The fairy garden

For some weeks we had planned that when mom arrived this time the three of us would make a fairy garden for Ella. 

And that's what we did on Wednesday afternoon.

Welcome to our fairy garden. We love that the sculptures of the characters were made by mom. 

Yes, I went crazy with the pictures because I liked different angles.

This was a fun activity to do together, we wont forget the experience and we loved the result. 

Little sculptures

Once again I have my lovely mom here visiting. We love it when she's here as much as we love her creativity. She molded and painted these four cute fantastic sculptures for Ella and me.

Mom made for me the garden gnome, because I love the chubbiness and the big nose of these little characters. For Ella she made a boy, a girl and a garden fairy.

We have great plans for our little sculptures which I'll be posting pretty soon. In the mean time look at these pretty little creatures.

The boy and the girl. (Mom made the girl's skirt look like a flower and the boy is holding a white rabbit).

My garden gnome. I love it.

Deconstructing an apron

OK, so remember that fabric I bought a long ago with which I made Ella's headband and skirt. Well there's still plenty of it, so with Ella's help I made her an apron, for those baking days and painting projects.

The pockets are made with an old pair of jeans Ramon can not wear anymore and on one of the pockets I sewed a colorful cupcake that once was part of a shirt.

Ramon's jeans.

The new favorite Christmas ornament

This year I thought it would be a good idea to make another original Christmas ornament for the tree but this time with an image of Ella. I thought about doing something with photography but then I decided to make her silhouette.

I took a picture of Ella and used Photoshop to vectorize it and turn it into a silhouette.

I printed the silhouette on the computer and cut out the shape to make the stencil, then using the screen printing technique I transferred the image applying red paint on a sheet of white felt.

I cut out circles of the white felt with the red silhouette for the front and green empty circles to sew on the back.

And finally I sewed the two parts together with a red thick string to hang it on the tree. 

I only made four but I wished I'd made more. The good thing about screen printing is that with one stencil you can make many more things of one design. I kept the stencil to make some more of these ornaments for the tree.

A school's fall project

Now for fall, there's a pumpkin decorating contest at Ella's school. The contest consists in decorating pumpkins as storybook characters. Ella and I thought we could participate in this one. We just needed to buy the pumpkin and the rest of the materials were already at home.

Painting the pumpkin.

As always, I look for a low budget project with a nice looking result. Here is our pumpkin.

Our storybook character is Junie B. Jones.

Ella had been reading books about this funny character lately and we thought it was a good idea to make her our pumpkin. 

Ella and her Junie B. Jones pumpkin.

Great week

Last week was great. It was Ella's 6th birthday, my mom and my sister came to visit us, I made a photo session for CathyCat products with my beautiful sister and I started making some new products for CathyCat designs, lets see how that goes. 

While my sister was here I took the opportunity to take ourselves a "Now and then" picture. I remember seeing this idea in a picture book at the bookstore and I always wanted to do it. 

I loved this idea and now I want to do  it with other pictures we have. 

Here's a picture of Ella on her birthday.

She loved the crown I made for her.

Trying the crayon heart project

Ella and I made a crayon project that is all around the Internet, I found full instructions here in this blog. They made this project for Valentines day but we made it because we wanted to do something with all those hard to hold old broken crayons.  

We loved the result of an easy and fun project. You can color with the hearts and they are easy to hold and many different colors will come out of just one heart.

Mouse pad makeover

I sometimes wonder why black is the predominant color in technological gadgets and accessories. There should always be a variety of colors to choose from for these things. Nonetheless most people don't mind this. Ramon was using this black mouse pad for his new computer (which is black too) and one day while staring at it my idea light bulb turned on.  

I took that fabric I used for making the inspiration board and cut a square, then glued it with Mod Podge. That's it. Too bad I can't paint the computer. 

Don't forget to leave margin to glue the edges too!

Mini plant pots

I love small things; small houses, small cars, so you can imagine my reaction when I found these planters at the craft store. I had seen them before online but never live. 

I filled them up with dirt and took some cuttings from two of my succulents which I later stuck in the dirt. 

Let's just hope they grow! 

DIY Shadow Puppets

A few days ago we were at the book store and we saw some shadow puppets for sale. There were different characters made of black paper and mounted on a wooden stick. Honestly the first thing that came to my mind was to buy it for Ella's nighttime story, but then I thought it twice and said, hey! I can do these at home for no cost! 

Fortunately I had some reeds from an old oil diffuser. Perfect for the shadow puppet's stick. They even still have some scent left. 

I chose a dark color from my stock card papers to make the silhouette and then started drawing the characters. 

Then I cut out the different characters and put a tape square on the back with the stick. 

Against the light they're just like the shadow puppets from the store and Zerooo dollars spent!!! Yooho!

Dr. Ella

Grandma Amelia gave Ella a play doctors kit. This is something that she really loves and plays with all the time. The only thing she was missing is the doctor's coat. So we made one with one of Ramon's old shirts.

I found a red ribbon that supposedly had no use. 

Dad's old shirt + old red ribbon= DIY Dr.'s gown.  

A Christmas present

I wanted to make something personalized for Ella to give to her on Christmas morning. So, I made this pillow with a drawing of herself on it. The size didn't turn out how I expected, I'm so bad measuring. I guess it's now a pillow for dolls.   

And here is Ella on Christmas morning.

Ella's 5 years old pictures

Yesterday I took some of Ella's latest drawings to put them up on her wall. Her gallery of drawings and paintings was a little outdated.

Ella's 3 years old paintings.

I arranged them...

And this is how it looks now, with some of her current drawings.

Now her gallery is updated.

Bye bye!!!

A picture frame pin cushion

Having the sewing machine now I needed to equip myself with materials and sewing tools. I thought that maybe I would be needing a pin cushion but I never really liked the tomato ones. So I took this one dollar picture frame I bought a long time ago and never used, until now. 

Then I put some fabric in the frame, just like putting a picture but leaving some extra fabric in the back so the frame could press it. 

Next I stuffed it with polyester fibers that I found in the garage and I was done.  

Here it is. And the best of it is that is very sturdy and works very well.

A present from mom

As you know I finally got a sewing machine, a gift from mom. I thought which other best way to thank her than making her something. I made her this headband that probably looks good in the picture but it actually needs improvement on the back. Anyways, it feels good to learn in the process of making things. Next time I'll make it better recognizing what my mistakes were. 

Mom wearing her headband.