Make Your Own Bento Bag

Recently I got myself a bento box. I love it. I've heard from a friend that they are easy to use out at school. I realized that when I got it I needed to make a bag to carry it in. I needed to make sure that the bento would stay together and would travel safely. If you wish to make your own then go to my DevantART account to *THIS*. It's a very easy and simple tutorial on how to make your own. Go a head and try. ;)

Lots of Crafts

I need to post these before the masses start showing up at the house later today. I've done these quite recently, it's just that I haven't put them up on the blog yet. Either because I was being lazy or busy with sketchbook and being out of town. So here are the new things.

First off, I made some more kanzashi. One is for a cousin that was getting married last weekend. I decided to make her a kanzashi using her wedding colors: black, white, and hot pink. Then the other kanzashi is made from an old beret that I only wore occasionally because I hated the design. Now I wear it a lot more often. I like how this turned out as a first try of doing shidare (dangling parts) of kanzashi.

Then I made a charm as an art trade with a DeviantART friend, Demi-Plum. This is her avatar that she currently has on her profile. This charm actually has no paint on it at all. That's right. The eyes are all polymer clay.

The next charms were more things for my cousin getting married. They are also in her wedding colors. I decided to make a dragonfruit cane so that I could have uniform slices for the charms. I mostly like how these turned out. The cake park of the big cake is messy; not fond of that.

Then lastly is something for my Granni. She turned 75 yrs. old while I visiting for my cousin's wedding. She loves things that are red, white, and blue. I thought she would enjoy this. She seemed to at least. ;)

Silhouette Giveaways

So--- last Christmas I asked for one of these machines:
It's called a {Silhouette} and it's really the best crafting tool out there; and I haven't even touched it yet. I know a good product when I see one. Go the website and check out all the cool things you can do with it; glass etching, vinyl decor, heat transfer, paper crafts and MORE! As an added bonus there's no need to buy extra cartridges. All you do it hook it up to your computer and go!

We didn't quite have the funds for Christmas, so I moved it back to my birthday next month.

As a back up plan, I'm entering in a ton of giveaways to win this machine ($300 value) on a few websites.

{Tatertots & Jello}
{Oh, Hello Friend}
{Southern Hospitality}
{Thrifty Decor Chick}
{Today's Creative Blog}
{Southern Savers}

I'll update as more become available. Go to these websites and enter for yourself. Trust me, and don't forget to let me borrow it if you win. ;)

Two Kanzashi

A while ago I decided to try a new craft called kanzashi. I decided to finally pick it up again. I really want to have an Etsy shop and I was trying to come up with something else I could sell in it. Kanzashi came to mind. They are also fairly simple so they are something I can do when I'm not working on my sketchbook. This time around it was also a lot easier to find tutorials on how to do them properly. I also decided to use fabrics that I had around the house and also reuse old clothing for some of the fabric. Yay for being green!

The first one here is one that I made to match a new dress that recently got. I wanted to try this time making a kanzashi that had multiple layers. The other kanzashi that I did before were only one color and layer. I think this turned out pretty o.k. for my first try. I don't think that I'll ever use felt to make petals again though. The petals turn out massive as does the flower. This one is a little bit over 3" wide. It was a nice learning experience though.

This kanzashi started because of the fabric choice. I had an old pair of pajama bottoms that were ripped and the stripes gave me an idea to make a 'Fourth of July' kanzashi. The other thing I wanted to do was to make the kanzashi look like it was a firework blasting off in the sky. Not just because of how the colors are laid out, but also the overall shape. I think that it turned out pretty nicely.

Toy Car Caddy

One of the things we made this last month was a group of these:

Toy Car Caddies

My little knight had a birthday and had friends who had birthdays, so I knew when Meg came in town we had to use some of our craft time to make these for the boys.

We used the tutorial {HERE} at {Homemade by Jill}. Funny thing is we grew up in the same stake together and it's really cool to see all the things she's created.

A couple things we did differently:

• used yellow ric-rac as the road divider instead of little rectangle pieces.
• Instead of the car applique (which is way cute) we used some leftover Radiator Springs postcards we printed on fabric for my son's birthday party.
• We used regular weight fabric for the car pockets and it turned out just fine.
• Once we got to the third one, I realized the dimensions need to be increased if larger cars were to ever fit in the pockets (like Mater and the Tractor from Cars). So, instead of using Jill's dimensions on the third one, these are the ones I used: 19.5 by 10 for the whole thing, 19.5 by 6 for the car pocket fabric, 19.5 by 3 black felt strip for the road. When you create the pocket width, start from the middle and make the two middle pocket 3.5 inchs wide instead of 2.75 inches wide.

The feedback I've gotten is good; all of the boys love their carriers. Here's my son enjoying his on a long car ride home. And you can bet we'll be taking it when we travel at the end of the month.
If you have a little boy in your life and minimal sewing skills, making one of these is a MUST!

Still Addicted

We're still here.

Trying to recover from birthday bonanzas and a month of visitors... but we haven't forgotten about our blog and we haven't stopped crafting.

Stay tuned for the long-awaited toddler shorts and toddler drawstring backpack tutorial. Plus things we've made using other tutorials...

So... like I said... we're still here and crafting. :)