Crafting with kids: magnetic paper dolls

Can you believe it's the end of March and today it snowed again?!
SO fed up with this weather...I'm not one to go out when the thermometer goes closer to zero, so what to do with my little one in an afternoon like this?
Paper dolls!
When I saw some cute paper dolls on Pinterest, a few days ago, it reminded me of when I was little and used to *LOVE* this simple game of dressing up bi-dimensional dollies with different dresses, which had tags to fold over the paper doll to stay in place.
So, here it is my family, paper doll-style:

Materials:

• Paper
• Pictures of your family members or friends or celebrities or whoever you like; you only need the face, alternatively, you could use a picture of the whole body, rather than drawing it as I did
• Magnetic photo paper (I use the Pound Shop's one = extremely cheap!)
• Scraps of fabric
• Other craft accessories / decorations (optional)
• Sharpie or other black fine tip marker
• Glue stick

So, first step is to cut the faces out of your pictures and stick them to a piece of paper. You can cut the individual figures but I wanted the family to be together. Then, draw the bodies under the faces.
Be creative: you can draw animal bodies or cartoon bodies or just, like I did, some sort of body that resembles reality - well, almost, I do have some more curves than this!
I also made a little mistake, as you can see, drawing Little Miss' body...never mind! I was rushing to get finished before making dinner :) You can obviously colour the bodies, and draw underwear if you wish, as I said, I didn't have much time for the details...

Next, lay another sheet of paper on the first one, and draw the templates for the clothes. You should be able to see through the paper because you used a dark sharpie...so it should be easy to trace the clothes' contour around the bodies.

Cut the clothes' paper templates and lay them on the fabric scraps to trace and cut the shape of the clothes. I haven't traced them, actually: I cut out the fabric straightaway using the paper template as an approximate indication. Be creative, again: I made an awful green stripey dress with sparkly yellow ruffle and a pair of cords for myself, and even a little beanie for Little Miss. My husband has a choice of two T-shirts and some jeans. If you have time, you could make different clothes for different occasions...or even little dress up clothes!

 

Here even the younger kids will be able to help: take the fabric clothes and glue them on the white side of the magnetic paper.

Cut out the little clothes.

Now, fix the paper dolls to your fridge door or other magnetic board, and let the fun begin!

Another quick project: upcycling an old vest

This old white vest of mine was crying for the bin...it really was, however it is made of a nice sturdy cotton and I use it all the time for doing yoga.
So, I couldn't really throw it away...how about upcycling it?
Sometime ago I had bought a set of 10 fabric paint pens at the Pound Shop thinking they must have been of the dodgiest type, however for some crafty jobs they could be just right. In fact, to my surprise, the colours turned out pretty nice.
At the bank holiday weekend, while Little Monkey was covering herself with watercolours, I thought I'd give a go at upcycling my vest, carefully covering all its tough stains with a hand-painted blue and purple flower.
This is the result:

 
And this is me, all stiff, strangely leaning to one side and wearing a sporty vest with some office trousers: so classy! *irony*...sorry for the terrible picture, but I hope it gives the idea...not too bad for a half hour job, uh?!

Orange blossoms: hand-painted tablecloth

I knew immediately what I wanted to offer my long time friend Cristian, when he announced he was going to get married soon...I knew how much he loves cooking and entertaining friends at home and how much he would have appreciated a hand-made present from me. Tablecloth it was.

He and his wife Francesca are talented architects (I was once one of them - but not so talented...), so they designed their own home's refurbishment. I noticed on the pictures they sent when they completed the works, a beautiful flowery theme above the kitchen table...so beautiful that they used it again for their wedding invitations, and so beautiful that I decided it was the perfect pattern for the present I had in mind!
So, well in advance of the wedding day (please note the well in advance) I cut a 120x120cm  square on white cotton upholstery fabric; using a dimensional orange fabric paint with a pearl finish (to give the drawing some texture) I started painting a pattern of flowers on two opposite sides of the square. The paint is really super-easy to use as it can be held like a pen. Now, the difficult part was to reproduce in scale the flowers from the pictures and the wedding invitation...it took me a while, but the result on the tablecloth is pretty similar to the original flowers.
I wanted to give a double-face function to the tablecloth, so I've used a rich, thick orange cotton for the back. I was lucky it matches quite well with the flowers on the wall.

A slight hiccup in this story were the napkins...towards the end of the project I realised I didn't have enough orange fabric to make four square napkins - or time to buy more fabric (as usual, I ran out of time, in fact I ended up asking my mum for help to sew some of it and giving this present to my friends MONTHS after their wedding...).
My husband (by now you got why I married him) came up with an idea: "Why don't you make triangular napkins? People tend to fold napkins in two anyway!". So what looks like a brilliant designer idea was in fact pure serendipity!

This is the finished result.
All credit for the beautiful pictures to Cristian, now owner of the tablecloth and happiest daddy-to-be!

This is Cristian, by the way, in a portrait I drew for his birthday, long long time ago