Tutorial: Wrist Ribbons

These wrist ribbons are one of the fun things that I have made for some of the kids in the Stocking Stuffer Swap, and they are so easy and fun that I wanted to share a tutorial with you so that you can make your own. Maybe even to stuff in a little one's Christmas stocking?

The supplies that I used are three different colors of ribbon all the same width, thin elastic (about 3/4 inch wide), needle and thread, and also a hot glue gun.

I measured my children's wrist and then cut a 6 inch strip of the elastic. I make this into a circle with about an inch of overlap,

I like to begin by putting a line of hot glue on that inch of over lap,

and then press together until set.

Here are my freshly glued elastic wrist circles,

Then I take my three different colors of ribbon, cut into about 1 yard long sections, and stack them lining the cut ends up. I've got my needle and thread ready to sew. If you don't have a glue gun you can begin at this point and just secure everything with your needle and thread.

I place the stacked ribbons against the part of the elastic that I just glued,

and sew, crisscrossing the thread on the side that will be visible when worn,

so that when I am done sewing the stiches look like a little star.

Now they are done and the fun begins, they get put on the wrists,

and away we go!

They seem to make dancing, running, spinning and even gazing just more fun!

Tree Skirt

 Making a tree skirt for the base of our Christmas tree is a project that I've had in mind for a few years and finally this year, after being inspired by this tree skirt, I thought it would be fun to make something similar. So, I pulled out the felt and got to work. The rainbow theme is just one that interests me and the project came together as I laid out the dots.

The most time consuming part so far was pinning everything in place. Now, I'm starting to sew the pieces on, I'm wishing that I had a sewing machine for this one, I'm sewing them all on by hand in the evenings while Frank and I watch past seasons of Survivor (our guilty pleasure). I'll post pictures when its done!

Also, I just wanted to mention that tomorrow will be the last day to order from my shop before the holidays, in case you had your eye on something. I'll be closing my shop for a two week holiday break as we leave for our trip to celebrate up north.

Stocking Stuffer Swap

So, I keep mentioning this Christmas crafting swap that I'm taking part in and I wanted to share a bit more about it, since we are really enjoying the anticipation and the crafting! There are 6 families taking part, and 14 children between all of us. The way it works is that all of the mamas make a gift for each child, then send the gifts by Christmas. My kids will get lovely hand made gifts from a bunch of other crafty mamas. Since about half of the families that are participating live in New Zealand I had to finish and send all of their gifts last week, here are some of the things that I made...

The top picture is of a little felt pouch for a 4 year old girl, inside the pouch I tucked some rainbow colored arm ribbons which I have yet to get a picture of, basically they are an elastic bracelet onto which I sewed multi-colored ribbons that stream behind when the child moves, my kids love them!

For a few of the children, as an add on gift I made this little needle felted bee, inspired by a gift that the teachers in our Waldorf Playgroup in Brooklyn gave my children. We've got a while hive of these bees on our family nature table, they are really sweet and so quick to make.

For one set of brothers, ages 4 and 7, I wet felted these two pouches, with swirls on the front. The pouches are almost identical but inside I tucked two different things,

Inside the pouch for the younger brother I tucked a set of arm ribbons, here they are all rolled up...

Inside the pouch for the older brother I tucked a set of these acorn men, Jasper really loves them and they can become anything, fairy guys or army men, you name it.

Here they are all cozy inside,

For a seven year old girl I made a moon fairy,

Who is coming tucked inside a pouch that I wet felted to match the fairy's colors,

Then there are these little needle felted birds that I am just dying over, I love them so much,

These are for a few girls who are 10 and still like cute things a lot. Frank cut a birch log into pieces so that each bird has it's own little perch.

Here are all the packages, I wrapped each gift individually and then put them each in a separate package for each family in NZ, tied up with string. It felt so festive to prepare them and send them off that now I really do feel like Christmas is around the corner! I'll post some pictures and a tutorial of the arm ribbons soon, they are so easy and fun!
You can check out what Morgan, one of the other crafty mamas, is making for the swap on her blog right here,
and here is a post that my friend Em did about some of the gifts that they made last year, such crazy cuteness. 

After dinner

After dinner, and before bedtime, a special time has developed at our house. A time for goofing around, playing family games, getting out instruments...

A time for snake charmers,

and tired princesses,

to come together and put on a show,

for the best sort of audience, for a very amused and proud mama and papa! Watching my children's imaginative play is truly one of the great joys of my life.

A little silliness

Recently we've enjoyed getting back into doing our family mural projects, where we lay a big paper down on the floor and just go at it all together with pencils, markers and paints. Often now Jasper will be the director, telling us the story of the drawing while we are making it, and telling us who should draw what and where. We are all liking this structure, as with his direction the pieces become like a dialogue and a family story.

This is one of our favorite ways to play as a family, and these sessions can definitely get a little silly,

Here is a recent finished drawing, that the kids immediately wanted hung up on their bedroom wall. The story of this drawing became about our family (see there are the 4 of us) wandering on a path through the woods where we saw lots of animals and then finished our journey at our new house in Charleston....see it there at the end of the path? 

I love the poetry in that story, and how doing these family drawings really helps our family bond and talk about things that are going on in an indirect way, helping all of us to feel safe, secure and together.

Felting like crazy!

The Felt-a-Licious class started a few days ago and even with getting ready for my show, I am loving finding the time for this total immersion in the felting world. I didn't anticipate how much Jasper and Carys would also love felting with me but we have been having a ball. I wanted to show you a few of the things that we have made so far. First we made the wool felted petals of the flowers above, that we placed on top of each other and picked just the right buttons from our button collection to decorate each one.

Then I decided that one of the felted flowers from that project would be perfect to decorate the new winter hat that I just bought at H&M, so I sewed it on, and then realized that it looks so cute with the hat that I decorated with felt flowers for Carys last year. Now we can wear them together, I just love how they sort of match!

We still had some felted petals left over and the kids and I started making a mobile with them, which then evolved into this hanging rainbow garland..

In between our wool felted petals we strung some beads and felt cut-out shapes. We hung it up by our back door, and the kids love seeing the petals that they felted hanging there in our rainbow. I really love family art projects like this, and am looking forward to more felting to come!