paint cut paste

now for the handmade holiday gift we created for all of the wonderful little friends in our lives — samosa bean bags!

i first saw this idea on the artful parent back in september, courtesy of five green acres (who provides a great tutorial.) i dog-eared it (digitally, of course) as an idea for the holiday season. in november, i got out a stash of fat quarters in all sorts of patterns, and began cutting away!

whatcha need:

• scraps of fabric, each cut to  5 1/2″ x 15″  (one scrap of this size makes 5 weights)
• thread
• sewing machine
• filler material: dried rice, beans, etc. (i used organic split peas, you know, incase the littlest ones put them in their mouths.)

reprinted here for your convenience, the directions in the words of five green acres (in plum), peppered with my photos and my words (in black):

1. Fold the fabric in half the long way, right sides together.  Your piece is roughly now 2 1/2″ by 15.”  Sew each of the 3 open sides closed with a 1/4″ seam allowance.

the bean bag factory in effect!

2. Cut into 5 equal pieces by measuring every 3.” Each piece will be roughly 2 1/2 by 3.”

3.  The first and last piece will already be sewn shut on one end.  Set aside and sew the remaining 3 pieces shut on one end also.

then came the most exciting part of this for me — choosing sets of 5 to be packaged together for which child. i *love* coordinating and playing with colors and patterns! it was a fun process, but photographed very dark because i did it at night. i have to share anyway.

4.  Turn right side out and fill with the rice, beans, etc.

5.  Fold the open ends inside 1/4″ and pin the seam closed, making sure that the seam runs perpendicular to the bottom seam.  You’re not trying to make a rectangular pillow, but rather a sort of pyramid that’s easier to grab… (it turns out like a samosa! love that!)

pinned up

6.  Sew shut, either by hand or by machine.  If you go the machine route, you might have to remove some of the filling to fit it under your presser foot flatly.

too cute!

then comes the packaging! i stamped a slew of cloth bags with a fun dandelion and the word “PLAY” for each set of bean bags to live in.

i printed out little inserts that read:

a few games kids can play with bean bags:

• hot potato
• toss them back and forth while singing a song or rhyme
• throw bean bag in the air & see what you can do before you catch it (clap your hands, turn around, kneel down…)
• toss the bean bags into a bowl or box to see how many “baskets” you can make
• set up hoops or targets for aim
• bean bag “bowling” (set up paper towel rolls or milk jugs)
• learn to juggle
• a child’s imagination will make them into so many things!

*fyi: they’re filled with organic split peas. enjoy!!!

we attached a gift tag and a salt dough ornament to each one, and sent them on their way to the homes of many of our little friends.

more handmade holiday goodness revealed! N and i created a bunch of these lovely lavender sachets for friends this season.

much like we did when making N’s lavender dream pillow in the summer of 2010, we used lavender from our backyard, poly-fill, linen squares left over from all of the flag making we do over here, thread, and stamps we already had on hand. first we cut rectangles or squares of the linen to match in size, and frayed the edges. then N and i went to town stamping one side of each pair.

yep, we put a bird on it. (our stamp collection is heavily avian, oddly.)

sewed them up on 3.5 sides… (gosh, this is all probably self-explanatory.)

filled them with poly-fill and a few teaspoons of lavender…

finished sewing up the opening -

i attached a cute little note with baker’s twine and sent them on their way… into the bureaus of those near and dear.

hope your holidays were relaxing… and if they weren’t, take a whiff of lavender and chilllll into the new year!

we wanted to share a little follow up post about our adventures in painting the gluten free salt dough ornaments we made the other day. (see previous entry for recipe.)

after taking inventory, we ended up with more ornaments than we realized… wow, that batch of dough didn’t seem like it’d make this many!

we got out some materials for decorating these cute canvases. we had a palette of acrylics left over from another project that we had to use up, and we also got out our acrylic metallic paints (love the sparkle!) and some stamps and stamp pads.

