St David's day and other randomness

So far this year I've been slow on the posting front as far as the blog goes. I think it's partly tiredness what with being pregnant and all, but mostly it's because anything that I put on the blog tends to get written at night after the kids are in bed, and recently I've been making a lot of stuff myself in the evenings and that's kept me away from the computer.

I know it's not something I usually do on Filth Wizardry, but I thought maybe I would put a post together soon to share some of the things that I've been making, not because they are particularly special or unique, but more because I've been making things using patterns or tutorials that other people have been kind enough to provide for free on the web, and thought it'd be nice to point folks to the ones that have worked out well for us, in case you fancy making some of the things yourself. It's mostly sewn, crocheted and knitted items made for children. Are any of you into that?

So anyway, as the title of this post suggested...

St David's Day.

I wanted to pop in before March 1st, to remind anyone with links to Wales that it's St David's Day tomorrow! and to give you the link to the St David's day crafts that we did last year in case you wanted to have a go (leeks, hats and flags). I think this year we're going to try making some bara brith (I'd better remember to put the fruit to soak overnight). And for the first time we will have some daffodils flowering out the front of our house on March 1st, which makes me happy. I might pin one to my jacket tomorrow :)

Falcon cargo math.

Thought this might give you a giggle. Last month I found some of the awesome little wooden hundreds, tens and ones blocks at a thrift store and wanted to find a way that the kids could learn with them without realising they were doing math. We ended up spending part of the afternoon using them as cargo crates on the Millenium Falcon dollhouse that Paul made for our 6 year old's birthday. They wrote out little invoices and delivery confirmations and random messages. It was pretty darn amusing. Love how Luke ordered some Batereets (batteries) for R2D2! I reckon we should use up the remainder of the grey spray paint on them to make them more like cargo crates.

In case you are wondering where on earth you are and if this has somehow started to turn into a homeschooling blog, fear not! This went on later in the afternoon...

Lovely People.

The weekend before last I was lucky enough to be able to meet up with Kami who writes "get Your Mess On" and runs "Austin Tinkering School". She came over from Texas to California for a few days on a mission to tinker and we managed to dash into SF in just enough time to say hi before she had to truck it back to Montara with Gever Tulley's immersive tinkering workshop posse. Although it was a very brief meeting, I was so glad that we managed to say hi. I absolutely love what Kami's been doing with Austin Tinkering School and have great admiration for the energy and enthusiasm she has when it comes to facilitating children's creative dreams. Hopefully we'll get to meet up again and hang out in May when Maker Faire is on.

My six year old was very enamoured with one of the vehicles that had been made during the tinkering workshop that day, so Paul helped her sort out something similar based on her drawings and plans over the weekend. It was very sweet watching her own the project and really only wanting help with things like not being heavy enough to push down with enough force on the electric drill. She still wants to add a seat and build a ramp, but in the mean time she and her mates are just pulling each other around the backyard on it at alarming velocities. See what twenty minutes hanging out with Kami Wilt inspires you to do!

Giant lolly pop valentines

So, first of all, for all the Americans reading, we British call "lolly pops" what you guys call "suckers", and for all the Brits reading, in the US St Valentine's day is waaaayheyheyyyy more commercialised than back home. All the kids trade valentines treats at school, which really is kinda cute and I have to admit that I do like that it is just about love in general and not exclusively love of the romantic variety. For anyone reading in a place other than the US or UK, how does your valentines day work? and what do you call lolly pops? By the way, we also call "popsicles", "ice lollies", which for some reason makes my American friends laugh and laugh like they have been huffing gas?!



Anyway, with all that cultural intrigue behind us, I just wanted to share with you the valentines cards that we sorted out this year and last year for the kids to give to their friends. A couple of years back I saw a post on 24-7-365 showing the way they had very cleverly made some personal valentines cards of their girls holding out lolly pops. You can see them here. (warning: cute overload) I really wanted to do something like this in 2010, but this exact idea wasn't quite going to work for us for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I wanted the girls to be able to give cards from the both of them, rather than make separate cards, and secondly I wanted to make the venture a bit cheaper to pull off, because we'd be printing them at home. The solution came in the form of a piece of white PVC plumbing pipe that we had lurking out the garage (these lengths of white plastic plumbing pipes along with their different connectors make very cool, very cheap building materials for kids to explore with, especially if you give them some bedsheets to throw over the constructions to make dens, but that's another post for another day). I just snapped a photo of the two girls holding the pipe together and then removed the background using Photoshop. If I hadn't had the ability to knock out the background with software then I would have just printed out the image at full size, cut it out with scissors and scanned it back into the computer with a white sheet of paper as the background then resized the image to fit on the postcard. The reason I removed the background on these images was to save on printer ink when printing so many copies on our home printer.

