Owl be there for you ..

Aren't owls just the cutest creatures? I can't help myself but go awww awwwww aaawwwww every time I see anything with an owl on it. Now, I am not obsessed (though I do have a pinterest board dedicated only to owls) but once in a while I think about creating something owl dedicated and sometimes I even go through with my owl plan.

I've been terrible with sending/giving baby gifts recently (recently = the past 10 years?). I always get excited for a new baby and run to the store, buy outfits of all sorts and then I don't send the gift  for ages. You guessed it! By the time I would actually get to the post office, the baby is walking or taking metaphysics classes in college ... So, no more outfits, I said! I will make an owl .. an owwwlll .. an owl pillow! Or even better, I will make three and gift them to some of my favorite baby girls (not including but leading with Lola but of course).

I decided to forgo inventing the wheel again, as there seem to be enough owl aficionados out there to be able to find a pattern online. A short search produced a free pattern found on  "Make it and Love it" blog by Ashley Johnston. The pattern is HERE. It really is easy. The only tricky part is inserting and sewing the side pannel.  You could get rid of it in theory, but the pillow would look much different and I much prefer this wholesome handsome owl look.

A portrait ...  

Other owls I adore: 

Owl BAG by Gingercake

Owl goodie bags for a party by Stamping with Erica

Crocheted owls by Bunny Mommy (pssst I am actually working on this one already)

I am excited to show you my projects in progress soon .. a crocheted blanket and a mermaid costume for the Coney Island Mermaid Parade for Lola and momma ... Lots of shimmer, shine and shells coming this way ... But not before I will share Governor's Island Flapper picnic photos and also hoping to lemonsqueeze a post from our 2013 LoLo's Lemonade stand
(coming soon to a street near you!) ...  

Ciao LoLovies, LV xox

P.S. I don't have my pinterest button here, but if you search for "lolovie" you can easily find me ... then you can adore 75 owls on my board and love me for collecting them all in one place :)) 

P.S. 2 . As always, if you've made anything owl recently or not so recently, please share with me.

Meet Pickles!

Hi Everyone and welcome back to my crafting and real world. It's been a while since I posted I know, but with all the holidays and family ganging up on me wanting their peace and quiet at night, I really didn't get much chance to craft. That's living on 1000 sq feet New York City style for you.
Sewing machine deprived, I picked up my knitting needles. I've been admiring those large knitted dolls for quite sometime and had a book on my shelf called "Knitted Toy Tales" by Laura Long that's been staring at me. The cover has the cutest little doll that sold me the book immediately. The patterns are well written and easy to understand and follow, plus all the projects would make great gifts for little munchkins. (I am not the book's marketing rep or anything if you were wondering :)  ...

When the doll was half ready, I asked Lola what she wanted her to be called.  She thought about it long and hard and with daddy's help "Pickles" was born ... London, of course immediately responded by demanding his own doll, who will be called "Bagel" (as he informed us). I've been hiding Pickles from Lola until Bagel is born, so no photos of Lola styling P's hair or tearing off her dress just yet.

Did you notice the barrette in P's hair? She is getting ready for Valentine's Day! Tutorial and pattern for the hairpin coming up next, so stay tuned!  

FREE doll patterns I would also love to make and you may too :)

• Evie's Doll from dried Figs and Wooden Spools blog Her name is Eliza. Eliza and Pickles could easily be BFF's, though Pickles would be jealous of Eliza's cute little sweater. For a free pattern of Eliza email here: gwgrimm@gmail.com
• An adorable Rag Doll from "Essential Knits" by Debbie Bliss. You can download the free PDF file pattern HERE
• Sally the Eco Fairy designed by Jennie Eveleigh Lamond is another cutie to add to the girl's club. I am sure she'd be adorable even without wings if fairies are not your cup of fairy dust (I mean tea, of course :) 

See you later alligator! I hope everyone's year started off on a right foot.

LOLO(vie), LV

Sock Santa

I love making stuff from socks for two reasons: quick, cheap and easy (mostly).

