Have you ever noticed how kids love to make things, and they always seem to love what they make, no matter how it turns out?

Monster and Princess

This gave me an idea for our latest craft endeavor.  What if I let the kids design and construct their own little creatures?  Typically, when we’re making a craft, we follow a pattern or set of instructions.  Other times, we talk about what we want to make, and I interpret our idea onto paper or fabric.  We usually end up with something cute, but it definitely looks like my interpretation of what we set out to make.  But what if, this time, they got to come up with the idea, put pen to paper (or marker to felt), and put the pieces together with minimal input from me?  What we end up with are these cute little monster dolls that have my daughter’s style written all over them.

Basically, I told my daughter she was going to be able to design her own stuffed monster toy.  She has worked with me enough to understand the concept of cutting out multiple pieces and fitting them together to form an end product.  So, I asked her to draw a picture of her monster on felt and draw arms, legs, eyes, mouth, and other part on different colors of felt.  I carefully cut out the pieces she drew.  Next, I asked her to arrange them exactly how she thought her monster should look.  I then sewed the pieces together on the sewing machine, and she stuffed the body of her monster.   What we ended up with was a little stuffed toy that looking amazingly similar to any one of my daughters drawings.  We also made a princess to play with monster.  Here are the basic instructions of how to make your own wild things!

Materials – colored felt, marker, scissors, sewing machine or needle and thread

Step 1 – Have your child draw a body of a monster/animal/person on a piece of felt.  Have your child draw arms, legs, features, tail, clothes, etc in different colors

Step 2 – Cut out peices, be sure to leave a little extra room around the main body piece for seam allowance

Step 3 – Trace and cut out a 2nd copy of the main body piece.  This will allow you to sew the 2 pieces together to be stuffed

Step 4 – Let you child arrange the pieces together how he/she would like them.  Sew the pieces onto the front of the body shape.

Step 5 – Sew the front and back of body together. (Sew with wrong sides together; we did not turn it inside out).  Leave an opening at the bottom for stuffing

Step 6 – Let your child stuff his/her monster.  We used a chopstick to get into hard-to-reach places like the head and arms.   Sew the opening at the bottom closed

Draw The Body and Other Pieces of Your Monster

Trace and Cut Out a Second Body Piece

Arrange Pieces on the Main Body Piece - Sew Them in Place

Hint – Do not try to use glue to put your monster together.  I notice that lots of online instructions for felt crafts say that you can glue pieces together, but this always ends up in miserable failure for me and tears for the kids.  I’ve used every kind of glue that I can think of, and have yet to find something (short of a hot glue gun) that suitably holds craft felt together.  For some reason, felt glues easily to other surfaces like cardboard (see my Felt Dolls post), but doesn’t glue well to other pieces of felt)

Princess and The Monster

Here is another photo of our finished Wild Things:

OK, what did you guess?  I bet you didn’t guess baby wipes!  That’s right, these flowers are actually made from dried out (unused) diaper wipes.

Kanzashi Flower Bouquet

Kind of neat, huh?  Basically, these are baby wipes, dried, cut into squares, folded, and sewn together to make a flower.  The finished flower was then painted with food coloring and water.  The design is based on Kanzashi, the Japanese art of folding paper or fabric into intricate flowers, oftentimes to be used a hair jewelry.  As much as I’d love to, I can’t take credit for this adaptation.  My daughter wanted to make something herself to give to my mom for her birthday, and the Crafty Crow directed me to the instructions for these flowers on Filth Wizardry (a fun blog with lot’s of ideas to share with kids).  If you and your kids are interested in making your own flowers, you should check it out.  Filth Wizardry has very detailed instructions with great photos.  If we make these again, I think I’ll use more food coloring in our ‘paint’ to give a more intense color.

If you are interested in taking a more traditional approach and making fabric flowers, I found this tutorial on Instructibles which seems very straightforward.  If you are ready for the advanced session, you might want to check out this site by Jen Minnis.   She has alot of information and a picture of a gorgeous hairpiece she made.

Our Bouquet

Before I say anything, I need to credit my husband Jon with this recycling idea.  He had a vision, whereas, I had my eye on the trash can.

Teddy and Zelda

Anyway, about a week ago, Jon presented me with a pair of old twill pants with frayed cuffs and rips across the knees.  They were too far gone for even the best mending efforts.  As he tossed them to me, he said “maybe you can use them for some type of craft with the kids; I don’t know, maybe you can make a teddy bear and use the pocket buttons for eyes or something”.  The pants sat on my desk for a few days, and then I suggested to the kids that we try to make a teddy bear for my son out of Daddy’s old pants.  My daughter was the benefactress of my last project, so I thought it would be nice to make something for my son this time.  Well, he was fairly indifferent to the idea, but my daughter thought it would be really cool to make a doll.  So, off we went to create a cute rag doll out of an old, ripped pair of pants.

