mini art kit

A recent car trip highlighted the need to have various distractions for the kiddo in my bag at all times. I wanted a stash of compact little things to fit in there that won't add too much extra bulk, but will keep him entertained in a restaurant, in the back seat, or in a yurt during an overly rainy overnight trip to the beach. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything.

An empty mint tin is a great way to organize a few art supplies, including a couple of those crayons that restaurants sometimes give out.

I also added a couple of short colored pencils, some neon posterboard cut to size, and a sheet of stickers sent to me as part of an advertisement. (Kids magazines sometimes send them out to tempt us to subscribe.)

When cutting the posterboard, I made sure to leave an inch of space at the end and a textured edge to make it easier to remove from the box.

And there is is! A mini art kit perfect for stashing in your bag, next to a Hot Wheels car and a travel-sized packet of Play Doh.

I know it's really the Boy Scout motto, but I think I'm going to adopt "Be Prepared" as my own.

Thanks for reading!

finishing up our fix-it felix costume

If you're following along with the Fix-It Felix costume tutorials, you can find the golden hammer tutorial here, the cap here, the shirt/name patch tutorials here, and the glove tutorial here. Here on in, I'm going to cover the boots, pants, and the tool belt.

We lucked out and found a pair of pre-schooler-sized work boots in my kiddo's size at a thrift store for a couple of bucks. Maybe it's because we live in the Northwest; there were three similar pairs in different sizes on the shelf the day we found these. I highly recommend checking thrift stores for these before you buy something new, especially if the work boots are going to be semi-retired after Halloween.

The laces were shredded, so I replaced them. A new pair cost around $2 from Target. I know tons of other stores carry them for a similar price. Also, to help you pick the right shoelace length, count how many pair of holes your boot have. There'll be a guide on the rack or the back of the package to tell you the correct length. Handy, right?

The jeans are just as easy. If you don't already own a pair, these are super-easy to thrift. Go for straight legs in a dark finish to most closely resemble the movie. Then, just roll the cuffs for a perfect match.

The Tool belt

On to the tool belt!

I'll save you the trouble of my silly repetition and link you here to the Two Little Hooligans toddler tool belt tutorial. I used her measurements but made some changes to build my kiddo's tool belt. To start, I used a piece of painter's tarp to make mine.

I made my hammer first, then I measured around it and added four inches to determine the size of the hammer loop. This seemed to me to be the very best way to make sure the hammer would later fit inside the hammer loop.

I simplified the pockets by leaving off the second tool loop and attaching the pockets directly to the belt instead of using the sliders Christina recommends on her blog.

I decided it would be a good idea to dye the tool belt before attaching a buckle so that the dryer wouldn't do what the dryer does when heavy metal buckles go in. 

I used the same combo of Dylon's Sunflower and Terra Cotta dyes that I used on the first pair of cotton gloves in yesterday's glove tutorial. If I had this to do over:I'd have dyed the fabric first, and sewn the tool belt second. I really liked the structure of the belt better before it went through the wash.

The Hooligans tutorial uses a plastic buckle, I wanted to use a metal buckle. I saved some money and got a sweet looking buckle by buying an old leather belt at St. Vinnie's.

If you decide to use a recycled belt buckle, check the back of the belt; some use snaps so you won't even have to cut into the leather.

After checking my kiddo's waist measurement, I stitched the buckle onto the belt, punched a hole, and done!

And that's it, all done! Thanks for hanging in there for all of the many posts. Good luck and happy Halloween!

c is for chasmosaurus

After last week's craft fail, it was nice to have a couple of craft successes. This is one!

This chasmosaurus shirt is part of our gift for an upcoming birthday party this weekend (second part to be featured here, soon!). Our little friend is a big-time dinosaur enthusiast.

Those of you without a Silhouette cutter will be happy to know that this was made without one. I used freezer paper and an X-Acto blade, after first designing the image in Adobe Illustrator. Free dinosaur graphics are everywhere on the internet, though, so it's possible to do this project with other dinosaurs, without Illustrator. Chasmosaurus fans can use this design for your own personal projects (not for sale!).

