Baby Toys and Diapers

A couple of my friends had or are having babies this summer, so I have been making many gifts and helping out sewing reusable diapers. For baby shower gifts I sewed these two stuffed animals I made patterns for. They were both pretty big, and I hope that the little ones will be able to play with them for a long time. One of them is a spotted doggie and the other a cute elephant with shirt and pants. I am moving towards trying to make patterns from my designs, and after I have enough done, I hope to make a whole book out of it. Kathy Mack from Pink Chalk Studio recommended a helpful book for me to read- Publish Your Own Patterns by Nancy Restuccia. I hope to get some info on how and where to publish the actual pattern since it needs to be the right size and printed hopefully on large sheets of paper. I look forwards to receiving the book in the mail! If you are interested in ordering baby gifts, please convo me through my etsy store.

One of my friends also wanted to make some reusable diapers. Having no kids or any experience babysitting, I had no idea even where to begin with sewing one. The crafty person as I am, I googled it and found a host of websites with more information I could handle. I was drawn to a few websites where the materials and types of diapers were the most clearly explained, so I could figure out what supplies to buy for a diaper making session. As it turns out, many of the the materials are hard to find in the fabric stores around town, so I ended up ordering everything online from Celtic Cloths. I have to recommend them to everyone. Jamie Karutz has put together a great resource explaining the different fabrics available, tips, patterns, and tutorials. Ordering the fabrics also ended up being a last minute thing, and Jamie responded to my emails fast and was able to get my fabric to me before I flew to Finland. I also scoured a gaggle of other websites and tried sewing three different patterns. Here are some of the resources I found most helpful:
Zany Zebra had a great list of tutorials and patterns. There was a link to a visual tutorial and they also sell materials.
Fern and Faerie was nice because it explained different kinds of reusable diapers and how to use them.
The best pattern that worked for us, to make all in one diapers was the Ottobre Design pattern. It was the best size and fit the best around the legs of the baby. It was also closest to the diapers that my friend already had store bought. Ottobre Design is a luscious Finnish sewing and craft magazine with patterns for children and teens. I have flipped through it several times at the store and oo-ed over the beautiful layout and designs in the magazine.
If you are unsure, of how to sew one, I would suggest to sew one out of some scrap fabrics before cutting into the more expensive materials. This is how our first diaper out of the "real" material turned out. I got the foldable elastic from Celtic Cloths that could be sewn on the top of the seam on the outside of the diaper edge. My friend ended up deciding she wanted to have a soaker pad that was just velcroed on top of the diaper instead of putting one inside the diaper.


Here are some other baby inspired gifts and ideas from Etsy:
On the top is a hand screenprinted piece by Strawberry Luna. You can buy a whole set of alphabet prints from her store. The adorable green shoes are from Heather's Hobbies.
In the middle row is a cute baby Mai Tai from My Blessed Baby and a pattern for a cute baby hat from McHat. If you are unsure of your sewing skills, you can convo them through Etsy and have one made for you. I thought the Ouch Pouch from Pillow Sew Cute was an ingenious idea and would make a great baby shower gift. Pair it with a cute sensory toy owl from Cafe Crinkle.
For the green conscious baby, the reusbale Wrap-n-mats now have snack pouches as well. I use one for my lunch sandwiches and am totally in love with it. Etsy also has many stores that sell reusable snack pouches etc.

If you are not familiar with Instructables.com, definitely go check it out. They have great tutorials for just about anything you could ever imagine. Here are just a few picks for our baby themed post: Baby sling by Momma+boys, and a blanket and donkey baby gift set. I posted this one a long time ago for an etsy competition... Hope you enjoyed the article If you are into Jane Austen, I have a super post for you coming up!

A Little Bit of a Photo Diary

I have been making crafty things all along this time, but have not had time to post things as so many things were happening in my life at the same time. Over the weekend I will post more crafty things and tips. But for now, I wanted to share my inspiration. I traveled back to Finland for a month this summer to go see my friends and family. Nature is always a big draw. I am familiar with the woods around our house and love to go for walks to see what I happenstance on. Among the hustle and bustle of making sure I get to see all my friends and family- nature offers a place to relax and recharge my batteries. Here are some pictures that inspire me over my trip.


