Thainie Shopping: Bajou

Image from http://www.bajoustudio.com/

I am so delighted to introduce this new line of children's clothing that a friend recently launched.  Please check out Bajou, gorgeous handcrafted designer kidswear by the beautiful and talented Alena Henriksen --- no this is not a paid ad but I'm also overjoyed since I had the pleasure of designing her logo.  So if you're looking for gifts for Christmas, Hanukkah or just something pretty, how about checking Bajou out?!

 

Thainie Tips: Christmas Decorating

Just last week while decorating our home for Christmas I redid our curtains by sewing the tabs down so the rod would not be visible, I got the idea from Pinterest---as usual.  Also, we recently made some changes to our home and so the place where we use to hang our Christmas stockings was no longer available.  And so I thought, why not use the vast amount of hanging space over at the curtain area???  Razzle dazzle, it turned out beautiful, if I might say....  I used a few S hooks for the garlands and decorated some S hooks with a bow so the stockings could be hung on them.  Who says you need a chimney!!!! 

I love Christmas!!!!  

Thainie Crafts: Advent Tree

Christmas, my favorite time of year!  And it's even more special when celebrating with your children.  For the past years, we had used a cloth hanging advent calendar with small pockets for treats but with 3 kids now, the small pockets cannot hold a fair amount of treats for each of them.   And so began the search for advent calendar ideas which eventually lead me to spotting this cute little tree at our local Big C.  Using my wonderful Silhouette machine, I made cut out ornaments with the days leading to a big Santa cut out so that I could tape them to tissue wrapped treats.  And the countdown to Christmas begins!

Here's the breakdown for this fun advent tree (forgot to include a 100+ baht star topper from Central Chidlom --- which happens to be the best place for gorgeous Christmas decorations!) : 

Thainie Crafts: Ornaments

With the holidays coming up, get ready for some festive posts!  Especially to make up for the lack of postings :-) Here is an article I did for a magazine recently on how to make your own ornaments with your child's handprint.  I found the recipe for the dough from Pinterest (love this website) and changed a few things, like  painting the ornament with acrylic and modpodging it when done.  

I actually like this dough recipe more than modeling clay or plaster since it's easy to make and holds up pretty good.  Just an important note to use really, really, really low heat when you are baking it in the oven since you do not want to make pita bread!  Yes this happened to me, one had ballooned up like a pita bread when the oven was too hot.  I would even adjust the heat to be less than 200 degrees.

This can also be baked in a toaster oven on very very very low heat too (always watch it closely).  The rule is steady low heat and longer duration.  Once it comes out, air dry it for a day and then paint.  I was saddened that after painting the ornament it had softened but after air drying a few days, surprisingly it's now hard as a rock!  So if you don't want to bake it in the oven, it will harden with air drying over a few days in a dry place.  

Overall it was a fun craft to do with the kids and it looks beautiful on the Christmas tree.  Happy crafting!

Happy Halloween!!!

Sorry for being such a slacker, it's been a loooooong time since my last post but hope to make it up with this post filled with adorable cuteness!!!  I love holidays, especially the ones that involve costumes!  When my daughter was born about 3 years ago I took on sewing so that I can make "itty, bitty, cute" outfits for her.  I loved the "idea" of being able to create her costumes, even though I had no clue how to go about doing it.  And so the parade of Halloween costumes began.  

4 months old "Cute lil Pirate" :: this was inspired from a stripe onesie she already had and so I took an old tank top I had and repurposed  it into a little pirate skirt for her and then took the bits and pieces to make a tiny little vest to go with the outfit.  Finished it with a red sash, grocery bought hat and patented flats.  

1 year old "Sweet Strawberry" :: Still a novice sewist, I tried to do a more daring costume that would involve actual buying and cutting of materials.  This strawberry costume was a wonderful beginner's costume since it was an easy pattern to sew.  

