Teachers Appreciation Gifts: Hand Print Pillows

I can not believe that the end of school is nearly here again and I found myself yearning to make me all time favorite project - hand print pillows. You might remember that we made them first for Mother's Day and for teacher appreciation gifts last year. 

This year we had 3 pillows to make. A total of 21 children aged from 18months to 5 years popped around at one time or another to let me paint their hands and print them on fabric. With the age of the kids you are working with you just have to embrace the imperfections and go with it. This year I used Jacquard Fabric Paints & painted the leaves & stems onto the pillows.



I wanted to do some different designs this year so we have a flower bed of flowers ....

.... with a plant label, quilted in swirls and brown yarn for the earth.

We have a bouquet ....

... with gift tag ...

 

... quilted in pebbles & feather swirls.

And the old classic of flowers in a vase ....

... with gift tag ...

.... and quilted in pebbles, swirls & waves.

 

AND  I am very proud to share this shot with you - another school year over and I am one proud proud Mummy. I love this project - perhaps we will do it again next year!

Turn your Kids Art into Greeting Cards

I keep pretty much every piece of 'art' my little ones make. I was spring cleaning a little and going through all the kids art work trying to keep the most special pieces - as even by age 4 my drawers are overflowing with precious scribbles and blobs of paint.

I couldn't bring myself to throw away any of the art and this project has been in the back of my mind for a long long time.

This is an example of the sorts of pieces I have.

I cut it into 4" x 5.5" pieces. I used a rotary cutter & a ruler - but you could use scissors and cut the lines carefully. Once the pieces were cut I put them on a piece 5" x 6.5" of contact paper and then stuck it to a plain 5"x 6.5" card.

I think you could also cut interesting shapes or animals out also - but I stuck with the rectangles.

I got this pack of 50 plain cards from Michaels years ago. I still had 46 left.

 

Once the art work and contact paper had been added to these cards - they are surprisingly solid - and the contact paper adds a little bit of luxury to the cards. I think you could just use glue to stick the art to the cards - but I like the way the contact paper keeps the art nicely flat - no wrinkles.

Here is a sample of the 46 cards we made.

Our cards include crayon art, poster paint, watercolor, shaving foam paint, scrapper art ...

... water bead painting, rain art and finger painting!

I seriously LOVE them and I can't wait to put together little sets wrapped in ribbon and give them to Grandma for birthdays, mother's day and other such celebrations! 

WIP: Kids Art Quilt: Fabric Building Blocks

My scrap bag has got utterly out of control - over flowing onto the floor and carpet - so I spent the weekend organizing scraps into colored bins and discovering little bits here. Separating pieces that I  can turn into speedy negative space filled quilts. I feel like since Freddie arrived I have become a little bit possessed and obsessed in thinking about quilts I can quickly make so that I can load and spend the majority of time quilting them. The more negative space the better!

For a while now I have had this idea of asking the girls to make a city out of wooden building blocks that I would then mimic in a patchwork pattern. But going through my scrap bag I realized that I could skip the building step and just give them the fabric - and they could lay out the blocks into a city themselves.



Here is the design that they came up with. My husband even commented on it (in a positive manner) as it lay on the floor - which means it must be cute. I plan to fuse & applique the design onto a backing and then quilt away on it.

We are currently having a debate with my middle bunny who insists that a large dolphin and teddy bear need to be included in the scene. We shall have to see how that request plays out ....

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Our other kid painted fabric projects have included:

Kid painted Teepee

Kid painted Garden Picnic Blanket

Kid painted Quilt - Blotter Art

Kid painted Quilt - Throwing Paint

Kid painted Quilt - Spraying Paint

Kid painted Quilt - Shaving Foam Paint

Kid painted Quilt - Watercolor Circles

Kid painted Quilt - Spin Art

Two-tone Playsiks

Our coffee filter butterfly tree has gotten many a compliment (we sadly just took it down to make our Halloween tree.) If you remember we made many of our beautiful butterflies by simply dipping and hanging our coffee filters in liquid watercolors. I know I must seem mildly obsessed by dying silks but it did make me wonder if we could make play silks this way. Just dip the silk in two pots and let it sit there and soak up the colors.

In each container is filled with approx 16oz of hot water, 6oz of vinegar & a good squirt or more of food coloring. You can read more about dying play silks with kid friendly dyes here, here & here.

We left the silks to soak for 30mins or so.

The results were really quite pretty - I gave into the imperfections in the color and enjoyed the design that the process resulted in. 

 

Here is Bunny #1 running around the garden pretending to be a butterfly. 

They also make really pretty neck scarfs.

Other dyeing fun we have had:
Tissue Dyed Silk Pillows
Two Tone Play Silks
Teacher Appreciation Gift: Home Made Play Silks
Easy Silk Scarf Dyeing with Tissue Paper
Kid Friendly Dyeing - Making your own Play Silks

Recycled Teepee Play

I took our recycled teepee to the country along with our playsilks. Let the play begin!

Giggling away inside. 

Dancing around the teepee. 

Inspecting the local wildlife. 

I made the headbands by pushing some colored feathers through a band of felt. The felt was secured together by a ribbon tie. 

