crayons into colors, and broke the crayons into about four pieces each. (You could of course make rainbow crayons or medley crayons, or contrasting color crayons... I'll try those ideas next time!!) Kenna chose which spot to put each color in.


I set the oven for 300 degrees F and let the crayon pieces bake for about 6 minutes until the pieces were completely melted.

Here they are, all gooey and melty in the oven after about 4 minutes:

I took a toothpick to each waxy puddle and gently swirled the colors together. (just to experiment) I then let them set up for about fifteen minutes. I read somewhere that they would set up faster in the freezer, so in they went for about 20 minutes. I checked on them and they were already nice and hard, and pulling away from the sides! They popped right out of the muffin tin- whew! (Hubby would not have been happy...)

This is what they looked like when they came out. I think they look so inspiring! Too bad Kenna is sleeping now.We'll have to wait til she wakes up to start a new masterpiece.
I only did a few colors just in case my recipe needed modifying. (Plus, this was a "hurry and finish before naptime" project.) The next batch is going to be a lot bigger, and I'm going to try some different shapes!
These chunky crayons are super-easy to make and would make great 1st birthday gifts, along with some paper or coloring books. These crayons are great for inspiring the very young to start working on their fine motor skills. Drawing, scribbing and pretend writing are the foundations of future literacy!!

Handy Husband 10-10-10

My hubby is always into some interesting project or another. This week, he decided to create a dress form so that he can "drape" and sew clothes for me. Without a pattern. Dress forms are pretty darn expensive, so he found a tutorial online to help him craft one out of duct tape. He told me that the end result would actually end up being the size and shape of my body. How, you ask?

By wrapping me in duct tape. Lots of duct tape.

We started with Hubby wrapping me in cling wrap." So the duct tape wouldn't adhere to my skin," he explained.
Super.
I crossed my fingers and kept reminding him to cover carefully.

The clingwrap was bizarre looking and since I was indecent, I didn't allow pictures. Please feel free to use your imagination.

Next, Hubby started with the duct tape. he worked from the top down, using short lengths of duct tape to control the shape, and being sure to really smooth it down before moving on. It did seem to get tighter and tighter as he went- so if you attempt this, be sure to keep it a little looser than you think you should.

Ack... can't breathe!

He totally finished the body, and went all the way up to my neck and around my armpits, so that he had an accurate shape and size to work with. Don't I look cute... I'm a bit woozy from the chemical smell of the duct tape in these pictures!

When he was done, he ran some thin blue tape at my waist, hips and bust as reference marks. Then he cut me out of the suffocating duct tape dress!!

On to Stuffing:
Hubby matched up the blue tape lines and re-taped the duct tape shape back together on the inside.

Using some old pillows we got at Goodwill plus some newspaper, Hubby stuffed the body of the dressform. He used cardboard to seal up the neck and arm holes, and then added more duct tape. About halfway through stuffing, he stuck the pole into the form so it would get wedged in nicely around the stuffing. (He used an old broom handle.) It took a few tries to get the stuffing just right- the dress form started out with a GIANT backside and a very lumpy side! He just kept adjusting and stuffing til it looked right.

Lastly, he stuck the pole into a christmas tree stand and Viola! A perfect dress form to start his career in fashion design.

Isn't my hubby cool? Next week, his first attempt at draping a dress! :)