Spring is here! A flowery brooch to celebrate

My little monkey's key worker (so they call the girl who looks after her at Pre-school...at my time it was "the Teacher") is moving to pastures new. Nothing special there, a part from the fact that my motherly anxiety has kicked in...it is already difficult to leave your child with somebody that is not family for 8 hours a day...then you realise pre-school staff are also human beings, and that actually that is a JOB for them...but I really liked and trusted this girl! so the penny dropped this week, which is the last one at little monkey's pre-school for this sweet girl, who has been truly amazing in the last year and a half and a reference point for my daughter.
I have been thinking about her leaving present since when it was announced she was leaving, and I even bought the fabric to make her a little purse...until I decided to make a flowery necklace for her, which in the end became a brooch ;) - by the way, am I the only one who changes her mind one million times before finally sitting at the sewing table? Sometimes I feel like I'm going to the cinema and I'm not quite sure which movie I want to watch...that same excitement that precedes something good...
Anyway, cutting a long story short, this is the brooch I made for Chelsey this week:

I got inspired by some beautiful hand felted and fabric jewellery I found online. And for the first time, I hand-felted a few little balls of wool. It was surprisingly easy and quick (a couple of minutes per ball) and I just followed one of the many tutorials there are on the web. Check this tutorial out, for example.
I also used sheet of craft felt, various fabric scraps and a button. I started with the polka dot fabric rose, just rolling a stripe of folded fabric on itself to make it look like a rose bud, and fixing it with a couple of stitches when I was happy with the result. But again, if you want a more precise result, there are lots of tutorials on the Internet for fabric roses (this one for example). I then laid and twisted a few felt and fabric circles next to the rose, as a sort of calla lilly and added a felt ball at the centre. I repeated the same with a different scrap of fabric and felt and added a button and a machine finished leaf to the lot.
All finally stitched to a piece of felt on which I attached a brooch pin. This flowery brooch is hand stitched a part from the leaf.

I hope Chelsey will enjoy her flowery brooch, which I hope will remind her of my little monkey and will probably sit pretty on a bag or a coat...and good luck to her for her next adventure!

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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!

Easy DIY monkey costume for last minute dressing up!

So, I was blogging a few days ago about the dilemma around World Book Day and nursery dressing up as book characters (yes, I know I should go out more!).
This year Little Monkey chose her costume for the first time (sob sob! she is not a baby anymore!), so she picked "MONKEY" in line with her favourite book of the moment: "Monkey Puzzle" by the authors of the Gruffalo.

The usual quest on Pinterest (did the world exist before Pinterest?!), and the fantastic and rich creative community came to help. A quick and easy monkey costume made using a brown hoodie and some felt...this is what I needed! Using a brown hoodie a friend gave me, and some brown and pink felt, it took me only a couple of hours to put together a really simple, but cute, costume.
The felt was used to cut out the ears (pink at the front and brown at the back), the tummy, and a tail. I then stuffed and sewed the ears to the side of the hood by hand; the tummy shape was drawn by using a plate to have a perfect circle on the pink felt, which was then cut in half and sewn by machine on the hoodie; and the tail was a simple, long rectangle of brown felt, folded in two and sewn along the longer dimension, then to the back of the hoodie.

And here is the monkey in action...

But being me at the moment, with lots of things to do and running around all day, I thought World Book Day was on Friday the 8th...turns out it was the day before! So, poor my little one arrived at nursery WITHOUT a costume, when all the other children were dressed up...and went to nursery the day after WITH her monkey costume, the only one dressed up....ehm ehm, I hope I didn't emotionally scar my child for life!
For more simple ideas on dressing up, have a look at my post on Children Dressing Up Fun. I would love to see your creations too!