You can print directly on the freezer paper. Cut it to fit your printer and make sure you'll be printing on the textured "paper" side, not the slick plastic side.

To save ink, I turned the opacity down to 30% so that it would print a light gray instead of black. You could also just print the image in outline, but I like to have a filled-in figure for whatever reason.

After it's printed, cut it out with an extra-sharp X-acto blade on a self-healing mat or a surface you don't care too much about (like an old magazine or a drawing board). The sharpness of the blade is especially important for those tiny letters.

Then iron it on your shirt and paint using a short-bristled brush! As I've mentioned before, the beauty here is that kids can help with the painting part. My kiddo helped paint this for his friend, so the gift is really from his own two hands.

Here are some of my previous freezer paper stencil projects, in case you'd like some more ideas or a bit more step-by-step.

(1) flour sack towels

(2) viking t-shirt

(3) toddler art pretzel shirt

Thanks for reading!

p.s. you can make these images larger just by clicking on them . . . but you probably already knew that, clever you.

freezer paper stencil toddler art pretzel t-shirt

My kiddo is less familiar with the 1960s than with pretzels, so it wasn't really too surprising when he pronounced the glittery, neon pink "peace sign" shirt a "pretzel shirt" and said he wanted to wear one. I thought something like that might make a nice project for one of the blank t-shirts we've picked up recently, so we headed home to make our own pretzel shirt.

Really, though, this would make a nice project for whatever image your kid wants. And the best part is that it's a great project for even little kids to help with, which means you're not trying to work on it by yourself while your kiddo is pulling at your sleeves.

You can take a peek at one of my previous freezer paper stencil projects (1 and 2) for the basics if you're not familiar with the freezer paper stencil process. Basically, cut a stencil from freezer paper and iron it on. For this project, we also used Crayola's fabric markers (previous freezer paper stencil projects here used acrylic paints and Tee Juice pens).

Because I planned on the kiddo doing most of the coloring, I covered as much of the t-shirt as possible with freezer paper to prevent color from ending up in unintended places. You'll also want to put a piece of cardboard inside the shirt to keep color from seeping through to the back if (like me) you have an enthusiastic marker-wielder.

I let the kiddo pick the colors and tried to encourage him to make sure a lot of color made it onto the shirt rather than the paper . . . but yeah, that's pretty much a losing battle, so I surrendered early.  After removing the stencil and heat-setting the design, we were done.

And here it is, finished! We were both pretty happy with the way it came out, although I think if I were to repeat this project, I'd outline the shape completely first so that any areas with lighter coverage wouldn't blend into the background quite so much. But I think that even without that step, this was a nice collaborative project. He got to color on a shirt, and I got to help make sure it looks like a pretzel.

Thanks for reading! What projects have you been doing with your toddlers lately? We're always looking for fun projects that keep well (read: don't have to be tossed out after a week).

p.s. you can make these photos larger by clicking on them; but you already knew that, clever you.

Crayola Fabric Marker, Assorted (Google Affiliate Ad)

hi ho, kermit the frog here!

Did I not promise you eyeball-melting cuteness? Bam!

Before starting, I tried valiantly to find the original source of this pin. I couldn't find it anywhere. But this is the image that started it all. From this, I interpreted, built, and eventually found a way to make a similar—but plusher—Kermie head.

Last year, when I made the Wild Thing head, it was big and round, and, to hear the mister tell it, uncomfortable to wear for very long. This year, I planned to make Kermit the Frog for the kiddo and Fozzie Bear for the mister. I didn't want them as large and unwieldy as the Wild Thing, but still cartoonishly large. I started with a wool baseball cap (brand new, found at Goodwill for 49 cents) and a sheet of 1-inch polyurethane foam from JoAnn Fabrics. 

(Aside: having since read up on polyurethane foam, I would recommend instead using the polyester crib pads found in the section where the batting is kept. I'll write about my experience using those in a future post.)

