Tutorial:: Bunny & Egg Garland

From Peggy at ComfyCozyKeepsakes.
[This craft makes an excellent after school activity for older children .]

Your crafty decorator is baaaaaaack….. with another fun project to replace those adorable Shamrocks that hung from your windows for St. Patrick’s Day. Today we’re making bunnies and eggs! The concept is the same as the Shamrocks, so go gather up a few simple items and we’ll be hopping down the bunny trail.


Materials needed:

• Bunny and Egg clip art or draw your own to suit your taste.
• 2 sheets of paper or cardstock. Cardstock works better.
• Scissors. For this project I used pinking shears because it looks cuter.
• Hole punch or awl. I have a punch with a very small hole, which is better than your average hole punch.
• Glue
• Fabric marker or permanent marker
• Yarn – white
• Felt or Craft Foam. I like the “natural” look of felt over foam. I chose pastels and ecru. Darker colors don’t show up as well from the street as pastels.
• Craft pompoms, large and small sizes. Coordinating colors for your bunny nose and tail.
• Tape

Now, let’s get started:

1) Copy or trace the Bunny & Egg shape onto the paper/card stock. Cut them out. I have 2 sizes of bunnies on mine.

2) Trace bunnies & egg onto Felt or Foam. If your bunny shape is symmetrical, you can fold the shape in half, fold the felt and place the shape on the fold before cutting it out – see picture on right, below. Don’t cut the fold. 

           

3) Cut them out. Pinking shears give a more festive look to these shapes instead of straight-edge scissors.

4) Glue a pompom on one side for the bunny tail. I used small pompoms for my little bunnies and large ones for the big bunnies.

5) Glue small pompom on the OPPOSITE side for bunny nose.

6) Cut TWO very SMALL holes with hole punch or awl, evenly
spaced about an inch from the top and bottom of shape. I chose
to make them right at the tail and nose of bunny shapes.

7) Cut yarn to desired length for windows or doors. I wrap a piece of tape on the end of the yarn so it doesn't fray and is easier to slip through the holes.

8) Slip yarn thru holes in bunnies & eggs. Tie a knot at the bottom so the bunny doesn’t slip off.

9) Hang with tape on windows or doors. TA DA!

If you are REALLY creative, add glitter or other adornments to your “egg” shapes. You can cut circles or other shapes from the felt and glue onto the eggs. I think I’ll be embellishing mine for next year!

So now you have these for St. Patrick’s Day and Easter. I’ll be back with another one soon. I’m considering creating a kit to sell and/or taking orders for completed decorations. Let me know what you think. Would you rather go the craft store to buy all the materials and make this yourself (with your kids), or open up a box with a set for your favorite holiday?

Now I’m going to break into the speckled eggs and celebrate a little early! Happy Easter!!

Keep up with ComfyCozyKeepsakes on facebook and at her Etsy Shop:

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Book Nook: Inner Perfectionist Beware!

From Cherice of InnerPiecesGallery.

I believe that within each of us lives at least a hint of perfectionism. After all, who among us really WANTS to make a mistake?

Apparently, Barney Saltzberg does. In his delightfully creative book, BEAUTIFUL OOPS!, he shows us how to use our mistakes, mishaps and blunders (yes my friend, we ALL make them) as opportunities to set our imaginations free!

From the very first page you know that you’re in for a special treat. This book is clearly exciting and mature enough for an older child yet feels as sturdy as an infant’s board book. That’s important because you’ll want to explore these artistic pages again and again. Secret fold-always throughout the book show inquisitive minds just how beautiful a smudge, a stain, or a spilled blob of paint can become.

Inner perfectionist beware. Once you read BEAUTIFUL OOPS!, you and the kids may find yourselves searching for excuses to make more oopses!


Find InnerPiecesGallery online at their blog, twitter and Etsy Shop.

