c is for chasmosaurus

After last week's craft fail, it was nice to have a couple of craft successes. This is one!

This chasmosaurus shirt is part of our gift for an upcoming birthday party this weekend (second part to be featured here, soon!). Our little friend is a big-time dinosaur enthusiast.

Those of you without a Silhouette cutter will be happy to know that this was made without one. I used freezer paper and an X-Acto blade, after first designing the image in Adobe Illustrator. Free dinosaur graphics are everywhere on the internet, though, so it's possible to do this project with other dinosaurs, without Illustrator. Chasmosaurus fans can use this design for your own personal projects (not for sale!).

You can print directly on the freezer paper. Cut it to fit your printer and make sure you'll be printing on the textured "paper" side, not the slick plastic side.

To save ink, I turned the opacity down to 30% so that it would print a light gray instead of black. You could also just print the image in outline, but I like to have a filled-in figure for whatever reason.

After it's printed, cut it out with an extra-sharp X-acto blade on a self-healing mat or a surface you don't care too much about (like an old magazine or a drawing board). The sharpness of the blade is especially important for those tiny letters.

Then iron it on your shirt and paint using a short-bristled brush! As I've mentioned before, the beauty here is that kids can help with the painting part. My kiddo helped paint this for his friend, so the gift is really from his own two hands.

Here are some of my previous freezer paper stencil projects, in case you'd like some more ideas or a bit more step-by-step.

(1) flour sack towels
(2) viking t-shirt
(3) toddler art pretzel shirt

Thanks for reading!

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

cozy coupe gas to electric conversion (free dash sticker download)

There's nothing quite like an early morning garage sale to get you going! The bebe and I ended up going across town to this one because the Craig's List ad promised lots of kids yard toys. I had my eye on a Radio Flyer wagon (which turned out to be a different model, and more money, than I'd been dreaming of). Instead of the wagon, we hauled home this sweet ride, a turquoise and orange Cozy Coupe with a $5 price tag. One of these was on my wish list as well, and my little guy LOVES it!




Ooh, I had a ton of fun cramming it into the front seat of the car.

It had been outside a bit, so the dash stickers and warning tag on the back were peeling and flaking. Not something I wanted the kiddo putting in his mouth (and you know he would).






It was the perfect opportunity for a Cozy Coupe gas-to-electric conversion! I did a bit of research to see what the dash of an electric or hybrid vehicle looks like, and then put these new dashboard displays together.








And of course, because there was a half sheet of sticker label paper left after designing the dashboard displays, the kiddo also got this "I'm Great!" Oregon license plate!






I added a line on the bottom edge of the plate sticker that has some of the safety warnings of the original sticker, just so that we remember the weight limit and the ban on steep hills and whatnot.

Download your own sticker label sheet here:
Cozy Coupe Dashboard Stickers


For best results from home, print on 8.5 x 11 inch, full-sheet label paper, using a laser printer. Or have a print shop print these for you on vinyl for truly weather-safe labels!

Have another idea in mind for dashboard stickers, or need a different license plate? Contact me for details.