Gift: handmade nutcracker

My 4 year old son loves nutcrackers.  He became obsessed last Christmas when my daughter rented the ballet at the library.  He would ask us to paint a mustache on his face and red dots on his cheeks. Then he would put a stick in the back of his shirt and when he moved it up and down He would open and shut his mouth. He would buy cheap little nutcrackers but would eventually break them. When contemplating what to make him for Christmas I kept going back to a hand-painted wooden nutcracker, but that was quickly followed with the realization that he is still too young and it's just a matter of time before it too will get broken.  Then when I was at DI and found a plush nutcracker I knew that fabric was the way to go. I sewed and sewed into the wee hours of the morning working on this guy.

So with out further adieu here is the plush nutcracker I made.

I hand sewed most of his face except the teeth, which are hot glued. The X on his chest, and the feather on his hat are also hand stitched. He is machine sewed pretty much everywhere else. 

His arms are button jointed, and his hands, feet and bum are all weighted with rice.  The body is a cylinder and his legs are sewn into the seam so because of the rice he sits up on his own! :)

He is so cute and My son LOVES him! :)

skinny jeans or " jeggings "

New Years resolution #1

Make more clothes for myself . 

I was talking to a friend Sunday and found out we both had resolutions to spend less time looking at sewing blogs and more time actually sewing!

So I made some old jeans into skinny jeans the other day. The result is super tight jeans that, "make me lose about 20 lbs" -says my husband. Awesome right?! I love them!

To make them I did the same basic idea as this tutorial.

Valentine salt dough cookies

I thought it would be fun to re-share the salt dough cookies I made last year. They are so festive and pretty! These are really easy to make, just use the same recipe as the snowflake cookies, but omit the food coloring so they look like sugar cookies! I also didn't add glitter to some of them and I like how they turned out. What do you think?. I glued ribbon loops to the back of some and gave them as a gift to my friend to put on her valentine tree. She loved it. :)

I tried some new techniques when I made the cookie below.  First I painted a red heart with craft paint. Then I decorated on top of the red paint with white puff paint and glittered the wet puff paint. It ended up looking awesome!

 

 I have them hanging on my Valentines tree and they look really cute! 

(P.S. The glitter cupid cost me 25 cents at an after Christmas sale! I also got my pink ball ornaments after Christmas at Walmart. A box of 25 ornaments for $3, you can't beat that!)

These look so pretty all packaged up in a pink origami box made from 12x12 pieces of card stock.

If you haven't tried to make these yet go and try it. They are so fun and addictive!

If you don't have mountains of 12x12 scrapbook paper you can cut two 12x12 pieces out of any paper grocery bag. :)  Like the one pictured below. This is a very cost effective and earth friendly form of packaging. :)

You might have noticed that these boxes have shallow lids. I usually make lids that totally cover the bottom box. It was kind of hard to figure out.  Once I have it simplified I'll give a tutorial on that. :)