Posts tagged ‘links’

We are a couple of weeks away from Kindergarten here at our house. And the rest of the country is getting all of their ducks in a row to waddle back to the big pond of school. We have a bunch of  school supplies to purchase, like crayons and stuff like that, but there are also items we need that can be bought handmade or second hand. I’ve been looking around the interwebs and wanted to share some of my findings with you!

Terre Mum has lots of eco-friendly items in her shop, mostly food related. But if you’ve got to pack a lunch this year, absolutely stop by her shop for one of these great snack bags. I especially like that they are just linen lined with cotton, which doesn’t help keep pretzels from going stale, but will keep chemicals from leeching onto your Kiddo’s snack. I am definitely buying a few of these.

Made By Rae has a great pattern for a Toddler Backpack on her site which I would love to try  to make. For the seamstresses out there, this would be a great way to help your Kindergartener feel personally invested in her first day of school. Picking out the fabric for your own backpack is one step above picking out the first day of school outfit.

Olivia has to wear a uniform to her school so I have been looking for cute belts and socks to give her some freedom of expression. That’s how I stumbled upon Ivan and Mary and this Alligator Belt in her shop. I love the little alligator and how it reminds me of the preppy school polo shirts. What a perfect belt!

And since lunch seems to be the one thing I am most obsessed about (I’m so worried about my child eating her food at school!) lets look at lunch bags. Deerpath Designs‘ Personalized Lunch Bags look adorable. And, the one I’ve featured here already has my daughter’s name on it! Taking into account the prices for bags I saw at Target today, $21.99 is very reasonable for a handmade bag.

I hope everyone’s transition into the school year goes great, no matter what grade your kids (or you!) are entering. And if you have, or you’ve seen, an awesome handmade item that’s great for back to school you’d love to share, please leave a link in the comments.

Have you heard of it? Groupon* is a lot of fun, and it’s a great way to get coupons that are specific to your town. When you sign up you will receive a coupon deal emailed to you each morning, and if enough people buy into the coupon (usually around 20 people) then you get the deal.

For example, last week I bought into the Shabby Apple’s coupon- buy $100 worth of merchandise for $40- and redeemed it on the website. That is a spectacular deal. I got this dress:

and this dress:

There are also more local offers, like the groupon that offered a family membership to the Akron Art Museum for $35 dollars. I bought that groupon, too. I have to be careful that I don’t spend more money than I should just because it’s a good deal!

* Disclosure, if you click the link provided and purchase a Groupon through my referral I get $10 in my Groupon account.

Here’s the work my students and I did on Friday and Saturday night at Craft Akron. I must say I am really proud of the work they did. The fabric choices are outstanding, the conversation was enticing, and as craft classes always do- it felt more like a girls’ night out than work. This is the Buttercup Bag, which will be put back on the schedule again in August, as it is a great class with a great outcome.

The pattern, for those of you who are advanced enough to not need a class, is free on Made-by-Rae.com. Rae, very kindly allowed me to use her pattern as a class. I must say, that her patterns are quite easy to follow, and adorable to boot. She has a few others on her site worth giving a go, especially the kid backpack pattern.

image from Esther Williams Vintage Swimsuits

Well now that I’m here at the beach and far away from my sewing machine, the quest towards my own handmade swimsuit has taken a turn. I bought a suit  at Target to have for vacation, and I do like it, but now I’m all invested in the process of making a suit. So I’m browsing online sources for vintage suits and patterns.

The thing about true vintage suits is that they are made of silk, cotton or maybe polyester. Not the most comfortable swimwear, if you plan on actually swimming. And therefore the patterns used to make these vintage suits, though I could buy one, I couldn’t use it directly to make a suit with current swimwear fabrics. So the best I can do I search both for images of vintage suits, and then images of vintage inspired suits to see where I can add elements like shirring and ruffles to create the illusion of a vintage suit.  Here are some modern suits with the vintage feel that I’ve been using for inspiration.