We used most of the usable fabric on the doll pictured above, but we did have just enough material left to make her cute little teddy bear companion.

More Teddy and Zelda

And, yes, we used the pocket button for Teddy’s eyes and nose.  I didn’t use a pattern for this doll.   I drew the pieces freehand directly onto the pant legs.  The dolls head and torso are one section, and each arm and leg are a separate piece so that her limbs have some movement.  Zelda, as I named her, is wearing a dress that I made using leftover cotton fabric from a baby quilt I made a few years ago.  Her hair is just basic craft felt.   I wanted to use acrylic paints to give her a more vibrant face, but my daughter insisted that we didn’t have that kind of time — dolly needs a face NOW, so I used a tube of purple puffy fabric paint to draw on a quick face (and belly button!).  Teddy’s scarf is made from scraps of a felted sweater blanket.

For those of you do a lot of sewing, I think making a rag doll without a pattern is a really fun way to go, especially when working with a very finite amount of fabric.  However, if you would like to try it with a pattern, here are some site with cute rag doll patterns from Make Cute Baby Stuff, Fluffy Land, Martha Stewart’s Bunny, and Martha Stewart’s Dolls, and  I also found the twill pant material was pretty easy to work with and lent itself well to a rag doll project.  Teddy probably would have liked a softer material to help give more curve to his ears.  They seemed to come out a little jagged.   My biggest piece of advice for you — if you decide to make your doll without a pattern, cut your pieces much wider than you want the finished item to be. For example, the unsewn arms and legs were almost twice as wide as they appear on the finished doll.  Between the seam allowance, turning, and stuffing, it is amazing how much the pieces ’shrink up’.

Hanging Out

All Together

I really like how these upcycled toys came out and love having another fun use for old clothes!  I will definitely stash away any old pants that we have for our next rag doll project.

A few  years ago, I went through a soap-making phase.  I wasn’t serious enough about it to really sell anything, except a few bars to some of my husband’s very supportive friends.

Valentine Soap

But, I did manage to make enough to give to everyone I knew for every holiday that came to pass.  And, I did manage to accumulate a pretty big stash of soap-making supplies.  When it came time to decide what to give my daughter’s teachers for Valentine’s Day, I remembered my chunks of olive oil & goat’s milk soap and my little vials of essential oils & aroma oils.  Thus, began a very interesting foray into soap-making with a 4 1/2 year old.

I won’t go into instructional detail about how to make melt & pour soap, because, frankly, you melt it — then you pour it.  Pretty straightforward.  OK, I guess it is a little bit more involved than that.  If you are interested, here is a very informative article on the melt & pour technique.   Instead, I’ll just share with you some helpful hints that I’ve learned along the way, and share some fun photos.

Stirring the Soap

Checking out the Molds

Filled Molds

Hint #1 – Bees Wax – Use a little bit of bees wax.  It will make your soap last longer and its good for your skin.  You can buy the little yellow pellets at most soap supply companies.  I don’t really measure, but I use about a tablespoon or so to a batch of 2-3 smallish bars of soap. (I know, I know, I should measure!)  When we did this project, I just let my daughter throw in a handful.  Beeswax melts slower than soap, so pre-melt your beeswax and then add the chunks of soap base.

Hint#2 – Color – I read somewhere that you can use melted crayons for colorants.  I tried this and found that it didn’t work very well with opaque soaps such as goat’s milk, but did a nice job with transparent soaps like olive oil.  For this project, we tried the crayons, because it was fun, but I ended up using Wilton’s gel food coloring to brighten the color.  I’ve also used powered soap colorants, but always had a hard time getting them to blend in.  All and all, food colorings always seemed to work best for me.

Hint #3 – Molds – For this project, I we used silicone heart-shaped muffin pans and rubber heart-shaped ice-cube trays.  I found them in the dollar bin at Target last year.  They were so much easier to use than the plastic soap molds I’ve used in the past, and they were much cheaper.  I’ve also used bread pans lined with saran wrap.  Just pop out the ‘loaf’ and slice it.

Hint #4 – Supplies – I’ve always had good luck buying soap base, bees wax and aroma oils at Brambleberry.  They have an enormous selection and a helpful site.  I used to buy great essential oils from a company called Cedar Vale, but they don’t seem to be around anymore.