Ok, that's three reasons ...

LoLo is in love with Santa, but who wouldn't be? A guy in red with a fuzzy white beard, two big eyes that brings gifts? Just like daddy! (Uhmmm  ... almost  :) 

What's great about this project is that even the smallest children can help with it plus the steps can be also used to make sock snowmen. 

• This is what you need for the Santa: 

A pair of red knee-high socks

One single short white sock preferably the thin kind  

Polyfill or any other kind of stuffing material suitable for soft toys 

A cup of rice 

Two buttons

1 ball of cotton wool (the tip of the hat)

A few rubber bands - large and small 

A piece of fuzzy stuff for the beard (you can also use felt and cotton wool)

Glue gun   

Step 1.

Take your knee high sock (as shown by Lola on the first photo) and cut through on two places. Straight line just above the heel and straight line below the heel. Now you have two pieces of the sock - one long for the body and one short for the hat. 

Step 2.

Take the long part (body) and a rubber band and pull it all together to make a little sack. (photo 3 left to right) ... Turn it inside out (photo 4) 

Fill the bottom with rice and stuff the rest with polyfill all the way to the top (as seen London doing it on the photo) and the next picture of our kitchen table and LoLo woking hard ... 

While stuffing the sock arrange the polyfill evenly - you may make your Santa as thin or as overweight as you see suited, or as much as the sock lets you. In any case, do not under-stuff the guy! When it comes to Santa and body image it's a very healthy one! ;)

Close the top of the stuffed red sock and put another rubber band over his head twisting it at least twice to make a head. 

Step 3. 

Cut off the heel and the toes of your single white sock. Now you have a tube.  

Make a little ball from the polyfill and take your small rubber band. 

Put the ball against the inside of the white sock leaving enough space for the face. Secue the ball in place tight. Pull the white "face" over the red sock head as seen in the last photo. 

Step 4. (not pictured)

Take the toe part of your red sock and put a rubber band over the toe part to make it look like a hat. I also glued a cotton ball to the end of it. Pull on Santa's head and sew or glue in place.

Step 5. 

Glue eyes and the beard in place .. VOILA!

Here he is with his sock snowmen family. 

The inspiration for the sock snowmen came from here:

Then She Made ...  

The tiny once are not filled with rice, because I will be using them as a tree decoration. I try to make special ornaments every year from LoLo's stuff .. For LoLo's first Christmas I made ornaments from their momma-made patchwork blocks, last year I made a bunch of ornaments from their second year birthday cards (using a scallop hole puncher) and this year everything is sock and tights made! :) 

From left to right: Daddy snowman from Geoffrey's "holey" socks; Lola snowman from Lola's tights from last year; yellow stripes snowguy is from London's baby socks and the red one was warn by mommy, of course. The baby at the back is also made from Lola's tights. 

I brought the project to our group "Bobita" which is a Hungarian children's group here in Manhattan and look what we've all made .. 

If you make some of these cuties, please send me an email or a Facebook message pretty please ...  

I would love to grow the Santa/Snowmen sock family. 

Have a wonderful week everyone!

LO(lo)V(i)E

 LV

P.S. I just thought about this one .. How about hiding a gift inside Santa's belly? Yes, he would have to be operated on, but still a cute idea, no? Or a marriage proposal from inside Santa's belly .. Hmmm .. OK, before I come up with more strange stuff .. bye byeee 

Advent calendar 2011

December must be the craziest month for all crafters considering all the presents to be made. I have a long list that will last 5 Christmases. I start and never finish many, but this one I did! I made an advent calendar for LoLo.

It's really a knock off calendar of the one I saw in a magazine for 95 USD, so I don't deserve much creative credit ... but if you really can't hold it back that's also ok with Moi ;o)

Last year I bought LoLo a paper calendar for 99 cents at our local food store and that worked just fine (in terms of developing chocolate addiction, especially when it comes to London), but I also thought it' would be just nice to hang something cute in their teeny-tiny room and make it even more colorful and festive ...
I found a mitten pattern online and made it to fit the page to print. Then I cut out a 48 pairs of colorful mittens. Instead of sewing, I hot glued the pairs together and tied them on a ribbon. Too much work if you ask me, but all worth it! See for yourself ...