Esther Williams Vintage Style Swim Suit

Vintage Inspired Tuxedo Suit by Stepankalicious

Sailor Inspired Suit

Marilyn Monroe Inspired Suit

And here is a huge collection of actual vintage suits, which are awesome, but I would never actually try to swim in from a site called Glamoursurf.

items picked up at ZeroLandfill Akron in February

If you’re artistic & want to build your stash of recycled supplies, come to Zero Landfill!  It’s an event where architects, interior designers, and graphic designers donate their discontinued samples & materials so artists & teachers can collect & reuse them.  You’ll find paint samples, tiles, carpets, wallpaper books, fabric samples, and binders, and you can have them for free!  The event will be happening in Cleveland on 3631 Perkins Avenue, Fridays in July & August.

If you want to see how Devona & I used ZeroLandfill items from our previous visits, do a “ZeroLandfill” search on our sidebar.

Sandcastles Made Simple- Lucinda Wierenga

Two years ago we checked Sand Castles Made Simple by Lucinda Wierenga out from the library before heading out to the beach for a week. I was the only one who was really into making the ultimate sand castle, but my family humored me and tried it anyway. We never succeeded in making one that stood up, and I didn’t think anyone really cared to try again.

But this morning my 5 year old, Olivia asked me about the book, and wanted to know if we were going to be bringing it with us on our trip. I don’t have time to go check it out again, so I went to the trust Google to see if I could find a refresher on how to build a good castle. I found SandCastleCentral.com, which has some of the same information and I’ve been brushing up on the rules for proper sand stacking. Both resources recommend stacking up sand and carving away, as opposed to filling up a bucket and dumping out a castle shape. I think it might be worth it to give it one more shot to build that awesome castle. I’ll let you know how it goes.

This was probably the most frustrating part of my sew-my-own-swimsuit project. I went to Jo-Ann’s and there were only 8 bolts of swim fabric. None of which were navy blue and yellow. I did manage to find nylon thread for my serger and stretch needles also for my serger. Those together cost me $20.

So I took my search online. I’ll tell you what, swim/dancewear fabric was not easy to find. I eventually found the site Fashion Fabrics Club, and they had pages and pages of swimwear fabrics. They also had helpful descriptions of the fabric choices to help me make up my mind. Oh, yeah the prices were decent too so I’m not $125 in the hole on a project that may not even end up wearable.

But even with all the choices available on the FFC site, I couldn’t find navy blue and yellow stripes. I ended up settling for these:

If anyone knows me, they can see that this is almost exactly the color combo of my kitchen! Not what I had in mind, but I’m not the most adept at finding fabric, apparently. If anyone out there has an awesome source, by all means let me know. If this experiment is successful I will probably sew some suits for my kiddos, too.

I’ve been craving this navy and white combo ever since I read this post on Darling Dexter, so I used some scraps from men’s dress shirt overhauls to make some flower hair accessories. They are so quick and adorable, I’d love to share the tutorial with you. Now we can all wear some springy and sporty nautical bliss.

If you don’t want to wear this as a hair pin, swap out a pin back and make a broach, or attach a jump ring through the fabric, and make a necklace pendant.  But I will showing how to attach this clip to a bobby pin, my favorite way to attach pretties to my hair.

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Bad lighting, picture taken at night, sorry!

Remember how at the end of each school year, Mom would grab the scissors and cut the legs off all your jeans, and that would be the summer’s shorts. Well, my kids don’t really wear jeans, so we don’t get cut-offs in our family.

Vively Online has a post up today about some of her summer clothing remakes for her kids. The first project, a pair of shorts from a t-shirt style dress, inspired me to dig through our play clothes for some unwearables to turn into shorts.

These two t-shirts will make great shorts for the baby, using the Vively method (which happens to be a great illustration of the way I already make kid pants). I also plan to go through my adult t-shirts to make some shorts for the older girls. Finished projects to be posted soon. It’s going to be warm this week, so shorts will be needed.

I’m working on planning a clothing swap to take place this summer. I am really excited about it. I have really enjoyed the Craft Supplies Swaps that Colleen organized and I thought this would be just as much fun.

In order to make the swap as much fun as possible for you guys, I have a few questions. I made a survey for them, so if you have four minutes or so could you look it over and fill it out? There are only three questions!