Monster Party Part 4: The Favors

Party favors are always my favorite part of a party to put together.  I guess I love that other kids are going to get little surprises the day of the party as well as mine.  I try to give a variety of different things as favors so that there is something for everyone.  Here is what we settled on this year.

The first thing I did was pick up a handful of these small gift bags for 33 cents a piece.  I punched out 1" circles from cardstock using my 1" punch.  I can't tell you how many ways that punch has saved my life.  After that, I just added a few details with a Sharpie to some and touches of black and red construction paper to others to make these little faces on the bags.

 

 

Now that I had my gift bags read to go, I started work on what would go inside.  The first item I added was super simple.  I found, on the aisle with the crayons and coloring books, bottles of scented bubbles with awesome little monster like silly faces already on them.  They rang in at 97 cents a bottle, so I splurged a little.

 

 

 

The next item to head into the favor bags was a teeny little pot of play-doh.  You can actually pick up party packs of fifteen mini tubs for around 5 dollars in the toy section of your local store.

 

 





Of course, I couldn't just toss in a plain old tub on play-doh....so I went right to work cutting strips of neon paper to fit around the sides of the tubs.

 

I used a glue stick to attach the strips of paper to the tubs.

 

 

 

Then I used a Sharpie marker and some googley eyes to make monster faces on the tubs before tossing them into the bag.

 

 

I always try to include some sort of edible element to the favor bags.  You know...a little sugar shot to take home...so that all of the moms roll their eyes and the kids all love me.  ;) 

 

This year, I incorporated my food item and my monster theme in these little cuties.

 

 

The clear little containers came in packs of four with different all different colored lids.  The containers were four for $1.  I filled them full of M&Ms and used googley eyes to make them into little monsters.

 

 

As I was looking for ideas for monster parties, I found a ton of different posts where Ugly Dolls (yes, that is actually a thing) were given out as monster favors.  I loved them, but was NOT about to spend the kind of money it would take to get each child their own plushy.  After about ten minutes of pouting, I went up to the bonus room to see what extra supplies I had in storage that could be used to possibly make these little fellas.  Just to prove to you how much of an insane crafter I am...I already had yards upon yards of fleece fabric and a large bag of stuffing in my sewing/crafting supplies.  My husband gave me a huge eye roll when I marched back into the living room with everything I needed.

 

 

Keep scrolling for the full tutorial on these plushy little guys.

 

I have no idea how much these would have cost me had I purchased the fabric and stuffing when I started the project....but for me...these were free....my favorite price.  If you are doing these at home, here is what you need:

 

Brightly colored fleece fabric

White fusible fleece (scrap or smallest amount you can get)

White thread

Black Thread

an Iron

a Sewing Machine

Needle

Thread (I used a rainbow multi, but I recommend getting the colors of the fleece)

Stuffing

Scissors

 

If you are not really handy with a sewing machine...THAT IS OK!  These are VERY crudely made on purpose.  The whole point is for them to be MONSTERS!  Sew crooked, mess up, that is the fun in them.

 

Start by making your monster templates.  I just freehanded some little guys out.  If you are not comfortable with that, there are books with monster templates in them.  Cut out your templates from cardstock.

 

 

My templates ended up being around 7" tall.

 

The next step is to cut out squares from your fleece.  You want to cut double the amount of plushies you want to end up with (fronts and backs).  I cut my squares 10" so that I had plenty of wiggle room, but cut whatever amount you feel comfortable with. 

 

 

Once you have cut all of your squares, you will want to trace and cut out your fronts.  DO NOT cut out the backs.  You will see why soon.  This means, you want to trace shapes onto half of the fleece squares.  I used a Sharpie (sheepish grin), but I would recommend using a fabric marker.

 

 

 

Then cut out all of your fronts with sharp sewing scissors.

 

 

Next, you want to cut out 1" circles for eyes and any accent pieces, such as teeth from your white fusible fleece.  I used a 1" punch from cardstock as a template.  Make sure you trace onto the stiff, fusible side, not the fabric face.

 

 

 

On these I REALLY recommend using a fabric marker rather than a Sharpie.  You can see how it rubs off on skin.  If you do use a Sharpie, make sure you cut all of the black part off completely.  Otherwise it will show through when you iron this on and sew.

 

Place your eyes and teeth onto your faces where you want them and iron then on per the fusible fleece instructions.

 

 

 

Using your sewing machine with white thread, stitch around these pieces to secure them.  It took me a few times to decide how I wanted to stitch these.  I started out blanket stitching, but ended up using a short and wide zig zag to basically embroider them on.

