Other Craft Projects

Just like every other little 3 year old girl in the world right now, Piper LOVES Disney’s Frozen! I have to admit, I kinda love it too! 🙂

When we went skiing earlier in the year, I wanted to give Piper a little surprise so I made her a personalised ski helmet, with her name and also featuring a certain little frosty friend! My name’s Olaf, and I like warm hugs!

I hadn’t really used the silhouette to cut vinyl before but I was really intrigued. A few years back when decorating Piper’s nursery I bought some vinyl from eBay and loved the look – i was excited to see how I could personalise other things as well as walls. As soon as I saw the ski helmets in the shop i knew what i wanted to experiment with!

I played around a bit to get the right settings – and to be honest there are loads of websites that have helpful guidance on the blade settings for vinyl, a quick google search made this part easy.

Sorry for the rubbish iPhone photos – late night crafting sesh often results in quick photos on the phone.

First stop – her name. In case you are wondering, the font is Lobster -i kinda love it. I did have to move the P closer to the i in order to create one merged piece of text.

OLAF! I love this little guy! We hid the helmet away until we got to the resort – when she saw it her face lit up so much it made my heart melt, but some people are worth melting for.

Of course, I couldn’t leave the back empty, now could i?

 

‘Do you wanna build a snowman?’ – of course Piper did! Daddy and Pi made their own snowman outside the chalet – its the first photo in this post! Although don’t tell anyone that we had to use foil caps from wine bottles as eyes!

And of course Daddy didn’t want to miss out either! Here’s a quick look at Craig’s helmet, sporting the logo from the Games Studio he works for.

 

A little tip to share in regards to sticking these bad boys onto the helmets: the vinyl is super thin, which means that it can stretch really easily and lose its shape. To remove the vinyl from its backing i first covered the design in overlapping strips of washi tape. I used one that i didn’t really like much, it came in a multi-pack, so i wasn’t that bothers about using lots in order to ensure the perfect transference.

Im sorry this post has so many photos – but here’s one last one to make you smile!

Stay Cool!!

 

Bonjour tout le monde! I’m trying to get in to a French mood because in a mere few days we will be enjoying the snowy peaks of the French Mountains! Woohoo, Roll On Holiday! I have now entered into packing mode!

Last year I shared my Emergency Craft Kit with you, a collection of goodies to pack in your suitcase when you want to craft on the go. It worked well for our domestic trip but this time we are really stuck for room, so there was no way we would be able to take up valuable suitcase space with that much stuff. Plus, we wont have as much free time, so lets be reasonable. I had to get creative about what to bring. And I do love being creative…. 🙂

I remember seeing a post on the beautiful blog of Crafty Goddess Elizabeth Kartchner, where she had packed some crafty supplies for a road trip. I loved it, be sure to check it out. This was the inspiration for my (mini) Emergency Craft Kit! Let’s take a look at what i’ve got!

Mini Book

Elizabeth made a little book from kraft cardstock and her silhouette and it was adorable. I thought I would follow suit to see what I could come up with. From an A4 piece of card I made pages with word apertures, cut out using the BEBAS font. I love the way this font looks when you cut it out.

I too used the bind it all to bind all the pages together, but I mixed it up a little in two ways. Firstly I used black wire as well as silver wire for the bindings. This is a cool way to use up those offcuts when you use all but two or three prongs. Secondly I added some extra pages to the book: a piece of glitter card to go behind the cover page, a pocket page for ephemera and I also glued two pages together to create the last page in the book (with some washi tape behind the aperture) – this makes it more sturdy, and hopefully more voyage-friendly!

Supplies

As for supplies, I too wanted to bring some washi tape, small scissors and some tags and journaling cards. I also brought some offcuts of pattern paper from my scraps box.

For adhesive, I really wish that I had the small bottle of glossy accents but i’m not going to buy it just for this trip so instead I am bringing this white glue pen. It is basically PVA glue but is it super easy to dispense. I have wrapped some sticky tape around the lid to ensure no mishaps on our travels.

In regards to pens, I’ve got a standard black pen that I like to write with and a white gel pen. I have wrapped these up in some discarded craft packaging incase of ink spills. It pays to be careful!

I also took a little baggy and put in a sprinkling of embellishments: buttons, veneer shapes, chipboard shapes. In fact Piper spent about half an hour sorting these this afternoon, so these may also double up as an indoor play project with miss P. BONUS!

All together

To contain her bits and pieces, Elizabeth had a little fabric bag. I never even thought of doing something like that. I guess I would have worried about getting things crumpled, but throwing caution to the wind I figured I would give it a try. Its good to get outside your comfort box sometimes.

I took some fabric and cut two rectangles, and before sewing them together I wanted to decorate the front of my bag. For this I used felt letters from KI memories, spelling out ECK – Emergency Craft Kit of course!! The felt letters have a cardboard backing and are adhesive but I didn’t think the adhesive would endure the ride so I ran some stitches through them. I love how they turned out. Not sure who makes the felt heart, but I stitched this by hand onto the material.

A few minutes later I had a bag, and all it needed was a drawstring – seam binding worked great for this! TA-DA!

NOW, if only I could get back to that packing!!

Here’s the rest of the pages in the mini book! Enjoy! x