My Only Sunshine

Fancy Friendship Bracelets

My friends at Klutz have another book I think you might like.

My Itty Bitty has been totally into friendship bracelets since learning how to make them for a Girl Scout badge a few weeks ago.  She's 8 and has plenty of friends to give bracelets to.

When Klutz offered to send me this book to try out I wondered if they live next door and know my Bitty personally, what great timing.  You know what's better than sending me a free book to try out?  You guessed it, they will send books to my friends too!  Everyone loves a good giveaway.

Here's what Klutz has to say about this book, "New from the Klutz bookshelf!
Introducing Fancy Friendship Bracelets, the original Friendship Bracelet’s new best friend! Klutz started with super-simple instructions for a flock of all-new bracelet designs. We added five different colors of cord and more than 200 sparkling beads. Then we threw in some stylish charms for good measure. The result is even better than we hoped."

How about a look inside.

 Bit and I haven't had time to make all the bracelets in the book yet but the ones we have tried have been fun.  Even though they are called "fancy" bracelets, Bit found them pretty easy to put together.  The finishing instructions and the beads included were my favorite part.

So here are the details - Comment on this post and on December 30 I will pick two winners.  Those two winners will each get a Fancy Friendship Bracelets book from Klutz for themselves and a second book to share with a friend.  Don't forget to give me your email address so I can let you know if you won.  Good Luck!

I Finished Something!!

I recently posted a review, on Craft Critique, of a product I got at CHA this summer.  Now that it is nearly time for CHA winter I thought I should show you what I made.

I made these yoga socks for Bug on my Clover 9" circular needle.  Go take a look at my review.  As you can see, I love this knitting needle! 

I do pretty well with the magic loop method.  I'm even relatively good with two circs.  I just can't seem to get good at DPNs at all.  With just one short needle I can whip up a project so fast that even my short attention span doesn't run out before it is finished.  Shocking isn't it?

Can you see Bug's cute little chill bumps up there?  What a great foot model I have.  She'll roll up her pants and go out in the cold with me for a photo shoot.  She is getting a really cool pair of socks out of the deal.  At least I think they are.

These are knit with Knit Picks sock yarn that is so old that they don't have anything like it on their website anymore.  It's close to this though.

I made up the pattern myself.  It's basically just a tube.  I knit some 1x1 rib, then switched to 4x1 rib.  Then I knit another section of 1x1 rib and I cast off half of the stitches in the middle of the section and cast them back on in the next round.  When I switched back to the 4x1 rib I threw in a few K2tog.  A little more 1x1 rib and I was ready to cast off.

Aren't they cute on my little dancer Bug?  She's most excited to have socks she can wear with her flip flops.  She wants to wear new Croc flip flops no matter how cold it is outside.  Silly girl.

My kids are KLUTZes too

This is Bitty's fairy from the Paper Fashions Fairy book I told you about last week.  I learned two things from working on this with her.  One, 8 year olds will make each individual piece a different color and pattern if you let them.  Most of the time they don't care if these colors and patterns look good together.  Two, 8 year olds may have a hard time visualizing what they are doing if you try to help them draw their stencils on the back of the patterned paper to avoid the pencil lines showing.

This is Bug's "Mermaid Fairy Waitress".  I learned a couple of things working with her as well.  One, 10 year olds will also put as many colors and patterns as possible together but at least this 10 year old will stress over what goes together and what doesn't.  They may not end up making the right call on this.  Two, 10 year olds are old enough to understand the concept of mirror image when it comes to drawing on the back and flipping and also making one glove stencil work for both right and left hand gloves.

I also have a word of warning to any of you who might use this with your kids...  Kids love glitter glue.  This little bit of trouble (it's both glue and glitter, how can that not be a problem on occasion?) is outweighed by the fact that my kids have spent HOURS just playing with the stencils.  They love drawing different fashion ideas on plain typing paper over and over.  It's wonderful to see how their imagination has been sparked.

Bug actually liked this so much that she spent her own money to buy this...

Now they can mix and match their stencils and papers.  Oh, and more glitter glue!!!

Don't forget that if you want to win your own Paper Fashions Fantasy book you need to comment with your email address to this post.

KLUTZ - Paper Fashions Fantasy

Several weeks ago I received this very cute book from KLUTZ.  They wanted to know if I'd like to review it.  Boy, how could I pass up crafts, fashion design, kid projects, and tiny little clothes hangers all wrapped up in one package?  I mean really, look at those tiny hangers!

Things have been totally crazy at my house but I did make time to tear this open and do a little paper fashion design and it was SO MUCH FUN.  Here's a synopsis of the book.

"In the Klutz paper fashions tradition, this book comes with everything girls need to design an entire one-of-a-kind wardrobe, including irresistibly tiny hangers to finish the fashions in style. Unique to this book, though, are fashions that are the stuff of fantasy: goddess gowns, pretty princess dresses, fairy finery, and more. Specially designed papers and stencils make it simple to create everything from flowing cloaks and twinkling tiaras to mermaid tails and fairy wings. And we've even added glitter to the glue — a simple way to sparkle up any fashion.
 
For ages 8 to Adult!"

On my first pass through the book I noticed that it had several types of fantasy fashion to build on.

You can create Fairies, Princesses, Witches, Goddesses, and Mermaids.

The ideas for these different ladies are amazing.  Whoever did the designing for the book is very creative.  I was completely engaged without having even opened the crafting supplies. 

Along with all the lovely pictures and ideas the book comes with patterned and solid paper and some great sheer and glittery paper as well.  The embellishments include ribbons, beads, sequins, and sparkly glitter glue.  The contents I found most wonderful were the stencils.  KLUTZ has broken down the different design pieces into their elements and created nice sturdy template plastic stencils.

