Mimi's tea party

I was beside myself happy when Mimi decided she wanted a fancy tea party for her 8th birthday this year. It seemed so fun and "simple" to do - okay, it was NOT simple, even a little bit, but it was a lot of fun. The eight year old loved it and so did all of her friends. (She's had tea every day since)

Here are some pics.

Mimi's fabric collage

Mimi's fabric collage, a photo by libby dibby on Flickr.

It took over our living room for two days. Mimi was a hard worker and even got everyone in the on the act at some point as she cut and glued through my scrap bag. The finished project is about 4'x6' and now is proudly hanging in her bedroom above her bed.
She worked on it between making a cement stepping stone and knotting a fleece pillow. The girl is a crafting machine...(can't imagine where she got that from, I wish my day were as fun as hers!)

mimi raises money for World Vision

Well, we did it!
We got Mimi's section of my etsy shop up and running and she's already made a sale as she tries to raise money for World Vision.
You have to click here and read the adorable description that she made for the pendants and don't mind me as I shamelessly plug her attempts to raise $$$ for other kids around the world. I love it when my kids get ideas like this and I'm so proud of her.
We will be posting about 12 more necklaces today and I know you'll be able to find something for someone in your life! (and YES, I will make special a special post about the sewing themed ones, because you can't miss those... Those were made by momma's special request)

Mimi wants to raise money for hungry kids

Stay tuned as Mimi is going to start selling necklaces that she makes this week. This week, the World Vision catalog arrived with lots of cool options to buy animals for hungry families around the world. Mimi immediately decided she wanted to earn $100 to buy some ducks and chicks for needy families. We recently bought supplies to make glass pendants and Mimi used clippings from her own magazine to make this necklace from one of the Rainbow Magic fairy images. She will be making 10-12 more charms this week and we will post them in my etsy store. They will be $10 each and all money will go to this cause. (hooray!)
... Be thinking about the little and big girls in your life who might want such a cool treasure.

Mimi presents her quilts at the LAMQG

In February, I took Mimi to Sew Modern and as we bought fabrics for my birthday, she picked out a bunch that she wanted to make a bag with. I told her that if she made the bag that she'd get to present it at a guild meeting and that I would let her stay up really late to attend.
Well, you saw the bag. Now you get to see the awesome pics that my guild pal, Nichole, took of the Design Director showing off her work. (THANKS,  NICHOLE!)


Here she is saying, "This one I designed but I didn't sew it, because I was only 4"


"This quilt I did everything except for the owl and the binding. My mom helped me with those"


"Here is my bag. I did everything on it except I didn't do the snap or the button on the pocket and my mom attached the ribbon to the straps for me before I sewed them on"

Everyone was freaking out. She was pretty cute, even if she was my own kid. That little 6 year old got up in front of everyone and said exactly what she wanted to say in front of 60 adult strangers. Talk about proud moments. I was so high on that kid that night. She rocked it.
Then after the meeting she showed me the fabrics she wanted to make a dress out of and asked for a lollipop.

Mimi finishes her bag

The design director and I went shopping on my birthday for some fabric and had a blast. We went to Sew Modern, a fellow LAMQG pal's store in West LA and she had the women there in stitches (no pun intended) as she picked out her fabrics.

They were blown away by her sense of color and asked her to bring in her finished project. We have plans and clearance to bring it to the next guild meeting, along with her quilt she made a while back, and she will get to be a part of the group's show-and-tell time.

The bag is a design we worked on together, but other than the hand sewn snap and attaching ribbon to the webbing fabric for the straps - she sewed every single stitch, een attaching the straps and label.
(I'm so proud of her!)

Ze Artiste decided he wanted to do one too now and we made him a great pouch with basketball fabric that he also sewed completely by himself on my machine. (post to come)

Momma daughter crafting

This morning I was showing Mimi and her pals (who are hosting us in Chicago) a little lesson on vintage yoyos. I showed them how I brought a little pile of them on my trip to sketch... Here is the Design Director working on a flower she saw on one of the yoyos.

The other pic is a book I picked up at the American Girl store yesterday full of great re-purposed crafts right up our alley. Can't wait to do those as projects...

Rock pets

One of our "Camp Mommakid" projects in the mountains was making these silly rock pets from random items in Mimi's art bin and rocks we found on our walks. The more we made, the funnier they got.

Mimi's morning projects

Nearly every day now we are waking up to some new artwork from Mimi. Today is Z's birthday party and before mom, dad or Z were awake she'd made these crowns for them. She had designs for evereyone at the party to make them too. (if you haven't guessed, his theme today is dinosaurs...)

A house for hermit crab... Kinder crafts

Since I'm the designated artsy parent in mimi's kindergarten class, when the all school Festival of Arts was fast approaching and the class needed to do a 3D illustration of this Eric Carle book (A House For Hermit Crab)... I was called. I've spent the last two mornings in kindergarten, making tons of art projects. And today our masterpiece is finished! Tonight's show may offer us chances for better pics, but here are some to share for now.
What fun we all had... and if you know the book (which IS adorable) you'd immediately recognize that we have the whole underwater world of this hermit crab represented. ALL made by kindergarteners. The only thing I did on my own was to wind the pipe cleaners to make the little red hermit crab himself. They did ALL of the rest. I'm so proud of them!

Wonky frenzy

The design director has caught the bug. "momma, let's sew!" (could I imagine happier words?) Today we made another quilt for her dollies. Again she impressed me with her sense of color and confident design direction. And how cute is she at the machine?

