Felt Finger Puppet Gang

Come and meet the gang.... Percy the Polar Bear, Henry the Hedgehog, Leo the Lion, Mr Fox, Kitty Mew Mew and Mr Dinosaur. I don't know why but all my soft toys have always been male, I'm not sure what this says about me? Do your soft toys (I would say did, but come on you know you still own some) have a gender? I would love to know I'm not the only odd one out there.

So anyway, it's been a while since I have played with finger puppets, but how cute are these little felt guys? You might be wondering then why I made them? Well now that Master Fox is 6 weeks with every day he is getting more awake and more inquisitive. To help him learn about his new world I have been looking for activities to do with him to stimulate and help his mental development. There are lots of great ideas from simply showing him things around the house to smells but of course my favourite activity was the one which featured finger puppets! I probably could have gone with a theme, say woodland or zoo animals or something but he doesn't know the difference. I just made up my favourite animals ;)

Little Felt finger puppets are so easy to make. All you need is some felt, scissors, needle and thread. Draw roughly around your finger onto a piece of paper but add about 1cm all the way around. Once you have done this cut it out and this is your finger template. From that you just need to cut shapes from felt to make little faces and features and sew them on with co-ordinating thread. Once you have finished with the features you then sew around the edge and top of the puppet leaving the bottom open. You can of course use glue if you don't want to sew them.

They took about 15 minutes per puppet which makes this another awesome project for making during baby naps. It took me about 3 naps to make these 6 little guys, not bad at all.

Have you ever made any toys for your little newborns? I am continuously hunting for ideas for playtime so would love to hear about them.

A Flock of Feathery Hens!

Remember me telling you I was going to a hen do? Well do you like my sparkly feather hairpiece? Our Bride to be picked the theme 'Feathers a Corsets' for her evening out, feathers of course being a very appropriate theme for a hen do. Sadly I don't think I even noticed the pun until just now! So being as a can't wear a corset (apparently its frowned upon to squash your growing baby) I thought I should mark the occasion by making every effort to don a feathery hairpiece.

Now these are one of my current favourite things on Etsy at the moment: Feather Ear Cuffs. They are just incredible, the only problem is my favourite are the pink and orange and well they were just going to get lost in my hair.

(Excuse the terrible selfie!) 

To add to that, sadly it turns out I was quiet poor last month, or I spent too much, so I couldn't justify the pennies to buy one for myself and instead I set to trying to make something out of the things I had y'know, just lying about. Armed with a glue gun, two types of black feather, some black felt, and old hair clip and some of my favourite sparkly fabric I managed to knock this little gem up in less than half an hour. 

I started out by cutting a piece of felt and a piece of glitter fabric into a heart shape. Then using the glue gun I glue glue glued the feathers onto the felt piece and then glued the glitter piece to the top making sure the edges were all sealed. The final job was to just spot glue a clip onto the back and voila. 

I am really pleased with how it came out, its a great little fascinator and it made me feel ever so glamorous, which is hard when your pregnant and in a constant feeling of frump. I also love it when a little whimsy project comes together so well. Of course we all know it doesn't always go that way 9/10 those little spur of the moment craft projects normally end up looking like something a 5 year old made, but occasionally you can surprise yourself. 

But that is not the end of it, no. Our lovely Bride to be decided to make everyone a little feathery gift of their own to wear on the night so we could all match. Check out how gorgeous this little feather brooch is. I love the colour and its just so delicate. Simple yet perfect and a great little momento from the evening. She made some with wire and beads, some as hair pins and some as brooches. A very talented young lady she is. 

Have you ever made any feathered accessories, or would you like to tell me all about your spur of the moment successes (or failures)? Please feel free to share the love. 

Have you ever made any feathered accessories, or would you like to tell me all about your spur of the moment successes (or failures)? Please feel free to share the love.

At least my craft room is tidy!!

 

Wow, this weekend was a scorcher! What were you up to? Did you make the most of the glorious outdoors? We certainly did, we spent pretty much all of Saturday outdoors tidying the garden, sunbathing, putting up and enjoying the new BBQ (we are such amateurs at making a BBQ it was 3 hours until we got food, we were famished!!). Because of all this sun, and the fact I am truly a ginger, I think we both tried to stay indoors a bit on Sunday to make sure we didn't end up with heat stroke or severe burns. 

 

So what did we do, well we still pretty much just potted about, I think Mr Fox is still enjoying the act he has no pressure to do anything. I actually took some time to sort out, tidy and have a little but of a clear out of my craft room. I know some of you will have seen pictures of this before, but I haven't had it on this blog yet so I thought, whilst its tidy, its the perfect opportunity to show you all what its looking like.  

You can see that I have a lot of stuff horded in here and I have gotten rid of about 6 bin bags off stuff this year alone. I think it goes without saying that I am well and truly a craft horder. Though, as you have seen from my blog, I am always making one thing or another and it is actually quiet rare that I won't already have what I need before I try out a new craft idea I have seen on the internet. I think this is the biggest problem about not having a particular craft to concentrate on, I have too much of everything! 

My main reason for attempting another major clear out was because we will have to move the kitchen in to this room whilst we are living without one. Its the only room which will be away from all the brick dust which has suitable space to be able to do a small amount of cooking and has room to store the plates etc. I think I have managed to make enough room for it now though so I can start on emptying the kitchen cupboards and getting rid of even more stuff!

 

I am definitely finding that I am having less time to get into any major craft projects at the minute like I suspected I would. I am just enjoying being able to spend time with my husband and I don't want to be stuck indoors whilst we are having a summer out there. I do have some smaller and less labour intensive projects in my to do pile though so I think I will try to get on with those in the coming weeks.

Finally I bought some of my favourite fabrics which I have been eyeing up on The Village Haberdashery website recently; these awesome foxes and kitties.I only bought a FQ of each because I had no idea what I wanted to do with them but I think I will actually purchase a little bit more and cover some cushions with them (you can never have too many cushions right?).

I would LOVE to see pictures of other peoples craft rooms, so if you have one of your own and you want to send me a picture, or a link to a post showing off your space I would really like to see it. I can never see enough inspirational ideas for storing all this craftyness.