Tag Archives: paint

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A doll bed

My kids have so many toys.   I think I may flip completely if another bloomen’ stuffed animal comes through the door.  I mean really, how is it possible for them to love every one of those things?  With every birthday and Christmas comes the challenge of organizing all of those new toys.  There are some great kids toy organizing ideas out there and I have employed a few of them myself. That is a whole other post (coming soon).

This year for my little girls 3rd birthday I wanted to give her something special. Something that would not mess up the precise organization of the play room.  I came across this cute little bed, and the plans.  I knew it would be the perfect gift for my baby doll crazed girl.

Mr Chaos took the challenge of making the bed while I went through my fabric stash for the quilt.  There was enough scrap wood in the garage to make the whole bed, with only a few modifications from the original plan.  There was also enough premier and paint to paint the bed. 

Thankfully my neighbour had some 1.5 inch foam that she was not using.  We cut that to the fit, and whala… a mattress.

For the quilt I used a 4+1 pattern.

Side note: When my first daughter was only 3 months old I took a quilting class at a local quilt shop.  It was the best thing I could have done. I learned the basics of quilting, it was a great place to start. In the class I made a lap size quilt of the 4+1.

I was going to use a simple pattern but the fabric screamed 4+1 patch. The birdy fabric is her favorite in the stash. I am so happy with how it turned out.

The `sheet set` is just a piece of broad cloth made into a tube sized to fit over the foam.  I sewed the rick-rack on to make it look like the sheets were folded down.  I wanted to make the bedding as simple as possible.

At three years old making her own bed is difficult, I can`t imagine she would ever make this bed.  In the future I will make her a pillow and more intricate bedding, but for now this is age appropriate.

She was a happy little mom on her birthday. And thankfully Dad made the bed really strong, she has already tried jumping on it!

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Painted Tree

The other day I found myself in the usual circumstance.  It was raining outside the kiddies and I felt cooped up and we needed something fun to do.  I started looking at Pintest, and all of a sudden I had an idea.  Rather than sitting around and feeling creative, I got up and got creative.

I put the baby down for a nap, grabbed some chalk, a wash cloth, paint brushes, paint and paper towel.  As I went running up stairs I called to the girls, “Ya wanna do something fun?” Needless to say, they we in!

So armed with an idea and inspiration from a Blog, called The Creative Imperative, we went to work on a creating a tree.   I used chalk to draw an outline on the wall.   I learned to use chalk for making an outline from the very talented artist, Jamie, over a The CI blog. 

The chalk was a piece of white sidewalk chalk that a neighbourhood kid left on my front deck.  Once I drew a design I liked, and it was approved by my art critics, we went to work with the paint.

note: my art critics were very honest as they are only 3 and 6 years old. 

The paint was some left over brown house paint from my neighbour with some acrylic craft paint mixed in.  I used a large paint brish for most of the tree.  There are some really good tutorials of the IC blog about how to use one.

The girls had some pretty interesting color suggestions for the leaves.  But I managed to convince them that green was the very best option.

We were able to finish the tree before Mr.Chaos got home from work.  He had no idea about this undertaking.  Here is my Facebook Status update during the process.

I am happy to say that when he got home and was violently drug up the stairs by two VERY excited girls he was quite please with the tree. 

By the time we were finished painting, the play room (the scene of this adventure) was a glorious mess. There were paint bottles and toys everywhere!

There is still more to come for this fun tree…

Here is a little hint!

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“I Love Snow”

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I always see the little signs in stores and in magazines that have a cute picture or neat saying.  I have always thought that they would not be too hard to make.  And of course, with anything homemade it is totally customizable.  So this is my first attempt at making my own little sign. 

I think it turned out pretty good.  I still don`t know where to hang it, but I’m sure it will make itself comfortable somewhere.

It is painted on an old wall hanging that I had.  I never hung it up after we moved so I repurposed it.

First I painted it with a Robin Egg Blue Color, then sketched out the snowman. 

Then I did the text.  The font came from a great website called Dafont.com.   You just search through all the REALLY COOL fonts and download the ones you want.  They magically end up in Word and you just print them out.

To get the letters from the page to the sign I colored with a dark crayon on the back of the page, then placed the page on the board and traced around the letters.  For all those amazing confident drawers, you can most likley free hand it. But this is a great way to cheat!

I used Deco-Art Snow Texture to add `snow` under the snowman.  To make perfect snowflakes I used the left over sticker page from a pack of scrapbook stickers as a stencil.  I filled that in with the Snow Texture as well.  Then, of course, the most exciting part of the entire project…. I added glitter.

So if you are looking at this, make sure to leave me a comment so I know you were here…. There is a little bubble up by the title.

 I love hearing from everyone!