double giveaway time!

I apologise for my lack of crafting and absence from the world of blogging..

Apart from the usual pressures of work, family, friends etc. I am getting started on plans for our wedding in October. Expect to see posts on this in the coming months, needless to say I am planning to craft a lot of things for our wedding.

I just realised that it’s my blog anniversary this month (where has the year gone?!) so I have decided to do a giveaway. Entries welcome from anyone anywhere, instructions below.

You could win a cute fabric party bag with some fun goodies for your child,
and some cute little extras (yet to be decided) for yourself..

I will be giving away an Alice in Wonderland and a Dinosaur fabric party
bag, yes – that means TWO winners!





To enter:

• leave a comment on this post stating your preference for Alice or Dino
• if you are a follower please leave an extra comment for an extra entry
• giveaway closes Friday 25 February 2011 21:00 PM GMT
• the two winners will be picked at random, announced here,
  and contacted via email
• please make sure your email address is accessible via your profile,
  or include it in your comment like this: you (at) domain (dot) com

The two winners will get to choose which bag they would like, there are 6 Alice character bags to choose from (Alice, Queen of Hearts, Mad Hatter, Cheshire Cat, White Rabbit, Caterpillar), and the Dinosaur winner will get to pick the prints from my stock and the colour for the handles (green, orange, blue, pink)..

Each fabric goody bag will come with colouring book, shaped crayons, stickers, and other fun goodies to match the Alice or Dino theme..

There will be extra little gifts included just for you, I haven’t decided what exactly yet, but they will be cute/crafty/handmade!

Good luck! and thank you for taking part..

halloween fabric trick-or-treat buckets

I made the kids some fabric trick-or-treat buckets for Halloween this year. I was so happy with how they turned out! I found this fabric bucket tutorial which inspired me to do the contrasting fabric turnovers, they look great and help them hold their shape, I used fusible web between the two fabrics which also helped. They are quite a bit smaller than the ones in the tutorial, I just worked out the dimensions for the size I wanted.

I picked out fabrics to go with the kids’ bat and pterodactyl costumes. I bought a fat quarter of the purple bat print, the other fabrics and the ribbons for the handles were from my stash.

I had a fat quarter of the orange and black dinosaur print leftover from the fabric party bags I made for Oliver’s dinosaur birthday party a couple of years ago. It’s actually a Jurassic Park fabric, which is not readily available anymore. I was saving it for something special.. which turned out to be Halloween!

I had an Etsy customer last month who ordered some party bags and favors for her little girl’s 3rd birthday, and she had mentioned that her daughter’s favourite dinosaur was triceratops, and that she was dressing as one for Halloween. What fun!

I don’t think I would have thought of dinosaurs for Halloween if not for this. It then occurred to me that the dinosaur ribbon I use for party bag handles would make cute hair-bows, and that the orange one was perfect for Halloween! So I made a couple of hair-bow-clips to send with her order as a little thank-you..



This led me on to the idea of making dinosaur trick-or-treat bags, and other Halloween related ideas which I didn’t get to this year, but I have a year to work on them now, and hopefully I will list some Halloween related goodies in my Etsy shop next year..

terrors of the skies halloween costumes

Terrors of the skies, or terrors in disguise?!

Cyan knew exactly what she wanted to be this year for Halloween – a bat! She was so delighted when we saw bats while camping in the summer, I’m sure this inspired her costume choice! It was a really fun yet simple costume,  so quick and easy to make – I made it in an evening.



We started with black leggings and long-sleeved T-shirt..



I cut two wing shapes from an old pair of my black leggings, machine stitched them along the bottom of the sleeves and up the sides of the T-shirt; and I used the leftover waist part of the old leggings to make a little skirt. I made a mask from black craft foam. Cyan made such a cute little bat!



Oliver, after some deliberation (and a little persuasion from me) decided to wear his pterodactyl costume, which my sister Tressa made for him for Christmas a few years back. He’s had a lot of wear and play out of it, but hadn’t worn it for Halloween before, and I think he will probably have outgrown it by next year.



I think Tressa used a couple of adult-size T-shirts for the fabric and the dark coloured details are in fleece. The two long pieces which extend from his hands and support the wings are stuffed with recycled plastic bags!

The pterodactyl mask is from a book Oli was given which has different card dinosaur masks to make.

dinosaur crayons party favors

I have made lots of these recently :


from a lot of these :


I made lots of these dinosaur shaped crayons over the last few weeks for some Etsy custom orders. I recently purchased a new mold to make the dinosaur crayons, made of silicone – much better than my old plastic chocolate mold. I can use the new one in the oven which is so much easier when making crayons, it also allows me to make multicolour crayons which are much more fun, especially for party favors. I make each crayon with 2 or 3 colour layers.

I had to take a shot of all the crayon paper wrappers because they look so pretty! and I hate to throw anything away, so I am trying to think of a way to recycle these .. paper maché .. handmade paper .. ? Any ideas/suggestions welcome ..
(removing these is the worst part of making crayons – luckily for me I have a little helper who loves to peel!)



I love making these! I am buying in a whole variety of new molds so I can make different shaped crayons to go with all the other party themes I’m working on ..



Here are the crayons with our dinosaur coloring book and fabric party/gift bag :



You can buy them in my Etsy shop ..

Linked:

dinosaur by cyan

Here we have another wonderful example of both Cyan’s artistic talent, and her giving nature. This is a picture of a dinosaur she drew today. She showed it to me when I got home after work; as I was marvelling at how good it was, she said to me “It’s not for you mummy, it’s for the little boy whose birthday is soon, who’s having the dinosaur party”. She is referring to my very first Etsy order, which I have been hard at work on recently, making dinosaur party bags, coloring books and crayons for a little boy’s dinosaur birthday party. I also made personalised bunting for him as a little thank you gift, which I will write about later.

