February 2009 Archives

For Christmas this year, i made my nieces and nephew each a pillow that was a portrait of each child. Here they are:

Pillows for Maia and Elise:

For Elise's pillow, I wanted to show her love for kindergarten and "paperwork." Her picture has a giant pencil (hard to see in pic) and her name written neatly on that weird lined paper they give you in the early grades. Elise with her pillow:

Maia loves Peter Pan and Robin Hood and is always dressed up like them, yet she's still a girl, so that's why I went with green and pink. She's also mischievous so that's why she has sneaky eyes. Maia with her pillow (her hair used to be all layered and that's what the pillow portrait was styled after, but she got this new sleek look just before Christmas):

Jenna's Pillow:

Jenna is a girly girl and loves princesses and pretty things, so I made her a princess with butterflies that sparkle. Jenna with her pillow:

Marcus' favorite things is cars, and cars that go fast, and cars that look cool, and cars on the road, and him driving cars. Marcus' pillow:

Marcus with his pillow:

I made the pillows using a variety of scrap fabrics, fusible web, and then sewing them on my machine. I started with a simple drawing I made on paper, cut out the pieces with an x-acto knife, then used those pieces as templates to cut out all of the fabric pieces in the portrait. With fusible web on the back of the fabric, I'd iron them in place on the pillow and then sew around the edges using my machine. The key was layering fabrics in the right order, which is not always easy to do. I tried to use a variety of fabrics so they'd be very tactile.

The pillow backs are grey fleece with a surprise zipper (wish I got pics of it...). When you open the zipper, there is a pocket with a tag that says, "Shhh! It's a secret!" For each child, I put a "secret" gift in the pocket and whispered to them about it later. They got a big kick out of having a secret place to keep their secret stuff.

I've been very busy working on various crafts as gifts for others and learning tools for Caleb since November. I have been mostly diligent photographing them, but I've been terrible at sharing them on my blog (or keeping up with blogging at all!). So, I'm hoping to backtrack for awhile while I share what I've been up to.

First, I would like to share how we have been wrapping gifts as of late. I got frustrated with the price of wrapping paper and also thought I could do something much more interesting. So, I got this giant roll of brown paper for like $8 at Home Depot. It's in the paint section with the drop cloths. Then, I would cut a folded piece large enough to accommodate the gift I was wrapping, decorate it with paint pens, and then using my sewing machine to sew around the edges.

Here is one we wrapped for Eddie. I tried to have my drawings give a hint as to what was inside. We got Eddie a doormat made of recycled flip-flops. I also alluded to my favorite comment by a student ever, "Art can be beautiful or ugly. It can be beautiful like flowers in a field, or ugly like a hairy man leg." So, I guess you can call this art.

Josh loved this one, for our nephew Andrew.

Here is a pile of some of the first ones I did. I got better (and more creative) as I got going and now feel that I have more of a feel for the artistry of it than I did with these:

I think some people thought we were weird (and possibly thought we were really cheap!) for wrapping gifts in this way. I think several were also confused, like, "How do I open this???" But, I think it was more fun to do, more personalized, and much cheaper than buying wrapping paper! Plus, Caleb had fun watching me and "helping" me draw them all. Sometimes I would ask him what to draw and he'd say "Ella!" so then I'd draw a festive Ella as the decoration. What fun!

Edit: I forgot that I had a picture of this one as well:

This is the wrapped gift I made for twins, Andrew and Karina. It was fun to give them one package with two compartments. I also sewed Bible verses to each side that correspond with the gifts inside.

Caleb and Ella, our miniature dachshund, are best buds. They are pretty much always by each other. They play fetch with Ella's toys, he gives her dog treats, she comes when he calls her (sometimes), they sit by each other and cuddle under a blanket when we're on the couch together. Sometimes Caleb will even go inside of Ella's kennel ("Her kennel, where she goes night night.") and shout, "Woof! Woof! Ella! Ella! Woof!"

Once the weather got really cold, I had to re-potty train Ella. She was like, "I'm not going out there!" and would go hide under blankets until her bladder was about to explode and she'd go somewhere out of sight from me. So, I was watching her very closely, looking for signs that she had to go outside, re-teaching her how to show me that she had to go outside, catching her doing the naughty in my house, and praising her when she got it right.

Okay, enough with the lead up exposition and on with the main story.

I was changing Caleb's diaper and I saw Ella slink off into our bedroom. I could tell by her slinking that she was going to go to the bathroom. So, I set Caleb down on the floor (naked at this point) and went into my room where Ella was in the middle of peeing on my bed(!). I scolded Ella and put her outside, only to realize that Caleb was gone. So, I ran around looking for him and finally found him sitting, naked, in Ella's kennel. And you know what he was doing? Peeing.

Take that, Ella.