Children and Nature Awareness Month

Good morning! I would love to say it is a beautiful one and the sun is shining but alas, it is a beautiful one with rains and grey skies. But that is ok, it is a good day for puddle jumping in bright yellow boots!

I know that I usually bring you a tutorial on Tuesdays (at least I have been trying to keep up that pace) but today I wanted to talk to you about something super important. Children and more importantly, children in nature. In today's hustle and bustling society with dance classes, homework and family dinner time it is hard to squeeze in that outdoors time. Doubly hard in colder, wetter climates like ours here in South Eastern Ontario. But it is so important! And to help us realize the importance, and to motivate us to get out more it is Children and Nature Awareness Month.



Who does not love honeybees?

My Crafty Weekend : Bunnies & Eggs & Cookies! Oh My!

Welcome to the Easter Wrap Up edition of My Crafty Weekend We had more fun this weekend than a barrel full of soft fuzzy bunnies. What with all the crafts, egg hunts and park going we didn't stop! I had hoped to have a photo of a field berry pie up there too, but alas I got caught up in some spring cleaning. Today though, I promised to bring one to a belated Easter dinner today.

But we did get messy! We dyed hard boiled eggs with food colouring. We tried different resist methods including stickers and crayons. Our stickers bled and the crayons only looked good on light coloured eggs like yellow. Hot glue does not work. (Just in case anyone thought they were brilliant like I did.) But Wednesday had a blast! It combine all her favourite things, colours, water and play. We'll be doing this again soon I am sure, for the price of a dozen eggs she'll get so much joy!

We made the cotton bud bunnies and cards for Wednesday's friends. She gave them to them at an Easter egg hunt they put on. It was awesome, and sunny and wonderful and I cannot wait until next year! I am going to start collecting things now to put in the eggs next year. The amount of candy we are giving away is crazy!

Lastly, on Easter eve I squeaked out some pretend sweets. I made Oreos that open up for pretend dipping and licking. I also made some chocolate bunnies. I have some patterns and tutes coming tomorrow. SO stay tuned!

Oh yes, and I just had to share my favourite link from last week!

Is this not the most adorable thing yo have ever seen? Polly from Helping Little Hands created this for her daughter's first birthday. Along with matching cake! The tutorial has been done and can be found here as well. Who does not love anything Eric Carle inspired? If you have yet to visit her blog I encourage you to do so. Currently she has a serious of refashions happening called Hand Me Down Rehab and if you love felt food you will adore the Felt Food Cook Along for an entire pantry full!

And what did you get up to this weekend amongst all the fancy dresswearing-family feeding-church going-egg hiding chaos? Maybe you hosted a brilliant feast? Do you have a photo or recipe to share? Did you start something? Finally finish something? You should share with us!And now I am off to bake the aforementioned field berry pie! Wish me luck on the lattice top! Happy crafting!





   
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Wow! 100th post!

Can you believe it? This is my 100th post! I am flabbergasted that in just a few short months I have gone from three readers and fifty posts to 52 readers and 100 posts! What a great ride this has been. I am not new to blogging by any means. I have had a love affair with sharing my innermost thoughts with (sometimes) select strangers at Livejournal for many years (I think this is year number six) but this sort of blogging, the kind that puts myself, my family and our accomplishments on display is a little bit new. And I must say, I rather enjoy it.

I think I do need to celebrate this milestone as well. I have decided to do a giveaway. I really want to do a giveaway. So in the next few days expect an announcement! Oh my goodness I am excited! For now though, you need just revel in my utmost gratitude for sticking with me thus far. I get so much inspiration from my fellow bloggers it is crazy! I also get the warm squishies whenever some one gives me the support I need, or the push or a simple "Way to go!". Love it, I mean I love it!

Another thing I love? Sleep. And Easter. And the look on Wednesday's face when she wakes up to a basketful of goodies! I made her a couple things that I cannot wait to share with you, but I think I will save that for My Crafty Weekend coming up on Monday! So for now, I bid you bonne nuit and Happy Easter.

How To : Cotton Bud Bunny Crafts

Yesterday, I managed to squeeze in some great Easter crafting with Wednesday. It started out as a card craft for her friends but that inspired me to tear apart a cotton bud and glue it to some foam balls. You still with me? Good. It turned out awesome, have a look.




I will warn you it is messy (well more sticky than messy) and Wednesday is not a fan of icky. So this might be more suited to older kids, but at the end of the post you will see Wednesday's version of it. And she loved it so much she would only talk to Bunny until nap time. Below is all the steps photographed. If you need directions there is written instructions below. Have fun!