The order was mailed across the pond last Saturday, so too late to send her drawing. I scanned and emailed it, I hope the birthday boy will like it!

I may get her to colour it tomorrow, scan it again and turn it into a birthday card!

dinosaur coloring puzzle books

I designed these dinosaur coloring books as party favors to go in the dinosaur fabric party bags I made for Oliver’s dinosaur themed birthday party, using vector outline versions of Karl’s dinosaur illustrations, these coordinate with the invitations which use coloured versions of the same dinosaur illustrations.

The books are full of puzzles including dot-to-dot, word search, odd one out, two the same, spot the difference, maze, match dino footprints… There are pages with dinosaurs to colour, and puzzle pages can be coloured too for maximum colouring enjoyment!

I’ve just made up 25 dinosaur coloring books which are to go with the 25 party bags for my first Etsy order. I have given them a new look by printing the inner pages on mixed pastel paper, the covers are on slightly heavier cream paper stock. The originals were on cream paper throughout. Oliver approves of the new colourful versions! I am also making dinosaur crayons to go with this order.

dinosaur party invitations

I created these dinosaur invitations for Oliver’s dinosaur themed birthday party using my vectorised and coloured up versions of Karl’s dinosaur illustrations. The dinos are lively and full of character so I settled on a fairly simple design which showcased the dinosaur illustrations and with all the party information clearly presented.

I searched online for some ideas to dinosaurise the wording; I can’t remember if this is when we started calling Oli “Oliversaurus Rex” or if it was earlier (his middle name is Rex). He still gets called “Oliversaurus Rex” sometimes! The other line I found which I liked was “Don’t be extinct” which I used on the reply slip and where the phone number is repeated on the back.

I printed the invites in colour onto a nice quality medium weight cream paper stock, then trimmed and tri-folded them, to finished size of 99 x 105 mm (4 x 4.25 " approx). This made them compact and neat – easy for Oli to give out to all his friends. Everyone loved them, I got compliments from parents and Oli’s teacher!



I am now offering these customized/personalized dinosaur invitations to buy in my Etsy shop along with other coordinated custom/personalized dinosaur party supplies – perfect for a dinosaur birthday party theme.

dawn of the dinosaurs

We just had to have a dinosaur themed party for my son Oliver’s 5th birthday, the boy is mad on dinosaurs! So that meant dinosaur invitations to design, dinosaur party bags to make and fill with dino goodies; and fun dinosaur games and activities to plan!

As his birthday is in August the party was in the summer holiday so invitations had to be given out well in advance, before the end of term.
I commissioned some dinosaur illustrations from my talented artistic partner, Karl. I wanted five dinosaurs ’cause it was his 5th birthday.
The boy’s fave dinosaurs at the time were T-Rex, Spinosaurus and Brachiosaurus so they had to feature. My personal favourite dino is Stegosaurus and Triceratops seemed the obvious fifth.

Karl did rough sketches of the dinosaurs (he didn’t get to refine and paint them – much to his disappointment) which I scanned in to the Mac ready for tracing. I knew I needed to vectorise these as I already had ideas forming for other things I wanted to do with them. So I traced them into vector outlines in Illustrator and then coloured them up ready to be used on the invitations.

itty bitty princesses and hama dinosaurs

Today Cyan found and decided to make her Itty Bitty Princesses, a Christmas gift from Oliver. The Itty Bitty book has instructions on how to make the tiny characters, and a cute little tin (I love tins!) with all the bits you need to make two princesses.




They are similar to fairies and princesses we’ve made before with clothes-pins, fabric flowers, tissue paper, pipe cleaners etc.; but Cyan really enjoyed making these and loved looking at all the pictures in the little book to get ideas for how she wanted her princesses to look. She did need a little help with cutting and gluing etc. but she was so proud of them when they were all done. They turned out so cute:



Oli got a few board games in with Dad while we were making the princesses, then he came in and decided he would make another of his Hama bead dinosaurs, which he also got for Christmas. He already made the T-Rex just after Christmas. He decided to make the yellow Velociraptor today.

don’t stop me now...

Phew! What a busy busy Friday it has been. At work for the morning; then I had the afternoon off so my partner Karl and I could join our son Oliver at his school for a Creative Partnerships Project – den building! Parents were invited into the school grounds to join our children in an imaginative den building session. So we, along with a few other parents, joined about 20 kids from Oliver’s class; the kids were split into groups of 4-5 along with parents and the only rule was that grown-ups were not allowed to decide how to build the dens. The kids took great delight in telling us what to do!

We worked with Oliver, two other boys and a girl from his class; she had very clear ideas on how the den should be built, Karl and I helped with putting up poles, tying and pegging bits where needed; and the boys built a fence around the den to protect us from sharks! (Part of the fun was to imagine we were marooned on a desert island!) Once all the dens were built the kids ran around checking each other’s dens out, then we all helped to dismantle everything. What a fun afternoon!



Then later on in the evening I made some dinosaur shaped crayons; I have been meaning to make these to list in my Etsy shop. I had a good excuse to get around to it because I wanted to include some in a little gift for Rachel over at Always Sunny as a thank you for being really great over lost parcel issues, and for my replacement items – a lovely necklace and some really yummy lip balms from her Etsy shop my little sunshine. Thanks to the lost parcel issues I found out via email that her daughter is another dinosaur fanatic, so I thought it would be cool to send them some dino goodies – a dinosaur fabric bag, colouring book and the dinosaur crayons.



And then I went and listed three new different items in my Etsy shop which include the dinosaur crayons.