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Project: Tiny Little Felt birds

Posted by :bcjen On : August 11, 2011
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I still haven’t picked yesterdays tropical bird back up as Than wanted tiny little birds.  I’m all about something easy.  So here we go:  Little Easy Birds.

I’m fairly certain the pictures are self explanatory and as I’m really, really tired we’re gonna go with that. The eyes are just drawn on with a black Sharpie pen.

First up, the little guy we’re going for:

                   

I think I’m going to make a whole bunch of these little guys (plus other types of animals) and sell them at next years Used Curriculum Book Fair.

PS. Its the next day and I’m a little more awake.

TIP O’THE DAY:

I had mentioned that I was nearly out of the stuff to “stuff” things with.  New “stuff” was between $3.50-$5.00 and I just didn’t have that to spend on stuffing.  However, I did need cotton balls.  And since these guys are tiny, I used shredded up cotton balls to stuff them with.  Cotton balls would work for small projects, but wouldn’t be cost effective for big ones. The entire bag o’ balls was $1.58.  BARGAIN.

Project: Than (kid) Crafts

Posted by :bcjen On : July 19, 2011
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Not sure if I’ve mentioned this or not, but we homeschool Than.  It’s lots of work, lots of fun and very rewarding.  We’re part of a great co-op here in Phoenix’s East Valley so he gets plenty of socialization with other children, and I get lots of help when needed.

We also belong to a great Mom’s group that gets together at least once a month.  At holiday times, during our “park day” we’ll have a potluck and one of the mom’s will do a craft.  It’s funny how I’ve never done the craft.  I literally just can’t commit to it because I never know when I can walk or not.

Anyway…here’s one of the cute crafts we did at Thanksgiving last year.  Toilet paper roll turkeys.

We liked it so much, we came home and Than asked if we could make toilet roll baby chicks.

Who has all those toilet rolls around?  And paper towel rolls?

People who try paper mache of course:

The Dinosaur (this was our first try ever.  Lots of mess but worth it.)

 

Than also makes things on his own:

 

One day (before he talked me into getting real fish) he said he really wanted an aquarium.  We had foam paper and an idea.  So we both worked on this:

That only worked for a time.  Now we have 1 betta fish bowl and another 10 gallon aquarium with 4 platys (2 mickey mouse platys, 1 red wag and 1 sunburst platy), 5 neon tetras and 1 pleco.  How I miss the days of the foam paper aquarium.  It was so much easier to clean.

TIP O’ THE DAY

Have a Goodwill store in your neighborhood?  Go visit it.  Many have craft supplies.  Seriously.  Those popsicle sticks up there?  Goodwill.  Giant bag of over a hundred for 99cents.  Know those little cotton puffballs that most craft stores charge $7-$14.00 for a pack of 100?  We found them at Goodwill a HUGE pack for 99cents.  SCORE!  (Than found that deal).

Here’s what Than made with the puffballs:

 

We had previously found a sale on pipe cleaners and googly eyes and were really wanting to buy puffballs.  Until Than saw the bag at Goodwill we were out of luck.  Before you think he’s an enthusiastic shopper, know this.  He HATES shopping with me.  He was just trying to entertain himself when he found them.  The rest of the time in the store he was asking “are we done yet?” every 5 minutes.

Project: Patty the Dinosaur

Posted by :bcjen On : July 18, 2011
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Ok, so here’s the life cycle of Patty the Dinosaur.

Last week Than asked me if I’d make him an apatosaurus out of felt.  But this time could I “make it big”.  Normally I only make the felt animals the size of the rectangle felt pieces I get at Hobby Lobby for $.25 each.  I thought about how to do it and told him, “Yes, I’ll do it.”

So I took a marking pen and drew the design over three pieces of dark green felt.  1st for head and neck.  2nd for body, 3rd for tail.  Then I drew eyes out of white felt and pupils out of black felt.  Then I drew spots out of yellow felt.  Then I cut them out and placed them on the cut out body parts to see if it looked ok:

Then (remember I sew by hand because I can’t figure out the sewing machine…), I sewed the pieces together.  Badly.  Don’t care, though.  As I went I stuffed the head and the tail- leaving openings into the body so the head and tail wouldn’t flop down.  Sewing was tricky because I didn’t just sew the neck shut or the end of the tail shut.  Or the legs for that matter.  I did at first and the head flopped, so I ripped out the seams and had to start over sewing.  Leaving the bottom of the neck open into the body cavity seemed to work better as I could push more stuff into that critical area where neck and body met.