Quilting kids

Tonight my kids asked if they could sew. (um okay!) They loved last night's wonky square project that i did ad showed them and asked if they could make their own. I stood next to the machine, did the pedal, and let them not only make the design decisions, but work the presserfoot on the machine and guide the fabric through it. I loved watching them do it. Ze artiste even lasted way longer than I thought he would (thus the smaller square)... The design director could have done it with me all night. This is totally my love language... Making things with people. I've bonded with so many people over a sewing machine - how happy was I to do it tonight with two of my biggest prodigies/critics/challenges/joys.
They go to bed tonight with mommy's heart happy.
And yes, the rockin' scrap box strikes again.

Design director designs a quilt

Momma has been making so many quilt tops. I'm exploding with ideas. But worth stopping all of that creative energy is the chance to include a certain little someone. She saw me sketching out my ideas in my journal and promptly went and got her crayons and a pen to design her own quilt. I was so flattered... So of course I was going to stop everything I was doing to make her sketch come to life. Here it is.

The only thing I bought for it was the satin binding - which looks horrible up close... But she loves it, it is her design, and we made it happen.

Glasses

Mimi got glasses today. Of course, she picked the hot pink ones that most closely resemble momma's glasses. She is thrilled to see clearly "everything looks bigger!" and Z asked for a pair, which we got at the 99cent store and promptly popped the lenses from.... So now we are a fully spectacled family... And a cute one at that (at least the youngest two are!)

Don't hate me because I am obsessive - another quilt top

a pic of last night's yellow and grey top - out in the sunlight. aiming for better pics soon...

I figure I am entitled to obsess over things every once in a while. If there is one thing to know about my dear husband - it's that he is a PATIENT man. He doesn't worry when I take over the house with my latest obsession - whatever it may be - beading & scrapbooking in years past, painting, collage, decoupage, sewing clothes, quilting, drawing, writing & illustrating a book, making stationery... there are too many hobbies to count. Somehow, J finds the grace to rejoice over each creation with me - however small they are - and he will even allow me to discuss my multitudes of plans with each project.

Our house for the past 5 years has been overcome with fabric. And all this time, I was hoping to get up the nerve to try quilting... stockpiling quilting cotton... and this week I feel like the volcano erupted. I keep sewing the quilt tops, because I am afraid I will lose my motivation and begin to forget my ideas. So for now (while J is working 2 jobs and very busy - out filming THIS tonight), I'm quilting like it might be my life.

At least this is a little more productive than reading Twilight again. Though I am not against that, either.

Tonight's quilt top has a lot of inspiration. In it there are pieces of the fabrics I used for the Design Director and myself and our matching top/dress at Mother's Day last year. There are pieces of one of AJ's blankies. There's some fabric from a shirt J used to wear to work. And there are some vintage fabrics, pieces from a charm pack and even more that I have no idea where they came from. (Have I mentioned that I have a great fabric collection?)

This quilt should be interesting to see where/how it ends up. The yellow square in it just had to be there. Mimi's love for yellow ends up popping up in funny places - I never loved yellow until the design director did... and I now gravitate to it. So that's a little shout out to her inspiration, I guess. (she, by the way, is noticing Momma's frenzy and has been sketching out her own quilt designs that we will work on together). I'm not really a "white" lover... and have literally no white in our house other than tile in the kitchen and bathroom... so it's funny that I've been collecting these white and green fabrics for years. I'll keep you posted on the progress of this. (obviously. can't I keep any secrets?)

No. I can't. That's why I have to tell you about all I love.

Tonight I was loving Craftsanity. I always love Jennifer's podcasts. She's a great interviewer, and gets awesome guests on her show... but tonight was fun to listen to because I sponsored her show! (yay!) I felt like I have received so much inspiration from her over the past few years, that I needed to give back. Well worth it. Tonight's podcast didn't make me cry, like some of them do - but it was really fun to listen to and I enjoyed it a lot. (Thanks, Jennifer!)

Drawing time

Now that The design director is in school all day every day, we don't get art time like we used to. Just now she found a shading tool from my drawing supplies and asked what it was. (yay!) i took a few minutes to show her how fun a plain old pencil can be. (I drew my thumb as I leaned over her and we worked on the shading together.) we got to talk about observing light and dark, shadows, shading...
I love moments like this. She's busy now... Looking at everything a little closer and trying to draw and shade it all.

Another body to clothe

The Design Director got an American Girl doll from her grandparents for Christmas. Which means we now have another body to clothe around here... And since I'm unwilling to pay more to clothe a doll than I use for myself, she's now getting handmade stuff as well. As an incentive to practice reading, Mimi now has a little chart. She read 10 books aloud to earn mittens for Kit this week. So here they are. She was so excited about them tonight that she almost couldn't go to sleep.

Design Director's Tree Collage

Mimi tried her hand at one of momma's collages last night.
How much do we love this?!!!!!

More time as art teacher...

I love being the art teacher for Mimi's class! The kids either call me " Mimi's mom" or "art teacher" (both of which I love!) the teacher asked if this week I would do something about apple trees or farms, so I (of course) "googled" that and found the cutest craft - which I modified, of course. The kids traced their hands with crayon, painted that in with brown paint to serve as the trunk and branches of the trees. Then we tore little pieces of paper to make leaves (note: tearing was a little hard for some of these kindergarteners), glued them onto the trees and then polkadotted some apples onto the trees for a final touch. I love how they came out! My favorite part was sewig the different artistic styles come out... Abstract vs. Literal... Minimalist vs. Extravagent...

Princess Canopy: closeup

The Design Director's birthday present was an easy and fun project...

Tif (who was making an identical one for her step-daughter) and I started with store-bought IKEA canopies and "girlied" them up with adhesive rhinestones, ribbons, hanging fairies, and plastic butterflies. The hardest part was the "false ceiling" on the inside of the canopy - but it was more time consuming than difficult (I was able to use the machine for that, phew!)

We each used different fairies, I ended up with some of the Disney Princess little figurines, hanging by thread. They're sparkly, plastic and super cute.