Pin Cushion Swap ~ What I made

I recently took part in a pin cushion swap hosted by Sew Far Sew Good and House of Pinheiro. My swap partner was the lovely and talented Keri of Two Little Flowers. I had so much fun coming up with this little pin cushion and all of the accessories! 

First off, I needle felted a little tree stump on a little green hill and attached it to the wood base. Well, actually I dyed the wool first then felted it... Then I decided to make a little snail out of oven bake clay and a real snail shell I found at the ocean last year.  (The snail idea is not originally mine, but I can't remember where I saw one like this. I saved a picture onto my computer for inspiration, thinking that someday I'd like to make one for myself, and I didn't put down were the idea came from... sorry! If anyone knows I'll edit to include the link!)

Isn't he adorable? 

The flower pins I made by gluing tiny beads onto pin heads.

And the little owl family and clay mushrooms are my own design. I shaped them from oven bake polymer clay, and pushed them onto pin heads. To hold them up while baking I cut a potato in half and pushed the pins into the potato, so they wouldn't warp by laying on the baking sheet while hardening. Not very elegant but it worked and it was free! When they were hard and cooled I painted them. 

My little photo stylist helping my arrange everything just so for the photo shoot. ;-)

I hope Keri enjoys her little pin cushion! Be sure to pop over to her blog Two Little Flowers to see what she sent me!

I'm also linking up with Nicole over at Frontier Dreams for her {Keep Calm, Craft On} link up!

Guest Post Toy Tutorial over at Twig and Toadstool!

Hi everyone! After days and days of not having internet or phone the internet company finally sent someone
over to figure out what was up... turns out one of our dogs dug up a "hidden underground" cable and chewed it to bits. Uggh. These are the times when I really think I am not a dog person.

 Anyway they just now got everything up and running again and I wanted to pop on here to tell you all that I have a guest post over at Twig and Toadstool that went live this morning! I wrote up a tutorial on how to make your very own Comet throwing toys. Hop over to learn how to make one for yourself! And while you are there you can join the link party and post about any crafty things you've made lately!

Bean Bags for Baby

Yesterday during nap time I whipped up a couple of new toys for baby Emmett... Bean bags!

I found some adorable vintage napkins with 1970's patchwork print on them at the thrift store a while back. They were really small about 8 inches square. I drew an owl shape and a frog shape  on a sheet of paper and cut it out to use as a pattern. (Yes, that is a frog... really, don't judge! Emmett thought it was a perfectly tasty frog, thank you very much!)

 I decided to make them double layered since the napkin fabric was pretty thin and I didn't want them falling apart and Emmett eating the "stuffing". I just traced the animal shapes onto muslin, and sandwiched the napkins right sides together between two layers of muslin. Then I stitched quickly around the outline and left a small space un-sewn for turning it right-side out and filling them. The owl is loosely filled with dry garbanzo beans (chick peas) and the frog with brown rice. After I filled them I just hand stitched the opening shut making sure everything was super secure. 

After shaking them, weighing them, and biting them a bit, I think Emmett decided the bean filled owl was his favorite. It makes a nice loud "whack" when hit against the floor, and it rattles pleasantly (loudly!) when shaken. The rice just make shooshing sounds, it feels shooshy too. (And yes, shooshy is a word... I just made it up!)

He crawled all over the house yesterday dragging his new toy with him. Serious business that, the logistics of moving oneself with a favorite object in tow!

Sorry for the graininess of the pictures, it was a dark grey rainy day yesterday and not very conducive to taking pictures of fast moving babies!