I Made Some Flannel Apples and Came To Terms with Dr. Seuss

Remember how I'm obsessed with making baby gifts for my baby niece?

I figured out how to combine that obsession with my OTHER favorite hobby, reading! I've been having a lot of fun figuring out gifts I can make her that pair with my favorite children's books, and figuring out what awesome children's book I can pair with the baby gifts that I want to make.

When I was an early reader, I super loved my super worn copy of Ten Apples Up on Top:

I think my grandparents must have joined a Dr. Seuss Book Club at some point, perhaps for their own kids, because I remember almost all of the publications from the first thirty years of Random House Beginner Books. Like, I PORED over those books, read them over and over and over constantly--I think those, a set of Disney's Wonderful World of Knowledge, and my aunt's old comic book collection were the extent of my personal library for a time, and I loved them.

Dr. Seuss is definitely not unproblematic, sigh, and I highly recommend the book Was the Cat in the Hat Black?, but fortunately Ten Apples Up on Top IS unproblematic, I think. It's just apples and counting!

I don't know why I was so charmed by that book in particular (my other favorites were Go, Dog. Go! and Little Black, A Pony), other than it's funny to watch animals stacking stuff that you know doesn't actually stack easily, I guess? But charmed by it I was, and then forty years later I found myself wanting to give a copy of that book to my baby niece along with a set of semi-stackable apples of her own.

I knew I wanted the apples to be sewn from flannel, but it took ages to get the shape right. This one is orange-shaped, don't you think? 

I made a few more orange-shaped ones, then surprised myself with a pear-shaped one, then thumped myself on the head when I realized that if you turned the pear shape upside-down, it looked exactly like an apple!

Let's make a bunch more, then! 

I also figured out that I could hide the blanket-stitching I used to close the apple--

--by using a long sewing needle and some embroidery floss to pull the top and bottom of each apple together, and that also made those top and bottom divots that real apples have!

They're still not very stackable... but, you know, neither are real apples.

The apples that aren't in my niece's hands are now in my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop. You can buy multiples--

--or just one, and you get to choose your favorite color between red--

--yellow--

--and green:

The leaf and stem are embroidered felt, stitched VERY firmly into the apple:

They're soft and comfy, squeezy but with a bit of heft, and even if you can't get all ten up on top--

--you'll hopefully have fun trying!

I did feel weird, to be honest, about giving my niece a book written by an author who's also made some  racist depictions. I was exposed to a lot of casual racism in my youth--never directed at me, because I'm white, and rarely directed at any Person of Color around me, even. It was just... there. I know a lot of racist childhood comebacks, and I know a lot of racist colloquial terms for all kinds of things you wouldn't think would have racist connotations. I played an "Indian" in my elementary school's Thanksgiving play. I read Little Black Sambo, and And To Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street, and Tikki Tikki Tembo. That crap absolutely harmed me, and messed up my worldview for a long time. It's still something that I feel like I have to be careful about, just because it's so embedded in my childhood that I'm never confident that some random thing that I remember doing or saying or knowing as a kid is actually an ethical, appropriate thing. 

But I still want to share the safe parts of my childhood with the kids I love, and I think this book is one of the okay ones? 

How to Embellish a Composition Book with a Coloring Page

 This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World in 2016.

Are you into coloring books? My kids and I are! We listen to a lot of audiobooks, podcasts, and read-alouds, and coloring is a great way to pass the time. 

 This means, however, that we have LOTS of lovely completed coloring book pages. I don't really have a problem with re-using and recycling paper, but often the pages are so thoughtfully and lovingly filled in that they just seem too pretty to toss. 

 At the same, the kids also have LOTS of composition books that they use for lots of different subjects. Composition books all tend to look mostly the same, mostly so that kids can mix them up and fight over them, I think. 

 Why not solve both problems at once, then? 

Here's how to embellish a composition book with a coloring book page, giving that pretty work of art a place to be shown off, and personalizing that composition book  so that everyone knows who it belongs to and what it's for. It's a little time-consuming, but it's not hard, and it's going to look really awesome when you're done.

