Shrinky Dink Keepsakes

Way back at Christmas 2013 I won a craft basket mostly full of knitting needles, crochet hooks & yarn; but hidden at the back there was also a pack of "Inky Shrinks". The Inky Shrinks pack contained four A4 sheets of white shrink film which is specifically designed to work with an ink jet printer and then get heated & shrunk in the oven - just like shrinky dinks. I thought it looked exciting, but at the time I didn't have a printer and I was too keen to get into all the luscious yarn in the basket! And then I sort of forgot about it.

It caught my eye again recently and I was trying to come up with something useful to do with it... The little miss is going on a dancing trip to Australia for the Australian International Oireachtas in May and I thought we could make some sort of keepsake for all of the kids and teachers going. I thought the Inky Shrinks pages could be perfect to mass produce something - especially since I could use my computer to design something & print them all off exactly the same. I'm very crafty, but not a very good artist, so I turned to Tagxedo to help me create the perfect picture.

I entered words specific to the competition trip and formed them into a four leaf clover shape for luck. I did two versions: a white background with pink & black writing (the dancing school colours) and a black background with white & pink writing. I then printed them on an Inky Shrinks sheet, cut them out & punched a hole in them, and shrunk them in the oven. On paper I liked the black background best, but after they were shrunk the words almost disappeared completely into the black background. So we opted for the white. Before shrinking I personalized each one by writing their name on the back in sharpie.

I'm really pleased with how they turned out and from the 4 sheets included in the pack I was able to make one for each of the 16 dancers and the two teachers making the trip across the ditch.

Co-incidentally I found a shrink craft jewellery kit when I was out shopping the other day and the little miss was so excited about it I had to buy it for her. The plastic shrink sheets included are like the old ones I remember from when I was a kid and they're alright, but difficult to get a nice sharp image and almost a bit brittle to cut out. The Inky Shrinks were much nicer to work with and produced sharper images and smoother edges.

The Little Miss modelling the new bracelet &
necklace she made.

My new earrings made by the little miss.

I have searched for Shrinky Inks for sale in New Zealand, but so far haven't had any luck (the shop I won the basket from no longer stocks them). I have, however, found a few other types of shrink film sheets that I will probably try out. I thought they would be particularly good for making personalized Christmas ornaments this year.

Frozen Ice Ribbons/Force Lightning Gloves

 It's birthday time again... I've been party planning (searching Pinterest) for the little miss's upcoming birthday, she wants a Frozen party, and came across these Frozen inspired icy snow gloves. I thought they'd be fun for the girls to dance around to the songs from the movie with icy ribbons swirling all around them. I've been crocheting a lot lately, and figured instead of buying cheap gloves and sewing ribbons to them as per the link above, I thought it would be nice to crochet some fun finger-less gloves and make the ribbons detachable so that the gloves would actually be useful after the party was over. I altered a basic adult finger-less glove pattern I already had in my library and the little miss helped me to pick out some 'icy' colours from my yarn stash. We found enough colours that were suitable so that every party guest will get a totally unique set of gloves.

All of the gloves were crocheted a while ago, but I had yet to sort out any ribbons for them. Today was a pretty miserable day and we ended up putting the Frozen blue ray on and I was convinced by the little miss to attach some ribbons to her pair so that she could dance around with them to the songs in the movie. They were a hit! (Now I just have to attach ribbons to the other 6 pairs...)

While dancing around, the little miss came up with a genius idea - a black pair for her Star Wars obsessed brother so he could use them for force lightening. So I got my crochet hook, some black yarn, and some ribbons (the little guy insisted on black and blue) and within an hour a pair of force lightning gloves were on the little Sith Lord's hands and forcing pretty much everything in sight!

Note: It's nearly impossible to get a photo of how cool these actually look when the ribbons are flying around!

Irish Dancing Birthday Party

Anyone who reads this blog will already be aware of the Little Miss' love of Irish dancing. Well, she's turning 6 this weekend and decided that she would like an Irish dancing party (surprise, surprise). We had to bring the date of the party forward a week as half of the kids couldn't make it on her actual birthday, and it wasn't until after the new date was all sorted that I realised that meant I had one less week to put together a party!