 

 

Once you have sewn on all of your white pieces, you want to switch to black thread to add the pupils and mouths.  Once again, I just used a short and wide zig zag to create an embroidery style stitch.  Make the faces different in whatever ways you like.  On some of my little fellas I even used one eye and made an "x" for the other.

 

Now you want to pin the faces face-down onto the squares you saved for the backs.  When you stitch around fabric, it has a tendency to stretch or shift.  If we had cut both back and front out, it would have been very difficult to keep the sides lined up perfectly.  This way, you can move quickly and easily and just trim the extra when we are ready.

 

 

 

Stitch all the way around the edges, leaving an opening to turn these right side out.  A normal straight stitch will do, but you can do these however you like.  Once you have sewn all of these, you will trim the extra fabric off, turn them inside out, and stuff them.

 

 

You can see the little puckers here where I left the holes to turn them.  Once you get all of your monsters stuffed, you will use needle and thread to hand stitch the holes up.

 

Then just toss them into a basket for a monster adoption station.

I also printed out little monster adoption certificates for the kids to name their monsters.  I think My favorite monster name of the day was Hiffy.

The favors really ended up being super fun and cute.  A huge hit for sure.

I hope you enjoy making these for the little monsters in your life!

 

 



Dye Rice for Sensory Tubs and Projects

There are a million and one uses for brightly colored rice.  Mostly, I just wanted it for my kids to dig in for sensory bins.  I have seen other tutorials out there using rubbing alcohol to die the rice, but I really wanted to die the rice using something that if the kids happened to eat it....it would be a little safer than that.  After a while, I decided white vinegar should do the trick.  After all, it is used to die Easter eggs and it evaporates fairly quickly.

First things first...grab your supplies

1 c. uncooked white rice per color (we did 3; I use Zatarain's)
2 Tbsp white distilled vinegar per color
several drops food coloring each color

one small bowl per color
one sandwich sized bag per color
1 c. measure and 1 Tbsp measure
wax paper
shallow pans for drying

Ok!  Now that you have all of your supplies together, we can get started!

Measure 1 cup of rice into each sandwich baggie.  If Zatarain's rice is available in your area, I recommend using it over other brands.  It holds its form much better.

Set those aside until we finish mixing our colors.  In each small bowl, mix 2 Tbsp white vinegar with food coloring and stir well.  The color intensity will depend on how much food coloring you add, so if you like the colors bright, go a little crazy!  The color will be much lighter on the rice than in the bowl.  We used orange, lime green, and purple.

Now, dump one of these colors into each bag of rice.  You want to work these one at a time so that your rice doesn't get mushy.

Squeeze the air out of the bag, and seal it.  Then just squeeze and mash to your little heart's content until all of the rice is well coated in coloring.

Or you could get a little help like I did.

I think she was a little excited.

Once your rice is fully coated, dump it into a shallow pan lined with wax paper to dry.

Ours took about an hour and a half to dry completely.  Of course, I couldn't leave it alone...I kept going over and mushing on it every 20 minutes or so.

When you are done, you have brightly colored rice to make sensory bins or other projects with.  Trust me....you will see projects with this in the future.  I am LOVING this!

I mixed all of ours up for the project we'll be working on, but store yours however you are going to use it.

Let me know if you try this with your kids or use another method that you love.

Mother's Day Gift for the Cooking Momma

I have been oh so blessed to have a family full of cooking women!  They have seasoned my life with their knowledge about God, life, family, and food. This mother's day, I wanted to give them kitchen gifts with a personal touch.

I started by picking up some good quality, inexpensive bamboo cutting boards and utensil sets.  I used this method from another post of mine to put each lady's initial and decorative flowers on each utensil and their name and flowers onto the cutting boards.

Ok, and maybe a heart for each, too.  After all, we do want them to know we love them.

 Mimi's cutting board is looking so sweet!

 Here is one of grammy's spoons!

Next, I grabbed some of the flour sack dish cloths left over from our Pin Tuck Dish Towels and got to work putting ruffles on each one.  Granny Carol got pink paisley ruffles, Mimi got white ruffles, and Grammy got green ruffles.  I am posting a separate tutorial for the ruffled cloths, so stay tuned!

This is Granny Carol's completed set. If I have a little extra time between now and then, I am going to embroider something cute onto each dish towel.

We are also throwing in some of these cute little bead suncatchers that the kids made more of recently.

We are also wrapping each present in a special wrapping paper we created, but that is another post for another day.

I think each of these special ladies are really going to love their box of kitchen happies.

Let me know if you tried any of this for your Mother or another special lady in your life!

