Tacky With Taste: Quick, Cute Gift Decor

There are a lot of options for sticking things together. It sounds simple enough, but there are very specific uses for a lot of sticky things. Have you been on the glue aisle of a big box store? Too many options, really. 

Most folks are familiar with school glue. It's great because it's water based, but it's runny and messy and when it dries it's not flexible, so things pop right off of the surface without a second thought.

Hot glue is kind of the opposite of school glue, and is fantastic... except for the part where it's dangerous and messy. I like my fingers and my fingerprints intact.

There's a great option in-between school glue and hot glue: Tacky Glue. The name is... tacky. But that's what's required, because you need to know that this stuff is sticky, not watery. I was already a user and a fan before I heard that Aleene's was looking for bloggers to extoll its virtues. I put these two to work-- the Original Tacky Glue and the Tacky Dot Roll. Go ahead and pin this to your craft stash to-buy list. 

To these I added white gift wrap and embellishments. Where school glue fails, Tacky Glue picks up the slack. Any of these items would fall right off of a project if you were using regular white glue and are small enough that you'd burn yourself trying to do a neat job of hot glueing.

 I chose the sequins to demonstrate. So easy to draw your lines and drop the sequins on.

Tilt and shake. The Tacky Glue grabs whatever it touches and the rest falls right off when you turn it. No running or dripping. With glitter that's particularly important. When it dries it holds firmly and flexibly, so that nothing pops off.

Individual dots of Tacky Glue (or the dots from the Tacky Dot Roll) make it easy to stick on individual sequins or poms or googly eyes. No sweat. Quick and easy sequin polka dots, and the glue is still washable. Water cleanup is just as easy as with school glue, with holding power that's more like hot glue.

I've been eyeing photos of gift wrap themes. I love the way a pile of matchy-matchy presents look under a tree, and with this you can make stripes, bows, initials, swirls and shapes. Quick, easy, inexpensive and fun! And it dries quickly, so you don't have to wait long to be able to pile 'em up.

In summary, what I'm saying is... Tacky Glue is a useful part of your basic crafting stash.

I wrote this post as part of a paid campaign with Aleene's and Blueprint Social. The opinion that Tacky Glue is worth adding to your stash is entirely mine.

Find more about Aleene's here:
Web: http://www.ilovetocreate.com/
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Mini Canvases

These are things that can kill you with cuteness. Little teeny tiny canvases. The size of a post-it note.

While they are so very very cute, they're also so very very tiny to actually make anything on them. So my solution to make use of the cuteness is to print art and photos and mod podge 'em on. By the way, Mod Podge: both a noun and a verb.

Whether you sit 'em down to decorate or add a loop and hang them on a tree, I think they're eat-'em-up-able. My 6-year-old had no trouble deciding what to do with hers.

Here I chose a fave photo of K from this past year. She's posing with a shield she made at summer camp. She chose "fierce" as her descriptor, and it's so appropriate for her.

In addition to the little tiny cutie canvases there are little tiny cutie easels!

Read how I made these (and how you can make your own) over at Crafts Unleashed.

Because You Can Never Have Too Many

As is typical, I went to a big box craft store this week for ONE THING. As is also typical, I was distracted by browsing and spent way longer than I meant to and had to cross the entire store to go to the restroom. (Do you talk to yourself in parent voice when you're shopping? I ask myself why I didn't go before I left. And then I kindly remind myself that I DID go before I left and that my 6 year-old's bladder has far more tenacity than mine.) On the way back to the cart I'd abandoned (because I needed a cart to buy ONE THING?) I passed these. Theeeese. 

There's an inner tray that slides out to keep the gorgeousness together.

I've previously exposed my obsession with art supplies. We still love these crayons and these pencils for kids and these pencils for fancy kids or serious artists. But these Lyra pencils looked so fun.

As far as design, I love the look, but it has a practical purpose. They're slightly triangular so that they don't roll, and the spots are drilled through the paint and into the wood to help with grip.

As far as cost, they're significantly less expensive than Prismacolors, and the color is smoother and brighter than your average kiddie colored pencil.

These even come with a place to write your name, if you've captured a tiny fairy as your slave who's capable of writing so small.

I'm grudgingly letting the girls try them. If you don't have them nearby, you can find them here.

Rainbow Undies

So, let's talk about Adrianna's amazingness last week with KCWC. AMAZINGNESS. I love seeing how amazingly skilled she's become. I mean, she had plenty of skill when I met her, but now she's amazingly skilled and FAST. Amazing. Totally overusing the word yet it's still appropriately used here because she's AMAZING.

My own KCWC (Kids Clothes Week Challenge, hosted by Elsie Marley) sewing? Not as inspiring. Just two pairs of undies. During the first three days of the challenge we were away from home. I thought about trying to take my sewing machine to Disneyworld, but figured maybe we'd be a little tiny bit busy?