InnerPiecesGallery, EtsyKids Team nor Etsy is affiliated with the books author(s), illustrator(s) or publisher.  This review is provided simply for the joy of sharing good books and for supporting the work of inspiring authors.

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Tutorial:: DIY Diaper Wipes

From Emily of BusyChickadees and Raising Busy Chickadees. 

I started making my own disposable diaper wipes a few years ago. I love them! They are more natural and cheaper than the store-bought version.

Now, I use cloth diapers, so I use cloth wipes, but I wanted to share how to do this with my disposable diaper friends. I am going to use mine as eye make-up disposable wipes. You will be amazed at how easy it
is to do. Are you ready?

Homemade Disposable Diaper Wipes
Ingredients:
Bounty Paper Towels (select-a-size)
2 cups water
2 tablespoons baby wash (natural if possible)
2 tablespoons oil (canola oil, olive oil, and coconut oil work)
container
tea tree oil (optional).

Step 1 
Cut the rolls of paper towels in half with a serrated knife.

Step 2
Pour water into container. Add baby wash and oil. Stir.

Step 3 
Add 2 drops of tea tree oil (used to prevent mold) optional.

Step 4
Drop the half a roll of paper towel into the water. Wait until water has soaked into the paper towels and remove the center cardboard tube.

Step 5
Pull wipes up from the center.

**A note of caution. **If you seal the lid on tightly, you are almost guaranteed for your wipes to mold at some point. I just leave the lid cracked open and have not had a problem with that. How about you, have you used your own wipes before?


Find Emily online at Facebook and Twitter, by visiting her blog - Raising Busy Chickadees and her Etsy Shop - Busy Chickadees:

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Toddler Sensory Activity: Colored Spaghetti

I was making dinner the other night {spaghetti and meat sauce} and though how fun it would be to play with the spaghetti! I knew coloring it would make it even more fun so I did some browsing and found this video on how to color spaghetti. It's really easy...just take a look.

I didn't have any watercolors so I used food coloring. It worked just fine but didn't distribute the color all that evenly.

If you don't have a sensory table {I don't} then you can use a bowl, tupperware, one of those disposable lasagna pans {which we used}...pretty much anything your little heart desires. There are also tons of sensory table DIYs around the internet if you are handy enough to make one yourself. We also have a water table that we like to use.

Bug had so much fun playing in the spaghetti. In fact, it was an all day project! Here are all the things we did with it:

First we played with it using our hands.

 Then I broke out the toddler scissors.

 She had some trouble with them so I showed her to lay it over a cup and use 2 hands to cut.

 Then I held it and she used 2 hands to cut.

Bug served me some scoop-fulls using kitchen tongs {great for motor skill development}!

I even dared to let her take it out by the carpet to cook in her kitchen.

She stepped in the tub and wiggled her toes. {I think she liked this best - be careful though, it's slippery}

We took the spaghetti to the kitchen floor and made some shapes with them too!

It was so much fun! How will you play with spaghetti?

If you like this post and want to see more toddler activities please visit my blog, Tutus and Tea Parties. You can also follow me here: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest.

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Tutorial: Spring Chick

From Steph of NewMillie of This Homemade Life.


Has your weather been as crazy as it has been in Texas? Last week we had a few days of high 70's, low 80's with humidity and now for the last 3 days it has been pouring rain and 50 degrees. It's confusing, and I decided we needed a bit of Spring in our lives, and I want to share with you this little Spring Chick tutorial!!

Here's what you need:

1.  Yarn. I used yellow, pink, black and orange, but you could make your little chick whatever color your little heart desires.
2.  Hook. I used a 4.25 mm, but once again it's whatever you want.
3.  Felt.
4.  Hot glue
5.  Hair clip or headband

Stitches used:
ch- chain
sl st- slip stitch
sc- single crochet-
hdc- half double crochet
dc- double stitch
tr- treble- Yarn over hook twice, then insert hook into next stitch. Yarn over hook, then draw yarn through the stitch (there will be four loops on your hook) *Yarn over and pull through two loops (three loop remaining), yarn over and pull through two loop,(two loops remaining) yarn over and pull through last two loops.
dbl tr- double treble- Same process as the treble, except yarn over hook three times to start the stitch
trp tr- triple treble- Same process as the double treble, except yarn over hook four times to start the stitch

Are you thoroughly confused informed? Okay! Then we are ready!