A view from the country road leading to our summer house. If you are unaware of it, most Finish families own a small summer cottage.

The view of our sauna from the other side of the lake. I love the gnarly old pine trees that insist on growing high up on the large rock by the lake.
It was fall, and the harvest has begun.

A lovely little fairytale mushroom. The one below looks like the most average mushroom, so I named him Mr. Smith.
I love the dance of colors on a mossy hillside.
Some fall colors

A little creek we drove over on our road trip.
I think I will use this picture for art one day. I imagine a bird sitting on top of the post.
Pretty lake views from a friend's summer house.

Mr Beetle.
In the woods the young birches can sometimes be seen bent over from the weight of winter snow.
I wish I could have captured it when the puffs of seeds were floating at their fullest. Here is a picture right after.
Don't cross the line neighbor!
This mushroom seemed to sprawl all over.
What did the doggies see?
Well wouldn't you know... We get a lot of deer, rabbits and fox on our front yard.

It was the best blueberry season ever! I picked gallons of them.
Love the pictures of these colorful berries. I am not sure what they are called in english. In finnish they are Puolukka.

The little bee was right behind me working as I was taking pictures of the berries.
On my walks I ran into an addeer, it had just been run over by something and was still very life like.
I saw this little clever guy as I visited one of my friends in the city.

Dress, skirt and Cake

What could be better than that!

I made the New Look 6674 wrap around dress a couple of weeks ago. This was going to be my practice dress, with some pretty flower fabric that I had bought from the thrift store (used to be sheets). It was a pretty easy pattern to sew, but of course I wantd to make things complicated for myself by making it into a reversible dress.

The idea with the reversibility worked out pretty well, except for one spot where the fabric is pulling from my armpit to the neck. I also wish that the dress would cover up more in the celavage area, now I have to wear a top underneath it if I would ever dare to wear this in public. I think for my next try I will also make it out of a stretchy fabric, and add the contrasting color band to the neckline. I will also have to figure out what to do with that part around my neck thats pulling. If anyone has any ideas on where to add or change the pattern, ideas are welcome.

I am posting two views of the dress, one turned each way. Here are also a couple of other pictures of successful NL 6674 dresses.

While I was sewing, I whipped up a little summer skirt with pockets. It was an old pillowcase, and the fabric was just so cute I had to do something with it. (its still a little wrinkly here) I just kept fitting it on and sewing as I went along. Not the professional way of making things, but it wasn't a serious project, so I just winged it. The top part is a stretchy fabric to make it comfortable to wear to the beach or a walk with the dogs.

I seem to have also been made the designated cake baker for my husbands unit. I made a chocolate cake yesterday for a birthday, but forgot to take a picture before my husband took it to work. This caramel and almond topped cake was for another b-day about a month ago. It was super tasty with fruity filling and whipped cream on the inside.

Interview

If you aren't already tired about reading about me, come check out my interview with Deborah from Deborah's Daily Dish!

Watercolor Class

So I remembered to bring the camera to the botanical watercolor class I have been taking for over a month now. Its a nice small group only about 10 people. Above is the finished colored version of the artichoke that we worked on for a couple of weeks. Our new assignment is a pansy. This week we learned how to mix colors for the floer and next week we are learning how to mix greens. I have done a little bit of an underpainting on the leaves, but didn't want to get ahead of myself. The artichoke looks good, but the color is all wrong. I couldn't mix the right shade of green. Its a lot harder than it seems. I guess I could blame my limited color palette. ;)
Here is Louise Smith, our teacher with one of the students in the class, talking about pansies.

Another student working hard on a pansy, my workspace is the mess on the table behind her.

The co-op art gallery where I'm a member at is also having a spring face lift. We spackled and painted all the walls and are in the process of painting the floor with a new coat of color. Our opening reception for the next show is on April 25th, so it should all look great at that time! I am so excited about having the gallery look clean. I'll put a photo when were done. It just feels like another busy week!

March winner!

Congratulations! The give-away winner for the kitty earrings for March was Aminyitray! See the older post for details.

I was able to post a new hedgehog on Etsy and have some owls ready to go. Now I just need the time to get them posted...

