I’ve written a tutorial for the pop-out/3-D pictures I’ve been making as gifts. You can read my AP story here.
(I always find it funny to see where the craft stories I write for AP end up. It gets sent out as part of our “lifestyles” package. Some websites put it under “health.” Others put it under “entertainment.” I guess not too many news sites have craft sections)
This was a goodbye gift to our wonderful friends who moved to Washington, D.C., last weekend. We miss them already, and my eyes welled up this morning when I read my friend’s Facebook update quoting her not-quite-3-year-old daughter saying, “When are we going to Concord New Hampshire?”
I wanted to make them something that would remind them of Concord, so my first thought was a picture of the Statehouse, where our boys often played together on the lawn after shopping at the nearby farmer’s market. I took a picture of the Statehouse and then downloaded a picture of my friends from their Picassa web gallery and combined the two in Photoshop.
I could have stopped there, but wanted to give the image a more artsy look, so I used a tutorial I found in a Photoshop book to turn the image into a pen-and-ink sketch/watercolor. That process was rather lengthy, though I saved most of the steps in an action so I can use it quickly in the future on other photos.
I plan on writing up a tutorial on how I put it all together, but basically I printed multiple copies of the image, cut out several layers and stuck them on top of each other using double-sided foam tape.
Miss you Jess, Peter, Jasper and Josie!
My son has been smitten with Richard Scarry’s Busytown characters since June, when he picked up two of his books while we were on vacation. They were in Italian, but that didn’t matter. He poured over them for hours, including about half of our plane ride home from Rome. So we decided to make Busytown the theme of his 5th birthday party earlier this month.
The amazing Huckle Cat cake is entirely the work of my food-editor husband. It was a super-moist, dense yellow cake (FOUR DOZEN EGGS), covered in buttercream and decorated with fondant.
Meanwhile, the stuffed Huckle was my project. I started with a pattern for a baby doll, added the ears, tail and nose and lengthened the feet. The pattern included a little shirt, which I altered a bit to look more like Huckle’s. The pants are a modified version of an American Girl doll clothing pattern!
I bought a used but perfect copy of the out-of-print “Richard Scarry’s Biggest Make-It Book Ever” on eBay and scanned various pages to make the invitations and decorations. It also included the pattern for the Lowly Worm dolls I made as favors, though I came up with my own construction method to streamline the process since I was making so many. Rather than cut and sew 10 bodies, 10 pants and 10 shoes, I sewed long pieces of tan, green and grey felt together, traced the pattern 10 times, cut in between and then sewed on the drawn line. That part went quickly but I admit that by the time I got to all those buttons and bow-ties I was pretty sick of the whole project.
I had grand visions of sewing a cute bunting but ended up just cutting triangles from leftover scrapbooking paper and some more images from the “Make-It” book. I strung them together by sewing a piece of ribbon across the top of the triangles.
Parker’s main present, other than the stuffed Huckle, was another eBay find: a 1976 “Puzzletown” set so he can build his own Busytown. We came up with what we thought was a great idea: scanning more pages from the “Make-It” book (which included cutout images of various Busytown buildings) and attaching them to fiberboard to make extra pieces. My husband used a jigsaw to cut out all the pieces, but the fiberboard (actually a piece of paneling) was just a hair too wide to fit in slots on the Puzzletown base. Had we realized that earlier, we probably could’ve sanded the edges, but since I already had glued the pictures on, we stuck plastic stands (cut from cabinet child-proofing devices) to the back so they could be free-standing. I think this idea would be great to do with other books, or even using a child’s own drawings. You could cut a notch at the bottom of the pieces and use another little piece of fiberboard for a stand.
Here’s a picture of the 1976 “Puzzletown”
And here are the new pieces we made:
All in all, it was a great success! Huckle has bumped all other stuffed animals from their usual spot at bedtime, and even has been going to kindergarten this week.
UPDATE: Please do not ask me to share the Lowly worm pattern. As mentioned above, I found it in a book and am not comfortable sharing it. But I am sure if you look at a picture of Lowly, and my picture of how I traced the pattern, you can figure out that he is basically a long rectangle shape, with a rounded top for a head and an oval-ish shape at the bottom for his foot.
My friend Annmarie introduced me to felting a few months ago, and since then I’ve made some wet-felted beads, Easter eggs (see my article and audio slideshow on my tutorial page) and a few needle-felted animals, including a hummingbird that my son thought was either a seal or an airplane. So I wasn’t particularly confident in my abilities when I decided to try a needle-felted playscape, but I’m really happy with the results. The biggest challenge was figuring out how to make the barn and fence since everything else is really just stabbing bits of wool roving into various lumps. For the barn, I ended up making paper templates for the walls, side and roof, then cutting out pieces of acrylic felt in those sizes. (I’m sure purists would use wool felt or needle-felt the whole thing, but I used what I had on hand). Then I needle-felted over the shapes, reinforcing the sides with pipe cleaners, sewed the walls together at the corners and needle-felted the whole thing to the base.
Click on the pictures to see more photos and detailed descriptions of some of the other steps.
I loved this book when I was little and had no idea there was a sequel until I bought the original earlier this summer as a gift for one of my son’s friends. For those who haven’t read it, it’s a tale of a town where all the food falls from the sky. (It’s also been turned into a movie recently but the plot appears to be quite different). I decided (the night before the party of course) to make some felt food to go with it, hence the odd assortment pictured above.
The meatball and ravioli are needle-felted. The ziti is wet-felted, made by wrapping wool roving around a pencil. The donut, sauce and pickle are made out of acrylic craft felt, though the frosting on the donut is needle-felted wool.
I’ve made a ton of felt food in the last year or so, mostly as gifts for my son, his friends and young relatives. I bought some fantastic fruit patterns from Bugga Bugs, and for other items I’ve just made things up as I went along. I even made one of my favorite desserts – a chocolate éclair – which became proof that even if you don’t let your 4-year-old son watch television, he still will turn everything into a weapon. “Really?” I asked him. “You’re going to shoot me with a chocolate éclair?”
Check out the article I wrote for AP about felt food in my tutorial page above, along with a how-to on making felt sushi.
I love maps, but they make me sick. As my husband will confirm, I am as likely to cry out “I can’t look at this anymore!” as I am to say “Take Exit 32” when asked to help navigate during family road trips. I have tossed more than a few maps on the floor of the car in a fit of nausea, and even, I’ll admit, considered whether I could fashion one into a makeshift barf bag if necessary. (Now that’s crafty!) But back on firm ground, I’ve been using maps for home decor and accessory projects. They’re also an easy way to save money on souvenirs from your summer vacation by making your own.
Here’s an article I wrote for The Associated Press about crafting with maps. Click on the article link to see more photos, and a how-to on making Scrabble tile pendants.
