DIY Magnetic Color/Shapes Game

For a few months now my two year old daughter is really interested in colors, shapes, sizes and matching things. And Stickers, those stinkin' fun things that little people use to decorate your furniture when you're not looking. So one afternoon I pulled out my ever growing collection of free fridge magnets to make this:

A magnetic color/shape/size game box.

This is a great craft that your toddler can help with and the game will provide hours of colorful creative fun, too. Here is what you need:

-fridge magnets, the flat "pizza" or "call your electrician" advertising ones (I don't know about you but we get them on our mailbox or door all the time. I save them, for crafts like this!) If you don't have anything like this laying around there are magnet sheets available in craft stores.

-stickers in different colors, shapes and sizes 

or alternative:

-white paper, glue and markers

-scissors

-a flat plain tin box (from chocolate or cookies, if you don't have a plain colored one you can spray paint a decorated christmas cookie tin or go buy yourself some fancy chocolate in a tin!)

or alternative:

- a fridge door (it's ok to leave it attached to you fridge)

you see those two-year-old hands trying to steal the tin box to check for leftover chocolate?

After you gathered all your supplies and ate all the chocolate... here is what you do:
Step 1. Pull off the advert from the magnet. Depending on the quality you'll either have several layers of white paper underneath or the whole thing will just come off and leave you with a plain black magnet. Either is fine if you use stickers (Go to step 3). If you want to draw your shapes with marker it is useful to leave the white paper on. Saves you step two.
Step 2. If the advert pulled off completely or uneven glue some white paper  to the magnet. (regular craft glue should do the job)
Step 3. Create your shapes by either sticking your shape stickers on the white side of the magnet or draw and color the shapes you like. (Both can be done by your happy crafty toddler)
Step 4. Cut out the shapes with sharp scissors.
Step 5. Play.

you can sort by color

or shape

or shape and size

or build a car... or cities, or faces, or flowers....

It's a great activity to take with you on long car rides, because it's magnetic the pieces won't fall down all the time. As said above you can use it on the fridge or any other magnetic board or metal door around the house too, but the tin box offers you storage and take away play board in one. Plus it can easily be split up for two kids, one can use the top, one the bottom of the box as play board. So yeah to triple-greatness!

The game can easily be adjusted or extended with whatever you come up with... I am thinking to add some face features like magnetic goggly eyes and some wider variety of shapes to make up more faces (like mustaches or glasses).

Tea Party

I had some fun stitching going on Saturday morning... and then we had some tea parties over here.

With six kinds of tea... lemon, peppermint, orange, camomile, strawberry & green tea

and a jar full of delicious cookies

 

chocolate chip, Oreo's and sugar cookies. They are DE-LICIOUS! want the recipe? all you need is some felt, a bit of embroidery thread, some seed beads for the sugar pearls (if you make this for little kids you can just embroider this part with french knots) and some time! cut out cookie shapes, hand stitch the chocolate chips and sugar decor in place, machine stitch two layers of felt together and you're done. For the Oreo's I used one black layer on each side and two white felt layers for the filling.

Doll Stroller Re-Do

You know those cheap-o doll strollers. The fabric and make is so cheap it breaks easily, especially if some 2 year old keeps sitting in it... and since we like recycling and sewing over here, it simply wasn't an option to throw the perfectly good frame out after the fabric part ripped. My friend - the seam ripper - helped me take the old thing apart completely to use as a pattern. I used a cotton fabric that will hopefully last longer than the original. For straps I used ribbon I had laying around the house, it wasn't the best choice but does the job. I would have bought something different but had no time to run to the store, because the baby was begging me to get her stroller back to be usable!

P.S.: There are a few tutorials for similar projects online... one is over here!

No Sew Kids Craft Apron

This is technically not really an apron more a general cover-up, but it's a 5 minute T-shirt recycling project that will keep your toddler's clothes clean from glitter, glue and paint! It could be the perfect (and way cheapest!) solution for a playgroup, Preschool, Sunday school or any other toddler (group) doing crafts. I know there are really cute crafts apron pattern out there and also tons of cute fabric, but really how much time and money does one invest in something that will only get dirty and spilled on, especially if you have to make 20 or more?

All you need per apron:
-one old men's T-shirt in size M or L (XL might so huge that you'll actually have to sew it smaller)
-two 15 cm/6" pieces of 1/4" elastic

You'll also need a pair of scissors, 2 safety pins and a few minutes of your time.

First get your toddler and hold the T-shirt up on him/her to check if the size is good. The T-shirt's width from sleeve to sleeve is about the same as your toddler's wrist to wrist measurement. Most likely a M or L will fit any toddler, XL will probably be to big and you'd have to sew the sleeve a bit shorter but I won't go into that here.

Turn the T-shirt inside out. Find where the seam meets the hem on the sleeve. We'll use the folded hem as casing for the elastic. To do this you have to cut 2 small holes through the inner layer of fabric (the folded bit on the hem), one hole on each side of the seams, but make sure not to cut the seams open. (see pictures below for clarity).

Pin one end of the elastic to the sleeve using a safety pin. Attach the second safety pin to the other end of the elastic and insert into the casing, all the way through. The sleeve will start gathering up a lot, that's why we pinned the one end down so it won't slip through.

Now you should have both ends of the elastic next to each other peaking out of the holes like this:

Tie the two ends of the elastic together with a double or triple knot (or sew the two ends together, but hey, this is a no sew project!); and remove the safety pins. That's how the finished sleeve looks like:

 Repeat on second sleeve. Turn the shirt right side out and put on your toddler to see if it fits. The sleeves should be snug around the wrist protecting any other shirt underneath from getting all dirty. The shirt will be pretty long on the toddler, protecting his/her pants, knee-length is the best, protecting most of the clothes but not getting in the way of the little feet. Most likely you can just leave the shirt as is, but if it's way to long cut off a bit from the bottom. And you're done!

Now put the shirt on your toddler and start the crafty fun...

FREDERIKA

Source: ikea.com via Lydia on Pinterest

This is Frederika, she is Swedish, and she lives all around the world in IKEA. When I first met her, I loved her right away, she's so cheerful and happy and colorful. I had to take her home. And I did. I sewed up every little piece of her, I couldn't let the tiniest strip go to waste. From only 2 meters she gave us tons of pillow joy.

This is a large cover that is stuffed with 3 old couch back pillows.

It has an opening on the side so I can take it off for washing. It's basically made like a regular pillowcase, just with the opening on the long side, and than divided into 3 equal parts.

with the leftovers I made 2 cushions for little chairs...

I love how the large print works on the little square.

and the leftovers from that became little pillows - I mean doll size.

I like how the round one turned out. And some members of the family love the pillow fight quality of these.