N was interested in the paints, and had a great time applying every color of the rainbow on the ornaments.

i stamped some of the ornaments to attach them to holiday gifts. (N only wanted to paint.) the ink took a while to dry, but they turned out pretty cute.

stamps + baker's twine = sweet

N’s painted beauties were a colorful delight!

we were intending to give these to her friends, but at this point, i’m honestly not sure that she’ll part with any of these. (do your kids hoard the stuff they initially make as gifts? maybe this is a phase…?)

we have a lot more ornament ideas up our sleeves, so stay tuned for those… and we’ll see how the gifting of these turns out, but our friends may have to come visit our overly-accessorized tree to see these in person unless N gets into the christmas spirit sometime soon.

what types of ornaments are you making this year?

the paint cut paste history of salt dough ornaments goes something like this: i used to be able to eat gluten, and when i did, the homemade play dough squished all over our kitchen. when N was almost 2.5 years old (2009,) we made these (yummy smelling!) cinnamon dough ornaments (yep in the summer; we like to plan ahead) and when she was almost 3 years old, (near christmastime, like normal people) we made salt dough ornaments. close to valentines’s day 2010, we made these salt dough hearts into garland.

last christmas (2010) we skipped the dough ornament part of our christmas tradition altogether because our kitchen became gluten free a few months prior, and i found it daunting enough to cook with weird and expensive flours. at the time, gluten free crafting seemed like way too much. i guess i’ve adjusted because i now know it’s not. we created the simplest of gluten free salt dough ornaments yesterday.

i was (p)inspired by a lot of pretty salt dough ornaments i saw around the web this year, like these and these, and the lovely ones tinkerlab posted yesterday. so yesterday afternoon, i figured we’d give a gluten free version a shot, and i searched for recipes. the one we ended up using is from the spunky coconut. they made cute pretend fruit with their dough, so it took a while for them to bake their thick pieces, but even our thin ornaments were not quick at all! here’s what we did:

okay, so who among us hasn’t repinned this okra stamping tip junkie pin yet?

idea from newhouseproject.com featured on tip junkie

i pinned it a while back, and like most of my pins, considered it collected among zillions of ideas i may never get to. until tonight when i was cutting up okra — one of N’s absolute favorite foods of all time!

when i cut the tops off, i put them aside in a bowl. then gathered up some random scrap paper, squirted out two paint colors of N’s choosing, and let her have at it while our homemade gluten free pizza baked in the oven.

i probably could have cut the okra to have smoother, flatter surfaces. i probably could have picked out the seeds to make cleaner prints. i probably could have added a medium to my paints to thin them out. but i did not because i was frying okra. and that’s okay.

okra really is so cool looking.

the prints turned out kinda cool regardless of my jagged cutting and haphazardly thrown together while okra burns in the oil on stove art project.

a few days later. we made them into thank you notes and a birthday card.

we’ll likely try again another day with less of a time crunch and more planning. regardless, the fried okra was delish!

just a quick little entry to show one easy idea for homemade valentines…

all you need is a stamp pad, paper, a pen, and your own finger or thumb (well, your kid’s digits to be precise.) we saw this idea for fingerprint valentines on babble.com, and decided to try it. they used thumbs. N chose her pointer finger.

i wrote “happy valentine’s day” on each one, and N signed them all herself.

stay tuned to see the refreshing valentine treat N will be gifting with these cards…

have a sweet one!

one of our favorite holiday cards this year was made by a dear friend and her little artist, and it inspired this project… painting/stamping with cookie cutters!

first we selected some cookie cutters (mostly stars, moons, and hearts… we were working with a few themes) and some construction paper.

we put a pool of paint onto a paper plate. then N just dipped the cookie cutters in the paint and N stamped away!

N stamped some hearts that i’m sure we’ll use for valentine’s day in some way.

we decided to use the stars and moons to wrap the friend’s birthday present, and it made really cute gift wrap!