I also printed the cards on 4inch by 6inch plain index cards from Office Max, rather than using photo paper, which saved a bit too. As with the original idea, we just cut the holes and slotted in a lolly pop and it looked like the girls were holding a giant sucker, which they thought was total aceness of course.

This is the version from last year...

and this is the version from this year...


I also did one with just my older daughter for her to give to her classmates on Monday, leaving space for her to write in each classmate's name...


The text on these was from the handwriting font that my older daughter made when she was four. You can see how we did that here. I should really make an updated version!

I love how you can see the radical differences in my kid's personalities from these pictures. From the clothes they chose to wear, to the poses they struck. My older daughter is such a gorgeous little tomboy and my younger daughter is clearly dead set on being Cyndi Lauper when she grows up ;) We already knew that though. You just have to look at what they chose for Halloween costumes last year!


Just in case you have time today or tomorrow to make some valentinezy type stuff, here are a few links to older valentine's posts from Filth Wizardry that might be helpful...

• Toilet roll tube heart necklaces.


• Mini roses from dollar store crepe paper.


• Valentine's butterflies.


• Cardboard valentines heart crowns.


• Printable easy to colour valentine's cards for little kids.

Big love to you! and not just on Hallmark day either ;)

Guest post at Alpha Mom

Hello! I'm a bit late letting you know, but a couple of days ago I did a guest post for Alpha Mom, showing how to make some cute little valentines patches out of felt and sharpies and plastic bags. You can either use them to sew onto clothing or glue on some pins to make badges. Here's the link...

Homemade Felt Valentine Patches.




The plan is for me to attempt to have my act together enough to do a regular monthly post at Alpha Mom this year, rather than just the occasional guest post that I did last year. I'll make sure to let you know on Filth Wizardry when our projects go up on Alpha Mom, because they aren't going to be at the same time every month.



Also, good news! I've finally got my get up and go back after months of feeling like I needed to be taken to the abatoir to be made into glue! We've hit the half way mark in the human manufacturing process and we're at that awesome place where I feel capable again and I can stay awake past the kid's bed time. This means that I'll be back at the computer posting about our adventures a bit more, rather than just having the adventures during the day and then falling asleep regardless of my location at 9pm ;)

Oooh and gun hei fat choi! Congratulations and be prosperous! or as my four year old says "It's the year of the runny babbit!"

New year stuff and things

Well, we're back in the US and the jet lag is nearly under control. I thought I'd post you a couple of pics of the lovely snowyness that we got to hang out in back in Wales. It really was gorgeous. Of course the kids are glad to be back in their own beds with their own toys after multiple weeks of hopping around between houses (I think the longest we were in one place was three nights), but we are still homesick after having to wave goodbye to family and friends for what will likely be at least another year.

I feel like I should be doing what all the other blogs do this time of year and give you a round up of the best of last year's projects, but it's a bit of a struggle, because I'm not one for trawling the stats, so I can't easily give you a run down of which have been the most popular. I guess I have an idea from how many people have written to me to tell me that they have actually tried them though, so that'll do, combined with which ones have been most popular with the kids that live here or just hang out here :) I'm not sure how much the stats really mean anyway, because I know that the storm trooper helmet from milk jugs went round and round the web for a while and got a lot of attention, but I suspect that was more a source of amusement and doubt many people actually tried it.

I'm not what I'd call a prolific blogger. This year I only managed 50 posts, but given that I tend to post less than once a week on average, I try as best I can to make those posts as useful and worthwhile as possible. Ten seemed like a good number to pick, so here are the ten project posts (in no particular order) that I feel like the kids got the most valuable play and exploration out of this year. The things I have chosen for this list are not things I have made for the kids, or the more collaborative adult-kid projects like the mini playscapes we often build together, but more open ended activities for the kids themselves that need little assistance beyond set up.

• Plasticine stamp printing
• Craft foam bath murals
• repurposing Duplo bricks
• Tissue paper and glue stained glass window
• Sand art lightbox
• Harmonograph experiments
• Junkhouse shantytown in the back yard
• Giant reclaimed wooden blocks
• Giant geoboard
• Glow in the dark sketch wall

I hope that you found something useful or helpful as far as ideas go in the posts from this year. Fingers crossed that we can have this much fun again in 2011 :)

Oooh, one last thing. Remember the star wars peg dolls that I made for my older daughter's 6th birthday?

