Thainie Craft: Dino TO-GO

Cute and easy craft for your dino lovin' munchkin!  Also great for easy clean up and travel!

All you need:
 -  Tin lunchbox (these are from a small shop inside BTS Phromphong, 200-400 baht)
 -  Felt 
 -  Toy rocks and shrubs (snatched a few from my son's stash)
 -  Glue gun
 -  A dino loving kid

 Instant hit, although this happened...

Thainie Craft: DIY Personalized Tee

Still need a kiddie present for Christmas or a birthday?  How about a personalized tee?  

All you need:
 -  Basic tee (Hanes from Big C, comes in assorted colors/sizes)
 -  Iron on Felt Designs (from BeTrend Emporium)
 -  Stencil
 -  Fabric paint or any Acrylic paint (these are Fabrica 45 baht for each and they worked really nicely)

Mix, match and gift!

 

Halloween: Pumpkin Costume

 Halloween is approaching and I usually try to finish the children's costumes ahead of time so that I wouldn't be pulling my hair the last week of October.  Fortunately this year, their school had requested more "Halloween" themed costumes and not the usual superhero or princess.  I'm not at all against any of those costumes (or the school) but I can honestly say my children would have never chosen a pumpkin costume if it was up to them.  So luckily they wanted pumpkins!  

What I got (2 plump pumpkin costumes for 3.5 and 5 year old):
- 3 meters of orange fabric (cotton mix)
- 1/2 meter of green fabric (cotton mix)
- 1/2 meter of green felt
- 1/2 meter of black felt
- iron on webbing
- matching threads
- elastic 

I had actually searched the web for a children's pumpkin pattern, which I found and paid $8 (240 baht) but it had printed out about 120 pages and I was lost---this pattern paper fiasco is now being recycled for my kids' artwork.  I'm just not capable of patterns!  Gave up and just took one of my daughter's dresses and put it on the fabric and pretty much drafted my own pattern.   Cut into sections and sewn them together.  I'm sorry this is not going to be a very good tutorial but I can offer the following amazing references to help guide you there as they guided me.

Making your own pattern from clothes you already have
MADE

Sewing dress and lining (applicable to this costume!)
Cool People Sew

For the pumpkin features, first take felt and iron on webbing then trace the eyes, nose and mouth, cut pieces and iron on to the pumpkin.  If you want to, I stitched over the pieces.

Leaves Pattern for felt leaves
Pink Suede Shoe 

*** Print out the leaves the size you want or you can search on the web for any kind of leaves you like and cut out green felt

Note, the lining for the plump pumpkin was a padded quilted fabric (you can get this at Fabric House) and you just sew the same as a lining.  Lastly, fold up bottom at insert elastic.

My daughter had a bit of a diva moment and decided she wanted it to be more dressy (you can take the princess dress away but you can't take the princess out of the kid), so I cut around the existing pattern (copying her dress) and just added the green cotton lining and cut the bottom zig zagged, luckily we had kept a cute black petticoat skirt that belonged to my older daughter and was able to use it under this dress.

Happy sewing!!

Halloween: Hawaiian Hula Costume

My children had Hawaiian Day at their school last week (yes they are in school--very short story but long in so many other parts--but they are loving it) and I wanted to share how I made my daughter's costume just in case you would like to make one for Halloween. 

1) I love these plain tanks and they were so cheap, 90 baht ($3) at Cotton On Mega Bangna.  You will see that I am using these as the foundation of all my costumes this year.  I took brown fabric and used fusible webbing and ironed them on for the coconut bikini top.

2) Then I used some pom pom ribbon for the string of the bikini, you will need to sew all along the back and also the shoulder straps too and just a little right in the middle of the coconuts.  And you're done with your top!

 *** Quick Tip:  I found the lint sticky stick works great when you want to clean up all your thread bits!

3)  Now the bottom part, the skirt I used this wonderful tutorial here and do everything the same but before you put in the elastic, get your scissors and cut strips!  I used 2 layers of different color green fabric so it looks just a bit more grassy!!  

And there you go!  Easy and fun!  Btw the grass skirt gets a bit frazzled if you put it in the washer and dryer but I thought it added a nice effect to the skirt.   As for the lei, I got them at Daiso but cut and strung them on some green yarn.  Made one for my daughter's head piece and one for her neck.  If you like, you can also use the left over petals and decorate the skirt with them.  Aloha!

