Feeling Crafty

I've had a long while since I've felt the urge to do something really crafty. But my cousin just had a little boy and I needed to get a couple of things out to her including some cute little outfits for her little man.

So I holed up in my craft room (aka my master bedroom closet where I have my craft stuff) to sew a couple of things for the baby. I wanted to make a taggie blanket, since I made one for Gaby and she loves it, as well as I've made a couple for friends kids and they love them too. And I also wanted to make a smaller taggie crinkle toy for him. I wanted to attempt putting a letter "M" on it in a different fabric as well for his name (Michael) but hadn't ever done that before so it'd be a first for me. I'd gone to Hobby Lobby and picked out a cute blue and brown fabric that would match with the light green of the minky fabric I'd picked out for the taggie toy.

I sketched out the "M" and then just zig zag stitched it to the front piece, then followed the tutorial from this blog (Domestic Charm) which I'd found on Pinterest. These blankets are super easy to make, but I always refer back to the tutorial just as check when making them since I don't make them all the time. For the taggie toy I also place some cellophane and batting inside so it was squishy and crinkly.

And here's the final products:

I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out for me not being a super sewer. I had issues with my sewing machine while sewing (the thread from the main spool running through the needle kept breaking) so it took me about an hour to put both of these together since I had to keep stopping and rethreading the needle. But thankfully, they all turned out, and I'll be able to pack these up along with the other baby goodies and mail them out to her this week!

Paper Dot Mobile

So before Gaby was born, I decided I wanted to make a mobile for her room. I'd found several on Pinterest that I liked, but they were usually linked to Etsy, and I knew I could make one easily myself. I'd made this one for Santi before he was born, and I wanted something handmade (by me!) for her as well.

 

So I started looking online and I found a paper "dot" mobile to be the style that I liked the most. I went and grabbed some supplies (jump rings, needle nosed pliers, tiny hole punch (the one I have punches just a little larger than a pin hole) wooden dowels (12" long), and paper (I just bought 8 sheets of scrapbook paper (12" x 12") in the colors I wanted (pink, green and chocolate brown.)

 

I started by taking the jump rings and the needle nosed pliers and separating the rings.

When I was done, the rings looked like this:

 

I placed the rings on the dowels in four different spots (evenly placed on the dowel.)

After squeezing the first ring onto the dowel, I added a second ring below to hang the paper dots from:

When this was done, this was how the dowels looked:

I then took the pieces of paper (which I'd already punched into holes from the original 12" x 12" paper) and lined them up by size and took the tiny hole punch and punched a hole in the top and bottom of the circle.

 

After finishing punching the holes, I lined the circles up in the pattern I wanted.

I then followed the same procedure with the jump rings and pulled them open, but instead of attaching them to the dowel, I placed the rings in the holes punched in the paper circles and squeezed them shut so the paper could still move a bit but wouldn't fall off. I did this with the whole line of circles all the way down.

After attaching all of the circles together, I attached them to the dowel with the top jump ring.

 

 

I repeated this with all four lines of circles and attached them all to the dowel. When I was done, I joined the two dowels together with a ribbon (wrapped around the two) and used it to hang the piece with. Here is the finished product:

 

And I'd have to say Gaby enjoys looking at this mobile hanging over her crib! I had a banner with her name on it made as well using the same paper so it all matches.

 

Family Scrapbook

Awhile ago, I wanted to come up with a scrapbook for Santi to have of all of his family members. Considering all of them, aside from my brother, live about 3,000 miles away from us (my family in Maine and Massachusetts and Tito's in Peru), and that we don't get to see them as often as we'd like, we wanted him to "know" his family.

So I decided to make a mini-scrapbook for him to carry around with him if he wanted, and to have in with his books. I know when he's a little bit older that looking at photos will be something he'll like to do, as most kids do. So the other week, I set aside some time and printed out photos of Santi with all of the family members that we have photos with him with. This is actually quite a few since we went to Peru over Christmas and my family came out in July for his baptism last year. By the end of this summer, we'll have most of the family in photos with him, which is great!

But for now, here are photos of what we have. I'm really pleased with how it turned out, and he loves looking at it!

 

 

 

 

More pages left to fill in from when we go back East this summer and see my family, and when we see my older brother and his wife next month!

 Already pretty thick! We'll add about 8-10 more pages after our trip!