Hello!  I’m Amber and MiniMak asked me to do a guest post for you!  I can usually be found at Amberism on MiniMak’s blogroll.  oh wait, I’m not on the blogroll.  hmmm…. interesting that. 

Still, I am very excited to be here where I intend to ramble on (and on) about crafting. 

I am a dabbling crafter.  I can’t say that I have any mad skills in anything really, but I do love to craft and therefore force all my children to craft too.  A family that crafts together, well, crafts together. Plus they make a wonderfully big mess which annoys the hell out of the Papa, and who doesn’t want to annoy the hell out of the Papa?  Exactly.  An added perk! 

So while I am not passionate about any one type of craft, I am passionate about re-using as many materials as I can, and I get downright giddy if I can take an item and re-craft it into something else entirely.  This is especially easy with clothes and I know a lot of people who are crazy talented and can repurpose just about any article of clothing.  Personally I’m not much of a sewer, although my most recent foray into re-purposing clothes was turning fake-silk pajamas into a Super!Claire! costume for my eldest daughter and I was really very proud of the results.  Of course she promptly refused to wear it because she is a toddler and toddlers are like that.  There are days when it is hard to remember that we craft for ourselves and not for the accolades that may never be forthcoming.

Repurposing clothes is always a lot of fun, but what I really love is when a microwave stand becomes a play kitchen or a spice rack turns into a puppet theatre.  I can spend hours just mindlessly walking down thrift store aisles wondering what I can find that can be made into something else.  Scrabble pieces turn into fairy stools, and remnant skeins of yarn into funky socks.  Right now a lot of my re-crafting ideas are definitely kid-focused because I am knee deep in kids, but I must admit that trying to think like a kid again has been a lot of fun.  It brings me a lot of pride to show my kids that the most creative and engaging play items don’t have to be cheap, mass-produced plastic doodads.  Plus having the kids be a part of the creative process makes the item that much more special.

The re-crafted item I am the most proud of was neither my idea, nor did I do much of the work but my passion nevertheless fuelled the idea.  I was coveting a hand-crafted wooden kitchen for my kids and simply couldn’t afford to buy one.  The thought of a plastic kitchen made me antsy so my Mom drafted up some plans thinking that between the two of us, and my husband, we could come up with something.  Then while walking the aisles in our favourite thrift store she came upon a microwave stand and envisioned a play kitchen.  With a little ingenuity, some mad measuring and calculating skills, she created the perfect play kitchen and the only new items she bought were the knobs and oven-door hinges.  No other toy in the house gets as much play time as this one does, it was the best $20 my mother has ever spent.

Beyond the play kitchen, I love creating felt food from thrifted felt and have made dozens of little cupcakes from an old horse blanket.  Play mats and messenger bags have been made from old curtains, a doll bed from a thrifted tray.  Child-designed creatures were made from thrifted scraps, fairy-dolls from old wooden spools, and a fairy house (in progress) from an old birdhouse.

Even the (incomplete) “mural” on my kid’s wall is made from recycled cardboard and old scrap papers that have been in my stash for years.

I really feel that all of us have a need to be creative in some capacity, and I love bringing together that need with my passion for this earth and finding ways to keep on crafting with a smaller impact on our planet.  I hope that one of these ideas inspires you, too.

I would like to introduce to you my sister-in-law, Maria.  She has graciously accepted my invitation to do a DIY guest post of her Urban Chicken Door Stops.  I am very excited to have her as a guest blogger.  Please leave her a comment. 

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Hello there! 

My name is Maria, and I am admittedly, a half-assed crafty person.  That is, I get a surge of energy and a great idea, run around like a freak collecting all the stuff I need to make something, then sit on it for the next three months.  Plus, my two little ones tend to occupy 95% of my waking energy.  So, the projects are few and far between.  But, it is, oh so satisfying when I do get those moments to put something together. This is one of those little projects I’d like to share.

My husband brought home about two dozen fabric swatch books one day about a year ago – beautiful, gorgeous, upholstery fabrics, just waiting for some creative projects.  We live in an old, drafty, crooked but much loved 1912 house, so I was intending to make some patchwork draft dodgers. While I was scouring the Internet for a free pattern to make one, I came across this tutorial for a chicken door stop. It was absolutely perfect – our old doors never quite stay open because nothing is quite square in the house, and, well, I LOVE chickens!

I mostly followed the directions to a T, so I’ll just show you what I did.  The minor adjustments I made were mostly so I could understand what I was doing, because I am a very novice sewer. If you know your way around a sewing machine, you can whip one of these off in no time!

This is just a bit of the fabric I got:

I used the clear plastic that covered one of my fabric swatch books as my template so that I could use it again. Also, I wanted the chickens to be dual purpose – doorstop + occasional cookbook holder-opener.  So I enlarged the pattern by 50% (I think, you’ll have to play with it to get the size you want). Then I wrote down exactly where the comb, waddle and beak were to go on the pattern.

The sewing up only takes a few minutes actually.  For me, most of the time was spent figuring out where all the chicken parts go.

And that bottom piece was a bit fiddly, but accuracy, thankfully, is not a big deal.

When I sewed the last edge, I did make a point of leaving that 2″ or so gap right in the middle, instead of a corner.  That’s because I find it hard to make it look good hand sewing into an end.

And then I filled my chicken with uncooked rice.  I ended up just rolling my template piece into a cone shape as my other funnel was too small. The plastic worked really well.

There are many eyeball options.  I opted for the non-sewing option.  The girls had a bunch of googly eyes kicking around, and I think you just can’t go wrong with googly eyes. So …

I decided to give this one great big eyeballs. I know chickens have beady little eyes, but BIG eyes are so fun!  Here she is with her sister, whose beak I think is a bit too elongated.  While I freehanded the beaks, etc. I realized after the first one that the beak should be more equilateral triangle like and not so long and pointy.

We now have chickens at almost every door of the house standing guard. Bok bok!

Hello!

Today is Monday and it is the start of a new week.  Let’s get it started!!

This week, I hope to share with you…

1. A simple little DIY project
2. Some photos of my tomato experiment.
3. Some Friday Fun.
4. My usual Saturday feature I {heart} 50 things in 50 weeks.

These caramel/chocolate dipped pretzels rods are delicious and extremely easy to make. 

All you need are 3 ingredients:

1 pkg of caramels and 1 pkg of melting chocolate. 

I used Bernard Callebaut melting chocolate.

(I work right across the street from the factory! Kind of convenient!)

1 pkg of pretzel rods.

Step 1: Melt caramel

Step 2: Pour melted caramel in a tall heat resistant container or glass and dip the pretzel rods about 3/4 way down.

Step 3: Place caramel dipped rods onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and place them into the fridge or freezer.

 10-15 minutes in the fridge or freezer is all it takes for the caramel to harden.

Step 4: Melt chocolate.

Step 5:  Pour chocolate into a tall heat resistant container or glass and dip the rods about 3/4 of the way down.

 Step 6: Place chocolate dipped rods onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and place them into the fridge or freezer.

 10-15 minutes in the fridge or freezer is all it takes for the chocolate to harden.

Step 7:  Take out of fridge or freezer after 10 – 15 minutes and ENJOY!!

Mmmmmmm!!

Please note: All photos are copyright MiniMak Makings 2010. 

Please feel free to use this recipe and tutorial with link back to this site.

Thanks lovelies!!

I will be doing my first DIY very very soon! I just have to finish the project! It’s not going to be anything too extravagant but I am pretty excited about it.  I hope to increase my readership so if you come by, please leave a comment.

I would love to meet you!