Felt Sewing: Lots of little critters

Inspiration: To keep busy during our #StayAtHome time during COVID-19, I kept busy doing lots of crafting.  Some of what I wanted to do was create the various felt projects from the book Kawaii Craft Life.  

How I Made Them: I mostly stuck to the instructions in the book, only veering to 1) use googly eyes instead of sewing them or 2) to change the type of final product like pins instead of charms or ornament hangers instead of something else.  If I was making more than one, I'd make the first with the colors listed in the book and then try a creative combination for the 2nd.  This worked most of the time, though I still think the purple fox is a little weird (cute, but still weird).

More Photos:

The original owl is upper left.  The blues were my "creative choice" for a 2nd version.  I made these 2 into pins.

The original brown fox and the purple fox, again these are pins.

The last of the woodland creatures are these 2 little hedgehogs.  The red one is my "creative choice" and they are pins.

This frosted donut charm is making me hungry.  The original craft was supposed to be a coaster.

Cute little cupcake, though this is probably too big to really be a charm, more like an ornament.

Lastly, my fry guys ornaments.  I always giggle and think of the commercials from when I was a kid when I look at these.

Felt Sewing: Bomb Pops for Teacher

Inspiration: I started making these cute little Bomb Pop felt pins and thought that it would be cute to tell my daughter's teachers that they were "Da Bomb".  Plus it was November, so it was perfect!

How I Made Them: The Bomb Pop felt pins came from the book Kawaii Craft Life.  These were one of the Frosty Treat Charms (pages 60, 64-65).  I photocopied the template and cute the pieces.  Instead of stitching the eyes, I used adhesive googly eyes (if you look in the picture above I used different sizes but was always careful to make sure a given figure had 2 of the same size).  I drew on the mouth with a red Sharpie instead of stitching it.  I also cut a small extra square of felt of the same color I used for the backing and sewed it around a small safety pin.  Finally, I used business size card stock and wrote on it using colored Sharpie markers.  I put "I think UR: in red, "DA BOMB" in blue and then "Thank you for being a great teacher!" in green.  My daughter signed the backs and we put each in an envelope with the teacher's name.

Other Ideas:

• An of the cute projects in this book would make an awesome teacher gift!
• I made pins, but you could easily make them as bookmarks or charms.  There are even a few projects in the book that make cute coasters or gift card holders.

Felt Sewing: Ice Cream Cone Bookmarks

Inspiration: At the end of each club season for my GirlsWhoCode Club, I put together items for the club members.  Since we were having our sharing and celebration at an ice cream parlor and we usually meet at the library, I thought these would be a cute little reminder. 

How I Made Them: A few weeks before I made these I found the book Kawaii Craft Life during a trip to Michaels.  These ice cream cones were one of the Frosty Treat Charms (pages 60, 64-65).  I photocopied the template and cute the pieces.  Instead of stitching the eyes, I used adhesive googly eyes (if you look in the picture above I used different sizes but was always careful to make sure a given figure had 2 of the same size).  I drew on the mouth with a red Sharpie instead of stitching it.  After assembling the front, I cut a ribbon about 6 inches in length and secured it between the front and back before gluing on the back (I did not stuff the piece or whipstitch it together).  I tied a knot about 1-inch from the end, added a pony bead, and then another knot to security it on. 

Other Ideas:

• Sewing down the ribbon and whipstitching the pieces together might make them last a little longer.
• I found that sometimes I had to glue down the eyes even though they had adhesive.
• I could have cut out of felt and glued on the mouths.
• I could also make these into pins too.

ShrinkyDinks

Do you remember making ShrinkyDinks as a kid?  You'd get a kit with the sheets, colored pencils or markers and there were very basic instructions to bake them. My mom would only let us make them once in a great while - mostly because they made the whole house smell (though not as bad as the Make-It Bake-It Stained Glass kits).  An acquaintance on Twitter had recently posted making some and I thought I'd look into it since much of the artwork my daughter creates would look great as little glass ornaments or cell phone danglers.