Well a load of people contacted me to ask if I was making sets to sell, and I had to say sorry and that no I had no plans to do that, but I have noticed recently that more than a couple of people on Etsy have clearly caught sight of my peg dolls and are making pretty accurate copies of them for what seems like a reasonable price given the amount of time that is involved in painting them up. For example, this seller has even made the removable clay Darth Vader mask like I did. Although I think all their pegs are the larger size, rather than a mix of large and small like mine were, but still, if you're wanting to purchase a set that is at least very similar to the ones I made my daughter, rather than make your own, Etsy crafters have clearly taken the idea and run with it. Me and the hubbins are waiting to see who the first person is to start making and selling the Falcon Dollhouse (don't worry, neither of us had any plans to make and sell these items ourselves).

One more link to another reader's Star wars peg dolls based on ours. These ones not for sale, but made as a Christmas gift. Aren't they cute, and just like ours with the same sized pegs and furry chewy and everything! (pics at bottom of the post)

Pocket softie skirts and where we've been (and still are)

Well hello, that was a bit of an unexpected blogging break! November really did a number on me it seems. I managed to half write two blog posts and then not finish them or publish them. We did still manage to get plenty of undocumented larking around done, but nothin' in bloggitty blogland. Sorry about that. December has been just as sparse on the blogging front around here too, because we flew off to Blighty a couple of weeks ago, to see the fam. We'll be back in the US again in the new year, if Heathrow can pull itself together amidst all the snow, and likely things will calm down a bit for more regular happenings on Filth Wizardry :) Hope you all haven't given up and unsubscribed by then!

Thank you to all the nice folk that checked in with me to see if everything was ok over here. We're all ok, in fact things are good. The year that started out hard going with rotten health, pregnancy loss, and visas/greencard stress is happily winding up in the opposite way it seems. We have Green Cards in hand, and have a new family member on the way too. I'm at that point during the human manufacturing process where I'm queen of the chunder fairies and also feel like I've been gunned down by a zoological grade tranquilizer dart though, so don't expect me to rock the awesomometer until after the new year, when I'll be about 16/17 weeks :)

In the mean time, I wanted to post a few ideas of things to make for the kidletts for Christmas. We're currently snowed in up a mountain at a place called Rhosgadfan in North Wales, so I don't have access to all the pics on my home computer, but I'd half written this pocket softie skirt post before we left, so there are a few pics in it already for you.

One of the things I made for the girls last year and totally failed to blog about were these dinky little skirts with soft toys in the pockets. All I used was some nice patterned scrap brushed cotton, a few lengths of ribbon, and the waist band I sewed on was just an "ear warmer" headband thing from the Dollar Tree.

Little sister got the owl fabric skirt, with three little owl softies cut from the same fabric, and big sister got the outer space skirt with a softie rocket ship to go in the pocket.

LiEr has been posting a load of great pocket tutorials on her blog Ikat bag lately and it reminded me of these skirts I'd made and then K posted about some little softies she'd made too on her blog "Made by K" and so I thought you might like to see this pretty simple project from last Christmas.

I just sewed the fabric onto the headband when it was stretched taught, so that the skirt had a bit of fullness to it. The adult sized headband was the perfect size for an elasticated toddler waistband. The softies that I made from the same fabric were attached to the ribbon and sewn into the pockets so that the kids could play with them, but not loose them. They worked out really well for random waiting in line places and that sort of thing. I liked the way the softies were made from the same material as the skirt, so Ffi's little owls could even have conversations with the rest of the non 3D owl community on her clothing, and Carys's rocket ship could visit the planets on her skirt. I really need to make more now that they are a year bigger because these ones are like mini skirts on them now, and can only reasonably be worn with leggings underneath these days!

This time around, when I make new skirts I can try some better pocket sewing techniques, thanks to LiEr's tutorials! Given my current exhaustion levels, I might resort to sewing a few pockets on skirts they already have, and making ribbon pocket softies for them. I love the feel of brushed cotton, and there are so many cute kid prints available in it, that it'd also be nice to make a pillow case with a pocket and a couple of pocket softies to tuck into it at bedtime. I'm hoping to have a bit more get up and go, and a lot less barfing in the new year and that'll result in more knitty/sewy goings on.

