The littlest in the family is crazy for Ernie these days. He calls him oooo-nee, which is unbearably cute. So what the hell, why not make an ernie shirt? Dana even has a tutorial for one. I didn’t print out her pattern, but I did look at her shirt as I cut out all the felt bits.  She adds a little embroidery, which is a nice touch, but I was feeling lazy, so I just top stitched instead. Now that I think about it my kids don’t have any licensed characters on their clothes,  but the baby, well the baby always get what he wants doesn’t he?

ernie doesn’t mind if you pick your nose

Right before kcwc took off this year, we celebrated my daughter’s golden birthday. The theme was gold, because we are original like that. It was a fitting theme, but a little odd–not a lot of golden party games (oh I found one though)–so we went a little crazy with the decorations.

The giant golden 6 idea came from this post for a fringey monogram. The fringey detail is super cool, but it also takes quite a bit of time, so I took a short cut and used wrapping paper–glittery, golden wrapping paper! I drew a huge six on the wall with chalk, taped the wrapping paper over it, and then cut right inside the line I drew.  The whole thing took about 1/2 hour + 1 1/2 rolls of wrapping paper.  It looks wrinkley in the photo, but the paper (and my baseboards and my floor and my hands and my face) was so glittery that I didn’t notice until I took the picture.

The humongous glittery six looked a little plain, if you can believe it, so I added those shooty out lines all around it.  Blazzam! Then with the extra bit of wrapping paper I made a golden paper chain for above the picnic table.  You can see the crazy, glittery texture of the wrapping paper a bit better here.

The actual present was wrapped in golden wrapping paper too of course.  I think it’s a sweater…

A little friend of ours turned 3 last week. I had the damnest time coming up with something to make for him. He’s got a super crafty mama, so that lucky boy is kitted out with capes and bags and awesome appliqued shirts. And all the other things you would make for little boys.

I figured the dress up box could always use a few more things, so I sewed up these felt masks. I started with a mask template I made from a paper plate and then went crazy with a bag of felt scraps.  There was a lot of white, gray, and orange felt in the bag, so out came a cat, an elephant, and an owl.

I had the best time making the elephant. His ears are extra wonky and homemade, but I’m so in love with his pompom headpiece I don’t care. It was sort of a last minute addition too. If I had thought of it earlier I would have dressed him up more!

Mostly I made up the patterns as I went along except I did steal the owl mask idea from Martha (she’s got so many ideas, she won’t notice). These were so fun to make and halloween is coming up so fast, I might have to make some more.  I might even go crazy and write up a tutorial. But which one? Or should I make something else?

I’m now accepting sponsors for October! Kids Clothes Week Challenge is the second week in October and there are already over 150 people signed up. It looks like there are lots of new people this time around too–yay! I’ve got some super good stuff lined up for the week before KCWC. And there is even some good stuff after it’s over too! October is going to rock your world.

KCWC has been such a big hit in the past that traffic on the blog doubles for the month. That means over 100,000 pages views! Just like in the spring, 125×125 sponsor spots for October are 40 dollars.  I’m also offering a larger 300×300 spot for $150–in case you want to go big. I really try to keep the prices reasonable so that bloggers and indie shops can easily afford it–and I hope you can.

Sponsorship introduces elsie marley’s 4500 subscribers to your shop or blog. And it gives me the resources to create tutorials and patterns and all of the good stuff you love about elsie marley. If you are interested please email me at

elsiemarleyblog@gmail.com

 

If you don’t have a blog or shop, but would still like to support this lovely blog, you could subscribe to elsie marley and have posts sent directly to your email or an RSS reader (there is a subscribe button on the sidebar at the right).  The more subscribers I get, the more support I get, the more projects you get! And I get to know you are out there, which makes me happy as can be.

If you made it this far and are still wondering what the pictures are all about.  It’s salad spinner art!  We did a few weeks ago and it’s easy as can be: jam a paper plate in an old salad spinner, blop lots of paint on it, and spin like crazy. Even the two year old got in on the action! I admit I was waiting for my turn too. This is a fairly contained project and you probably could get away with doing it inside, but better to go outside while the weather is nice. I’m sure you know where all your almost empty bottles of paint are–this is a project for them–but I bet you are thinking, “where the hell did I put that salad spinner?…”

a few weeks back my friends and I threw a baby shower for our dear friend who was about to pop. She has since popped (!) but I thought I’d share a few of the things I made for the party. The floofs [above], as my daughter called them, were by far my favorite thing to make. There are many tutorials floating around for them–and many names–but I found this method to be the easiest.

You might recognize these painted cups from a design sponge tutorial a while back. I did exactly what they told me to do and pretty much copied their color scheme to boot.

While I had the paint brushes out, I slapped a bit of paint on some cardstock. When the paint was dry I cut circles out of the painted paper. Then invited a friend of mine over for wine and projects, so she could write (with her beautiful handwriting) all the potential baby names our friend had come up with.  We glued them together with a bamboo skewer inside and called them cupcake toppers. I thought they turned out nicely–baby shower-y, but not goofy.  And don’t worry the baby is not named Moellendorf.

I made a few desserts too. They both were less than stellar because of the oppressive heat and humidity, but the lime curd cupcakes up there were very tasty–even if they did look a little worse for wear.  All in all, it was a very nice party. No horrible torture-the-pregnant-lady baby shower games, just a table full of delicious food and a house full of lovely ladies. Tomorrow maybe I’ll show you what I made for the baby..