Nested

Something to Make: Stencil Collage

When we purchased the Birds of a Feather Mobile by Helen Ige, we were put-off by the $69 price for a few moments. After all, your purchase seems to be nothing more than a 11 by 13 piece of walnut veneer and some string. When we saw that the bird and tree pieces are meant to be punched out of a piece of wood that can become a stencil, we thought, "okay, we can make *something* else out of this" and swallowed the price.

That *something* that ended up being made is this piece of nursery art that was intended to tie all our nursery colors together.

First, we took the stencil and cut out the leaves, tree and birds from brown paper. To add some contrast, some of the pieces were also cut out of white paper. There wasn't anything scientific going on -- just an aesthetic choice of what works and what doesn't.

The background colors were simply  pieces of colored paper we got at a stationary supply store.

The most complicated part of the project was finding the right frame -- and that wasn't too hard either. We used one of those family collage frames that have a bunch of windows cut out the matte paper.

The pieces of color paper were simply placed in the windows -- just like you would place a photo and then the bird/tree pieces were moved around until the presentation was just right. Gluing secures it all and that's it.

Something to Make: Basic Bib

Yesterday, when we posted the great fabrics from Repro Depot that we thought would inspire anyone to get sewing, we said that making a bib was "as basic as it gets."

Now, that may not be completely true when you don't even know where to start. We're not master seamstresses by any stretch of the imagination and even making a bib can give us a headache, but a bib gives high returns for relatively low effort. All you have to do it ditch the complicated steps (like encasing an entire bib in double fold bias tape). Unless you're good and stuff and sewing and then you can embellish away!

Here's a basic bib pattern we threw together (with instructions) that should help you showcase the fabulous fabrics that you find.

Something to Make: Fold-up Crayon Pouch

There was a time that parents (well, mothers) weren't just encouraged to sew clothing and projects for their children, but were expected. Now, this isn't quite the norm nowadays but mothers and fathers are getting back in the habit of being crafty for their and their kid's sakes. For those who are starting to get the itch to stitch, we wanted to create a project that could be done without patterns and in as short amount of time as possible.

Therefore, we present step-by-step instructions (and nifty little illustrations) on how to make our Nested Fold-up Crayon Pouch.

The instructions follow below. If you make this, let us know in the comments and if you have any tweaks to the instructions, we'll welcome the feedback!

Updated: To make it easier to make this away from your computer, here's a PDF to download and print out: Download crayon-pouch.pdf