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Dressing up fun...children costumes

World book day is approaching again (8th of March, this year)...at Little Miss' nursery they always organise a party with the children dressed up as their favourite book character. I find it VERY difficult to come up with something that respond to the multiple challenges of:
1) Being as comfortable as possible: you can't possibly cover your child in fur, no matter the season - although you can see plenty of examples on the Internet of poor little things wrapped in heavy, way too warm costumes...probably getting steamed in there! or perhaps all living in Alaska?!
2) Looks: it needs to be recognisable, or the child won't see the point of wearing it
3) Relatively easy to make - I'm alright with crafty stuff, but as soon as it comes to clothing, I've pretty much got no idea...
However, have a look at these three simple costume I made in the last 12 months...

VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR COSTUME
Last year I made a Very Hungry Caterpillar costume (see my post here), which all in all came quite nice, mixing some basic crocheting and some basic sewing.

HONEY BEE COSTUME
A few months before that, I made a bee costume, which is really as easy as it gets (not sure about famous books with bees in them, though!? but worth keeping this in mind if you are running out of time).
All you need is a yellow or orange top (I have had to dye a white top, as couldn't find any yellow ones in the shops), some black or brown leggings, and black fabric (I've used corduroy) to make the stripes and the sting at the back, which I then stuffed with a cushion's stuffing. I found in a high street accessories' shop a lovely set of bee wings and antennae that helped making this very simple costume the winner of the nursery competition!

OWL COSTUME WITH WINGS AND MASK
How about dressing up as the owl in the Gruffalo? or Winnie the Pooh? I found this sweet idea in a blog called Llevo el Invierno, written in Spanish and English. Here you can find the instruction for the wings, pretty simple to make and assemble (no hems required, hurrah!), if only a little time consuming. I didn't attach the wings to my child's neck, though, I instead added two loops so that she can wear them like a rucksack on her shoulders.
To complete the costume, I made a little felt mask (I found a nice tutorial in a blog called Petit Poulou). My personal invention in the mask making was using an elastic band with a little spring stopper (taken from an old jacket - see pics below) to regulate it. This way, I hope, the mask can be adjusted more easily and last for longer.

But since I call her my Little Monkey...can you guess what this year's costume will be?! ;)

Homemade lotion bar and travel pouch

Since I started making my own body care products a few months ago, I made all I could find on the Internet that would use at least one of my magic three ingredients: Shea butter, coconut oil and sodium bicarbonate. I've made wonderful solid deodorant, whipped body butter, face cream, lip balm, shampoo, and lotion bars. The last one being the one I was less happy about, but the one I was most willing to get right. How wonderful it is, to be carrying around your very own customised moisturiser, that has no packaging, no nasty chemicals, no wastage, and most importantly, is really effective?
So in my post from a few months ago on bodycare homemade natural products, I gave the link to a recipe that, in hindsight, it may not be the best one, as it contains too much beeswax, and as a consequence, it doesn't melt that easily. I since found another recipe, same simple ingredients (coconut oil, Shea butter, beeswax, Vitamin E and essential oils), slightly different proportions ("the devil is in the details" someone said...), which was only published recently on the Health Impact News Daily online (you can find it here).
This is just *AMAZING*, so much so that I have given a few bars to friends as a present in the last couple of days and I have already received orders for more! I keep one in my bag at all times, and my hands have never been this soft.
But after giving the first bars wrapped in supermarkets bags or freezer bags (so very classy, I know!), I decided that I ought to give them away in a proper little travel pouch, that wouldn't be affected by the grease of the oils, and would be prettier than a supermarket bag...so I came up with this:

Ordinary oilcloth inside, cotton outside, and a cute little button to keep it closed. Oh, and my NEW LABEL! (Have you noticed it? Really chaffed by the way it came out, and how it makes my stuff all of a sudden look more professional!)
Cute little useful present, good to make hands, bodies, hair and pregnant bellies baby-soft!
Until the next one, have a great week!