I removed the brim from the cap, after first checking that the cap fit my kiddo, with only a little give.

Using the cap as a pattern, I cut six sections from the foam: three matched the measurements of the hat sections (with about an extra half inch all around) and three with an extra four-inches on the bottom. 

Two short sections at the front. Two long sections in the back. The third short and long sections I cut vertically down the center, and together they form the sides (you can kind of see what I mean in the photo below). 

Everything is just whipstitched together; construction stitches don't have to be pretty since they'll be covered up later, luckily! The big running stitches along the bottom connect the foam to the hat base.

Two angled pieces make up the jaw; basically, two long rectangles with one end cut at a sharper angle. I attached this with pins while I test-fit everything. 

Then I whip-stitched and test-fit again. He was ready to call it "done" at this point, but I didn't think it looked enough like Kermit. Or really, anything like Kermit. He thought he looked like a robot.

Clearly unnimpressed with my plans.

Non-pill fleece in Kermit green, cut to fit. Ish.

I machine-stitched it inside-out, then stretched it over the foam head.

I pinned along all the seams to get a better, tighter fit and to match the fleece seams to the foam seams so there'd be a single edge. Then I pulled the pinned fleece off the  foam and stitched in on the machine.

Here it is, back on, right side out with the seams trimmed to avoid lumpiness.

The fleece was cut long enough to pull over the edge and attach to the cap on the inside.

I used a hidden stitch to attach the fleece to the cap. I know it doesn't look hidden here . . .

. . . but then I pulled it tight and the stitches pretty much disappeared. Voila!

Same deal for the jaw; I left one end of the jaw piece loose for velcro, so I cut the fabric a little longer to make a tab on that side.

I found a handball to use for the eyes. I used a kitchen knife to cut it in half along the seam.

I painted them white, too, then held them up to the head and realized they were way too small. Kermit needed bigger eyes.

I found a sack of foam baseballs at Goodwill and when cut in half, they made perfectly sized Kermie eyes.

I tried wrapping with felt and hot glue, but I didn't like the bunched up felt on the back, and the edges didn't come out smooth enough.

So I cut the felt smaller and stretched and pulled and ironed with a hot iron till I got nice, tight wrap, then hot glued in place. I ended up doing two layers per ball to cover bumps. 

Ba-bam!

With felt pupils attached with craft glue.

The stressful part: planning proper placement, then actually cutting into that fleece. Once you commit, you commit. I used washable Crayola markers to mark the placement so that I wouldn't have pen marks all over my finished piece.

Then I just tucked the eyes inside and attached them to the foam with hot glue. Completed head!

I used this photo of Kermit as a  guide along the way, including counting the points on his collar before cutting them out of felt and making a collar.

It's just a long, thin rectangle of felt cut to measure my kiddo's neck, plus an inch for the velcro tab. I cut out the triangles, then sandwiched them between the folded-over rectangle.

I wanted to go simple for the suit, so I picked up one size 6-8 t-shirt and one size 16-18 t-shirt from the boy's department at Target.

The larger shirt was used to make the pants. I used another of my kiddo's pairs of pants as a pattern.

Then I cut the pant legs from the large shirt's sleeves. Here's one tutorial on an easy way to do this, if you've never heard of it before. 

And if I wasn't such a perfectionist,  I would have been done. In fact, he wore his Kermie clothes and non-matching Kermie head to a birthday party, and it was just fine.

But since I'd bought the extra fleece anyway, and since it gets cold here around Halloween time, and (ahem) since it would match better, I sewed him a little fleece suit to go over his t-shirt outfit. Perfect match!

To quote Miss Piggy, "Oh Kermie! Mwahh, mwahh, mwahh!" (those are kiss noises).

We taught him to say, "Hi ho! Kermit the Frog here!" like in the old Sesame Street News Flashes. So cute.

What have you been working on this Halloween?

Fozzie bear post coming soon, but in the meantime, thanks for reading!

p.s. you can make these photos larger just by clicking on them, but you probably already knew that.

Linking up to:

Mop it Up Mondays #39