Bow Drawer to Bow-tique

For years, I have stored bows, headbands, head wraps, ponytail holders, and more in the top dresser drawer of my daughter's room.  Lately, with two girls, it has gotten to be quite a huge mess to dig through in the mornings.  As I was rearranging the girls' room this week, I decided it was finally time to do something about the mess.

I started by attaching three vertical ribbons to the left side of the dresser, which was a whiteboard.  I did this with a staple gun and staples, but your method may vary based on the material you are attaching to.

All of the bows on the two ribbons to the right are alligator clip bows.  The second from the left are barrette closures.  The far left are assorted, oddball closures along with snap clips and bobby pins.  Hanging from the far left ribbon is a ponytail holder with all of their claw clips clipped around it.

This is WAY more attractive than the giant mess the drawer was before.  I wish I had taken before pictures.  It was ROUGH.  Look again...I even color sorted each bow style.

That was great for the bows, but the girls still had a ton of headbands and head wraps to organize.  After a few minutes of scratching my head, I headed to the kitchen to grab a paper towel holder.

Perfection!  This worked great for all of their headbands and headwraps.  This may be a temporary solution depending on how well it works out, but so far it is amazing.

Last, but not least....I needed something to do with the 85 million ponytail holders.  You have no idea how serious I am...but you are about to.  Since I had already robbed the kitchen once, I headed in there again for a finishing touch on the girls' bow-tique.  A ROLLING PIN!  You can buy a cheap one if you don't have one in the kitchen to spare.  This is an antique one that was given to me as a gift. (I have five rolling pins)

This is probably my favorite solution out of this whole project.  It fits perfectly inside the front of the top drawer too! 

This made the bows much easier to see and access.  It also protects her headbands from getting all smooshed and broken like they have been getting lately.  The best part though....it freed up almost the entire top drawer for swim suits and accessories!  Every girl needs a little more storage space.

Let me know if you use any of these solutions for yourself or your daughter.  Keep crafting, and have fun!

T-Shirt Tote Two Ways

Twice a year at my house, we go through everything, purge, and donate things we no longer need to charity.  Normally this goes off without a hitch.  This spring, however, my daughter had a few shirts that she just didn't want to let go of.  We went round and round about these shirts.  Finally I just decided to leave it alone.  She had to go to school sometime, so I decided I would just sneak them out after she had forgotten about them.

While I was waiting ever so patiently for Laney to forget the shirts, I remembered seeing several things online about using t-shirts to make totes.  When she went to sleep Sunday night, I decided to get to work.  I sneaked into her room under cover of night, and confiscated the shirts in question, then I made two very cute, very different little bags.

The first tote took less than five minutes, and is a simple tote for library books and such.  The other is a little more purse-like to carry any summer goodies as we are out and about.

What you will need:
One t-shirt (adult or child)
Sharp Scissors
Sewing machine
coordinating (or not) thread

Here we go!

TOTE ONE: Just a simple tote

Start out by laying out your t-shirt.

Cut the shirt sleeves off.  Then cut to scoop the neck down further.

Now turn your shirt inside out, and stitch up the bottom hemline to close the bottom of your tote.

Now turn your completed tote right sides out and fill it with whatever!

For a more durable bag, you can top stitch the bottom seam while the bag is right side out to have a stronger seam line.  You can also zig zag or serge around the handles to reinforce those if you choose.  I just kept this one simple.  Due to the nature of knit, the fabric will not unravel at the raw edges if you choose to leave them without additional stitching.  This is going to be a perfect library book tote for summer reading program!






TOTE TWO: A purse-like little tote



Once again, start out by laying out your shirt.

Cut off the sleeves, but leave the neckline in tact.  You will also need to cut the bottom of the shirt off to around a half inch longer than where you would like the bag to stop.

Save the sleeves, but you can throw out the bottom strip of the shirt or toss it into your scrap stack. (I tossed mine into the scrap stack to use for another adorable project)


Stitch up the shoulder part of your sleeves to close that end. Fold the hem end of the sleeve in half.

Turn your shirt inside out, then securely pin your folded sleeves into the shoulder of the tshirt.

Stitch the sleeves into the shoulder, making sure to stitch below the line of the sleeve hem.  Then stitch up the arm holes and bottom of the shirt.

Turn right side out, tie the sleeves into a cut knot, and fill with goodies!

At the end of the day, Laney was VERY excited that we had saved her shirts in a way that she could continue to use them....and I was VERY happy to be done with the t-shirt battle of 2013.

I hope you enjoy this project as much as we did!