I found the kit very easy to use which left me wide open to creativity.  I decided to go a little Project Runway for my first fantasy dress.  You know what I mean, big collar going straight up on the shoulder.  It was so much fun to make.  I do have one hint.

I used my stencils on plain paper first to put the different design pieces together so that I could cut them out as one unit.  Then I laid the piece that the pattern had been cut away from to lay on my final paper so I could make sure the paper design would show through the way I wanted before I cut on the paper I only had one small piece of.  This picture is my white paper laid over my patterned paper for placement.

Here's the final product hanging on it's teeny tiny hanger.

See the big collar?  So PR, Non?

Tonight I am going to let the Girlies play around with me and I will show you how that goes on Monday.  Oh, and I can't forget, KLUTZ has generously offered to give three of my readers a copy of this cute little book and kit.  Leave me a comment and be sure to include your email address and next week I will draw three names.

Copic Markers

Want to read more about this color chart?  Go take a look at my article on Craft Critique and don't forget to leave a comment so you can win some really cool stuff.

Invitations

Bitty's birthday is this Sunday.  Bug is a week later.  As you can imagine, it is birthday party season here at the house of Sunshine.  Last year both Girlies were starting a new school and didn't know anyone so we didn't have birthday parties.  Instead we waited until months later and took one kid each to the American Girl Cafe.  This year we decided to make up for the lack of full on party last year by doing it up big.  We are having a Carnival at our house.

 

I am making the invitations myself based on what the Girlies asked for.  I printed the info (including the No Gifts disclaimer, we are having far too many kids to have all those gifts) on cardstock.  I used my Martha Stewart circle cutter to cut them into disks.

 

I used my Cricut to cut out flower shapes to put behind the disks.  Even with the bad lighting my Cricut looks good in photos, doesn't it?

 

I sandwiched a tongue depressor (why would you want your tongue to be sad?) between the invite disk and the cute little flower die cut.

 

I'll have pics of the final product next time.  Check it out though, I only made THIS MUCH mess working on this project.

Back(packs) to School

I didn't intend to take several days off from blogging this week but it's back to school week at our house.  Busy busy.

 

Here's Bug on the first day of school. Isn't she gorgeous?  The girls had a really good first day, and second day too.  I had a frustrating first day.

 

See these cute rolling backpacks from Pottery Barn Kids?  Yeah, they suck.  One problem which isn't entirely their fault is the size.  They are meant to be rather standard sized backpacks but they won't hold a standard sized 3 ring binder.  Both of the Girlies are required to have binders this year.  The other problem is with Bitty's backpack.  One day of use and one of the zippers has blown and I can't get it to go back.  I'm very bummed because they are so cute, rollie, and embroidered with their names.  Oh well, I have already bought new, Jansport, backpacks.  Jansport is what Buster and I carried all the way through Baylor and we love them.

This is Bug's

 

This one for Bit.

 

The girls seem to like these backpacks just fine and their binders fit so we are all good until they have to start carrying their books home.  Speaking of books, check out all the books the 4th graders have.

 

They girls never fail to beg me to carry their bags when we walk.  Yuck.

 

Bitty is the queen of the funny face.  I can't believe she is big enough for 3rd grade.

To do, Today

I'm thinking of making these today.

 

They are the Cherry Brown Butter Bars from Smitten Kitchen.  I bought one of these yesterday to go with my fresh cherries.

 

Make sure to check back later and see how it went.  Before we can get to the cooking we have to get some painting done.  I'm really hoping two more days to paint the trim and built-ins and I will be done.  I know it seems like this is taking forever, but that is a room with so much to do.  It's also hard painting mostly alone while taking care of my princesses.  We'll get there though.

UGH? (no, UGG)

Now that Bug is old enough to wear adult sized shoes I am not above doing whatever I have to do to win free (and cute) shoes for her.

Go take a look at this contest, unless you don't want to make my chances of winning any less, I would understand that.

Gifts for Kids

Having two elementary school aged children means that we get lots of birthday party invitations.  Mostly for little girls, but sometimes little boys invite the Girlies to parties too.  Getting so many birthday party invitations means we spend a good amount of time trying to find birthday presents.  I almost always let my kids pick what to get their friends with one big rule, if I wouldn't allow it in my house then we can't buy it for someone else either.  That means no guns, no toys that make migraine inducing noises, and nothing that can't be washed out of the carpet.  I also usually tell the kids we have a roughly $15 limit.

My Girlies often run straight for whatever toy has the most commercials on tv.  The funny thing is that they rarely ask for those toys for themselves but nearly always seem to think all the other kids of the world must love them.  I guess the ad guys are getting the point to my kids that "kids love this" but weren't able to convince them "you'll love this". 

Tonight we had to buy gifts for Bit's best friend and her little brother.  We started out at the bookstore but Bitty was adament that even though her friend's mom said she likes books that the friend really doesn't want books.  Then we headed for Michael's because my favorite thing to buy for kids is craft supplies.  My kids can go quite easily spending bonkers at the craft store (much like I can).  I'm not sure what Bitty's friends usually do in the way of crafting so I decided to go with a kit.

Bit picked this one for her friend.  She loves just about anything that is "fashion".  She wasn't so sure about what a little brother who calls her names might like but then she found this one.

 

She thought this looked like pretty good "boy crafting". 

I need to start gathering up better art supplies when I see them on sale for putting in gift bags for kids.  Until then I think this stuff will do.  What do you buy for kids for their birthdays?