Chick Body

Chain 4, sl st to form ring

Round 1- 10 sc into the ring

Round 2- 2 sc in first st, sc in 2nd st, 1 hdc and 1 dc in 3rd st, 2 dc in the 4th st,
2 dc in 5th st, 2 sc in 6th st, 1 sc and 1 dc in 7th st, 2 tr in 8th st, 2 dbl tr in 9th st,
2 dbl tr in 10th st.

Round 3- starting in the first stitch of the previous round, 2 dbl tr and 1 trp tr in st,
ch1 and sl st in same st (this is your tail). I also pulled my starting string to close up the hole.

Wing

Chain 4, sl st to form ring

Round 1- (crocheting into the ring)- sc, hdc, dc, 2 tr, dc, hdc, 2 sc, hdc, dc,
2 tr, dc, hdc, sc, sl sp into next stitch.

Finishing

1. Sew wing onto chick

2. Use black yarn to make a little eye

3. Use orange yarn to make a little beak. (I just found the stitch I wanted to be the beak and attached yarn, sc, ch 1, sc, ch1, sl st all in the same stitch.)

4. Finish and weave in all your ends

Now, cut a piece of felt in a similar shape to your chick. Get out your hot glue and glue it to the back of your chick, hiding all your ends. Then get your clip or headband and hot glue it to your chick. I like to put one last piece of felt over the clip or headband just to ensure it is going to stay.

Now go make some chicks! And as always, if you have any questions, please let me know!  You can find me on Facebook, at my Blog, or in my Etsy Shop: 

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Handmade Business 101: Revenue or Profit?

Business 101 is a new monthly series from Sarah of CuriousWorkmanship designed to help you improve the success of your handmade home business.  

We crafters are so creative, we often spend more time on the “craft” side of the craft business than the “business” side. With this series of monthly blog posts, I’ll introduce you to some of the business concepts that will help you make your business more profitable. Don’t worry—there’s no math more complicated than simple arithmetic!

Today’s topic is revenue and profit.

Revenue is the amount of money that comes into the business. Let’s make up an example to illustrate it. If I sell a baby dress for $35, my revenue is $35. But even though there’s now $35 in my pocket (or in my PayPal account), I don’t really have $35, because I have to figure that I spent money on materials and selling fees. Profit is what’s left over of the revenue after you subtract the costs you had to pay to sell the dress. To figure that, we need to make a list of the costs associated with this dress. Let’s say I spent $10 on materials for the dress, $1.43 in Etsy fees, $1.32 in PayPal fees. These costs total $12.75. So my profit, what’s left over of the $35 revenue after I subtract $12.75 in costs, is $22.25. That’s how much I’d be getting paid for my hour of work making the dress.

Suppose, though, that I discover that somebody else is selling a similar dress for only $15. I don’t want them to undercut my prices, so I am thinking of dropping my price to $15 also. What does that mean for my profit? Well, even without the labor costs, my materials and fees still come to $12.75. That would leave me just $2.25 to pay myself for an hour’s work! Is that really worth it for me? I would wonder if my competitor is doing the math on this, because her materials and fees must cost something like mine.

Why do we want to calculate profit? Because we’re usually in business to make money. Let’s say I’m earning money so I can take a $1000 trip. How many of those dresses will I have to sell in order to earn that much money? If I sell them at $35, I will have to sell 45 dresses to make $1000 profit. But if I sell them at $15, I will have to sell FOUR HUNDRED and forty-five dresses to make the same amount of money. As hard as it is to find buyers at the $35 price, it’ll surely be easier to find 45 buyers than 445 buyers. Plus it will be much less sewing for me.