I've gotta show you what I did manage to make. Because it's a marriage of three of my favorite things.

1) The fabric. Bought early in the summer from The Fabric Fairy before she became a sponsor. This particular print seems to be gone, but when I'm looking for cute knits, her shop is one of the first places I look. I looooove this fabric so much I've had a hard time committing it to a project. I thought this was a good way to just start somewhere-- I still have enough left for a racerback dress and maybe a tee, too.

2) The pattern. Created by Amanda of Kitschy Coo. My girls reach for these first because they are wildly comfortable. They cover everything. No crack. And they never tug at them. The body is one piece, with no center seam to irritate. As if the comfort wasn't enough, I think they're SO worth sewing because they can serve as an adorable diaper cover pre-potty training, and THEN as undies. Such a long life! Amanda has cute knits in her shop, too. This pattern is fantastic for repurposing tees.

3) The foldover elastic, also known as FOE. It has a ridge down the center that makes it easy to fold over and stitch. Also from The Fabric Fairy. I'd been excited earlier this year to see some of the big box fabric stores selling FOE, but it turns out theirs is heavy duty and much better suited for diaper making. This FOE is soft and stretchy and easy to work with. A satiny side and a matte side.


I used Amanda's pattern for this version too, and just used FOE instead of the yoga style bands.

I can almost see Amanda making offensive gestures at me from across the pond, because the whole point of her pattern was to make the bands super comfy and add to the rise on the backside. All I'm sayin' is that you can use the pattern both ways. I like both versions. The previous one makes a much better diaper cover, though.

My girls are big fans. Though I find it nearly impossible to provide a photograph of them wearing undies that I don't imagine showing up in some unsavory other internet location. This is the best I've got.

When their bums makes their inevitable appearances on the playground while they're pretending to be monkeys, at least they're well-covered.

A Sticky Subject

Earlier this year Spoonflower offered some fabric designers a chance to take two new product offerings for a test drive at a discount. You'd guess it'd be two new types of fabric? That was what I'd have guessed. But they're branching out-- into wallpaper and wall decals. The products are finally out of the testing phase and are available to everyone.

While I love the idea of wallpaper, my reality is that we're probably not in this house for the long haul. Maybe a year or two or three, but we know we won't be here forever. They say that the wallpaper is fully removable, but for me it's more the investment of application time. For now, decals are more my speed.

Rather than the squishy envelopes of soft fabric, these arrive in a really sweet tube. I carried mine around for a while pretending to be a hip architect.

What was in it? A splash of color. I thought that'd be just the thing to brighten up a corner of M's room. Here's the plain-as-plain-can-be all white corner begging for an infusion. 

In the beta phase decals arrived still in need of some trimming. I'm told that now when you order they'll have taken care of that for you-- something called "kiss cutting".

Removing it from the liner and placing it is easy peasy. The adhesive is plenty secure but forgiving as far as application-- if it's a little off you can peel it back and try again without leaving marks or creases on the decal. It has an almost linen feel and a very matte finish.

M's inspection of her new rainbow was fun to watch. Related thought: With drawer stickers and with anything I'm sticking anywhere, I do the application when little eyes aren't nearby. My working theory is that if they see it going on they'll try to take them off. So far so good...

I took these photos in early spring. She's already so much bigger! Probably wouldn't sit any more still for photos, though. She's also not nearly so pale. Poor kid's looking like she's been locked up.

I created my design in Illustrator, but you can upload a variety of file types made lots of different ways. If you've ever uploaded files to Spoonflower before, the interface is pretty similar. If you're interested but haven't tried it, I suggest giving it a go. The tools are fun to play with and give you an idea of scale. For example, I tried our new header image as wallpaper. 

Who doesn't need a whole room full of that?!?! But really, about 6 months later, the rainbow in M's room still looks great. No bubbles or peeling or anything. For people who want to add custom accents to walls without becoming full-on muralists, it's worth a go. If you've tried it, I'd love to hear what you think!

KCWC Day 7: Aaand Scene.

Here's my finished Junebug dress!

Ok ok, I'm glad I made it.  Thanks for the push, ladies.  As I suspected, this is one of my favorite things from this week.  It's tied with my three cardis, the pjs, the baby rompers, and the balloon dress...

 You guys were right yesterday - I made it with knit fabric.  I graded it up a size, but only a teeny tiny bit since knit can basically fit their measurements with little ease.  I think I added about 1/4 inch to all the pattern pieces, and just re-drew the neck and arm curves.  It was easy peasy with Jess' awesome pattern.

