I whipped up this little cross stitch as a gift tag for a bridal shower, but realized it is a perfect and quick project for Valentine’s Day. Kind of like carving your initials into a tree, but without the need to wield a knife. Stitchpoint has some nice alphabets featured in their cross stitch writing tool, and you can also find a lot of alphabet patterns by doing a search on Google Images. I’ve included a link to the heart pattern as a PDF below; just print it out and fill in the squares with your letter pattern.

Download the heart cross stitch pattern.

This project was finished in the embroidery hoop is was stitched in, using this excellent tutorial from Maximum Rabbit.

Rubyellen from Cakies was sweet enough to send us a link to the Chalkboard Nesting Doll tutorial she posted up on her site featuring our nesting doll blanks.

Too too cute for words, and crazy clever! You can snag your own dolls and start painting here.

Thanks, Rubyellen!

The kidlet and I took a Montessori parent-child class, which mostly succeeded in teaching her how much she likes to put stuff in stuff. Not a day has gone by where she hasn’t put her montessori skills to work dumping the cat food into the cat’s water bowl. I decided to push her interest in this towards something less messy, and made a coin box out of materials we had laying around the house. Quick & easy, and significantly cheaper than buying the legit version.

We used an empty Happy Baby Broccoli Munchies tin for this, though any tin with a lid will do. I covered the outside of the tin with Elmer’s X-treme Glue Stick (whoa! extreme! it snowboards, too!) The fabric piece was cut just larger than the tin, both in circumference and height. I lined up one edge along the top of the tin, pressing all the way around. Then, I used my hand to flatten out the entire outside. To get a clean line at the bottom, I ran my rotary cutter along the ridge to remove the excess.

Depending on the type of coins you plan on using (we have poker chips, but wood discs would also work well), slice the top of the lid with an exacto blade a little bit larger than the coin itself.

Besides just being a great tool to help with fine motor skills, the filled tin also makes an excellent noise maker.

Five minutes might even be too generous – this came together so quickly that I smacked my forehead for not doing this sooner. My mousepad had gotten all grimy and gross over the past year, so I called on my old friend for this refashion: Wonder-Under. If you haven’t used Wonder-Under before, prepare to have your world rocked. It’s a double-sided fusible webbing that lets you turn pretty much anything you can iron into fusible fabric. Make friends with it, and fast.

For this project, set your iron to hot. Cut a piece of Wonder-Under and a piece of fabric slightly larger than your mousepad, and iron the non-paper side to the underside of your fabric. Once slightly cooled, peel off the paper backing. I’ve found it to be the easiest to remove if you score the paper (just through the paper layer!) with just a single stroke using your scissors. You can then bend at this score and peel off the paper. Lay the fabric (print side up) on top of your mousepad and iron to affix. I went around the edges at an angle to make sure it was well sealed at the edges. Trim off the excess fabric, and you’re set!

We battled the chill in the wind and complete lack of parking to hit up this year’s Renegade Holiday sale. While it was tough to get a close look at everything there (it was jam-packed like a clown car in there) we were able to spy and grab a couple shots of some pieces we really enjoyed to share with you.

Knit Necklaces from YesJess

Letterpress from 1Canoe2

Jewelry from Julie Nolan

Clocks from Black Forest Works

Pillowcases from Kin Ship Press

Yarn Trees from PLYtextiles

These unfinished wood christmas trees are a great hands-on project for kids. Let them help with the painting, and then give them as teacher gifts!

* We’ll be featuring super fantastic holiday items all week, perfect for your handmade holidays. As a bonus, get 25% off your order with the coupon code YAYHOLIDAY. View all holiday items, or browse the whole shop.

With a kidlet in the house, our Christmas tree is getting some safety updates this year. Namely, we will be swapping out all of the glass ornaments for soft and wood pieces. You can bet that these wood peg doll ornaments will be getting a couple coats of paint and receiving top billing on the branches.

* We’ll be featuring super fantastic holiday items all week, perfect for your handmade holidays. As a bonus, get 25% off your order with the coupon code YAYHOLIDAY. View all holiday items, or browse the whole shop.

It’s not the holidays until felt makes an appearance. This Eco-Fi felt pack in holiday colors is made from 100% post consumer recycled plastic bottles. It can be machine washed and dried and is fade resistant.

Need some felt inspiration? We suggest these tutorials:

Felt Holiday Trees from Thompson Family Life
Felt Holiday Cards from See You There!
All kinds of felt projects from Betz White on Craftsy

* We’ll be featuring super fantastic holiday items all week, perfect for your handmade holidays. As a bonus, get 25% off your order with the coupon code YAYHOLIDAY. View all holiday items, or browse the whole shop.