Now let’s apply this to craft shows. Many people think they’ve had a good show if their revenue is bigger than their booth fee, but they’re often wrong. Let’s say my competitor sets up at a craft show where the booth fee is $100. If my competitor sells 10 dresses at $15 each, they have $150 in their pocket and they think they’ve done well. But have they? The cost of each dress is $10 for materials, and instead of Etsy and PayPal fees we have to add in the booth fee. So the cost of selling 10 dresses at $15 each is $100 for the materials ($10 times 10 dresses) and $100 for the booth fee. This show actually cost them $200, but they only brought in $150 in revenue. Not only did they not make any profit, they paid $50 for the privilege of being at that show! And that’s not even counting their time making dresses and displays, the gas they had to use to get to the show, etc. Don’t let the revenue fool you—a craft show can be unprofitable even if the revenue is more than the booth fee.

Next time we’ll look at how to find the right price for your items. Pricing your items higher and getting fewer sales may actually give you more profit.

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St. Patty's Picks

Happy St. Patrick's Day from all of us a the EtsyKids Team!

Baby Boy, Diaper Cover Onesie Set, with Green Frog from RaeGun

AHOY Matey, Boys Green Pirate Shirt from SweetThreadsClothing

Needle Felted Green Apple with Happy Worm from ThingsByV

Elephant Plush Toy from LittleSidekick

Words of Inspiration 11x14 Typography Poster from AsYouWishPrinting

Double Minky Baby Lovey from notybaby

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A Pinch of Green

Baby Swaddle Blanket in Chartreuse by LeytonSmiles

Green & White Stripe Leg Warmers by PoppinDotsBoutique

St. Patrick's Day Child's Reversible Headband by ThELaUgHyGiRaFfY

Boutique Boys Sham ROCK Appliqued Tee by christinamcdaniel

Shamrock Initial Baby Dots Onesie or T-shirt by thenook

St. Patrick's Day Green Crocheted Sheep by LoopySheep

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Tutorial: Monster Page Corner Bookmark

From Sabrina at NeverlandNook.

Like many of you out there, I am a self confessed addict to Pinterest!!! I just can't help it, so I decided to "Pinterest Challenge" myself. I decided to start with an easy challenge and so I chose the Monster Page Corner Bookmark. This is something you can just do for fun or with your kids! They would love it!

Supplies:

• Paper (I used double sided paper - 1 side had a pattern)
• Glue Stick
• Pencil
• Scissor
• Ruler

First I drew the pattern on the non-decorative side of the paper. Each small square is 2.5" x 2.5".

Next I cut the pattern out along with a 2.5" x 2.5" square from the paper.

 

Glue the square piece so that you see the pattern because next you will fold the triangle pieces over and across the square and glue them together.

 

Next you will want to draw out a pattern by teeth. The triangle should be 2.5" x 2.5" x 3.5" to fit in the square. Draw teeth however you would like! It's fun to create different characters!

 

Once you've glued the teeth in, cut out some circles for eyeball(s).

 

Glue them on and Ta Da!!!!! You have the perfect Monster Page Corner Bookmark!!!

So gather up some different shades of green paper and a variety of circles and let the kids make-up a slew of green toothy monsters to mail their bookworm friends for St. Patty's.  Thanks Neverland Nook for sharing this fun tutorial.

You can find Neverland Nook online at these different locations:  Etsy Shop, Blog, Facebook & Twitter. 

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Tutorial: Shake an Egg

From Lauren at crocheting4baby.


Have you heard of Laurie Berkner?

She sings songs for kids that we just love here in our home. She makes kids music enjoyable, instead of annoying. I must say I can listen to her music non stop while playing with Bug and not get sick of it. She has 5 CDs {i believe} plus a The Best Of CD and I can't tell you which is my fave. I love them all!