This is how they all looked on our kitchen island ... 

I cut corners on this project where I could - can you tell? :) I really didn't feel like tracing the numbers so I didn't - they are all just hand drawn out as it came. I used fabric scraps from my Romero Britto project, which had double sided adhesive on already. All I did was cut, glue and iron ... 

Pretty easy, huh?

London's side of the room ... 

Lola's ... 

"Surprise!"

Yupp .. almond kisses and Chanukah gelt for eight days because we celebrate all the holidays where we can eat, drink, be merry and get presents and chocolates ;) ... 

 Happy Christmas/Hanukkah shopping everyone! LV

Crate to Cradle: How to make a doll bed (tutorial)

I am so excited to show you my new project I can barely contain myself ...

Among many thing I love to re-use and recycle are those fruit crates you buy at your local grocery store. These kind:

I've been using them as trays for children's parties for a while - making them pretty just gluing on ribbon or fabric of all kinds around them. I also cut out a piece of cardboard for the bottom, cover it with fabric and there you go!

As I admired one of these boxes (the kind that everyone in the family knows NOT to throw away, just like toilet paper roll tubes and other seemingly useless items), I've thought of another idea: making crates into baby doll beds. I want to claim this project to my name, although I did do a research online and realized I didn't just discover the wheel (I am still so proud of this one I almost feel like it .... :)
I hope you make many, many doll beds, so that I will be able to show it off here for everyone.
Step 0: Go shopping for some fruit in crates before they are off market for the season!

What you need:   
- a crate
- cardboard (I used a Pampers box - no lack of those around here!)
- fabric - (I bought 1/4 of the dotty and 1/4 of the tree pattern, plus 1/2 of the bed skirt material; I also used Geoffrey's old T-shirt for the bed sheet)
- glue gun
- Mod Podge or other glue
- white cardstock
- ribbon for trimming around the bed
- quilt padding material (for the cover and pillow)

The obvious: 
scissors, cardboard cutter, sewing machine, pen, pencil, thread

Draw out the bed board. I used a plate to make the pattern and just played around to finally get the shape I liked. The bottom of the crates is not even, so I cut a piece of padding used in quilts and filled the gaps around the corners, following I used tape to secure it to the corner.

1. Cut out your headboard material a little bigger than the size you actually need and glue it to the back of the board. If your box has print on it and it shows through, glue a layer of white cardstock as the first layer before the fabric. You can probably paint it also, but I live in a small 2 bedroom apartment so no painting, sanding .. etc. for me ... I used Mod Podge for this project, but you can use pretty much any glue. 

2. Headboard in progress. Make sure to make cuts into the the fabric as you glue around the corners, so that you can stretch the fabric.

3. Just showing how easy it really is!

4. Now we'll do the top part! Hopefully, you cut out two pieces of board material, so that you can pretty much do the same for the front, as for the back. The only difference is that you have to fold the fabric to place, before gluing. This can get a bit tricky, but manageable!

5. I realized that the bed needed a bottom sheet also, but had no material. Then I glimpsed at Geoffrey sitting in front of the TV in one of his white undershirts that needed replacement a long time ago and as you suspect, I tore it of of his back (literally! :) I stretched it around the bed, glued it on and now we had a white bottom sheet in place! 

6. I just noticed that 6 is really 7 and vice versa, but you get the idea ... Make the ruffled bed skirt, glue gun it to the side. For the length of the ruffle around the bed, just double the length what you need and add 1 inch! Ruffling as always: strongest tension on your machine with largest stitching. (Though sometimes I got frustrated because at the highest tension the thread tore a few times, in which case just use whatever tension works, pull the bottom thread and you'll get the ruffles that way!)

