Candlemakers

Willow and I have a new hobby to tell you about:

Candlemaking! Even though we'd never tried it before, I was confident enough that the girls would enjoy making rolled beeswax candles to buy some supplies in bulk from Knorr Beeswax. I figured that Sydney, my hands-on craft kid, would be the one to sit at the table for four hours in one day rolling beeswax candles, but I was surprised:

Syd hasn't touched the candlemaking supplies, but Willow apparently finds it a meditative, contemplative break from her immersive mental world (Matt and I call this "the Willowverse"), because she spent pratically an entire afternoon, and much of the evening, rolling out a huge variety of candles.

Well, of course someone had to sit with her and help out when she needed it (ahem), and so I ended up making quite a variety, myself:

I have a rolled beeswax candle tutorial up at Crafting a Green World, but they're really quite simple to make, even for little children. Willow found her niche in creating one particular size of two-toned candles so well that I encouraged her to consider making some to sell at our summer craft fairs:

"How much should I charge? One dollar?" she asked.

"Well," I said, "For every candle that you sell, I think that you should pay me $1 for the cost of the supplies, so you'll want to charge more than that, or you won't make a profit."

"Two dollars?"

"I think that people would pay more."

"Three dollars?"

"How about six dollars? Then, after you give me one dollar, you'd have..."

"Wow, five dollars!"

"And how about if you sold six candles?"

"Five...ten...fifteen...........thirty dollars! I'll buy some BeyBlades!"

"I'll drive you straight to the store."

There's still plenty of room for experimentation, however, as she then went on to make "the longest candle in the world":

And then the shortest:

I had thought that these beeswax sheets would be sort of a novelty craft supply, but I already need to order more! I'm thinking that we'll be doing more math with spiral forms this week.

They Look Better in Your Old Clothes Than You Do

After one custom order guinea pig (I hope you love it, Miranda!), I've decided to make custom T-shirt baby gowns a regular pumpkinbear etsy item:

I had been worried that I'd happen to receive an order in a week that was too stressful for sewing, but my last couple of weeks have been SUPER busy, and I've still been amazed at how much I can accomplish with just a few minutes of sewing here and there and whenever I can. I'm also keeping the custom orders down to one listing at a time, because if there is anything that I am not, it is a baby gown sewing sweat shoppe.

The Paparazzi Snaps Her Photo as She Reads

I needed a few photos of Willow reading, to accompany an article on the same subject that I'm submitting to Home Education Magazine. Our wintry weather isn't exactly conducive to reading picturesquely outdoors, so we retreated with the camera to the place we would have gone even if there hadn't been a photo shoot to do...

The library!

Although I took care to comb the child's hair (normally it's her responsibility, and I let her get away with just brushing the outer layer of that wavy/curly mop) and to dress her decently (unlike her sister, who will regularly screen at least two outfits before leaving the house, then will preen and dance and talk to herself in the mirror once she's in the chosen frock, Willow's habit is to pick the top item from her shirts drawer, the top item from her pants drawer, and to attempt to do away with underpants altogether), you will notice that I forgot to actually have Will remove her coat for these first few photos. As she normally does, she ran straight into the children's department and dove right into a book, and I merely followed and snapped photographs:

Will doesn't pose as naturally for the camera as Syd does, but this isn't a problem when taking photographs of her reading, since she doesn't even notice me hovering there, camera up to my face:

This allows me to creeeeeeeep in ever closer, until...

Got it!

I Let My Kids Paint My Car

The first death knell sounded for our pretty nice white minivan one day when the little kid was a newborn and the big kid wasn't yet two, and a driver careened through a red light and T-boned us at an intersection just a few blocks from home and across the street from the police station (I was so flustered calling 911 that when the operator asked for my location, I was all, "I'm right outside your house!"). Did you know that even if the other driver's insurer pays up, you're never going to get enough money to flat-out purchase a comparable car in a comparable condition to the one that the other driver trashed for you? Fun, right?

We drove that minivan with the caved-in driver's side for years more, and actually it wasn't so bad because since the insurance totaled the car but it was still safely drivable, they paid us an extra coupla-grand for the salvage rights to the car and lowered our insurance payments, since who needs collision insurance on a car that's already been totaled?

Of course, if your car already looks that beat-up then it's only downhill from there: window stop rolling down? Meh. Air conditioning stop working? What's the point, right? We even kept driving the damn thing after the transmission went out on the way home from Cleveland last winter--the trick was to keep the rpms under 2,000 and the speed under 20 mph.

We were SO happy when my partner's parents offered us their old minivan and we could officially trash this white one that's been half-dead for four years already. And wouldn't you know, when my partner called the insurer to tell them that they could pick up the car for salvage, they said, "Yeah, we don't really actually want it. Feel free to junk it yourself."

And so while my partner waits for the perfect offer (he's holding out for $220 at least), our junked minivan just sits in the driveway, a giant white paperweight.

White. Like, blank canvas white.

I told the kids that they could paint the car.