Before I sign off and wade through some deep snow to see if the car is still burried, here are a few things from the last few of years that might work for you in the last couple of days before Christmas...

Presents.

• Superhero poncho fleece cape. (I made both of these on Christmas eve last year, so you definately have time still)
• Painted peg dolls. (these ones took quite a while, but a small set would be quicker)
• Homemade freaky unicorn pillow pet. (my mate back in the US is making a replica of this for her little girl at the moment. I hope it's going well jennifer!) Again, this was very quick to sew up.
• A little sewing/embroidery kit very cheaply.
• Fuzzy Felt friends and family set. I really want to make the kids an updated version of the one I made a few years ago. Maybe for my younger daughter's birthday in March.

Easy Holiday activities.

• No icing candy cane cookies.
• Printable christmas lego and hole punch set.
• Paper plate angels.
• Old tights snowmen.

Hope those links are useful to a few of you in the last couple of days before Christmas and I hope everyone gets some lovely time with their families over the next few days. I hate to think of all those people sleeping on the floor at the airport in London, just trying to get home :( Fingers crossed that won't be us next week. In the mean time I shall be stuffing my pregnant face with fish and chips, sausage rolls, Ribena, Rusholme Kebabs, Wensleydale cheese, and all manner of other British foods that I can't get my hands on back in California! Om nom nom!!!

Headband Masks for trick or treating

I wanted to make a bunch of Star Wars masks for my kids and their mates to play around in for my six year old's party and also for trick or treating a week later.

Firstly I want to let you know about the great mask print outs that we got from here and here. So lovely and retro and hand drawn/painted, just like the original artwork for the movie posters. Love it! I printed out some of the masks and then glued them to some Dollar Tree poster board to make them a bit more sturdy. Then it was Paul that did the cutting and covering with a layer of sticky back plastic, also from the Dollar Tree (the sticky back plastic, not Paul). He cut holes for the eyes and little doors for the noses to poke out a bit. We covered them with the sticky back plastic because the print outs were inkjet and so not water resistant. I figured there would be party beverages flying around, so the plastic covering would give the masks a better chance of lasting longer than just one night.

I originally planned to do the usual stick a couple of holes in either side and put elastic on to hold them on the kid's heads, but we had kids ranging from four up to eight years old and so one size wasn't going to fit all. It was a moot point anyway, because as it turned out I had no elastic. Bah. What I did have though were three packs of Dollar Tree kid's hair bands. They came in packs of three, so I had nine in total, which was perfect. They are just kid sized ridgid plastic hairbands that are covered with a woven fabric layer to make them prettier. All I had to do was get the hot glue gun out and glue them onto the backs of the masks at the right height.


The thing I really like about this result is that for trick or treating they can be flipped up to be worn like a real headband whilst walking about, so that you can see properly to cross roads etc, but it's easy to flip them down into a mask after you've knocked on the door. No more face planting on people's doorsteps because you can't see where you're putting your feet! (or is that just me?)

Ooh and one last one. I was one hair band short, so I glued an old pair of the 3D movie glasses to the back of the R2-D2 mask. That worked really well too, even though they were adult sized glasses.

So, just a quick post really, and more of an idea than a project, but I thought it might be useful to a few trick or treater last minute preparations.

Total cost for ten star wars masks was $5

$1 poster board
$1 roll of sticky back plastic (The Dollar Tree called it "self adhesive shelf liner")
$3 three packs of three Dollar Tree headbands.

The other good thing is that they have been worn a lot this week by a lot of different kids and none have broken so far. In other Halloweenish news... The 4th July tree has now become the Halloween tree. You don't need to tell me how weird this is ;)

No real projects to blog about from my older daughter's 6th birthday party really. We had to go for a pretty small party this year, with only four families, because we'd been ill and when we were finally well enough to have the party, the weather was terrible and with a party limited to the livingroom and kitchen, it had to be small. I used the same aproach with the cake this year as I did with the superhero cake from last year, only this time it was an Empire cake with storm trooper and vader party rings squished in the sides for decoration. We made balloon torch light sabers and had a death star pinata to abuse. I think my favourite bit was the party food at the "Ackbar Snackbar" in the kitchen :) She wants to be Darth Vader for halloween. Do you think it has anything to do with her feeling an affiliation to the entire crew of the death star, who just happen to all be British?
Hope you all have fun trick or treating on Sunday! Seems like October was the Star Wars month for us. I think we're maxed out with it now after back to back birthday and Halloween. I wonder what new obsessions November will hold for us.