Put you best vest forward...

Wanted to share a wonderful tute I found.  I was searching how to make vests for my children's class line leader vests and this tute from The Mother Huddle was amazing!  Her tute was very clear and detailed, it was so easy to follow.

But if you would like to make a bigger or smaller size version, I would suggest using any size tee you want and tweaking the pattern from that.  

As for the star emblem and LEADER artwork, I used my Silhouette to cut out templates and then acrylic paints.

Have you started working on any costumes for Halloween?  Well I'm prepping tutes for a Dinosaur and Hula girl costume to share with everyone soon!

The Princess Tea Party Birthday

Of course this idea was from Pinterest, I did this the night before her birthday morning.  Only thing different was I hung the balloons outside in the living room since they always get up in the middle of the night so her room door was not going to work

Okay this is going to be the longest post ever since it's about my daughter's recent birthday party.  My now 4 year old daughter wanted to have a princess themed birthday party and so I played with the idea and thought of a Princess Tea Party theme.  This way the girls would be able to be all princessy and enjoy a nice tea party with tea cups and everything.  I secretly was delighted at the idea of throwing one too!  Although, this year I decided to do a more cozy and small party since it would be more controllable enjoyable to do crafts and activities with a small group of girls, 6 little girls to be exact (T's 3 very best girlfriends, her godmother's daughter and her friend).  Luckily, my 2 year old boy went down perfectly for his nap during the party and my 13 year old daughter was home to help!  Lastly, I set a budget of about 5,000 baht ($150+) for the party since I believe you don't have to waste money when you can diy or find it cheaper!

So here's the rundown!

The Invite...

 

First, you have to have an invite!  I found this perfect scroll online and put the details of the party as well as found a cute seal with her initial.

The font I used was Edwardian Script but after checking for the link, I found that you have to pay for it now and so I would recommend going to any free font site like dafont.com and downloading a font style you like from there. 

I then printed the artwork on A4 premium drawing paper and cut the shape out with the Silhouette.  The invites were then put into an envelope and sealed with our family's letter seal to add that royal touch!!! 

Here they are, signed, sealed and ready to be delivered to the lucky princesses:

The Birthday Banner & Streamers...

I used the Silhouette machine and cut her name and the background shapes then used 3M repositioning spray adhesive (the link actually goes to the widely used Krylon one -- in the states-- but I am using 3M since it's the only kind I can find here in Bangkok) to attach them together.  I really recommend this repositioning spray adhesive for any paper craft you are working on.  It's so easy to use, you can spray several pieces at the same time, goes on clear and you can reposition it (it's like the stickiness on the back of post its!).  After all pieces are cut and glued together, I strung them together with ribbon and then attached with some masking tape at the back so that it would position just the right way on the wall. 

The streamers were made of scrap fabric streams that were cut and then tied onto a plain old white string (the string that is used for packages).  Also great project for just decorating a room too and the perfect way to use all those scraps!!! 

The Pom-Poms

I have a confession to make, I'm a tissue paper hoarder--in addition to a hoarder of mostly all craft-related items.  I love my tissue paper collection and I couldn't bear using tons of them on the pom-poms.  And so trusty ol' IKEA came to the rescue!  I bought the colored paper napkin packs and they had the perfect colors for the party.

1) IKEA Fantastisk (don't they name their items so cool?) paper napkins, I also bought the paper plates and cups for the party there too.  

2-3) You take about 6-8 paper napkins and lay them on top of each other and then follow these directions!  But instead of the wire I used a plain rubber band (it was also great since you can stretch the rubber bands onto whatever you are decorating).    

4) Now the tricky part!  You want your pom-poms to be fluffy and airy but they just don't look like that, you have to spread the sheets since each paper napkin is 3-ply.  So carefully spread your napkins apart and fluff!  It's a learning curve but it gets easier! 

And hopefully you will get these:

The Goodie Bags and Activities Goodies...

As mentioned, I was working with a budget, luckily I found some great goodies that were perfect!  

1) The custom made royal invites.

2) All the goodies on show.  Books were from Kinokuniya (100+ baht/book), some princess pencils from The Emporium (they came is a 6 pack), notepads I had hoarded through the years, fruit chews, bracelets (also hoarded, bought them from Sampeng years ago) and a custom skirt I made with my fabric stash.