I picked up a 6-pack of the specialty material while at a local craft store recently and when it was too rainy to go outside, my daughter and I made a couple of sheets worth.  The material I picked up was called Shrink Film and it's also available in a 50-pack (if you're really into this). 

I hadn't actually read all the instructions inside the package until just before I was ready to bake them so based on what I read from the outside, we used Sharpie and Shuttle Art markers to color ours.  My daughter drew her ideas out on paper and then traced the outline of the final drawing on the "rough" side of the film.  I used images from some Salesforce-themed coloring books and an old watercolor painting of a butterfly (Florida Atala) that I did many years ago.  I then cut them out leaving some space around them and smoothing/rounding edges.  I also used a hole punch because I remember that after they bake, you really don't want to have to use a drill to add a hole.  I used parchment paper on my cookie sheet and also put a piece over the pieces too.

This picture is over the pieces before they were cooked.  We used pretty small pieces.  The largest is the butterfly which is about the size of my hand (fingers included).  I baked them at 350 degrees for 2 minutes.  I did use a spatula while the upper parchment paper was still in place to help ensure they were "mostly" flattened (or at least no big curling bumps).  When finished I added some cell phone lanyards that we got in Japan a few years ago.  My daughter can't wait to give one to her Grandma (the one she says in her in a purple kimono).  They shrunk way more than I expected but they turned out super cute and I can't wait to make more!

The end pieces looks really awesome in the sunlight.  The picture below is of the butterfly I did handing in my office window along with the original watercolor that I used for tracing when I created it.  As mentioned the watercolor is about the size of my hand and the finished ShrinkyDink is a little smaller than a square Post-It.

Some new Cross-Stitching

Inspiration: For my job, I work as a Salesforce Administrator (not for the company Salesforce).  I love learning via the Trailhead platform and may be a little obsessed with the Salesforce characters.  A few months ago someone posted a pixelated image of the rainbow unicorn Astro.  At the time, I posted a reply stating that this would make a great cross-stitch project.  However, since I was working on other things I really didn't give much though to doing it myself.  I went back to making some felt cute characters (that I'll show in a later post).  In a post I made of one of those cute felt characters, someone shared a link to blog that included a crocheted Codey that was pretty cute.  I took a look at the post and the instructions included an image that I could easily use to cross stitch, so I did.  The author also had a post for a crocheted Astro.  I used that one too.  Then feeling like I had to do Cloudy (since Astro is central but Codey represents developers and Cloudy represents Admins, I couldn't just do one and not the other). So that brought me to making a cross-stitched Cloudy too.

How I Made Them: For Codey, I used the pattern provided in this blog post.  I found DMC floss in colors close to what the author described (sorry I didn't write them down but I think they were Black, 801 for the Dark Brown, and 436 for the Light Brown).  I used 14 count White Aida cloth and used the fold-over before stitching method for the edges.  I used White DMC Floss to fill in the rest.

For Astro, I started from the pattern provided in this blog post.  I didn't feel like make Astro's costume in the dark colors the author posted was correct so I went with a lighter tan and then modified the ears to make the insides dark more like the Plush versions of the character I have at home.  So for colors I used DMC flosses of Black, Ecru (skin), 436 for the lighter brown, and 433 for the dark brown in the ears.  I used 14 count White Aida cloth and used the fold-over before stitching method for the edges.  I used White DMC Floss to fill in the rest.

For Cloudy, I didn't have a pattern to start from so I had to make one.  I found an image of Cloudy I like on Google and then used LunaPic to crop it and used the Lego effect to get it closer to a grid-based image with colors.  I then drafted out what I was going to do on graph paper and set to work on it.  For colors, I used the following DMC Floss: White, Black, 436 for the brown horns, 605 for the mouth, 3072 for the grey, and 801 with only a half-stitch to create a sky-like background to make Cloudy's white fur pop a little more.  I used 14 count White Aida cloth and used the fold-over before stitching method for the edges.

Other Ideas:

I definitely still want to do some of the other Salesforce characters like Appy and Earnie.  Also the blog I used for patterns above also had one for the Trailhead Logo that might be fun to do.  And of course, that original Twitter post that inspired this still needs to be cross-stitched.