   1. Do you need to prime your composition book? Even though composition book covers are glossy, they do pretty well with paint. Nevertheless, I usually cover everything that I paint with a no-sand primer. I lay my composition books open flat on my work surface, with the covers both facing up, when I paint them; I don't mind a little if a little bit of paint gets onto the edges of the top couple of notebook pages below, but if you do, spread out newspaper between the composition book covers and the notebook pages. 

  2. Paint the composition book covers. I've used both interior/exterior house paint and water-based spray paint for these book covers. I usually save our craft acrylics for smaller projects, although you can certainly use them here. 

 Even though the coloring book pages will be covering the center front cover of each composition book, I generally paint the entire cover, just so I don't have to worry about my placement later. Do whatever feels right to you. 

 Let all the paint dry well before you start the next step. 

  3. Trim and prepare your coloring book page. We have a family policy that we photocopy coloring book pages and color the copy, and we usually do this on cardstock, because everyone likes the color saturation of Prismacolor or Sharpie markers the best. This means that I don't have to worry about the translucency of a coloring book page, or the possibility of it being printed on cheap paper that won't take glue well. 

If you're worried about the quality of your own paper, feel free to back it with a nice cardstock or high-quality typing paper. You could even use scrapbook paper and make a nice border around the page for some extra embellishment. 

 Don't forget, of course, that you don't HAVE to use a coloring book page to embellish a composition book. If you want to embellish a composition book with wrapping paper, cut-outs from a magazine, comic book or dictionary pages, or anything else that you're dreaming of, that will work, too! 

  4. Adhere the coloring page to the composition book cover. I like to center mine, and I'm happy with my results using either spray adhesive (not eco-friendly) or Mod Podge (eco-friendly!). 

  5. Seal the composition book cover. Several more coats of Mod Podge, or a couple of coats of a spray sealant (not eco-friendly) or one coat of polyurethane (not great, but better than spray sealant) will seal and protect the cover of your lovely embellished composition book. 

 In my opinion, you don't need a reason to embellish a composition book, because the result is super cute, but here's one: these embellished composition books make great journals and sketchbooks, especially if you've colored the coloring page yourself. They also make cute presents, either for a parent using their kid's art, or for a loved one using something that you know they'll like. 

I mean, doesn't everyone need another notebook with a hand-colored dragon on the front?

Pumpkin+Bear Shop Update: So Many Candles!

The kids and I have apparently been making candles for a decade, which...

Time has been flying in a horrifying way, lately.

Candlemaking is not only something that I can do quite well now (not surprising, since I've apparently got a decade of experience at it!), but something that I've been finding very meditative and comforting lately. I took advantage of my mental renaissance to finally photograph and list in my Pumpkin+Bear shop the many different styles and sizes of candles that I've been making for the past ten years but just never got around to actually selling for money.

Ahh, it feels so good to stop procrastinating!

I now offer just about every size and style of beeswax candle that a person could possibly long for.

Here's a traditional pillar candle, eight inches tall and 1.25" in diameter:

And here's a tapered version in that same size. It's the same 1.25" at the base, but tapers to just .25" at the tip:

And here's my absolute favorite style of that taper candle--it's STRIPEY!!!

I also now sell a miniature version of that stripey taper. It's still 1.25" at the base, but it's only four inches tall:

I also make striped pillars! These have a regular pillar candle at the core, and I cover them with strips of different colors of beeswax.

I also finally offer a third size of my rainbow taper candles. This one, too, is only 4" tall:

And because I already have the holidays on my mind, I made a 4" Christmas tree taper!

I still offer all my old favorites, the Waldorf ring candles and the birthday candles:

But the whole family is just a LOT bigger now!

Shh, don't tell, but that family portrait, above, does show a favorite candle of mine that I still don't sell!

How to Make Reusable Chalkboard Gift Tags

This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World in 2016.

Make reusable, DIY chalkboard gift tags for all of your holiday gift wrapping adventures!  