The front bib portion is completely lined with lightweight interfacing to help it stay up and support the buttons, and the whole bodice is lined with another lightweight knit.  I also reduced the sleeve cap and length to make them straight cap sleeves.  I think less is more when it comes to knit sleeves.  The skirt is just a big rectangle that I brought in at the waist with 4 inverted pleats.  I wish I had made it an a-line though.  I made a giant 4-inch hem to weigh down the super lightweight knit, but also so I could let it out and get at least a year's wear out of it.  And that's it!

How awesome are these buttons?  Can you tell I only had 5 and one of them is silver?  Me neither.  I couldn't let that sway me since they were so perfect.  The style of the bib, the navy stripes, and the buttons all give this a fun nautical feel, which (if I was forced to choose only one) is my favorite style.

And that means that I officially sewed for at least 1 hour a day for 7 days!  Actually, I don't think it was ever just an hour.  Those pjs pretty much took me the entire day.  KCWC was fun though, and I'm happy I participated, and I'm really happy with the stuff I made because of it.  Thanks Meg!

 I guess my projects can be summed up by: knit & BUTTONS!!!  I sewed 21 buttons this week.  That's probably more than all the buttonholes I've made in my life combined.

Things I saw elsewhere during KCWC that I must copy:

Painted polka dots:

charmstitch | craftiness is not optional

Peter Pan Collars:

see kate sew | made by rae

Orange (oh wait, I did do an orange day.  I guess I really love orange):

you & mie | the red kitchen

 Rad shirt art:

girl like the sea | skirt as top

 

Thanks for all the inspiration ladies!  It's been fun.  Now I'm going to go clean my sewing area.

KCWC Day 6: It's not a party until someone throws up

So after I mentioned that I might skip out on my Junebug dress goal yesterday, I got some MAJOR GUILT TRIPS from Jess and Kristin.  And then I went and sobbed in my room for an hour just kidding I didn't just kidding it was two hours just kidding.

Ok, so it wasn't really a guilt trip.  But I did still really want to make the dress because it was kinda the thing I was most excited about for this KCWC.  And then I realized that the only thing holding me back was that I didn't want to sew yet another dress for my 4 year old daughter.  Um, yeah.  The girl who wears a dress to school every single day that she can get away with it.

So after waking up this morning to a kid needing me to hold her hair while she puked (which, besides coffee, is just about the best part of waking up), I got the kids settled down and got started*.  As you can imagine, I didn't get very far.  Those kids are awfully needy when they're present and awake.  Next time I'm sending them a KCWC memo, or just dropping them off at school and pretending I forgot it was Saturday.

So, this is how much I got done before we left for our back-to-back parties, not returning to our house until 10 pm:

It's a Junebug dress!  But I'm doing something a little different.  10 points to the first person who can tell what it is. 

I maybe shouldn't have given you this sneak peek, because there's a fairly good chance this won't work out.  But I'm going to finish it tomorrow in the 2 hours I have between church and another party, oh yes I am.  No promises on photography or blogging though. 

*before you give me the mom of the year award, I should clarify that I didn't abandon my puking kid to go sew.  She wasn't sick, and she didn't get sick again.  She just likes to puke occasionally to keep life interesting.  The car is her favorite place, especially if we're on a highway with no exits, but she's not too particular about her throw-up locations.

KCWC Day 5: And now for something completely different

I switched gears today and started sewing with wovens!  After 4 days and 9 garments sewn almost 100% with the serger, it feels good to be back with Brigitta.  I missed her.

Today's project was the aforementioned bubble dress pattern from Straightgrain in washi fabric.  The only change I made was to lower the front neckline.  I like the aesthetic of the higher neck, but I figured if my kid was anything like me, she would feel like fabric boa constrictors were trying to strangle her (turtlenecks = evil) 

I sewed up the size 6 for my oldest, but as you can see, it is a near perfect fit for my just-turned-4 yr old.  The bodice would definitely fit my 6 yr old, but I'm guessing it wouldn't cover her underwear.  It's an easy enough fix if you know about it ahead of time, and I wouldn't let it stop you from using this pattern because it is sooo dern cute. 

I was kinda bummed that Z didn't get the dress because then it would get to cycle through all 3 girls, but really I'm just glad I didn't waste my very dear washi fabric on a project fail. 

The dilemma now is that my next project was going to be a Junebug dress for this kiddo, but now I don't really want to make her another dress...

I do have a friend who is in the hospital imminently delivering her second girl (what up mindy!  congratulations on making a person with your genitals!), so I'm going to go scour the interwebs for some cute matchy outfits for her 3 yr old and soon to be newborn.  Any suggestions?  I've made it this far, I've gotta finish strong!!

Speaking of finishing strong, someone tried to pretend she was sick of modeling today.

Faker.