March 2013 UPDATE! if you can't be bothered  to make lotion bars and want to buy my handmade lotion bars, you can visit my Etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/CraftyVirtage - if you can't find what you are looking for, please contact me and I'll try and help :)

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Sunday morning crafting with kids: homemade fishing game

Since my life has turned much more crafty (and I have a toddler to experiment with!), I make a point of doing some simple crafting on a Sunday morning, especially since this is the time I'm on duty with my little Miss, while daddy catches up on sleep. So silent games are the best at this time of the week.
This morning I didn't know what to come up with, though. Last week we did a giant butterfly collage, the week before we did a poster with all Christmas cards she received as a keepsake (you'll know if you are following me on Facebook...), but this week my tired mind really didn't have a clue... So, I picked up a book I bought in a charity shop ages ago called "365 things to make and do" by Vivienne Bolton. It's an old 1990s edition, but still a useful reference for parents when they run out of ideas to entertain their kids.
In this book, I came across a game I *LOVED* to do with my little brother when we were kids, the "fishing game". At that time we had a "sophisticated" version, it was a set of little fishes which had a magnet inside their mouth, in a rotating plastic pond; the scope of the game was to catch the fishes with little plastic rods with a piece of metal at the end of the rope. If you are about my age you'll know what I mean!
The one I saw in the book was the homemade version, using cardboard to make the fishes and paper clips to do the hooks. I happened to have some cheap Pound Shop materials that keep on turning very useful these days: magnetic paper and coloured foam sheets. These seemed perfect for what I had in mind.

So, if you want to do the same, this is what you need:

• Crafting foam sheets (you can substitute with cardboard, but this way the fishes are a little more resistant)
• Magnetic paper (you can use simple paper clips to do the hooks, but this way it's so much better!)
• Scissors
• String
• Sticky tape
• Two pencils or pens or chopsticks or any safe sticks you have handy
• Colours to decorate your fishes
• All purpose glue (this is slightly more toxic than kids' paper glue, but more effective in this case, so I suggest an adult does the glueing, rather than a child)

All you need to do is to cut the foam in little fish shapes (I cut a couple of special pieces as well, a sea star and an octopus: if you are playing with points, these could be worth more); I didn't follow a template or drawn the fish on the foam first, I just quickly cut the shapes, but of course you could download some templates off the Internet and do a much more professional job. I was after "quick-fun-who cares lets be quick so we can play with it". The limitation with foam is that you can't really decorate the fish (although my little Miss has drawn eyes on all of them; older kids could also do the cutting, glueing and assembling), but if you decide to use cardboard you can let your creativity go wild!

Once the fishes are all cut and decorated (I made an odd number of fishes so that there will be always one winner) you can cut little pieces of magnetic paper and glue them on the fishes, with the non-magnetic side to be glued on the fishes.

Now, the last part: making the fishing rods. Just cut two pieces of string of the same length, then tie each one to the end of each of your sticks (or pencils). At the other end of the string, glue or fix with sticky tape a piece of magnetic paper, slightly larger than the pieces you used for the fishes (the string should be stuck on the non-magnetic side of the paper).

That's it! Now put your fishes in a plate or tray and start playing by catching with the magnets at the end of the fishing rods as many fishes as you can in a minute. At the end of the minute, wins the player who caught most fishes. If you want to add another educational element (apart from the eye / hand coordination needed to play this simple game), number the fishes or write a letter on each and for example pick the fishes in numerical order or so that you form meaningful words.
Happy playing and happy Sunday! X

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Exciting exciting! First EVER giveaway!!!

On the 12th of February 2012 I wrote my first post (on the felt playhouse, remember?).
One year on, and many many crafts later, I am still here, happy as a bunny to celebrate the first birthday of Virtage Gets Crafty!
So, to celebrate properly, here it is the FIRST EVER giveaway of the blog...
So, if you want to win a lovely hand decorated tote canvas bag AND a handmade lotion bar (full of the richness of Shea butter and organic coconut and almond oils and gently scented with lavender essential oil - great for body, hands, hair and pregnant bellies!), read on!

To enter this competition simply log in in box below and follow the instructions!


a Rafflecopter giveaway



Note: thanks to those that have entered, this competition has ended, but I'm going to have another one at some point in the future...
What prize would you like to be offered?