Okay, I DID find just one more cardboard record album cover craft to make with my scraps--reusable DIY chalkboard gift tags! These reusable DIY chalkboard gift tags came together in just minutes, from the scraps leftover from making my latest batch of album cover bookmarks. I'll be pretty excited to have them already in hand when the gift-giving season really starts rolling, and since they have a chalkboard side, we can use them over and over again.  

You will need: 

  cardboard. The base of these gift tags is an interesting piece of cardboard, upcycled from anything that you like. Record album covers are great, of course, but so is the cardboard packaging from your favorite foods, or perhaps even old calendar pages. 

  chalkboard tape. The reason why this project is so quick and easy is that a few months ago, I found a roll of chalkboard tape on sale, and I bought it even though I didn't have a project in mind for it (my husband haaaaaates when I do this, by the way, but look at that tape now, Matt. LOOK AT THAT TAPE NOW!!!). 

You could experiment with chalkboard paint instead, but my intuition says that it will warp your cardboard if you're not super careful. 

  chalk markers. Chalk markers will enable you to write messages on the gift tags that won't rub off. When you're finished, wipe it off with a damp cloth and it's ready to go again! 

  scissors or gift tag hole punch. I have a gift tag punch that I use for lighter materials, but it won't cut through record album cardboard. Anyway, it's cuter to freehand around fun images.  

To make these tags, simply cut out a rough outline of your graphic on your cardboard, then back it with the chalkboard tape. 

Having done that, you can cut out the exact outline that you want, cutting through both cardboard and tape at the same time for perfectly clean edges. 

 Punch a smaller hole for hanging at the top of your gift tag, then write your chalk message on the back.

   My only worry, now, is that the older of my two kids will wash off all of her sister's tags and write her own name in, instead. Fortunately, she's also my kid with messy handwriting, so I *should* be able to tell...

Nutcracker Masks

 

I have decided that the holiday between Halloween and Christmas is, in our family, The Nutcracker. 

I mean, it's got all the holiday trademarks. It's time-consuming! It's expensive! Out-of-town family comes to visit! There are decorations! Children are delighted! There is MUSIC!!!

Last year, the absence of The Nutcracker put a pall over the entire season for me. This year Nutcracker is back, and I am determined to treasure every second of it.

Syd is reprising her role as a little lad in the party scenes of the ballet, and I wanted something extra festive to send her off to rehearsals in. I found this awesome Nutcracker print at Spoonflower, reworked Syd's favorite mask design to have a single front piece, and fussy cut the Nutcracker Prince battling the Mouse King to fit:

I LOVE it! It's the perfect size for this mask.

These cord locks and nose strips have been working great, although the cord locks definitely have the potential to wander away. The nose strips have a sticky back, which helps them stay in place while I sew them.

I made Syd two identical masks so that she can trade them out when she gets sweaty. The costumers will have custom masks for the children to perform in, and I'm excited to see if they'll be cute, but they're definitely not going to be as cute as this:

The boring black mask is MY Nutcracker mask, because I have to dress like a bandit when I volunteer backstage, and the costumers certainly won't be making ME anything cute!

P.S. I'm working on a Nutcracker Pinboard, because obviously it's not a real holiday if it doesn't have a Pinboard, so hit me up with any ideas you find!

October Favorites: 31 Days of Horror

 We had the spookiest October ever! All my favorite things about my second-favorite holiday were back this year: kids DIYing Halloween costumes--

--our Monstrous Family Movie Night, with our traditional monstrous menu accompanying Nightmare Before Christmas--

--and even trick-or-treating with friends--

--resulting in the traditional non-problem of Too Much Candy:

I decided that I was only consuming horror-based media this October, which I low-key thought would be a mistake for my mental health, tbh, but in actually, it. Was. AWESOME!!! Horror is already one of my absolute favorite genres, so it was very fun to take a deep dive into it for a full month.

I'd really wanted to listen to The Haunting of Hill House with the kids, but I'm always five minutes behind the pack and so library copies were unobtainable. I realized during my catalogue search that I'd never read this Shirley Jackson classic--

--and so I remedied that for myself, instead. It's very Grey Gardens Gothic, isn't it? 