Of course the first thing I did was grab my laptop and start searching the internet for Irish dance birthday party ideas. And guess what... it turns out that Irish dancing parties aren't actually that common of a birthday theme and there really wasn't much for me to find. I did find this blog and got some inspiration from it, but my Little Miss is more into the the dancing and pink than green and leprechauns.

I wanted to come up with an activity to start the party off with - something that the kids could do in their own time as they arrived, that would allow my daughter to be able to meet & greet each guest, and that wouldn't be too overwhelming for any children that didn't know anyone other than the birthday girl and the Little Guy. So I bought some extra wide ribbons and cut them into sash lengths and had the kids decorate their own prizewinner party sash. The girls spent quite a while decorating and it was a nice mellow way to start the afternoon. As each finished, I pinned their sash on and they made their way into the lounge to do a little dancing. (I really wish I had taken a photo of all the girls lined up with their beautifully decorated sashes on before they took them off.)

  I also made some shoe bling for each party-goer that I found over at this blog. They're meant to fit over the heavy dancing shoes, but the girls just put them over whatever shoes they were wearing (the girls that actually do dancing will be able to wear these over their dancing shoes later on if they like).

A lot of dancing and some dancing games came next while I swapped the ribbons & markers for party snacks. There was snacking and then a few more games while I set out the table for cookie decorating. I made some sugar cookies the night before in the shapes of Irish dancing dresses, four leaf clovers, hearts, and a few gingerbread men shapes (for the two boys) to decorate. The kids LOVED doing this! It was interesting how differently the kids approached this activity - some spent a lot of time decorating a few cookies very elaborately and then packed them away to take home with them, some decorated quickly and ate each cookie as they went, and some did a combination of the two.

Then it was time for presents, cake, a little more dancing, and home time. I actually had another activity (spinning paper fairies) printed off just in case, but it turns out it wasn't needed. Oh, and to make the cake I used this technique for the icing. Sadly I placed it off centre, but unsurprisingly not a single party guest noticed.

The Little Miss had a fantastic day and it looked like all her friends had a lot of fun too. Both my husband and I noted that it was the calmest & quietest birthday party we had ever seen - apart from the last 15 minutes which was filled with screaming and running off their sugar highs!

Ribbon Charm Necklaces

Whoa this month has been busy! I had a lovely 2 weeks with my parents visiting, but that combined with back to school, the little miss' dancing, and the school gala drawing nearer and nearer, it's been a little full on... But I'm starting to get back into the groove of things and that means it must be time for a new blog post.

I whipped up a tonne of these cute ribbon charm necklaces for the school gala one morning. I made around 50 of them in just over an hour - and that was with the little miss' 'help'.

I had a whole pile of these little metal charms, that came with a bulk lot of buttons I bought ages ago, and no use for them. So I got some inexpensive rolls of ribbon from the local emporium (a roll containing at least 15 meters cost only $1.80!) and made them into cute little necklaces the kids can buy with their pocket change at the gala.







I cut the ribbon into around one meter lengths and folded each into half before threading it through the charm and knotting it through itself.

And then to finish them off I melted each end of the ribbon with a lighter so that they don't fray and unravel - a very important, but often missed, step when working with ribbon!

To display these cute little accessories, I covered a piece of sturdy cardboard with some plain fabric and will pin the ribbons to it to hold the necklaces in place. Voila!

Rag Curls

Since starting the Irish dancing dress, Irish dancing has been on both mine and the little miss's minds a bit extra lately... She can't wait to preform in her new dress and really, really wants a wig. I myself am not ready for her to get a wig... she's already got such gorgeous hair and she's only 5 years old - it's just too soon for me! I've got what seems like an unlimited amount of fabric scraps, so I thought we'd try out rag curls and see what would happen...