On her CD "Whaddaya Think of That?" there is a song called I Know A Chicken, it's also on The Best Of CD.

The song is so much fun and she tells you different ways to shake an egg. If you don't have a shaky egg you can just shake your body, but we made some shaky eggs from old plastic eggs we had in our play food cart since Easter.

What you will need:

• Plastic Eggs {one per kid, or as many as you'd like}
• Small items to put inside the egg to make noise. We used yeast, rice & small noodles. We wanted to make ours soft and loud shakers. Other ideas are oatmeal, cornmeal, sprinkles, beads...
• Crazy glue
• Tape

First you are going to want to tape the inside where the holes are {if any} so there are no leaks.

Then fill half an egg about 3/4 of the way. Place glue around the edges and let it dry. {don't glue your fingers to the egg} If you are lazy and impatient like I am you can just wrap some packing tape around the egg so it doesn't open easily. You might not want to do that meathod with younger ones who will try to open it. Bug was a good listener and didn't even attempt it.

Give it to your little one, turn on some Laurie Berkner and shake an egg!

See more of Lauren's toddler friendly activities on her blog, Tutus & Tea Parties, follow her on facebook and see her crocheted offerings in her Etsy shop:  

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Book Nook: How Full Is Your Bucket? for Kids

From Cherice of InnerPiecesGallery.


Have you helped fill someone’s bucket today? And no, I don’t actually mean with water, sand, or potting soil.

Authors Tom Rath and Mary Reckmeyer fill buckets every time someone reads their children’s book How Full Is Your Bucket? for Kids. So does illustrator Maurie J. Manning. Want to learn how?

The aptly titled How Full Is Your Bucket? for Kids is based on the adult edition How Full Is Your Bucket, a #1 New York Times bestseller. This delightful and empowering storyteaches children and adults what bucket filling is all about.

First we learn that we each have our own imaginary bucket. Granted, some children are not thinking in metaphors at the age they most enjoy picture books. In my humble opinion, a little guidance may be in order while reading to your young, concrete thinking child. We don’t literally have buckets of water floating above our heads all day long. We can, however, learn which actions fill us up and which ones empty us, that is, with a little help from a bucket.

How do we feel when our buckets are empty?

How do we react to other people when that happens?

How do other people react to us?

Manning’s beautiful illustrations help address these important questions and more in a lighthearted, easy to understand way.



I must admit, I initially grew a bit concerned while reading examples of how to fill our buckets. Felix, the main character, began to fill his own empty bucket by receiving compliments from others. I wholeheartedly support cheering for children after a job well done. I do not agree, however, with encouraging reliance on praise in order to feel good about ourselves. Better to form internal mechanisms for self empowerment than to create unhealthy dependence on other people’s opinions. Then again, that’s just my opinion.

As it turns out, my concern only lasted for, oh, a fraction of a moment. The authors, being the research focused professionals that they are, include a variety of ways to fill our own buckets. They placed plenty of emphasis on one of my favorite bucket-filling methods, helping other people fill theirs.

If you’re a parent, you most likely have already filled your child’s bucket numerous times today. If you would like a helpful tool for empowering them to do the same, I highly recommend How Full Is Your Bucket? for Kids. Published by Gallup Press, you can find it along with other Tom Rath bestsellers here.

Parents of 10-14 year olds, you will find resources to help discover your child’s strengths there as well.

Care to help fill some more buckets today (including yours)? Spread the word about this empowering children’s book! Pin it. Tweet it. Share it.

If you enjoy this month’s inspiring book find you might also like:
Incredible You and Unstoppable Me!
The Dot, Ish and
The 7 Habits of Happy Kids

Find InnerPiecesGallery online at their blog, twitter and Etsy Shop.

InnerPiecesGallery, EtsyKids Team nor Etsy is affiliated with the books author(s), illustrator(s) or publisher.  This review is provided simply for the joy of sharing good books and for supporting the work of inspiring authors.

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