This book was a good take on the zombie subgenre:

It's heavily informed by our better understanding of the actual clusterfuck chaos that a pandemic will cause, and takes place in a world in which you can't actually, in perfect conscience, hack away willy-nilly at your zombie attackers... on account of they aren't actually dead.

I've been looking forward to reading the sequel to Scary Stories for Young Foxes, and it just happened to come in from my library holds queue in time for Scary Stories Month!

I was VERY late to the game figuring out what the recurring pandemic is supposed to be, and now I like the books even better for the way that the author combines the supernatural with the real, and gives the foxes the same type of mythmaking tradition that people have.

Kill Creek, about four horror novelists in a haunted house, didn't move me, but I SUPER loved this book:

This Amazon review does a much better job than I could in encapsulating my absolute delight with it:

Seriously, the concept of taking a "non-scary" imaginary creature and making it SUPER scary?

Delightful!

I thought the author's name sounded familiar, and when I looked her up I saw that she also wrote another of my favorites, Parasite, and its sequels... and she's written a ton more, all of which are now in my library holds queue. 

It's been kind of hard to stop only consuming horror media now that it's November, actually. Last night, for completely non-Halloween reasons, I was searching Spotify for Vampire Weekend when I came across a user-created vampire-themed playlist.

I HAD to check it out, right?!?

Twenty minutes in, though, as I was happily vibing along to it and reading the HONY book that had been waiting for me on my library shelves all month, Syd suddenly looked up and was all, "You're listening to another Halloween playlist, aren't you? It's NOVEMBER!!!"

She then reminded me that it was 365 days until Halloween, the brat.

Tutorial: DIY Magnetic Mosaic Kit

This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World in 2016.

Do you ever have one of those moments when you look at something store-bought and think, "Hey, I could make that!" 

 That's what I thought one day when I took a good look at the magnetic mosaic kit that my kid was playing with in the car. Of course, not only did I decide that I could make that, but I also decided that I could make my own DIY magnetic mosaic set WAY larger, AND put it on the giant magnetic memo board that my husband and I put in our kitchen. That way, everyone can play!  

This is a very easy project, although it's a little time-consuming. The finished result, though, is totally gorgeous and super-fun. Here's how to make it!

DIY Magnetic Mosaic Kit

You will need: 

  small wooden cubes. I buy mine from Casey's Wood Products in Maine. 

  liquid watercolors and zip-top plastic baggies.

magnetic tape. Normally, I go for the strongest magnets possible in the size that I want, but these mosaic magnets are just for fun, not for sticking art to the wall. For the easiest project, choose tape in the same width as your wooden cubes.  

1. Stain the small wooden cubes. I've written a few tutorials for this process, so click here to see exactly how to stain wood with liquid watercolors. 

Unfortunately, my method does require the use of a plastic zip-top baggie (although I'm almost certain that you could also do this in a small glass jar), but the good news is that you can re-use that baggie indefinitely. I seal them and keep them with our liquid watercolors, and use them over and over again with the same color.  

This liquid watercolor stain is mostly water-resistant, but not completely. It's not intended for use by children who still mouth objects (and to be fair, neither are the small wooden cubes!), but if you deeply need the objects to stand up to the occasional immersion in water, then you can either soak them in vinegar to release the excess dye or you can seal them with your favorite clear sealant. 

 Let the cubes dry completely before you begin the next step. 

  2. Add the magnets. Cut the magnetic tape to size (you can usually do this by scoring the magnetic tape in the correct intervals as you measure it with a ruler on top of a gridded cutting mat, then breaking the tape at the scores) and remove the backing. 

 Although the magnetic tape will usually come with a sticky backing, that stuff is a joke. Instead, place a dab of hot glue on the back of each cube and glue that magnetic tape down yourself!  

3. Enjoy! We like this magnetic mosaic kit best on our large magnetic wall board, where anyone who happens by can play with them and change the pattern, but if you've got a metal cookie sheet, then you can play with these anywhere, and if you've got a metal tin, then you can even come full circle and play with them in the car.