After the initial excitement the girls decided to decorate the teepee with flowers - inserting them into the cotton eyelet holes.

 

I hope you had a sunny time outside this weekend too. 

Teacher Appreciation Gift: Hand Print Pillows

For my eldest bunny - we made her class teacher & classroom assistant hand print cushions.

You may remember that I made these before for Grandma on Mother's Day.

Each child in the class made his or her hand print using fabric paint.

I quilted the front of each cushion (experimenting with free motioning quilting - one continuous line in a heart pattern - not perfect ...

... way harder than it looks) and added some embellishments (felt flower pot & a bow.)

I wanted the pillows to be very fun and happy so this time I made a ruffle trim. (I have a new ruffler foot - which I would much recommend for endless hours of fun easy ruffles.)

I made labels for the back of the cushions so the teacher can identify who made each hand print. I favor a pillowcase closure for cushions - easy and prettier than a messy zipper (I am scared of zips!)

 

I hope you all have a wonderful summer holiday. I can't wait not to have to load all the kids in the car (twice) every morning for the school run and if you are wondering what to do with your little people this summer check out Fun at Home with Kids, Growing a Jeweled Rose and the Artful Parent for endless ideas for fun and inventive play.

Teacher Appreciation Gift: Home Made Play Silks

My girls go to a really sweet preschool. Next year they will be moving schools - so I wanted to thank their teachers for giving them such a lovely and happy experience. I asked their movement and music teacher if there was anything she would like for her classroom and what do you know - she wanted some colored silks for the movement classes!

We decided 30" square silks would be the best size as her classes range from just under 2's to 4+.

Again I used food colors to ensure the silks were super kid friendly. I used the McCormick Assorted Food & Egg Dye and the McCormick Neon Food & Egg Dyes.

I have posted a previous post about kid friendly dyeing techniques here. But to recap -  

- Soak silk in hot tap water with a glug of vinegar while you make your mixture. (I'm in a debate about whether soaking the silks before hand is really necessary - if I do this again I will try using dry silks.)
- Mixture: 1/2 bottle of 0.25oz food coloring with 16 ounces of hot tap water + 6 ounces of vinegar.
- Squeeze water out of silk and place silk in a pyrex bowl with the dye mixture.
- Leave it there and stir occasionally - you will see when the dye has been absorbed as the liquid will become a lot clearer - approx 20 mins - although we did leave ours hanging around most of the afternoon.

- Rinse in cold wash & dry on hottest cycle in tumble dryer.

Amazingly bright colors. My only disappointment was that the neon 'pink' and the assorted 'red' are practically the same hue.

TIP: If your silk ends up looking like this first try (I rushed it) do not panic - just make another mixture of dye, water & vinegar and resoak the silk.

You can see how bright the green came out (far left) on the second soak.

Recycled Teepee

When a friend of mine pointed me towards this tutorial on A Beautiful Mess about how to make your own teepee - I jumped at the opportunity to whip one up. I was amazed how quickly this project came together - but also the size of it - it is much bigger than I had thought it would be!

Before we moved into our house the previous owners had lived here for 45 years. I don't know if they had the same curtains for that period of time - but we took every curtain down. I washed kept some white 'cotton' eyelet curtains for a potential craft project. This material has now been sitting in a box for 3 years - hurrah - a purpose and confirmation of my belief that one should never throw material away.

I had to amend the tutorial slightly (my teepee is slightly narrower by 2" at the base) as I had a limited amount of material to work with.

Some of the material was damaged - but I just had to embrace the frays and nicks in some places.

I constructed the front panel differently from the tutorial. The front panel is a triangle at the top and then two gentle ruffled curtains with more abundant ruffles at the base of each curtain. I had some fabric scraps left over from the project and not enough length in the curtains so I sewed all the left overs scraps together and ruffled them - I think the ruffles hide all the seams well.

I carefully trimmed and saved some of the scalloped edges to make the curtain tie backs.

Inside the teepee I sewed 3 ties to each seam. One at the top, in the middle and at the bottom. I used ribbon that was left over from our Princess Tea Party - but I think you could use anything that can be tied tightly without ripping.

Instead of using 2x1 lengths of wood - I opted for a pricier round 1 3/8" wood molding poles (8ft lengths). Personally I think they were worth the extra cost.

The teepee will be mostly used outside but I did put felt pads on the bottom of each pole. Despite sanding the base of each pole before hand - I was worried that the poles would scratch or mark the floors when we played with it inside.

I made a mat for the tee pee out of an old wool blanket I purchased on ebay for $18.26 (that price includes the shipping.) Ebay is an excellent source for finding recyclable materials. Once I had reminded myself of the basic geometry of a perfect triangle I began cutting and constructing my hexagon blanket. I even reused the binding of the original blanket on the edges. I might decorate this blanket in a cute way at a later date.

I hope this will inspire you with your own tee pee! The Land of Nod & Magic Cabin have lovely teepee's for sale. And if you would like to make a smaller scale teepee here is the cutest little teepee on LoLovie her teepee is made from a tutorial on Pink Toes and Power Tools.