3) Princess tiaras, these were for the craft activity, I got the idea from here at Lu Bird Baby. 

4) These were also for the craft activity, they were little zipper pouches that the kids would paint in their names with metallic gold or silver acrylic paints.  You can see my tute for the stencils here.

5) This frame was a light bulb moment at IKEA!  It's the Tolsby frame and was 49 baht for each of them.  I used artwork from Lettering Delights and my trusty Silhouette to cut a hole out so that a photo could be inserted, the other side just had a message saying thank you for joining the party.

 All these goodies then went into a paper bag decorated with a doily and their name written on it.

The Activities & Crafts...

A smaller amount of kids turned out to be perfect since each one had the chance to do their own crafts.  In addition to the princess headpiece and zipper pouch, I also had the following:

-  A bracelet kit that I got at the mall (The Emporium) and it was perfect since it came with plastic bangles and gem stickers.  

-  A bunch of plastic beads and elastic to make our own royal jewels (Central B2S).

-  A wand craft made from foam clay, which dries light and airy (Central B2S) and attached to balloon sticks. *** Sadly, this craft turned out to be more of a art piece than a wand.  But the kids had so much fun making them, so did the moms!

-  "Kiss the Frog" (aka pin the tail on the donkey), I took green construction paper and cut out a frog and cut out lips and sprayed the repositioning adhesive spray so that the girls could kiss the frog while blindfolded with these cute panda eye covers I got from Cotton On (Mega Bangna).  It was a hit!  The girls had so much fun and a lot of giggles, their prize were IKEA markers!

-  Well this was a last minute activity craft that my daughter requested.  She wanted a pinata (she calls it a "pee-a-tah") and how could I say no right?  Well I was very lazy to do the whole paper mache pinata and on a budget to buy one and so I MomGyvered it.  Looked around the house and found paper plates, stapled plates together into a shape, covered it with crepe paper and liquid glue.....then thought about what that shape would be...it turned out to be a teapot for the tea party!  The lid, spout and handle were just cut out shapes, again from the Silhouette and decorated with a bit of frayed crepe paper and presto.....PEE-AH-TAH completed!

The Princess Tea Party Decor...

Paper napkin pom-poms, goodies, pee-ah-ta, streamers and everything else was ready to decorate!  I picked up some helium balloons at Pinata Party Place while out that morning picking up the birthday cake.

Threw everything together and it looked like this:

I had bought these adorable little tea cup sets from the 60 baht shop and you can see the IKEA paper cups, plates and napkins.  I also used paper napkins that I ironed out the night before for table mats.  Bought some fresh (well almost fresh day old cheaper flowers at Villa-I didn't need pre-bloom ones)  and each place setting had a place card cut from the Silhouette with each of the princess' name.

For the cake stand, I just took an over-sized cup we had and a plate and use UHU putty to hold it together.  Perfect again for the teacup/tea party theme!

The Princess Birthday Cake...

How cool did this cake turn out?  This 3D cake was ordered from S&P and was 790 baht ($26)!  You need to order about 2-3 days ahead and pick it up yourself but it was so worth it, the kids all loved it!  I then added a small decorative pom-pom, candle and tiny frog!  Can you guess the on-going theme here other than the princess theme?  Yes, Princess Tiana!!!

Last but Not Least...

My birthday princess and her Princess Tiana costume I had made for her. 

  

Well, that's it....  I'm happy to report that the party was a success but will have to decide whether I'm up for another themed party next year!  I hope you enjoyed sharing this special day with me and it will help you with your princess or prince!  Happy crafting!

There's a card for everything!

Do you have tons of membership, loyalty or discounts cards that you have to lug around with you and the moment you don't have it you need it?  Well after filtering and filtering all these cards (on a weekly basis at times), I still had a bunch that I needed to keep in my purse and they definitely were not all going to fit in my wallet.  

And so I came across this wonderful mesh pouch at The Emporium and decided to do a little sewing project and make little compartments for the cards and on the other side was perfect to hold any excess coins.  

You can actually use any size pouch and just sew vertical stitches where you want to separate your cards.  It's easy and quick since the stitches just need to be long enough so that the cards don't wobble to the other sections.   It's so handy and I can sort my cards as well, yes I am an organizational freak....

