Day 256 - Santa Vase from an old tin.

I got this idea from this Maryvelous cakes facebook page and I just thought it was adorable so decided to make one with one of the old formula tins we had in the pantry. Mr D drank formula for a couple of months and the tins seem to good to throw out.

So this Santa was made with a formula tin, an old camera bag strap and some buttons. The flowers grow wild on our block. Ho, ho, ho to you all.

The kids didn't know what it was, but Mr Crafty recognised it right away.

Day 255 - Paper string of pretty.

Well summer doesn't officially begin for another 2 days but we are heading for a 40 degree (google tells me that's 104 degrees for the Celsius challenged) day here today and it's already very hot at 11am. I shall be lying low for the day.

I got a head start last night on cutting out the pieces for today's craft. I loved my decorations from yesterday so much I decided to make some others.

I still had one book page left from the meg and mog book used in Day-230-meg-and-mog-love , and I love the colours of the illustrations. So began an idea. I combined this with a coffee bag and some shape cut outs left over from a birthday party pack.

I cut circles from the book page and stars from the coffee packet.

Used a long straight stitch on my sewing machine to sew them all together. (You could glue if you don't sew).

And here is my string of pretty.

 I would hang it on the tree but we don't have one yet, so here it is.

I think these would also look great hanging from the roof.

Day 254 - Recycled book page Christmas decorations.

This year I've decided to make all of our Christmas decorations using recycled materials. Today is my first effort, using recycled book pages to make these onion shaped hanging decorations.

First I cut strips in three different lengths.

Then I glued the strips at the top and bottom so that they looked like this, with the shortest strip in the middle.

Finished! I punched a hole in the top to hang them.

 My little golden book paper was a little too thin so I glued two layers together to give each strip a bit more body, and hung them up using some metallic thread.

They are hard to photograph properly, but they do look quite good.

Day 253 - Recycled Toy Packaging - Little box of love

As sometimes happens when you look ahead to a day for a while, planning and making it special as Dylan's first birthday was to me, I have been feeling a bit flat the last couple of days, and low on creativity. It's hard sometimes to maintain it every single day.

To combat this today I decided I needed to get back to some sort of recycled craft, and I worked with a wooden box used to package toys. This one had some lacing cards in it, and I have another that had a couple of instruments in it.

Boxes.

And here is my creation. I love it because I just sat down with the box and a pile of craft supplies and began creating, with no plan. It was fun to make and it makes me smile when I look at it, in my kitchen at the moment. It has no use or purpose but to bring joy and sunshine into my life.

My flowers are made from toothpicks and beads, and I have felt bunting and some trims, and scrunched up tissue paper (recycled) to arrange my flowers in.

I hope you are having a bright and happy day, wherever you are.

Here is a map of all of the countries who have visited my blog since I added my flag counter a couple of months ago. Awesome! Thank you to each and every one of you.

Day 252 - Green Dino Collage

A quiet day with 2 tired little men today and Aidan wanted to make a dinosaur using as many green things as we could find. He loves all things green these days, so we collected some goodies.

He glued them on.

It ended up having some other colours when Aidan was dazzled by some pom poms he found and just had to add them to his creation.  Now to find some wall space for this lovely new picture.

Day 251 - Garden of Dylan

Tree made from Mr D's forearms, feet and fingerprints. I painted them and he loved the tickly feeling of the paint going onto him, but was extremely wriggly when trying to get the image onto the page. Not for the fainthearted!

Day 250 - Party Loot Bags

What a huge couple of days and lovely party to celebrate the little man's birthday today. It was really hot here and lots of old fashioned water fun and sprinkler play was had.

Today's craft is fabric loot bags - I made 25 of these from scraps of fabric, just cutting strips and overlocking 2 sides to make little bags.

And here are a couple of photos of yesterday and today.

Phew! I think I could sleep for a week now....If only....

And my rainbow fruit tray. Yum!

Day 249 - A Dylan Timeline

The day of Mr D's birthday has now arrived and we had a beautiful family breakfast this morning letting the bigger 2 go to school a little bit late. Then we are going to a local winery for a lovely lunch overlooking the vineyard. It's going to be a lovely day celebrating a wonderful year.

I made a Dylan timeline to mark the day by choosing a photo from each month of his life so far, some scraps of fabric, some tshirt yarn, and pegs. It runs down our long hallway in the middle of the house.

Here is the cake for the family. I'll be making another one tonight for his little party tomorrow. This one has a '1' for Dylan and a loveheart for each of the other members of the family to whom he has given so much already.

And here are some photos of our morning so far. Opening his present and having a breakfast of peach and chocolate fondues, pancakes and freshly squeezed juice.

Have a day full of love everyone.

Day 248 - Team Dylan

Birthdays are a bit of a big deal around here, especially first ones. It's a good excuse to come up with a few more crazy crafty ideas, so I decided to make some Team Dylan outfits for Dylan's brothers and sister to wear on his birthday.

First I made a screen print by printing out the words, laminating the paper, and cutting a stencil with a box cutter knife.

I thought I would stretch the fabric with an embroidery hoop.

Huge failure, tried to fix it a bit here.

Proper screen print box is needed! But at least I tried and now I know this doesn't work.

Luckily the fabric paint washed off when I got to it when it was still wet.

Transfers were made and printed. Much better. :-)

Models.

My baby is turning 1 tomorrow. Boo, Hoo, Hoo.