Shrinky Dink Mania

We are planning a shrinky/dink-craft-get-together with the girls, so I wanted to find some inspiration before the pen hits the plastic. Above are keychains by Evie for mothersday; thats just around the corner... Here are some awesome little shrinky dink ideas:

I got this picture from Etsy a long time ago, but I dont remember the shop name. I'll do some research and try to post it later.

Cute little robots from the Little Lost Robot blog.

Jessica at How About Orange printed on her sheets from a printer to make these adorable tags.

I love Wee Wonderfuls from way back, and found that she also has a shrinky dink tutorial for some cute pins. I had to put two pictures...

Cute little dogtag idea from Making it Lovely. She also had a nice pink keychain.

The most awesome jewelry by Irina. I have to make something like this for myself.

Another place to get awesome shrinky dink jewelry is Fuzzy Bunny Shop on Etsy.

Before I make this post too long, I made a collage of some more pieces. There are so many people doing imaginative things with shrinky dinks its amazing and hard to choose! Going from top left corner clockwise:

Robot necklace from Luna 1375

DillonDesigns rings- I never even thought of that!

KaylaJane has really pretty charms and pendanst in her etsy store.

Passion Flower has cool cutouts.

DIY ice cream necklace with glitter and rhinestone for the younger kids out there.

Shrinky Dink Test Lab has a ton of great info on the product. Here are some wine glass markers.

I love everything that She Felt Pink has in her store. a lot of old tattoo design type of items.

I hope this post has a little bit of inspiration for everyone. I can't wait to get my hands on some plastic! I'll post some pictures of our creations next week. I know it is a new month, and I really need to do my give away, but its been crazy busy. I need to do that asap...

New Patterns

I visited a friend a couple of weeks ago and she borrowed a whole bunch of cute Japanese craft books to me. I loved flipping through everything and drooling over all the cute little critters.

I drew some of the patterns out, and in my enthusiasm was able to put them into practice. I started out with two owls and a hedge hog. I had seen the owls in so many places before, and it was nice to make some myself. I got so excited that I cut a whole bunch of fabric out and started 12 more. I had to go to a conference so I could not finish them all right away, but here is where I got so far.
Harry the hedgehog was fun to make. He is very small though, so it took a lot of effort to sew and turn the arms inside out. On such a small scale the corduroy was pretty stiff to maneuver. When finished he ended up turning out just as cute as the hedgehogs. I cut another hedgehog out, but haven’t had time to sew it together yet. It is fun to work on this miniature scale for a change. IT takes just as long to make as bigger stuffed animals, but smaller is always cuter.

The watercolor class I talked about earlier is also a lot of fun. I am learning some new tips, but mostly I enjoy just getting back into making drawings again. After the first week, the assignment was to work on basic watercolor techniques. I am not a very good student, since you can tell I never finished my exercises… I guess I should work on this again.

The next week we were working on shading, and had to bring in a round object. I had chosen a garlic, but had to use 5 cloves of it the night before for cooking, so it ended up being a half a garlic. We were just painting with a gray color to practice lights and darks.

Last week we had to bring an artichoke in and draw that with graphite. Tomorrow we are going to bring the completed drawings in and paint over them with watercolors. I am excited to do that, since I have done a lot of drawing and my prints are predominantly black and white, but don’t really know the intricacies of color in plant life. Listening to the teacher there seems to be a lot of things I never noticed. Apparently on a green leaf the highlights always have yellow undertones and highlights have blues. I would have thought opposite. So after my great attempt at painting this artichoke tomorrow I’ll post it here.

On a completely different note, if you have seen those pretty letter pressed cards in gift shops and wonder how they are made, I will soon post a video from a printmaking conference I just came home from.

Shrinky Dinks and Drawing Easel Idea

I hope you are doing great today. I wanted to share a craft with you that I had almost forgotten: shrinky dinks. I remember making these with my mother when I was a little girl. Oh, the thrill of watching your drawing shrivel up right before your eyes! Last year I had seen it somewhere and brought it up with my husband, who to my suprise had never even heard of shrinking plastic. So I headed out to the nearest craft supply store (A.C. Moore) and found a great deal on some shrinky dink plastic to educate my husband on craft making. It came in a nice pack of 8 sheets, so no worries if you mess the first one up. There are directions if you have never made any. Its super simple, basically just draw your design, cut it out with a pair of scissors, and then bake at 325 for a couple of minutes. Done!

