More Christmas Ornaments - Boy Friendly

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas & that you have a healthy & prosperous New Year!

Yes, It's past due, but it is never too late to get started on next year.  Here are a few last minute Christmas tree ornaments we made this year.

Race Car Clips:
You will need:
mini race cars (I got these for a steal on black Friday)

clothes pins paint
hot glue



PAINT CLOTHES PIN (I used nail polish, some even have a glitter top coat)



GLUE CAR TO CLOTHES PIN





CLIP ON TREE



Thank You, Karla

recent projects...

Hi All,  I'm still here crafting away.  Here are photos of a few projects I've been working on over the past few weeks.

Scrabble tree Ornaments:

Sewn ombre note cards from scrapbook paper:

Pine cone ornaments from Sweaters:

Camper pillow case & jammies  (Christmas Present for Peepers):

Poinsettia pillow with jingle bells:

Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

Flannel Scarf

 Do you love to wear a cozy scarf? 

I do & I can't believe it took me years to make one of these lovely scarves!

 Start with 1 old flannel shirt... I think this one was given to be my my BFF Tina in 1989 during my Northern Exposure phase.

Add another flannel shirt...

 And another.

 Cut the back out of your flannel shirt.  Mine ended up being approximately 16" wide x 22" long since these were oversized shirts.  If you shirts are smaller/more fitted, you may need to use 4 shirts to get the length you want.

 Sew the 3 shirt ends together.  Since flannel will fray with wash & wear, I folded over the seam allowance to one side & used zig zag stitch to enclose the raw edges.

 I ended up with one really long scarf (about 65").  At this point I switched gears a bit & decided to sew the scarf in a circle to make an infinity scarf.  If your scarf is shorter than 58", I would not recommend this as you won't be able to easily slip it on & off.

 I hemmed the edges with a simple zig zag stitch again to prevent fraying.

 Super cute scarf!

I really like that I can wear it with different plaids in the front

depending on the other colors I'm wearing.

 I tried it with blue striped dress shirts too...

Thank you, Karla

Sun Catcher

For Grandparents day we made Sun Catchers.  I read about this on-line & thought it would be kind of fun to try.  It is recommended to do it on the grill to avoid the melted plastic fumes in your house.

Place your plastic pony beads in a pattern in a baking dish

(cake pan, muffin pan for littler ones, etc). 

We used cookie cutter to guide our in our shape, but you can do

whatever pattern (or no pattern)

Remove cookie cutter & place on hot grill, wait about 10 minutes (we checked ours every so often to see how well the beads were melting)

Once all beads are melted, take off & allow to cool. 

TIP:  Don't get your grill too hot, I think that is why the first one did not melt into a smooth surface... it was hot enough to boil plastic!

Once cool to the touch, pop in the freezer for a few minutes & the plastic sun catcher will pop right out of the cake pan!

 Then drill a small hole & hang with ribbon.

Other Tips:

1) This did ruin my cake pan even though the on-line instructions said it was OK - if you have an old pan you don't care about - use it!

2) The translucent & opaque Pony beads melted best, I bought some pearlized ones & they melted, but were "clumpy".

Peepers really enjoyed this project & wants to make more fish sun catchers.

Thanks, Karla

Spider Web

Last week I was home sick for a few days, at one point I went outside to get a little fresh air & almost ran right into this amazingly huge & intricate spider web. 

 I ran in the house & grabbed my camera & got a few quick shots.  This was between a tree & our yard waste bin next to the house by our garage.

It got me thinking about Halloween!

Thank you, Karla

Camper Shirt

Hi All,  A few weeks back, we had the privilege of going camping (in our driveway)... Anders is obsessed with Campers, so I thought I would make a shirt to commemorate the fun occasion.

I don't have a step by step, I just used scrap fabric, Stitch Witchery & kind of "went for it"

I used iron on letters for Happy & assumed everyone could tell it was a camper, but someone actually asked what "Happy Trailer" meant?

He loves the shirt, but next time he wants a "high hitch camper" aka a 5th wheel.

Thanks, Karla

Little Boy Plaid Shorts

Have you look at One Yard Wonders and  One Yard Wonders 2?

They are two amazingly fun books with projects galore that take only 1 yard of fabric! All the patters are included in the book.  And one of my former co-workers is the author! Small world huh?

I used a woven pants pattern as inspiration for shorts for Peepers.

I took a few measurements from his "favorite plaid shorts" & tweaked the pattern slightly.

I shortened the inseam to be 5".

I changed the pocket opening shape from curved to angled

 & used self bias fabric to finish it off.

Just as I was ready to sew the fold over elastic waistband, I decided to take a few more measurements from his "favorite plaid shorts" & realized I did not have enough material for a proper fold over waistband.

So I improvised with a leftover piece of chocolate colored knit fabric for a cozy waistband.



Don't look too close at my plaid matching... it is not up to par in my book.

Peepers is jumping for joy to have new plaid shorts!
Karla