Wednesday on Wednesday

Some cool spring day fun.

How To : Felt Flowered Papier Mache Easter Basket

Good morning! The sun is shining here today and it is slowly warming up. After I post this I am getting pretty and Wednesday and I are going out to play! But, before that I have a photo tutorial to share with you. I had it in my mind to make Wednesday's Easter basket this year, to go along with the eggs I made her and the soon-to-be-felt-food I am making her. I had a few issues though. It needed to be big enough to hold two dozen soft eggs, it needed to be light enough for her to carry and comfortable enough for her to want to carry it. I kept going back to papier mache for simplicity. I re-examined the mailbox I made her and found it to be light enough so, I went with it. The next snag was how to cover it. My head was not in the place to make a slip cover for it like the mailbox but I knew I wanted a nice soft look. Enter this tutorial from Love 2 Create. It was inspiring in both its simplicity and prettiness. Over the course of the weekend I think I made about 160 felt rosettes.

My Crafty Weekend V2 Complete With Accessories

Oh and of course, I made a couple of nifty buttons to go along with the link up. Feel free to use them, comment on them or ignore them. I gotta say, they were the most difficult thing I have done creative wise in some time. I hope you share some of your crafty endeavors. Finished, WIPs, recipes, you know, whatever you had fun creating this weekend!

   
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My Creative Space - A New Blog Look

I have a new obsession. (I know, like I need another one of those.)But, I felt it was necessary to learn. Digital scrapbooking. I love it. I mean LOVE it. I do not love it more than traditional scrapbooking, I am too, tactile to give that up. But, for things like blog design, holiday cards, business graphics etc. This is brilliant. It took me two days to get to where you see the header and buttons are now. I am sure I will be tweaking them in the coming weeks but for now I am pretty darn happy with what I come up with on my first try.

I managed to find a ridiculous amount of freebies with some googling. Not all of them are Shabby princess either, but all of them are awesome! My favourite elements (In case you can't tell)are the torn bits of paper and the aged pieces. There are some really pretty feminine elements I like too but for now, I can't get enough of the fake masking tape and staples!

I can't direct you to any good tutorials yet because I just downloaded a but load of files and then began to resize and layer them in Photoshop CS2 until I figured out what I liked and what I was doing. It is itimidating, I hemmed and hawed and asked for help on Twitter before even trying to download anything. It was just so overwhelming. But, I plan on doing some fun stuff with the blog soon and I really wanted some cool looking buttons. I haven't made those yet, but maybe this weekend when I have my Easter sewing done (Ack! One more week!)

What I can do is leave you the two links I used for the most plentiful freebie downloads. There is the ever famous Shabby Princess freebies. I say ever famous because as far as I know their freebies are synonymous with getting started in DS. Also, they are great for us beginners as absolutely no cutting and pasting are required for the elements. (I mean each element and alphabet piece is it's own individual file.) The other site I got MAD freebies from was from ComputerScrapbook.com I must have received hundreds of dollars worth of free downloads, (with a lot of patience) just for signing up for their newsletter (which tells you about more freebies!) I did find a couple more sites but they didn't really have what I was looking for, but you might for serious though, just google free digital scrapbooking elements and you're golden.

And now, I must go and join the physical world and do my dishes, fold my laundry, play with my babe. Check out some other Creative Spacers @ Kirty's when you have a moment for the digital world. I hope you have a fantastic weekend!

Wednesday on Wednesday

Here is to sunny days and simple fun with good friends. Happy Spring!

How To : Mod Podge Egg Garland

This was a labour of love but it was worth it and I am excited to have a new tutorial for you.

A few notes before beginning:

• To Modge Podge the fabric to the eggs took me about 3 hours from beginning to end and I did sixteen eggs. The flowers were easy peazy and the threading took only minutes as well.
  
• The Modge Podging makes the eggs strong enough to be collected by little ones on Easter but pretty enough to collect in a bowl or thread on a garland. If I hadn't already sewn up two dozen fabric eggs this is what I would have done for her to collect.
• I did notice after all was said and done that the darker/brighter the fabric the better it looked when dried. I did up four to begin with and almost didn't finish because I wasn't sure if I liked them with the paler fabrics. As soon as I added the bright yellow and purple though I loved them.
• Also, you want to talk frugal? These scraps are the size of quarters and the eggs came from a couple weeks of baking.
  
• I wasn't sure if you would want to make the same flowers I made, but just in case I made a quick video tute because pictures would have taken too long to show you what a video does in 1:30s. Also, don't laugh when you see me burn myself.