My daughter and I made these lady bug cards for her to give out for Valentine's Day this year. She signed her name on all 30+ cards! The card idea came from the tutorial here at Skip to My Lou. For some reason, I can't find any close up photos of the finished card, but we omitted the lollypop and instead used googly eyes. Thanks to Daddy for a Michaels run on the way home from work to pick up extra googly eyes for us.
The green Easter basket was a gift for my daughter's first Easter. This year my son is old enough he will want a basket of his own. I decided the green basket would become his and let my daughter pick fabric for her new basket. We're already at the age where her choices and mine are not the same but I think she made nice choices here. I would have used different eyes as the cross made by sewing on the 4 hole button gives the bunny a bit of a zombie look. (The plan was to use googly eyes on top of the buttons, but she is having none of it.) I should have used interfacing to give the basket and the ears a bit more structure. I had planned to this time but for some reason (mostly laziness) forged on without it.
For my daughter's birthday this year I surprised her with gymnastics and ballet outfits for her and matching outfits for her doll. Two mornings she woke to find Daisy, who sleeps in my daughter's bed each night, dressed in a new outfit and her outfit was wrapped and waiting for her.
The first morning was the day before her birthday party and a gymnastics party for a friend of hers so she got the gym outfit that day. I have since modified the top to remove the tie and sewed it shut so that it now pulls over, is easier for her to put on herself and we don't have to worry about it getting caught on any gym equipment.
Patterns are: Burda 9914 view A (but shortened) and view C for the gym outfit and Butterick 6660 views A and F for the ballet outfit. The doll outfits I made my own patterns for based on the larger patterns for my daughter.
I've been planning to make some Leave In Conditioner for months now. (Ever since the last of my Aveda Smooth Infusion Style Prep Smoother ran out and I've been too cheap to buy more.) I finally did and boy am I glad I decided to try it - I love it! I modified a recipe I found here. If you want to make your own bath or beauty products, I would definitely recommend Susan's site Point of Interest. She's got tons of good information and recipes!
Here is my version:
Leave in Conditioner
LEAVE
IN
CONDITIONER
2% Incroquat BTMS
4% glycerin
1% hydrolyzed protein (cromoist)
1% panthenol
2% dimethicone
1% essential oil (10 drops each of rosemary, cedarwood, clary sage and lemon)
1% preservative (optiphen)
water to 100%
After overbuying fabric for the beanbags back in November, I had lots leftover for the Crayon Notepad sets I decided would replace loot bags at my daughter's birthday party this weekend.
I used the tutorial here changing it as necessary for seam allowances etc since I was using quilting fabric rather than felt. Another Skip to My Lou tutorial here also helped as I don't think I would have come up with folding the pocket piece in half rather than having an edge to hem myself.
I wanted to do something different from the usual loot bag for my son's birthday back in November. Loot bags are great fun, but typically a lot of stuff that ends up as clutter, in the landfill, or, in our case now, recycled as Geocaching SWAG. I've had beanbags for the kids on my 'to sew' list for years now so I decided it would be a set of 3 beanbags for each child.
I used bright quilting cotton, so I did an inner liner for added durability. My fill was rice. I tried to research the best fill... but didn't find any conclusive info. I had a lot of rice I wasn't using around, so rice it was. I like the feel of the finished bags and as an added bonus, they can also be microwaved and used as hot packs.
Making 30+ beanbags took some time, but hopefully they will be enjoyed and played with for quite sometime.
Here are a few tutorials here and here if you want to make some beanbags of your own.
I made some excellent lip balm a while back. It is similar to Saje's Vanilla Spice Lip Balm.
Lip Balm
7.5mL candelilla wax
5 mL cocao butter (approx measure)
5 mL almond oil
5 mL hemp seed oil
1 mL vitamin E
1 mL jojoba oil
essential oils (3 drops cinnamon, 2 drops vanilla)
yields approximately 3 tubes