Hint #5 – Making It Kid-Friendly – Obviously, you need to be very careful when dealing with hot, melted soap around kids.  Some of the things I let my daughter do were to pick out the colors and aromas, put the cut up of chunks of soap base into the bowl, squeeze an eye-dropper of essential oil (filled by me) into the melted soap, and stir the essential oil into the melted soap base while being carefully monitored.  She also had fun popping the soaps out of the molds when they were hardened.

The Finished Product

When we were done, we ended up with some really cute heart shaped soap in pink, orange, yellow and blue.  We bundled them in pink tulle and plan to bring them into school later this week.

Don’t you love having fans?  My biggest fan is my 4 year old daughter.

Kid's Fingerless Mitts

Every time she sees me making something or working on a new project, regardless of what it is, she exclaims with genuine enthusiasm “Oh, that’s so pretty! I love that! Is it for me?”  There’s always a brief moment of disappointment if I have to explain that no, its for someone else or for sale.  More often than not, I end up making a smaller, child’s version of whatever it is I’m making.  In fact, her only criticism of my work is that I don’t make nearly enough things in pink.  In her eyes, the pinker, the better!

Last week, she caught me working on a pair of Happy Hands fingerless mittens.

Making Pancakes in Her New Mitts!

She liked them so much, I ended up chasing her around the house to get my prototype pair back. So, of course, I ended up making a pair for her, too.  She couldn’t decide if she wanted hearts or flowers on them, so we went for one of each.  I think they turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself!

The mitts are actually pretty fun to make.  I bought a bunch of second hand wool sweaters for another felting project I’m working on (another post on that, another time!) and realized the bottom part of the sleeve would fit perfectly as a fingerless mitten.  I sewed an opening for a thumb and used wool yarn to embroider around the raw edges and then added an applique from a another wool sweater in a contrasting color.  Voila!  Thick, warm, felted mitts!  If you like the kids version, check out my adult version in my Etsy shop.

These cute toys are fun to make, fun to play with and require a minimal amount of skill.

Felt Paper Dolls

Basically, the dolls are cardboard cutouts covered with felt. The best part is that since felt tends to stick to itself, you don’t need tape, tabs or glue to make the clothes stay on, so its easy for the kids to change outfits on their dolls.

To make them, you will need the following materials:

1. Cardboard (we used a recycled diaper box)

2. Different colored felt

3. Glue

4. Scissors

5. Googly eyes (optional)

6. Marker

Start by drawing a body shaped outline on your cardboard.  I did mine freehand, but you can also use a gingerbread man cookie cutter for a pattern.  Choose a piece of felt for your skin tone.  Trace and cut out the body shape from the skin tone felt.

Felt Doll Body

Felt Doll Template

Let the kids glue the “skin” onto the cardboard template.

Cut out hair for your doll.  Let the kids glue on the hair, googly eyes and draw a mouth on their doll.  Finally, cut out clothes out of different colored felts.  The kids can use markers to add details to the clothing.

Its super easy to accessorize these dolls.  We made hair bows, belts, shoes and jewelry.  The clothes should stay on the felt body kind of like velcro.  Cute, aren’t they?

Eggy Babies

What is an eggy baby?  An eggy baby is a simple felted doll that I made with my kids, (Deirdre – 4, Jonah – 2). Basically, we felted one of Jon’s old wool sweaters, cut it into ovals and made it into dolls.  I did the sewing and the cutting, and the kids drew on faces with markers and stuffed them full of cotton batting.  I figured, if Build-a-Bear can build an empire on letting kids stuff their own toys, why can’t we have some of that fun at home?  The kids enjoyed it so much, they made extras to give to some of their friends at school.  I hear that one of Deirdre’s friends loved his eggy baby so much, he sleeps with it at night!

Eggy Baby Template

If you’d like to make your own, here is the template and basic instructions.  You can do the sewing by hand or machine — we did both.

• Felt a wool sweater by putting it through a hot water wash cycle
• Draw your pattern — a basic egg shape 6 1/2 by 5 inches
• Cut out 2 pattern templates.  On one of the templates, draw a head and cut it out so that you now have 3 pattern pieces
• Cut out the 2 larger pieces from your felted sweater
• Cut out the smallest piece from linen, muslin or whatever you want to use for the face
• Pin right sides together of face and body front.  Stitch together
• If you want to add a decorations (we used felt hearts and bows), sew it on at this point
• Pin right sides of front and back together.  Stitch around the outside, leaving a 1″ opening at the bottom
• Turn rightside out
• Let the kids draw on a face and stuff their eggy baby with stuffing
• Whip stitch closed the opening at the bottom
  

If you are using felted sweaters for another project save the scraps and use for eggy babies.  You can use different colors for the front and back.  I think we will try to add hair for our next batch.  Have fun!