I used regular colored pencils to draw, but it was a little dusty after baking, so I had to fix it with some polyurethane spray. You could use markers as well. The nice thing about the sheets in this set was that it was see-through, so I printed out some photos (left) from my desktop and used them as a guide to make fun gifts to my family and friends.

I made a whole bunch of keychains/zipperpulls, earrings, and a pin. To the left you can see a pair of the earrings.

To get an idea of how large to make your drawings, I have the below guide of before and after baking size.

Below is a flathaired retriever pin for my friend who has two, and zipperpulls/ charms for my mom and sister of our dog and horse back home. (I hope they dont read this before I give these to them)

Here's a collection of other charms.

My husband is into these plastic Gundam model kits, so I drew him some of his favorite characters.

I started an 8 week botanical illustration class this week as well. It is taught by the very talented Louise Smith, who has a beautiful website http://www.greenstems.com/. One of the ladies in the class had made her own little travel easel from a camera tripod. I thought I'd share the simple design, in case anyone else needs to make one. Basically, she screwed a piece of wood to the piece that comes off on the top of the tripod, and added velcro on it. The other half was a piece of corrugated plastic board with velcro on the bottom of it. Voila! Stuck together makes a great mini easel that travels well, if you like to paint or draw outdoors.

New Monthly Giveaway on Etsy

To boost sales after our move, and to get back into making things- I am starting monthly giveaways from my etsy store. The raffle is pretty simple, buy anything from the store and you are automatically entered to win. On the first day of the following month, a random drawing will determine who will win the giveaway!

This months giveaway will feature a pair of cute kitty earrings featured on the left. Good Luck!

Chocolate Dreams & Inspirations

Chocolate is one of my weak spots, and in case it is one of yours too, I wanted to share this recipe with you.

I have had this 5 minute (yes, that's right) "Chocolate cake in a cup" recipe tucked away on my computer for a year now and finally had a chance to try it. I was very sceptical about how this might work, so I grabbed the biggest cup we had (just to be on the safe side) and tossed it all together:

4 tablespoons flour (that's plain flour, not self-rising)

4 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons baking cocoa

1 egg

3 tablespoons milk

3 tablespoons oil (I used butter in absence of oil)

3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)

Small splash of vanilla

Why not add some nuts too?

This makes enough for two, if you are not greedy. Add dry ingredients to mug and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well. Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla, and mix again. Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts. The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed that's normal!

When it's all done, take the cup out of the microwave, allow to cool a little and tip onto a plate to make devouring easier. We put the cake in a bowl, added ice cream, sprinkles and whipped cream, mmmmm-mm good! I used a huge cup, but after trying the recipe, I think a regular coffee cup will be big enough. Now- do I think this is the best chocolate cake I've ever had? No, but for the time and effort put into it and satisfying a night time craving- it sure hit the spot and beat running out to get one or spending 1 1/2 hours baking it.

As I am dreaming of chocolte cake here, I wanted to share some other dreamy creations found on Etsy: top right a beautiful necklace by Lillyella. It is so precious I want one right now! Next to the lilypad is a cute bunny by Zygopsyche. I just love the fabric used for the bag by Daphnenen and the retro woolen bird by Catsmiaow.

I am also doing a craft fair this coming weekend, a little scary since we just moved, and everything is a little dishevelled... it should be fun though, I hope to have time and get some space to make a couple of new things for it. :)

Move rapidly approaching...

Our movers will be here on wednesday! I wont be able to write in a little bit, since it will be a long drive from GA to WA. Hopefully we'll get internet set up at our house within a week or so when we arrive.
I packed my sewing machines yesterday, so I concentrated on some art for a change today. I did a demo on some lithography plates last week, and got inspired to make a set of three little "hut" prints. (You can see the video on my art blog http://www.mirka-h.blogspot.com/)
While I was drawing the prints, I would think back to my childhood. Building little huts was one of my favorite activities growing up. Even when the other kids would come and break our hut down, we would always build a new one trying to make innovations as we scavenged for supplies.
I think after our move, I will put a couple of prints on Etsy to see if there is any interest.