Egg Designing Competition

At school each year my kids enter the 'Egg Designing Competition'. This is always held just before the kids break up before Easter.  The photograph above was the design that my son made, 'Dracula'. The children have to design their eggs and props at school, not at home! Apparently this is to stop the children having help from their parents.

The photograph below is of the entry my 9 year old daughter made at school, these are chicks in a basket.

Unfortunately, neither of them won the competition.  There were some great entries and to be honest I think it must be so hard for the teachers to choose a winner.

I boiled quite a few eggs, so that the kids could have a test run in the house the day before the competition, so they could see if their design would work.  This was because last year things didn't work out well and paint was running all over. This year they decided to use marker pens instead!

Wide Headband Tutorial

I thought I would share with you some photos of some wide headbands I have previously made for my children.

I love making headbands for my daughters', especially for my eldest daughter.  She has lovely bouncy curls which I personally think make her look adorable in wide headbands.  My daughter even makes her own headbands, but finds it easier to make the thin ones.  Here is a great tutorial I found showing how to make wide headbands. wide headband tutorial

She personally doesn't like her hair as it needs a lot of work to keep it looking nice, but I would love to have her hair.  She has tried to straighten her hair, which makes her look so different!  I personally think she looks better with her curly hair. When she is older she can decide for herself what she does with her hair, but I personally don't agree with putting to many products and heat stylers on her hair at such a young age.

T-Shirt Designing

My daughter had a Party at the weekend.  She chose to have a craft party similar to last year.  Her choice again was to design T-shirts.

I bought some plain white cotton T-shirts from Asda (Walmart) they were in packs with blue T-Shirts, but they were still the cheapest option.  I am sure the blue ones will still come in handy!  I already had plenty of fabric pens, as these are used regularly in our household.  I did buy 2 more pens as some do get used more than others.  I have fabric paint, but I find this is too messy for the children and pens are very easy to use.

They could choose what they wanted to put on their t-shirts, I already had some printed 'Hello Kitty' sheets for them to trace around.  I had requests for 'monkeys, ladybirds, and moshi monsters.  I simply found some pictures online and printed them out on plain white paper. The children then placed these inside the T-shirts so that they could trace the picture onto the T-Shirt.  Please note that when drawing onto T-Shirts, always have some card underneath, so that the pen does not leak through to the other side of the T-Shirt!

Once they had all finished designing, I left the T-shirts for about 10 minutes to make sure the ink was dry. I ironed all the T-Shirts so that the colour was heat sealed to the cotton T-shirt. This stops the colour from running when you wash them.  The children also designed on the back of the T-shirts and around the neck and arms.

Below is a photograph of all the party girls, modelling their finished T-Shirts.

Below is a mini Tutorial
Here is what was needed:

• Plain Cotton T-Shirts (white preferable for tracing!)
• Fabric Pens (assorted colours)
• Card or cardboard (to stop pen leaking through)
• Printed Designs (to trace from)

Here are the basics steps to designing your own T-Shirts:

• Place the cardboard inside the T-Shirt
• If tracing also place that inside the T-Shirt
• Draw your design onto the T-shirt
• Once dry (about 10 minutes) iron over the pen design

It took just over an hour for them to complete the T-shirts, once they were finished they then decided to listen to some music and do some dancing.  As take away gifts I had made them all some personalized printed gifts, instead of the normal sweet goody bags. I printed off some lovely place mats and bookmarks and some craft gifts to make at home!

Does anyone else want to share with me what crafts they have done at their children's parties?

Hello Kitty Hat

My youngest daughter has a lovely red and white hat, which she loves wearing, but she said she also wanted to have a Hello Kitty Hat. I thought I would compromise and change the hat she currently has into a Hello Kitty Hat!  I bought a couple of Hello Kitty iron-on transfers a while back now and I still had a couple of spare patches left over. The patches were red and white with a black outline so they would match the hat perfectly.
 

To attach these patches was so quick and easy! All I needed was an iron and a damp cloth. I placed the patch on the hat, then placed a damp piece of fabric over it and placed the hot iron over this for about roughly a minute. That is it, the patch is now stuck onto the hat, no sewing or any difficult work. Below is a close up photograph of the patch.

My daughter loved her hat, but she loves it even more now!

Iron-on patches are ideal if you want to jazz up a piece of clothing or bag, or to just cover a stain or hole! When I was younger I remember buying patches that I used to attach to my school bag, but you had to sew them onto the bags and could be time consuming, these iron-on patches are much easier!

Have you used these iron-on patches and if so what project was it for?

Designing Cards with Picnik

This is a card I designed for my mum to send to her family during the holidays last year.  I designed this using the 'Picnik' website, here is the link http://www.picnik.com/ This is a great site that even my children use to design their own cards or posters.  This is a free site that I have used many times, there is the option to upgrade if you pay extra, but if you look around the site there is plenty in the free option.  I only use the free version and the card I designed above was designed using the free version.

You can change the colours, size, add text and add graphics.  As I said my 8 year old uses this site unaided, the instructions are so easy to follow, there is a help box which pops up when you first start using it.  Below is the original photograph I used to make the card above, so you can see what I have changed. This photograph is of my mother's chihuahua puppies waiting in the vets for their injections (ouch!)

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Applique Letters on Clothing

Above is a photograph of my youngest wearing some clothes that I altered for her.  I added applique letters to her top and also with matching fabric I added some large hems (cuffs) to her matching trousers.

How to do the applique letters:
1) I found some letters on the internet and printed these out in large onto A4 paper.
2)  Then I cut these out to use them as templates.
3)  I placed these onto the fabric and traced around them.
4) Then I cut out the fabric
5) I then sewed these to the top.

How to do the hems (cuffs):
1) Here is a link showing how hems are attached.  I followed the instructions about adding the hem, by opening up the trouser legs only enough to add the extra fabric.  I did not unpick the whole of the trouser legs! http://craftsanity.com/project/files/project19.html

Adding the extra hems (cuffs) can be beneficial if you are wanting to make the trouser legs longer.  Adding Appliques are also useful to cover any stains that are on your children's clothing.

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Funky Shark Stuffed Toy

The above photograph is of a sewing project that my 12 year old son made at school.  They were given a task to make a sewing project that had a 'funky design'.  This was made out of felt pieces and stuffing.  He has sewed zigzag stich designs and also fabric painted some designs onto the felt.  They could bring it home once they had completed it.

Because it is kind of like a soft toy he gave this to his little 3 year old sister as a present.  She loved it and has been playing with it ever since.

At school they have been teaching his class how to sew, which I think is great.  My son has done some sewing, but never really decorative sewing, he quite liked doing this project.  I love the bright coloured felt that the children used, no wonder it was called 'funky'.