2 years old & one more baby boy "The Tortoise & the Hare" ::  And the plot thickens, now with two babies, I had to come up with duo themed costumes!!!  It's so much fun, too bad Halloween is only one time a year.

I would love to share patterns but honestly I had absolutely no idea what I was doing and pretty much improvised from beginning to end.  I truly believe it was the hand of God that guided me!  If you would like help or the pattern, please drop me an email and I will try to help you the best I can.  Happy Halloween!!!!  

All the birds of a feather...

Did I mention my kids are crazy about the movie Rio?  It's playing almost once a day in our home and they love dancing to the songs, the soundtrack is really good.  It made me think of a project that I wanted to do and thought it was the perfect opportunity to tie it in with the movie.  

 Eri of Llevo el invierno has a diy tutorial/pattern avail­able on her site that is ahmazing!!!   I adapted her tute and tweaked it a bit.  Here's what I did:

1) I cut the 2 side wings from the same pattern and I reinforced with fusible lining (sticky side up) so that it would be easier to hold the feathers when sewing (I'm thinking that it would have been more airy if I did without it but too late...you can leave this out if you want)

2) I precut all my feather pieces, you don't have to stick with the rounded feathers, I think it would have looked just as nice with more of a pointier look.  

3) Lay your feather strips in the order you would like and iron if you did the fusible lining OR pin and sew later OR you can just use fabric glue.

4)  Since I did the fusible lining, I just kept ironing my feather strips on.

5) It's a quick project actually and there you have your wings.

6) Sew your layers of feather strips.  Again, this is optional but I wanted to reinforce mine so that my kids don't have them torn off from wearing them.

7) The inside of the wings will look like this.

And there you go, fun wings for your fun kids!!!!  Here's a pic of my daughter modeling hers.

Kids Room Makeover (or makeunder?)

 I have been itching to paint my children's room since I always feel that the colors were making my kids crazier than usual.  I loved the jungle/under the sea theme and don't get me wrong, I love primary colors but I think for the bedroom it just didn't mesh well.  So I wanted to create a more calmer environment for them and thought light blue skies and grassy fields.  The tree as you can see in the pic was an unplanned addition but there were some bad spots where I had ripped some of the previous coat of paint off and was too lazy to spackle it smooth before painting.  It's amazing how different the room feels now and I think my kids are more calmer too (or it might just be the paint fumes)!  

*** If you would like to makeover any rooms in your home, I suggest using wall paints that are VOC free, matte finish and ask for the type that is easy to clean (just in case your kids go crazy with their crayons).  For this project I used TOA SuperShield paints.  For any wall murals/artwork, I just used crafter's acrylic paints.

*** If you would like to have your children participate in painting their room, I drew the outline of shapes and had my daughter color them in, she did a fantastic job and really enjoyed being part of decorating her room.

 

Must Share: How to take the hood off your Maclaren Stroller

I'm a serious germophobe, I have a need to clean and sanitize everything ... and I mean EVERYTHING ... especially all my children's stuff!  So for the longest time I could not figure how to get the hood off the stroller to clean, I looked in the manual and searched on the internet and could not find anything about it.  And so I reluctantly spot cleaned it often but it still bothered me until finally one day as if a prayer had been answered, I looked at the hood closely and saw that it was a sort of latch thingy.  I then tried fiddling with it and finally figured that you CAN take it off, EUREKA!!!  As for the Triumph, it's an easy slide lock.

Thainie DIY: Wall Reminder

Okay, I'm not a morning person, my mind totally does not function so early and just getting out the door is horrendous.  I'm always forgetting something (thank goodness my younger daughter is still too young to notice that her mom is a total ditz), if not her water bottle, it's an outfit for that day of the week or the show & tell item, sometimes even my daughter!  And so I thought of this wall reminder project, also I just got my Silhouette about a couple weeks ago (thank you T&L Mommy!!!) and have been itching to do projects with vinyl stickers.  If you don't have the Silhouette, you can easily just create paper labels to post on the wall or if you're more venturous you can paint directly on your wall.   

