Raid the recycling! Slap it together with hot glue! Decorate with tape! and whatever else is lying around!

My kids call it the guy house, “because it’s for guys, Mom, not dolls.” Playmobile guys, lego guys, little people guys, calico critter guys, everybody can go swimming in the stripy pool!

What I really wanted to do was spray paint the whole thing one color (safety orange!) but my kids were having such a blast decorating it that I couldn’t spoil the fun. Tape turned out to be the easiest way to make it awesome. Mostly we used duct tape and the washi like tape from target.  Bonus: the tape box made a sweet hammock.

Go glue things together!

Some friends of mine started a fabulous kid’s consignment sale here in Madison a few years ago called Half Pint.  They have children and jobs and husbands and thought hey let’s have a business too! I really don’t know how they do it, but they do and twice a year to boot. It get’s bigger every year and I’m so happy for their success.  And happy to get a bunch of  fantastic kid’s clothes and toys on the cheap.

I’ve had some great finds at Half Pint (pink high tops, green sneakers, red white & blue speedos) but this little rocker takes the cake. It’s called a teeter tot. And though I can’t tell if it’s actually old, or just faking it I love the look of it–much more than the exersaucer at least.  The baby likes it a little (I really need to make a little seat belt so he stops sliding out) and the big kids love it. They sqeeeeeze in and play baby.  While I’d like to think I’ll pass it down to my kid’s kids I’m guessing it will end up back at Half Pint. If you are local and want to find out about their next sale, and other kid’s stuff too, head over to their blog.

This is what all those little things on my desk became–a toy bag for little people. It’s up in the shop along with another toy bag (puzzles) and there are more on their way.  This week was making stuff for the shop week and though I’m pretty excited about this new design, not much more than that got done.  I only ventured down in my studio about half of the evenings I was supposed to–I’m a crappy boss to myself I guess.  But there are somethings cut out for the shop that I really want to finish (city skirts and county skirts too!), so I’m just going to keep at it next week. After that we’ll be off to the middle of nowhere on vacation. A whole week! without the internet! I’m guessing there will be cable in the cabin so that kind of evens out the time suck factor. There will also be an enormous lake so I’m not expecting to get much done, but that is the point of vacation anyway isn’t it?

I making bags like crazy over here.  All, of course, for the sale that you are sick of hearing about.  It’s this weekend and I’m actually getting a little nervous.  I’m sure all the self doubt will all go away when someone buys something–if someone buys something!  I’m used to selling pastries and breads and chocolates that I’ve made, where if you make a mistake it gets eaten anyway.  But someone will own these bags and use them, and if they fall apart their mother will be cursing me.  Or maybe they will be used and loved and come out of the washing machine in one piece.

You can see I finally made the toy bags I was talking about and though I wasn’t excited about them while I was making them, or even after I was done, but they are growing on me now.  Simple muslin drawstring bags with some applique (and stamped labels? yes? no? still can’t decide anything over here). The other bags in the picture are kiddy messenger bags.  I made one for my daughter just like it for christmas.  She got so many compliments on it, I thought they would go over well at the sale.  There are pictures of more bags over at my flickr site, if you are interested.  Have a good day.

this was a lot harder than it looks.  And even though it only needs a few buttons (wheels, headlights, tail lights) I can’t bring myself to finish it.  I thought I’d move on from diggers and try my hand at dump trucks.  The body of the truck wasn’t so bad–a lot of confusing parts, but it worked out okay.  But the actually dumping part (I have to learn me some technical terms if I’m going to keep making these things) was pretty damn frustrating.  I used timtex (well something like timtex but fusable–it was all they had–and I just fused both sides to cotton batting) and holy crap is that stuff hard to deal with.  Granted I probably shouldn’t be using it on something so small, but I couldn’t figure out how to make all the sides of the dumper sturdy.  It comes together just like a bag with a lining would, except if your bag has an extra thick layer of stiff as hell interfacing then it turns out that the inside is smaller than the outside and the lining you made has to be remade smaller (but whoops not that small, make it again).  Turning that sucker out was such a pain that I had to take a break half way through.  But now that I’m looking at it a day later (and complaining all over the place about it) I’m starting to like it again.  So really I have to rethink the pattern–any suggestions?  But I am happy about on thing: it dumps.