Milk Jug Storm Trooper Helmet

Well, you know how we go with phases of obsession here. It was fairies a while back and now it's Star Wars. I thought it was worth putting this post up right away because with it being Halloween soon, there must be a few of you that are looking for budget Storm Trooper costume solutions (especially if you have more than one kid that wants to dress up as a storm trooper!). All you need for this are a couple of gallon size milk jugs (with their lids/caps), some hot glue and something you can cut them up with (I used an exacto knife, but it would probably be doable with a good pair of scissors because the plastic is quite thin).

I thought of this while I was making the Fimo storm trouper helmet for our Star Wars peg doll set. As I was modelling the helmet I started thinking it could be approximated with strategically cut portions of milk jugs. I had to wait a couple of days until we finished our second gallon of milk and also had to be fairly confident of what shapes I wanted to cut, because I only had the two containers to work with and I knew I needed both. Here are the containers I used (still with a bit of dish soap water in them!)

These are the shapes I cut out of them to use. Pieces A and B are cut from the first milk jug and then piece C is cut from the second milk jug. This really was a prototype, so next time I think I'd go for a taller piece as section C. I guess it depends on the size of the head you're making it for though. My kids are four and just turned six, so petit was the aim of the game with this helmet.

I used hot hotglue, rather than the low temp stuff, in order to try and secure the pieces together more firmly. As you can see from these photos, piece A was the lower front and sides of the helmet and piece C is the front of the helmet from the nose up. The pouring top part of the milk jug had to be cut off to make piece C, so to cover up that and make the helmet a bit more aesthetically pleasing I cut out the circular indent from the side bit that was left over from first milk jug. This fitted in nicely to fill that hole.

I hole punched the back of the two protruding side panels so that I could put in elastic to hold it on. It's not a "full helmet", but it is significantly more than a mask. I then glued the two lids of the milk jugs on either side of the mouth part.

Once the structure was all glued together I popped it on my daughter to figure out where the eye holes needed to go. It wasn't going to work to have the eye holes cut where the storm trooper's eyes actually are, but with the milk jug being partially see through, it was easy to see where to put them and it worked out that I could hide them pretty well in the decorations afterwards.

I had a can of white spray paint, so I used that on it. You could paint it with acrylic craft paint though, or if you are smart then you could deliberately get the totally opaque white milk jugs to start with!

Here it is painted up with black, white and grey craft paint. I had the paint out already from making the peg dolls, but a grey and black sharpie marker would do the job. I decided at the last minute to put the ear cover things on (they are made from the bottom plastic sections from the containers you get from the 50cent toy dispensers around here). The horizontal black line around the forehead is just a strip of black electrical tape.

As far as clothing went, I just used a back long sleeved top with a white vest over it. I didn't have a poloneck/turtleneck so I just gave them a black dollar store ear warmer band to put on around their neck. I didn't get as far as doing anything for the lower half of this outfit, because the kids are happy to just run around in it as it is (they want to be Darth Vader and Princess Leia for halloween anyway). I hope this is useful for a few of you that have wannabe storm troopers. It's not totally accurate and if I did it again then I'd change a couple of things, like removing the front nossle to make a better version of the mouth area, but it's good enough that most young kids will be happy with it.

If you have the milk jugs, but no one wants to be a storm trooper then you could always use them to make trick or treat pumpkin pots like we did a couple of years ago, here. :)

Oooh, or there are the milk jug batman masks too, here. I'd forgotten how much we mess about with milk jugs!

Another Star Wars related thing that might come in handy for trick or treating is the torch and balloon light saber hack that I posted at the beginning of this year.

Most kids have a torch for trick or treating anyway, so if you have young Jedi then this might be exactly what you need to both light the way and avoid the injuries that the combination of candy high kids and expensive and solid plastic light sabers can result in ;)

Update: A while after this we made some cheap and easy x-wing pilot's helmets for the kids to lark around in. You can see those here.

There is also a post here with a printable x-wing flight suit iron on thingy that I made for the kids to go on some orange hoodies.

Last of all, if you like the Star Wars toys out of stuff from the recycling bin, then you might like the R2-D2 secret storage boxes that we made, here.

Oh, no, wait, one more... There's a bunch of Star Wars peg dolls that I made my daughter for her birthday, and the Millennium Falcon doll house that her dad made to go with them. You can see those here and here.