I probably could have been more creative with my fonts but I didn't want to push my luck since it was my first time cutting vinyl.  I'm actually happy it worked out perfectly and it serves its purpose.  I have a hook (you can get those 3M plastic hooks but make sure they can take the weight of whatever you want to hang on it) for each day of the week and so I can just hang the corresponding bag that I have labeled using freezer paper stenciling, presto neato -- easy wall reminder!  Also if you don't have a bag and just want to put up a reminder, you can just stick a post it under the day.  Happy crafting!!!!

Thainie Treats: Easter Egg Cakes

One more Easter tutorial for a quick and easy treat for the kids to decorate and get hyper from!  This came about only because I'm honestly scared of boiling eggs.  I just cannot ever get it right, so I chickened out and thought of making cake in the shape of eggs and also getting a chance to try my hand at making fondant (have been watching a little too much Cake Boss lately and was inspired).  So I searched making fondant on the web and it turns out it's not that hard.  Here's the recipe I used for making marshmallow fondant.   And here's the step by step:

- Start with the egg,  this you can make by baking any cake if you have time or I just bought some S&P butter cake (sort of like Sara Lee but this is cheaper, it was 2 for 1 and it taste just the same)

- Empty the cakes into a big bowl and mush with a potato masher until crumbly

- Use a couple spoons of icing to bind and make it easier to shape/mold

-  Shape cake into egg shapes (turns out the butter cake was really easy to shape and mold) and when you finish making your egg cakes, put them in the fridge 

- If you've made your fondant already, you can take it out, I like to use a cutting board wrapped in plastic wrap for easy clean up, put a little powdered sugar on board and place the amount of fondant you need and roll flat

- Wrap your egg cakes up --sorta like wontons--- this was my first time but I found the fondant really easy to work with just as long as you keep powdering them with powdered sugar

- And hopefully you get egg-looking cakes!  You can either mix your own paints by using food coloring and powdered sugar, pretty much all experimental since I'm not really sure how the end product will look like but another decorating alternative is adding sprinkles or colored icing?   This is definitely a sugar overload treat, so maybe once the egg cakes are done, note to myself...don't give the whole egg for them to eat all at once!

So now just have to see if the kiddies like them?!  Will post finished decorated eggs, stay tuned!

Thainie Freebie: Easter Eggstravaganza Template

Forgot to add the template if you would like
to do the Easter tote craft.  Enjoy!

Sew What?: Name Labels

Top-left image from Karaku's Shop and other two from Thainie Creations

Not much of a sewing project but just a bit of sewing at the end.  I saw this on another blog and I wish I could remember which one because it is genius!  All you need is some fabric (I think you can actually buy fabric tape that is all in one but I haven't been able to find it here but you can check out Karaku's Shop for it (I want to buy everything there!).  And so I improvised with cotton fabric and fusible web which worked just as good (if you don't want to go all the way to Chinatown for these supplies/notions, you can visit any Elvira store--no--not mistress of the dark Elvira, but the sewing machine shop Elvira---confusing I know!).

I opted to use fabric markers from Crayola since I tried fabric paint but it was too runny, you can easily buy fabric paint at The Emporium, there's a good selection but when I tried it on the stamp, it just was a big mess.  I think I will have to try putting the paint on a sponge/stamp pad thing next time.  The stamp set was a gift but you can find them at Daiso or The Loft.

So here's what I did:

1) Color the stamp in with the fabric markers, the stamp came out very clear and clean.   

2) Heat set it with an iron.

3) Iron on your fusible web on the back of the fabric.

4) Cut out labels.

5) Iron on labels to piece of clothing.

6) You can either leave it but the sides may fray if you're using a piece of fabric and not the fabric tape.  I think you can cut the sides with some pinking shears so that it will help it not fray.  

And presto!  Easy and cute labels!