I flicked through Pinterest to see how others had done rag curls - looking especially for tips on how to get nicely shaped ringlets. A few tips of the best that I found were:

•  to start with dry (or mostly dry) hair because if the hair is still damp when taking the rags out, the curls will just fall right out (and use lots of mouse or gel and hairspray instead)
• roll the hair vertically and remove them by unwinding/pulling straight down to get good ringlets
• make a small ponytail with the front section of hair as this is how it is 'styled' for Irish dancing anyway - the curls won't get combed out tying it up afterwards.

I cut up some fabric scraps, put on a DVD, and got started. I put hair mouse and hairspray in her hair before starting as well as a little bit after every layer or so. I ended up using 43 rags in her hair in total. I was a little shocked that the little miss sat nice and still for the half hour/45 minutes it took to roll up her hair.

And then she slept...

I was a little worried that there would be lots of screaming while I took all the rags out so I went nice and slowly and was as careful as possible. Fortunately there was only a complaint or two when I came across a few bits of a knotted hair.

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out for a first try (and the little miss is absolutely thrilled!) but next time I will use some rolling papers to fold around the ends of the hair so they don't end up too kinked and will be less likely to get tangled around the rags. The little miss has already asked if I can do her hair like this for when she goes back to school and has been jumping around to see how the curls will bounce when she's dancing, so I guess I'll be doing it again the night before her next performance...

Jewel Hair Pins

This post is about another craft for little miss' upcoming school gala...

I actually made these hair pins last year when I had a table selling my own crafts at the little miss' kindy Christmas craft market... Since it was a kindy run market, I wanted to have a few little inexpensive things that the kiddies could buy with their pocket money. I found these hair pins and gave them a go...

I bought a big bulk pack of bobby pins and a jar of 'jewels' for a total cost of less than $10. I went for jewels rather than buttons because buttons are actually quite expensive and the little miss preferred the sparkly-ness of the jewels anyway! There were so many jewels in the container that I was able to be really picky with the ones I wanted to use and we the jar was still well over half full when we were done.

They were super simple to make and the little miss and I were able to knock out about a hundred of them in one sitting. We cut up some card stock we had laying around the house and pinned them on in pairs for the little jewels and singles for the large ones. I found some card slips that my husband had leftover from when he collected some sort of cards and they fit perfectly, so I packaged them in those to make them look even fancier. I sold them for $0.50 for a pair with little jewels and $0.50 each for the large flower jewel ones. They were a hit and I sold quite a few to the littlies and just as many again to the grown ups! I have taken them to other markets I have done as well and they do quite well - especially around Christmas and Easter as stocking/Easter basket fillers.

Needless to say, the little miss has quite a few and she likes to wear them all at once - unless, of course, she's using them as mini wands for her little dolls and other creatures.

Rapunzel Dress

A friend of mine pinned a link to an etsy store selling girls dresses based on the dresses of Disney Princesses. The little miss is quite the fan of anything Disney Princess, so I re-pinned it of course. The Etsy store was My Kids Drawers but I think she's too busy with the orders she gets through Facebook so she isn't putting anything on Etsy at the moment. You can find her on Facebook by looking up 'My Kids Drawers' though.

What I loved about her princess dresses was that they are 'real' dresses that can be worn out and about without looking costumey, but it's also obvious (to anyone who knows their princesses) what they are styled on.

The little miss's current favorite princess is Rapunzel, so I decided to make a little something extra for her birthday. I liked the idea of the dresses being a pesant style: firstly because they are easy for young ones to get on & off themselves, but also because they are a pretty basic style dress and easy to make without a pattern.

Besides being purple, I think the main thing a Rapunzel dress needs is some lacing up the front. I thought long and hard about how I could do this... I thought of using metal eyelets, or strips of fabric with button holes, or sewing on loops of ribon, but they all seemed like just a little bit too much effort! I looked through all of the notions at my local fabric store and found exactly what I needed – pre-sewn elastic loops on a crochet-type strip. I covered it up with some pretty ribbon and used thin ribbon in the same shade for the lacing. I had originally planned to put elastic on the bottom of the sleeves, but when I was sewing them up I really liked the way they looked without the elastic, so I just hemmed them instead.

All in all I'm very happy with how it all turned out in the end; but most importantly, the little miss just adores it!