*NOTE:  None of my crafting is really “how to” friendly, but I’m trying…if you really want how to’s, let me know and I’ll work it out with better pictures. I guess if I’m blogging now, I’ll start taking pictures of each step when I make stuff.*

Than also wanted four legs on the dino so it could stand.  You know, because he couldn’t make it easy.  So I had to make each leg a pocket and THOSE I sewed together (each leg was sewn shut before attaching to body).

Here’s unstuffed dino:

You can buy the stuffing from Hobby Lobby or any sewing/crafting/Walmart type store.  It’s fairly cheap.  Oh and make sure you don’t over stuff or it splits the seams.  Also, make sure that when you pull a handful of stuffing out of the bag that you pull it apart in your hands a bunch of times.  It makes the stuffed animal better.  Always do that with anything you stuff .  You have to pull those fibers apart so it doesn’t bunch inside the object.

Here’s the finished project and one happy little boy:

I put a “collar” around the dino’s neck to hide the horrible sewing I did there.  I had a moment of conscious where I couldn’t allow Than to see just how badly crafted the dino was. :)

BIG TIP O’ THE DAY:  NEVER pay full price for things if you can help it.  Hobby Lobby always has really good weekly coupons.  Mostly it’s the 40% off of a regularly priced item.  The bonus here is that if you forget your coupon and have a Smart Phone (Iphone/droid/etc) you can pull the coupon up on your phone at the HL cash register and show it to them and they accept it that way.  I do that all the time.  Just make sure what the coupon is.  Sometimes they slip something else in there.

Background info on me

Posted by :bcjen On : July 18, 2011
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Regarding drawing….the Reader’s Digest version:

In October 2004 I had brain surgery.  I have 2 rare diseases.  Arnold-Chiari 1 Malformation and Syringomyelia.  They are a pain in the neck.  Literally.  The brain surgery took care of the ACM until the bone grows back.  Which may, or may not happen.  But since I’m so symptomatic it probably will. The Syringo is in my cervical spinal cord (neck) and lots of damage has been done.  It sucks, but I deal with it.

Anyway…sometimes I can walk and use my hands and sometimes I can’t.  It’s a gift from God that I can craft at all.  I like to laugh about all this, hence the joking around all the time.  It’s how I deal.  Anyway…another HUGE problem is that my memory is shot.  The ACM pushed my hindbrain down into my spinal column causing all sorts of problems (and ACM is a birth defect so I had it from birth til surgery at age 38 so lots of dmg done).

Having said all that the miracle is that I used to draw.  Not great, but I did it.  And I loved it.  But I forgot that I did it and loved it.  In May of this year (2011) a dear friend bought me an online art class for my 45th birthday.  She knows me well and knows that I’m a frustrated artist always looking for a medium in which to create.  So she bought me the doodling class.  I started out doodling letters like the class taught.  Then I started drawing.

Then our fish died.

Nice segue, eh?

So we start going to this local mom and pop fish store and they help us set up the new fish tank and teach us a bunch about raising fish.  I become fish obsessed (will post pics later).  I start looking up cartoon fish pics online and drawing them.  It leads to more drawing.  All of a sudden I get really good at drawing.  Then I show the awesome lady  fish store owner my sketch book and she asks if I’ll mural a wall (or maybe it was the window).  Um…WHAT?  ME?  “not a professional”.  She didn’t care.  She loved the pics and wanted to work a deal when they remodel their store.  Even if she was just being nice, it made my day. I’m good with that.

Oh what the heck…here’s the pics I showed her from my sketch book:

   

These are all copies off of other artists work from online.  I just put them together on pages because that’s how I roll.

Anyway, I had to teach crafts at vacation bible school the following week and told my friends there about the fish store lady.  My friend Anna’s husband is the children’s pastor and she said they’d been praying for someone to finish the murals in the children’s wing in the church.  She asked if I would pray about it.  I reminded her that I’m not a professional but if they’d provide the paints/brushes/supplies, I’d be glad to do it.  That’s all it took for God to reach down and help my drawing improve big time.

I completely believe He was waiting for me to get ready so He could use me to do this.  Pastor Mike and I got together and he gave me his ideas and I put them on paper.  I will post those ideas later.

My biggest suggestion to those who WANT to learn to draw is this:

Don’t be afraid to fail.  Have a big white eraser handy.  I erase more than I draw.  Seriously.

I go to Google/Images and type in whatever I’m interested in drawing that day and hit enter.  Then I just start drawing and erasing til I get it “right”.  And by “right” I mean right for me.  To the place that I’M happy with the drawing. You don’t need fancy schmancy pencils.  You don’t even need a sketch book at first (you’ll want one eventually if you’re like me and become obsessive about always drawing).  Just grab a pencil and paper.  I say get a white eraser because it doesn’t leave junk behind on your paper.

So that’s it.  That’s me and drawing.  While I’m still not great, I’m better than I was.