Well it’s coming along… I really need to buy some teensier tiny paintbrushes to get better details, and obviously I am no artist. I am having a very hard time doing cute faces for the little ghost people so if anyone has any advice, it is welcome!
Spoooky haunted house!
Edited: September 30th, 2009
A spooky mess!
Right now it’s kind of a mess, but what it’s going to be … hopefully, eventually, hopefully soon! Is a ghostly, spooooOOoOOooky haunted house playset for Bella… complete with a family of little white ghosts!
She is very excited about this project and was determined to help paint. She helped paint the actual house for 5 seconds flat before she was covered head to toe in black paint. She painted the little wooden ghosts with gobs and gobs of white paint (for that 3D effect!) and when I told her how well she was doing, she kindly said to me: “I can teach you Mommy!”
More pictures to come when the spookiness has progressed a bit…
Edited: September 25th, 2009
So yesterday I was feeling like *making stuff*, and I made Bella a little shopping bag for her kitchen/cash register experience. Mostly I wanted to practice putting felt pieces together in anticipation of the felt block I’m working on. I used colors of felt I happened to have handy, and blanket stitched it (not well, but I did blanket stitch!) up.
Then, last night after Bella went to sleep, I was inspired to try my hand at painting little wooden dolls. I was inspired by lovely little dolls like these, or this one.
You can see here, the first one I did is on the left with the oddly blobby eyes. I never claimed to be good at this!
But I must say I didn’t expect all of this to be rejected out of hand by their recipient. She said she just “doesn’t like” the little green shopping bag, and the dolls are “bad and angry.”
Back to the drawing board!
Edited: June 15th, 2009
My first time jumping in to WIP Wednesday, so be gentle… I’m all new and vulnerable and stuff. This is the Lion brand baby hoodie towel, supposedly anyways. I’m not sure I’ll ever have the patience to finish it, since it is pretty borrrrring to knit. I do a row here or there where my daughter will let me.
Can one of you knitting gurus out there tell me how I’m supposed to knit past the limits of my needle size? Do I need to switch to circulars? Because circulars make my head go BOOM!
Edited: June 10th, 2009
Well, not suddenly. I have a bunch of projects I’m currently working on actually! My big project right now is a felt block for my new little niece, and it is almost ready to be photographed. But last night Bella sat me down and wanted to play “store,” and “buy” all her play food. So after I finally got her to sleep I got online and started looking for ideas for making a little cash register.
I know there are some nice ones you can buy; Haba and Selecta both have wooden cash registers. But they are pretty pricey, and I just don’t want to obtain another plastic toy. So I decided I’d make one, at least for now.
This was my inspiration. I saw that and just thought, ok, I can do way better than that! So I did. I used a postal priority mail box I had hanging around, and covered it in felt, and then made buttons, burned myself with hot glue six or seven times, cut my middle finger with extra sharp scissors twice, and then… well, here it is.
I’m feeling a combination of humility and proud. I was quite proud of myself and then Bella got up this morning, saw it, and said “What’s this box Mommy?” Hmph, I say! It still needs numbers, which will make it look much more cash register-y IMO. I decided to go with picture buttons for now, and I made those by printing out pictures of food and then hot gluing the pictures to felt squares. (I was going to be all reuse-y and green and use old magazine pictures, but of course I couldn’t find any of the foods we actually have play food of!)
So there it is. It needs numbers for the digital display, and I think I will collect some of my receipts and try to make some kind of receipt dispenser. But I’m pretty excited about it. Hopefully Bella will figure out that it’s not just a box at some point. 
Edited: May 19th, 2009
Making play food for their kids, that is. Well I’m experimenting with felt in lots of ways; I made a felt play board for my daughter, and these are my most recent creations.
As you can see, I haven’t sewn since junior high school and have no idea what I’m doing, so be kind with me. That’s a little baby doll and a cookie, in case you were confused, which I would completely understand.
Here’s the beginnings of my little custom felt board:
I got inspiration from a felt house I saw on etsy selling for about $30, and thought; I can do that! Turns out, I was right. I glued the dark blue felt to a piece of cardboard to create the actual board, although I love this idea too for putting felt on canvas. I haven’t yet found felt by the yard, I’ve been buying felt from the local walmart or Michael’s.
That brings me to another issue regarding felt; the types of felt. I’ve been using eco-felt which is felt made from recycled bottles. It seems to work well, is cheap, and widely available. I’ve seen some discussion that using wool felt is better in many ways; but I keep getting stuck on how pricey it is. I think for now I’ll stick with my cheaper stuff; I can just see myself sobbing into oblivion if my daughter ruined something I made for her from expensive all wool felt.
BTW if you are unaware, handmade toys are in danger of some nasty legislation. This ridiculous legislation would make it impossible for work-at-home-moms and small companies to make toys, as each toy would need to be tested for lead and other toxins. I am glad on the one hand that our government is paying attention to our concerns about toys; however, handmade toys were never the problem! It was always mass-produced toys causing the problem. I’ll be devastated if that goes through!
Sorry for the disjointed post, I keep listening to my daughter and husband playing together in the background…
Edited: January 17th, 2009