Our paints are standard student-grade tempera, and the brushes are soft student-grade acrylic brushes:

Our kids are standard student-grade kids, and they jump right in, as you can see:

Yep, I even let the big kid climb onto the roof. But I assure you, when she's not busy breaking her leg at the playground, she is quite the little mountain goat:

A little paint got on the children, as well as the car:

Especially when they discovered splatter paint, Pollock-style:

Behold, our masterpiece!



A rainstorm the same night knocked about 70% of that paint right off. It's freezing cold again outside, but as soon as it warms up I'm going to send the kids out with some buckets and soap and sponges and teach them how to wash the car up perfectly clean again.

And then?

We'll paint it!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Science Experiment FAIL

An Easy-Peasy Superhero Cape Pattern

After making children's superhero capes for a while (superpowers guaranteed!), I've settled on a couple of standard sizes that I think work well for most little superheroes. I've also settled on an exact width that I like, and so that means that it's time to make a pattern!

A superhero cape is a super-easy pattern to make, since it's simply a trapezoid. My pattern piece is a half trapezoid, meant to be placed on the fold and cut:

The length of the pattern piece is the total finished height of the superhero cape, plus an inch at the top to fold over the elastic neck piece. The top width is half of the total finished top width, and the bottom width is half of the total finished bottom width.

Now that I know one or two specific sizes that I prefer for these capes, having a pattern piece is MUCH easier than measuring out each individual cape.

P.S. Want more patterns and tutorials and other awesome stuff? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Soap for Daddy

It's ridiculous, but soapmaking has been on my must-do list since...September? First, I wanted to find a new cold-process recipe, being heartily dissatisfied with my old one, so I requested a bunch of soapmaking books from the library, then waited for them to be held for me, then picked them up and read them all, then didn't like any of the recipes in them, either, so then returned them and requested more books.

So then I found a recipe on a soapmaking DVD that I liked, but had to return it before I got around to copying it down, so then had to request it again, then copy it down.

Then had to track down the ingredients. Waited until a Wal-mart trip (ugh!) to find the cheapest coconut oil, only to discover that they don't sell coconut oil at Wal-mart, so waited until the next discount day at the local indie grocery store to find the next cheapest coconut oil.

Waited until a trip to a different place to find castor oil.

Waited until a trip to Indy to find the super-cheapest olive oil.

Did a bunch of other stuff.

Used some of the coconut oil for granola, so had to wait until the next discount day at the local indie grocery store to buy more.

In the meantime, my poor Matt ran completely out of bar soap. The girlies and I use liquid Dr. Bronner's, but Matt is a man, and apparently a man needs bar soap (?).

Cold-process (and hot-process, just because I want to) bar soap is on its way, I assure you, but in the meantime, I set out all the supplies for the girls to make "soap for Daddy."

Vegetable glycerin melt-and-pour soap is so super-easy, and a quick and satisfying craft project, as there's pretty much no way to mess it up. I dragged out all the essential oils, and let the girls sniff and sniff and sniff and each choose two to mix into one soap for Daddy:

Sydney choose geranium essential oil and cinnamon essential oil, and Willow chose geranium and pine. It's funny, because a few weeks ago I permitted Willow to choose an essential oil from the grocery store, and after much sniffing and sniffing and sniffing, geranium was the oil that she chose--she apparently has excellent taste, because it's been a popular oil around here!

As with everything, the waiting is the hardest part:

Fortunately, we had to take Willow to ice show rehearsal, so after spending a hour there, and then another hour at the gym, by the time we headed home, the soap was...

Perfection! Matt apparently thinks so, too, or else he's just VERY grateful to have bar soap again, because he was just as excited to receive his soap that night as the girls were to give it to him.

And as the eyewitness on the ground, I can tell you that the soap has been well-used every morning since.

The Most Ridiculously Cute Superhero at the Playground

The purple and pink superhero cape that I sewed as a birthday present for a little buddy of Sydney's was already tooth-achingly cute, but I had the feeling that it could be made even more nauseatingly cuter:

Buttons! I certainly wouldn't recommed this for the under-three set, but Syd's pal is turning a grand three years old, and so I glued each button down with clear epoxy glue, then stitched each one to the cape with achingly cute pink thread:

Syd, of course, couldn't permit her friend to receive an untested cape--what if it malfunctioned, somehow, and did NOT render superpowers? So we spent some time at the playground on the eve before the big ballerina party, so that Syd could make sure that the cape rendered its powers effectively:

 
 Yep, seems to work just fine.

We Heart Our Chalkboard Globe

It's our new favorite homeschool tool! Syd, especially, who's my tactile, hands-on, art project go-to girl, loves the chalkboard globe that I made from a 25-cent garage sale globe from the 1960s and a can of chalkboard paint (check out my chalkboard globe tutorial over at Crafting a Green World if you, too, have a globe that still proudly sports the USSR).

It's fun for doodling and artistry of all sorts:

 Fun for geography:

 Fun for math and spelling:

 And fun for copywork:

It's brought us back to an art chalk renaissance, of sorts, and since I have just about 99% of a can of chalkboard paint left, I'm spending this week snooping around my house, spying out other hapless materials to turn into chalkboards!

