potato print onesies (baby shower project)

Inspired by a similar project from Martha Stewart Living and the potato printing projects of my youth, these are a fun, fast, simple project for a baby shower. We made these at a shower I hosted for one of the moms from our preschool, expecting her second baby. 

Potatoes make good stamps for printing on paper or cloth. Cut them into simple shapes, use foam brushes to apply fabric paint (we used Kid Made Modern fabric paints from Target's selection of kids' art supplies), then stamp shapes to make pictures or scenes. After dry, heat set with an iron, and they're ready to wear!

 

Linking up to:
I Should Be Mopping the Floor

rubber eraser wrapping paper printing

For the dinosaur-themed birthday presents I mentioned back in the chasmosaurus t-shirt post, we wanted a little dino-themed paper for wrapping.

Among the many craft supplies I had laying about were some Pink Pearl erasers and some accounting-style graph paper from the Goodwill. Combined, they made some Jurass-tastic gift wrap!

I used an X-acto knife to cut one side of the eraser to look like a brachiosaurus . . .

. . . and cut a prehistoric palm tree onto the other.

Then the kiddo and I got out the washable stamp pads and stamped blue dinosaurs and green trees all over the graph paper. I guided his hand a bit to keep a pattern going, but a couple of randomly printed sheets turned out pretty nice too.

I accented with some pens and wrapped up the gifts (a t-shirt, as previously mentioned, and a hat I'll be blogging about soon). I also drew some little tags to go with each gift. One of these days I'll remember to photograph every part of a process; that day is not today.

And there you have it! Some fancy wrapping paper you can whip up for any occasion with stuff you probably already have. 

Thanks for reading!

pinterest challenge: a backyard arbor

At last, it's time to show you a little more about this teaser photo I showed at the end of my last post:

Of the many pins on my Curb Appeal Pinterest board, most are variations on the pergola/arbor/garden arch theme. I've been collecting ideas for nearly two years now. 

In front of my house, I have two random metal garden arches (in different styles) that came to me on sale from a couple of different places. In the backyard, the "arch" in front of the studio building (which is now mostly sided! Hooray!) looked like this:

Urgh. The green metal arch (can you even see it?) is a leftover craft store "wedding arch" from our wedding ten years ago. It was clearly not meant for heavy labor.

I had it pretty neatly disguised for awhile with twigs and branches woven in. A windstorm collapsed the whole thing last year. 

I then had it supported by the side supports of a pergola that had also collapsed in the windstorm . . . total eyesore. That part had been removed by the time I thought to take this photo, along with a lot of the sticks and weeds.

Yes, I'm embarrassed that things got to this neglected, overgrown state. That's life in a fixer-upper, folks. Some things get fixed-up faster than others.

Which explains all of those arbor pins on my pin board, and my burning desire to take care of the issue.

This project was uploaded to Instructables by someone calling himself/herself SpecialK, who deserves the credit for this photo. And it's the project I decided I could take on, by myself, before my husband came home from work one day last week.

So, that didn't exactly work out. I did have it about 90% built by the time the mister rolled up that evening (just needed cross bars and lattice on top and sides), but in my eagerness to get to building, I built it out of place. This presents some challenges I hadn't properly anticipated, like, say, assembling the thing with only one adult present, and moving it, and keeping things square and level. But let's set that aside, and assume that you'll do things the EASIER way: holes first, arbor built in place.

I finished it up the next afternoon (with some help from my kiddo and his toy drill) and started measuring for and digging the holes for the legs.

After the mister helped me finish digging with the post hole digger (approximately 15 inches deep), I put some pea gravel in the bottom of each hole (approximately 3 inches worth) and we finagled the arch into place, working until it was in-line with the roofline of the studio.

The bottoms of the legs are coated with spray-on rubber sealant about 18-inches along the bottom and sides. They are made of Douglas Fir, which needs a little insect and rot resistance. The gravel is for drainage as well as anchoring. I filled around the legs with some more pea gravel, and finally some larger river rocks near the top to disguise the sealant and to keep dirt away.

 

I also trimmed back the rose and grape vines a ton, which hurt to do. The rose will grow back quickly, but that grape vine takes awhile, and it really only started producing mass amounts of grapes last year. Fingers crossed that it snaps back. 