As the final step I glue-gunned a ribbon around the top edge of the bed skirt and the bed so that it looks nice and finished and here is the final product .. tralalalalalaaaaaaaa

P.S. I don't have steps for the pillow and the cover, but it's fairly straightforward. The padding is done with the quilting material, but you can also use fiberfill (at least for the pillow). 

The first guest sleeping in our brand new bed was BAA, the sheep I knitted ... 

Sleep well! Night night! Jo ejszakat! Dobru noc!

If you like Baa's new bed and my tutorials, please follow me and "like me" on Facebook! 

(I really want you to "love" me, but there is no button for that) I have so many projects rummaging through my head every day and so many crafty nights planned, that I am bound to come up with something creative again very soon. 

In the meantime, thank you to my loyal readers and followers and likers! 

LO(lo)V(i)E 

LV 

LOOK AT SIBYLLE'S version of the bed on Fun.kyti.me: 

http://fun.kyti.me/index.php/2011/03/clementine-box-doll-bed/ 

So adorable! Lucky baby dolls :)

Featured also here:

Feeling Fairy creative

I'd like a sympathy "oooooohhhhh", please, because I grew up without knowing that there were tooth fairies in this world.  We don't have them in Slovakia! Therefore, I don't have a keepsake tooth and never realized I deserved financial support for loosing them. So, when I got a bag of flowers petals from Kat at Fiber Notion saying "make a fairy" I took the challenge to compensate ...

What you'll need:
A large wooden bead
Pipe cleaners
A bag of flower petals used by scrapbookers
Wool (for hair and body)
Glue gun
My all time aid to make anything look fabulous: fake pearls

I think the photos are self-explanatory. I folded the pipe cleaner in half for the arms to make them more sturdy. The hair was the hardest to glue on without the glue showing, so make sure you apply only a little bit each time. Once you have the head glued on and the wrapped up body, I started making the skirt. All you need to do is to glue the petals one by one to the body. Don't worry if at first it doesn't look anything like a skirt! Once you add a few layers of petals, you can shape it with your glue gun. Now glue on the beads. I added a bead belt also and a flower/bead hat for my first personal fairy.

Here she is ...

The only reason she looks sad, is because the bead I had, had already a sad face on it. Otherwise, Blossom would be the happiest fairy in New York!

I sense more fairies coming into my life as LoLo grows up, though we are still working on getting the first set of teeth in order. I have a bit of time to beautify Blossom Fairy till needed! If you do make Blossom for your toothless munchkins, you can make her a teeny-tyni purse to hide the tooth in. I just wasn't inspired to unpack my sewing machine for such a luxurious accessory! :)

LO(lo)V(i)E

LV

P.S. I am so thrilled about all of you liking my necklace, I may just have to do another one soon. Scrappy projects still to come!

Knitted mini ZOO and daddy isn't allergic to any of them!

I didn't mean to take up knitting again - I gave away all my leftover wool and needles years ago, but then I made the leg warmers this winter; then realized there weren't any hats out there that could accommodate Lola's two pigtails and theeeeenn, I discovered Fuzzy Mitten's patterns and fell in love. At the same time I also found the Mochimochiland blog with all sorts of crazy knitted stuff - like the confused moose or the sofa, which is my current project in making. (I wish I could knit one in real life size, as ours is covered with milk, chocolate and playdough. Life with toddler twins ... )

I can honestly say, that this is the most satisfying craft I've ever done. (Have I mentioned I work on instant gratification?) These little guys can be made in an hour! LoLo loves carrying them in their pockets, pushing them around in their baby stroller, sticking them to most unexpected places and subsequently loosing them. Ideally, I wanted to take photos of the nature turning into Spring as my studio - flower buds and greens and snowdrops, but of course it snowed instead...

If you saw a butt sticking up in the air from the ground today and a woman in a big red puffy jacket kneeling by what seemed like a pile of nothing with a camera around her neck, constantly blowing hot air on her frozen fingers ... well, that was me ... enjoy the pics ...

LO(lo)V(i)E

Elvi