Felt Food and Pink Milk Repurposed

Today has been a lazy kind of day. I wanted to really get some hefty craft time in this weekend, maybe make one of the cute aprons that Kelly from Sewing in No Mans Land has been making tutorials for this past month like the Razzelberry or Sail Away apron. But today I ended up with a huge lack of motivation to actually do anything. After the girls lunch, I realized the pink milk (Strawberry Quik) jar was empty. It seemed too wasteful to just throw away, so I decided to cover it up with some Adobe papers from American Crafts ;) Then my mojo started to sputter back to life and I figured since I have this cute box now, I should make something to fill it with. I've been eyeing all the felt foodies online, planning to make some for the girls, but my hand sewing skills are pretty atrocious. Even so, I figured I could give some felt cookies a shot and I ended up making a full dozen! They are so addicting and a lot of fun. Plus, all I used for these guys were scraps. I'm excited to try making more felt food. I think next up is donuts, lol!

Paperscraps House

Remember how I said I wanted to put something on the back of the town I made? Well here it is, a little house for Mao (Audrey's tiger lovie) or their littlest pet shop toys. It was created much the same way, starting with a sketch on the back of the poster board town. I glued down the rooms first and then made the furniture from memory. With a less detailed project like this I didn't need to keep the sketch visible so I simply created each room, measuring and gluing as I went. The big sections were part of my purging pile of papers, but all the rest was from scraps. This was much quicker than the town and just as fun. I had a hard time deciding which angle to approach the furniture from though. In the end I did a simple mix of forward and top facings to make all the home's goodies. The bath mat cracks me up and it's one of my favorite accessories. Audrey wanted it to be Mao's house and since he's a cat I thought a dead fish bath mat would be hilarious. Even though it started out being for Mao, they usually play with their pet shops on it. My favorite room is the laundry room. If my washer and dryer looked that cute, I'd probably have no problem getting the laundry done, lol! Thanks for popping by and have a lovely Sunday!

Paperscrapsville

It started out as a speech therapy homework assignment. Then it turned into a sketch. The next day it ended up being an entire papercrafted town! So maybe I went a little crazy with this... maybe ;) Crazy aside though one of my crafting goals this year is to whittle down my scraps and this project used up an enormous amount of them since nearly everything here uses scraps! The homework assignment was fairly simple, to talk about different places in town to help build vocabulary and familiarity. Just a warning this is a long rambly post ;)

I made this sketch on my dying poster board for the activity, the one I use to back my layouts for pictures. This way it didn't end up in the recycling bin and we could play with the Littlest Pet Shops to work on Audrey's speech therapy questions like "Where should kitty go to buy bread?" "Who is in the grocery store?" "Where is Lizard?" and there would be a good visual to help her. So now homework is more of a game rather than information regurgitation and she loves it, both the therapy game and playing on her own.

Here are some close ups. The idea to do this initially came because Caitlyn said "Now color it Mom!!" I will admit I am hard pressed to color even a whole page in the coloring book let alone an entire poster board! So the idea of coloring this board was incredibly daunting to me. Even so, looking back coloring probably would have gone faster, lol. But I had a lot more fun this way. And then using up all those scraps... major plus! I didn't glue the buildings down until I was almost done making all of them since I was using my sketch as a reference and it also allowed them to play with the board until I finished.

Each building was made separately, doing it in those tiny chunks made the project seem easy and the best part was that I wasn't worried about matching the entire board, just the one building I was working on. Plus perfection wasn't the goal, I hand cut all of the curvy stuff and hand wrote everything, I think it looks more fun and whimsical that way ;) The road was made using 2 full sheets of textured navy cardstock, the sky and park grass each used a sheet of MME paper - all from my to be purged pile so that was another plus too. All the other patterns and cardstock were scraps.

The Police Station is one of my favorites, simply because of the silly little jailed guy. I changed the officer from a guy to a gal after gluing it to the board. The firefighters were requested by both Cait and Audrey since I drew them on the sketch. I was actually planning on not making them since I didn't think I could make them look any sort of decent but they turned out alright. We've decided the little guy is in jail because he tried to rob the bank.

Some stores changed between the sketch and finished project, namely the coffee shop and Target. While putting together buildings I realized we didn't have a bank and also that an ice cream shop suited a kiddo project better than a coffee shop since I won't let them try more than a teensy sip, lol. Anyway, that was my creation from homework assignment to massive play project ;) The even crazier part is now I'm thinking of other places to make like the zoo, the inside of a house, the school, camping grounds, etc. I still have a lot of scraps left...

Lolly Bath

Another repurposing project, this time using a small Amazon box and more MME papers that I wasn't going to use. It was the perfect size for a little bath and I even had a large part of the water bottle cardboard still sitting around. A toilet paper roll helped make the faucet come together. I made a lot more flowers from the scraps of this one and of course had to add some to the tub to make it chic like the bed ;) Cookie and Snowball are getting a bath, good thing they aren't too opposed to pretend water! Though it does look a little like Cookie is trying to get out! Thanks for visiting!

Lily's Bed

A no cost dolly bed! Heidi mentioned on my Tuesday post that she has a hard time letting supplies go and I have to admit it's not always an easy thing for me to do. Sometimes the paper is just too pretty even though I know I won't scrap with it. In this case I made the bed out of a cereal box, the cardboard bottom on my bulk water bottles, and some plastic bags. The bags were used as filling inside the cereal box. I used the sides of the water bottle base to make the bed's bottom base pieces and the center large piece was cut down to make the headboard. I covered the bed with these lovely My Minds Eye papers that I knew I wasn't going to scrap with but couldn't seem to put in the 'purge pile', lol. I used up 4 12x12 papers to cover the bed and finished off the scraps to make flowers. A couple ended up on the bed, so pretty and chic! Now Audrey has a darling bed for her doll and I have some gorgeous flower embellies! A fun way to upcycle some trash and use up my stash ;) Later I'm hoping to sew a little pillow and quilt to complete her bed.




Even though the bed is Lily's it seems Snowball and Cookie have taken a major interest in it. Which is fine for now since all the other lollies will be jealous that she has a bed and they don't yet ;) Thanks for popping by and have a terrific Thursday!

New Play Food Boxes

From Ugly:




To Cutesy:




How fun is that?! Not that this is new or innovative in anyway, people have been recovering boxes for decades, but for me this was a very fun project. I got to use papers I don't care for to make super cute boxes for my girls' kitchen play stuff (and of course now I love them since they look so darling as boxes!) The plastic front of the spaghetti box is actually from the packaging of one of my scrappin' goodies too so a bit of upcycling going on here. I am in the process of creating a fun kitchen playset for them so more repurposing (and sewing) to come! For those of you wondering the spaghetti is just yellow yarn and the meatballs are pompoms. My girls LOVE making spaghetti and meatballs for their dolls and stuffed animals. The peas are the small green pompoms, I'll be making some felt food later, these were just really easy to throw together on short notice for the girls to play with. Papers were by My Minds Eye, the cardstock is Bazzil. The peas were made by just cutting out some of the green lanterns on the other side of that green pattern paper. I simply free handed the titles with a sharpie, no need for it to be perfect. I might punch out some meatballs from either the scallop or regular circle punch to decorate the spaghetti box more. The girls took them and ran so I figured they were cute enough right now ;)