The next step was to paint. I had some oil-based primer left from ye olden days (maybe we used it on the pickets in the front yard?). Had I used all cedar or all pressure-treated wood, I would have kept it wood-colored, but I used a variety of woods and thought a little paint protection would go a long way.

The original project parameters call for pressure treated wood and store-bought lattice, and estimate the cost at about $100. I have three of these to build (this is the first) so I wanted to bring in my practice arch at closer to $50.

Here in Oregon, 8-foot 4x4 Douglas Fir posts are about $7 apiece. I used a mix of recycled shipping timbers (79 cents) and utility grade 1x2s ($1.50 for an 8-foot length) for the side supports, horizontal lattice,  and crosspieces on the top. The long skinny pieces on the side lattice are 6-foot long cedar garden stakes I already had on-hand.

The front and back pieces at the top are made from 1x6x6 clear grade cedar fence boards for $3 each.

I came in under my $50 target thanks to the river rocks, screws, and paint I already had on hand, as well as using utility grade lumber and a few on-hand and recycled bits. I'm sure that (free) pallet wood could stand in for most of the pieces here, too, so it's entirely possible to build one for even less (in fact, over on my Curb Appeal Pinterest board, there's a link to a plan for a pallet wood arch that's kid-sized).

I'll have more for you later, as the path gets re-done and the garden beds get rebuilt (I'm thinking cement retaining wall blocks this time around), so check back later in the summer!

In the meantime, thanks for reading the latest in my series of posts for the Young House Love / Bower Power Pinterest Challenge! Head on over and link up if you've finished a project inspired by Pinterest, too.

Linking up to:

Young House Love

Bower Power

Sparkle Meets Pop

Red Bird Blue

calaveras de azucar : perler sugar skulls for dia de los muertos

This is a little story about how I sometimes start out making one project, and end up making something completely different. It always reminds me of the artist who spent an afternoon with my second grade class (shout out to Ms. Champion, second grade teacher extraordinaire!) teaching us an art project. I kid you not; to this day, whenever I make a mistake in a project, I think about that guest artist's advice to turn "happy accidents" into even better art. It's rarely led me astray.

I pinned this awhile back because it seemed like a really nice, fast way to use up some Perler beads I picked up along the way. 

Alas, it didn't work out for me. The beads started to smell pretty early into the process, and I had severe second thought about having my kiddo in the house with me while plastic fumes were filling the air. After half an hour in the oven at the suggested temperature, all I had were some hot beads and nasty air quality, so I nixed the plan. Now, possibly, because the site isn't from the U.S., the temperature mentioned is a celsius temperature instead of a farenheit temperature, but I didn't really feel like risking it. I think melting beads in the oven is just not a good fit for our family. 

Then, when I was trying to pull together a project for the YHL/BP Pinterest Challenge, I was browsing my boards and found this lovely pin of some calaveras de azucar flower pots. And just in time for Dia de los Muertos! I'd actually pinned it close to three months ago thinking I'd find time to make some before the holiday, but I started working part time again, and a lot of projects have been put on the back burner.

As it happens, I was making some Perler bead robot magnets for the kiddo the other night. One of them started to look a little like a Day of the Dead sugar skull, so I abandoned my robot project three robots in, and instead made a fun little trio of sugar skulls. My once-upon-a-project turned into something completely different.

I used this large peg board from Ikea (where they cost $2 for a set instead of $6 for two), but the pattern is small enough that you could make a skull on one of the smaller Perler boards they include with the bead sets.

And here's the pattern you can use to make your own! As you saw in the above photos, I made three different color variations. All you need to do is replace the white beads with turquoise beads, etc. and you can make any color combination you want. Iron the beads onto your board according to package instructions.

Ours are going to be refrigerator magnets, but you can use your calaveras de azucar for ornaments, window hangers, coasters, etc. 

You can also use this pattern for crochet, cross stitch, etc. Just don't sell, it, mmmkay?

 Thanks for stopping in and reading, and thank you to Sherry, Katie, Carmel and Sarah for hosting this season's Pinterest Challenge!

p.s. you can make these pictures larger just by clicking on them, but you probably already knew that!