*** will get back about the brand of the pouch and price....

A card hill!!!!  (Image by Thainie-click to enlarge)

Just simple needle and thread will get your cards organized (Image by Thainie-click to enlarge)

 

Easter Crafts: Bunny Bags

This year my friends and I all got our kids together for Easter a few days earlier since some of us weren't going to be in town on the day of.  Fortunately, I was able to take pictures of the crafts that we did to share them for everyone to enjoy!  

This is a really easy bag craft that you can do with any kind of paper bag and you just need to cut out the bunny ears and the bunny face.  I used scrapbook paper for the ears so that the boys and girls can choose from the different designs and it was precut since I had planned 3 crafts and wanted them each to be short and fun.

You can also add googly eyes and pom poms for the nose too.  Threw in some stickers as well!  I've attached the bunny's face so all you need to do is print and cut!   

Happy Easter crafting!!!

Image from Thainie

Image by Thainie....Click to enlarge and save...

Eggsaster? That's okay, there's always crepe paper...

So many of my friends were attempting this egg yarn craft from Simply Modern Mom for Easter and I thought with the right tute it would be easy peasy right?  I mean it's just yarn, glue and a balloon, how hard is that?  Well as you can see from the picture below, BIG FAT CRAFT FAIL.  It wasn't the tute, the tute was really amazing but I'm going to blame the balloons, they were cheap balloons and the deflated in an hour!  

And so I did this balloon craft from Not Martha and instead of fabric starch (which I couldn't find here and made the mistake of scented fabric starch, the one they spray to iron, well lets just say it only make it smell nice...other than that it was like using water) I used the good old glue and water mix.   They turned out really nice and made a great centerpiece!

Top left image from Simply Modern Mom, other images from Thainie

.....here's the tail

Image from Thainie

Here's the craft in action, the kids all loved picking out the pom poms and gluing them on the bunny.  Tried gluing with a glue stick at first but it didn't really stay well so used white glue instead (Elmer's).

Easter Freebie: Pin the fluff ball on the bunny

Easter's coming and been prepping art projects for the kids and thought I would share this with you all.  You can either use art pom poms or just plain ol cute cotton balls!

Click for the full image to print on A4:

Do the hooky pokey...

Did you ever wonder how they do those vinyl stickers so nicely, especially the ones with cut out letters in them?  I finally got a chance to use the hooky thingy (aka Universal Hook) that I bought to use with my Silhouette machine on a labeling project that I've been also wanting to do for a long time....there's a lot I've been wanting to do for a long time....  Anyhoo, so I thought I would do a short tute on how they do it.

Image from Thainie

 - To begin, cut out your stickers with your cutting machine.

- Take some masking tape and gently apply it on top of your vinyl sticker. You don't want the masking tape to completely cover your label.  Make sure you can still see the top and bottom so that you can align it easily to what you are labeling.

- Position your sticker on and rub the sticker until that sucker sticker is on there for good. 

- Gently peel from top to bottom/side to side, depends on your cut out but always take it slow since you don't want to tear the insides.  

- Now get your hooky thingy and start picking at the letters to peel them off.  Be careful if you're peeling against plastic or anything that can be scratched easily.  

- And there you have it!  Wasn't that easy?

 

Here's some repurposed mayo containers for your cooking necessities...

Image from Thainie

  
IKEA plastic boxes for art supplies labelled...

Image from Thainie

*** I'm thinking you can probably use a toothpick or those dentist thingys?  Will have to try it out and let you know how it goes...

 

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.

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!!!!

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! 

DIY: Custom Onesie

Looking for a custom gift?  Try making your own easy custom onesies or tees.  You can buy plain white tees at any Central Department Store, they have really nice cotton ones that come in a 3 pack, they are about 200++ baht.  Daiso also has plain tees too.  As for onesies, you can get them in packs of 3s at Mothercare but they may be more expensive.  So after you got the onesie, prewash them and then you're ready to do some artwork.

Either use acrylic clothing paints or any acrylic paint will do too.  When you're done, put a towel on top and iron over, it will help set the artwork.  If you plan to use an image from the computer, you can buy iron-on printer paper from any stationary store and print your artwork (***Important: before printing, make sure you click on the mirror image setting in "Print Options" so that when you iron on it will be not backwards!  Don't wanna waste  the pricey paper!)  and do the same for washing and ironing.  And presto, you've got your cute custom onesie!

I am planning to experiment with freezer paper stenciling, so stay tuned!