The Fashion Show Project: Crowning Achievement, and Thoughts about the Process (So Far)

The final element of the little kid's overall Butterfly Fairy Princess design that we submitted to the Trashion/Refashion Show is the fairy princess crown:

This crown gave me the most grief! My first instinct was to wire the whole thing together out of wire hangers, and then cover it with fabric. The wire hangers, however, are thick and unwieldy enough that it was impossible to construct an oval smooth enough to fit the kid's head well without hurting her--a little too crown of thorns-y in practice, alas.

My next idea was to construct the band out of folded newspaper, which would enable me to sew the royal purple fabric (leftover from the same cotton blouse that furnished the butterfly wings) onto it. I thought this because I've sewn on paper often, but I've never sewn on paper that I then wanted to wear--the holes for stitching made the paper just too weak for this purpose, and it fell apart.

Finally, I took an extra trip to the big-box craft store to buy yet more hot glue (I really need to start buying this by the case), and I used SO much glue to cover the newspaper band with the purple fabric. I had my partner cut the wire hangers into 16" lengths (the kid likes her crowns tall) and fold them in half, then I hot glued red sequined fabric to the front and purple cotton fabric to the back of each crown point, then I hot glued each crown point inside the fold of the newspaper hatband, THEN I bent the hatband into a circle and hot glued it closed.

Hallelujah, it worked! And although the red sequined fabric isn't repeated anywhere else on the outfit, it's what the young master designer wanted, and thus...the Butterfly Fairy Princess Dress, complete:

For footwear, the kid drew me a picture of what appeared to be 14" red high heels, and I said, "Nuh-uh. Find something from your closet." So cowboy boots it is, although I have plenty of that red sequined blouse left, and I may make a rosebud or two to adorn them:

 From a homeschool perspective, this project has been so beneficial to the little kid, in so many ways:

  
 

From a parent's perspective, however...it's been troubling.

When I originally submitted the kid's outfit to the Trashion/Refashion Show committee, it was rejected. The representative of  the committee who emailed me wrote in explanation, "[W]e find it a bit too sexy to a young child."

Poor grammar aside, I OBVIOUSLY found this criticism to be completely inappropriate and highly offensive. First of all, the kid's dress ISN'T sexy. It's a fantasy costume, sure, but it's a four-year-old's fantasy, as designed by herself, with, fine, a little bit of Barbie's influence, but with a hell of a lot more influence from her own vivid imagination. I mean, the child has never even seen a Disney princess movie.

To say that my child would design a sexy outfit for herself is to say that I've exposed her to so much sexy imagery that she's internalized it as the ideal, which isn't the case. To say that I would sew a sexy outfit for my child is to say that I'm just a bad parent, frankly, which I'm not.

But to actually apply the word "sexy" to a child's outfit at all...well, I'm astounded that a group of adults would dare to make such a conflation, would say it out loud to each other, and then would tell someone else about it. We just don't apply that word to young children in our culture. Even on Toddlers and Tiaras, in which show children are basically prancing around in tassels and hotpants, the go-to word is "sassy." One child dresses as a "sassy policewoman." Another child is a "sassy cheerleader." Etc.

If you think that I've sewed my four-year-old a whore outfit then fine, that's what you think. But if you're a judge and it's your job to tell me why you're rejecting my outfit, then that's certainly not what you say, because if you do, then I'm going to think that you're a bad, nasty, damaged sort of person who looks at a four-year-old playing dress-up and thinks about sex, and I'm going to keep my kid away from you. How about, instead, you tell me that the outfit is a "little too sophisticated?" "Not as child-like as we're looking for?" Whatever, just as long as you're not telling me that you're thinking my kid and sexy at the same time.

You might wonder why I'm still at all interested in this show after that. I wonder a little, too. However, the truth is that this outfit design project and even the runway show is an experience that I want the kid to have, as interested as she is in clothes and fashion and art and design. We're having fun working together on it, and it's educational, and that's that. So when the committee invited me to "rework this design and make it more child appropriate," I went ahead with the kid and we didn't rework it, but instead added in the wings and crown, elements that I described for the committee in the original submission, but didn't show them as they weren't yet complete.

However, in my re-submission, I did write the following: "Although I appreciate constructive criticism, you should know that as a parent, I found the term "sexy" as applied to my young child to be completely inappropriate and highly offensive." There was a lot more that I felt like saying, but might as well be concise if you're not blogging, right?

The kid's outfit was accepted after its resubmission. In that email accepting it for the fashion show, the spokeswoman wrote, "The committee is very pleased with the revised submission." Since the submission wasn't exactly revised, a fact that I did make clear, I'm wondering if the committee is now beginning to pretend some things about our exchange, especially as not one word was said about my complaint. No apology, nothing. Interesting, yes?

So all's well that ends well, right? The kid is THRILLED, and I haven't even told her that hair and make-up services are being donated to all the runway models the day of the fashion show--frankly, I'm not sure if that would even rev her engine more, because I don't think that the kid has ever actually seen any make-up before, and the only time that she's ever been inside a hair salon is the day that her sister chopped off half her locks for her. There will be several rehearsals nearer the show, and although I've made it clear to the kid that she'll be doing the runway walk independently, and she's totally on board, she is a preschooler, and thus...we'll see.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!