Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Happiness is Simple

What is happiness to you?  Is it having lots of money to buy whatever you want?  Is it travelling around the world?  I believe that happiness can be simple... happiness is waking up to your kid planting sweet kisses on your cheek.  Happiness is watching the clouds float by with a cup of hot chocolate in hand.

With this in mind, here are some stuff from the "Happiness is Simple" series:



Thursday, May 23, 2013

Dinosaurs

When I was in school, my textbooks had doodlings on almost every page.  From simple smiley faces, to cute little animals.  Over the years, I learnt how to draw new things, new styles, but.... I've never ever drawn dinosaurs.

With the Angry Bird craze a few years back, my drawing skills were still able to satisfy my little boy. One day, he wanted me to draw dinosaurs!  'Mummy doesn't know how to draw dinosaurs, dear', I went.  But he insisted, urging me on, even acted out the pose of the T-rex I was supposed to draw.  My dinosaurs then were hardly cute, actually not even very nice, but he was happy with them.

Now, as a tribute to my boy, I've started a range of dinosaur cartoons on my Zazzle products:



Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Elephant Puppet

You know when your kid's friends have a birthday celebration in school, and they come home with goodie bags?  I'm not fond of all the candy, sweets or gummies, so I thought this was much more useful: a puppet making kit!

Elephant puppet
The puppet making kit came with all felt pieces pre-cut and already had holes along the sides so your kid could use the child-safe blunt needles to sew it up.  Decorating the face was a breeze as all the felt pieces for this purpose had double-sided tape attached to them.

Has anyone else received any useful or creative stuff in their goodie bags?

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Temporary Alteration to Baby's Clothes

Babies grow up very fast.... one day, they are wearing this comfy, cute little onesis, and then just days later baby seems ready to do an incredible hulk, stretching that same cute little onesis to it's seams!

We found a set of cute clothing (a shirt for toddlers, and an onesis) with the same design, but there was one problem: the smallest size available for the onesis was way too big for baby.  Elder kid was so excited about wearing the same design as baby that we decided to buy the set and see what we can do about the onesis.

Here's what it looked like straight from the store, way too long for baby:
Too-big store bought onesis

With a little adjustment, and just one line of machine sewing, it became:
Altered onesis

There was no cutting at all, and once baby outgrows this, I'll unpick that one line of machine sewing and make it slightly longer, longer until it's original size.  Here's one onesis that will last more than a month =p

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Fabric Flower Hair Clip Tutorial

I had a top that I really liked, but could no longer fit into it after I had my first kid *sob sob*.  I just couldn't bear to send it to the Salvation Army, so I decided to upcycle it into a fabric flower hair clip.

First of all, I cut a template from a cereal box:
Cut out a 5-petal flower template
Use the template to draw out 9 flowers on your chosen fabric.  I used a ball point pen here so that it shows up better.  No issue, just cut slightly inside the pen markings
Mark out 9 flowers on fabric
Then cut them out:
9 fabric flowers
Fold 8 of the pieces into quarters.  Don't match up the edges when you fold them, the more they don't match up, the better the effect.  Here's what one of them looks like:
Flower folded in quarters
Now get ready a small circle of felt:
Pink felt to match the fabric
Using a hot glue gun, glue 4 folded pieces to the felt like this:
3 folded pieces glued to felt circle
1st layer of 4 folded pieces
Now, use another 4 folded pieces and glue another layer, offsetting the pieces like this:
2nd layer of folded pieces should be offset by 45 degrees
2nd layer completed
Now, with the final flower (number 9), fold it in half, roll it up to form a bud and glue so that it keeps its shape:
All rolled up
After rolling, the bottom gets quite bulky, so use your scissors and cut a little bit of the tip off, holding on to the bud firmly so that it doesn't unroll.
Snip off the bottom tip
We're almost there.... put a generous amount of hot glue in the centre of your petal layers and hold the bud firmly in place until the glue hardens
Glue bud to centre of petal layers
Ruffle up the petals as you wish, adding some glue here and there to hold the petals in place.  And here's the final fabric flower:
Completed fabric flower
Since I'm going to use this as a hair clip, the final step for me was to glue on the clip and there you have it -- an upcycled fabric flower hair clip:
Glue on the clip