Craft Cart

This Christmas I gave the girls a bunch of new art supplies.  With these additions, the plastic shoeboxes that held all of the art supplies started to overflow.  I've had my eye on the IKEA Raskog cart for the longest time, but going to IKEA is always such a project, so I started to look online for alternative carts and found one at Target.  

It fits perfectly between the wall and the art table.  

When it got set up, my eldest loved sorting all of the craft supplies into containers.  It doesn't always stay so neat.

On the top level, they have all of their markers, crayons, pencils, scissors, glue, etc:

It doesn't go in the cart, but I found an electric pencil sharpener on clearance at Target and the girls are smitten with sharpening their colored pencils.  We were using those tiny hand sharpeners, but the points never got sharp enough and were always broken.  I thought it was the quality of the pencil, but the electric sharpener has proven that the pencils are fine.

With my littlest still being under three, we have to stay vigilant about watching her activity with the scissors.  She always goes for the pointiest ones, of course.  They go to a school that promotes having art supplies and things easily available to the kids at any time, so putting everything in the cart (including scary scissors) mimics the school situation. 

The second level has tapes, stamps, water colors, and oddities.  They love tape.  That dispenser is mine and I'd like to find one for them so that I can have that back, but it's okay for now.  It's pretty sturdy, so it's held up well against their destructive nature.

The third layer just holds all the papers, stickers, and coloring books:

So that's their cart.  The only thing I keep out of it are the acrylics.  We'd always be painting if they saw them out all the time.  

Napkin Sweatshop

My friend invited a group of us over for a napkin making sewing session.   It was fun and it's been so long since I spent all day sewing with a group of ladies.  I think the last time was over seven years ago.  

The idea was to set up an assembly line of sorts, where some would cut, some would iron, some would sew, etc.  That happened a little bit, but we had some napkin style variations, so it wasn't an exact assembly line sweatshop experience.  To sustain us through five and a half hours of sewing we had delicious nibbles:

Anyway, on to the sewing photos!  Here are some process shots of ladies hands hard at work:

I always like photos of hands at work.  Not my hands.  My hands are crap, but other hands are nice.

Check out the finished stack:

Amanda's napkins were all double sided.  Some were backed with recycled tablecloths or other fabrics.  

Katie's napkins were also double sided, but finished with mitred corners and she used this pattern from Purl Soho.  I'm very impressed that she committed to that pattern!  So hard!

Colleen and I both went with single layer napkins.  I brought my serger and once we figured out how to thread it (and keep it threaded), it was a very quick process to whip up some napkins.  Here are Colleen's:

?? ??  Oh crap!  I didn't take any photos of hers.  Ugh.  I'm the worst friend.  You can see her black ones and maroon ones stacked in with mine.   Here are our serged edges:

Serging was so much fun.  I need to get better at using that machine and should probably take another class.  I also took a part off of it for the rolled narrow hem and I'm not sure how to put it back.

Anyway, here are my napkins:

It was a lovely day!  I've proposed doing it again, but making holiday gift bags.  It's just an idea...

Oh, but before we part, I will leave you with a pile of sewing smegma:

Marbled Magnets

Hello!  Yes, yes, I'm still alive.  I've just not been crafting or blogging or even reading very much...I can't say that I've been doing much of anything lately.  So this thing here that I'm showing you was done for Christmas....3 months ago.  Argh.  

So...remember when I took that second marbling class?  I made more bookmarks for the little free library with some of that paper and then I also made little tiny magnets.  I got the idea from Consumer Crafts and did a little bit more research via Pinterest to decide on the best method.  One place suggested Diamond Glaze and I bought that, but then realized that it wasn't what I wanted to use to adhere the magnets to the glass tiles.  I used some of the E-6000 stuff and probably gave myself lung cancer in the process.  That stuff is so smelly and I'm sure I wasn't well-ventilated because it was winter in Minnesota.  I bought all of my supplies on Etsy from this seller.  They had everything I needed, so that worked out.  

Anyway, so here are the end results.  The lighting is not great, because I finished at night and had to pack everything up to ship off the next day.

These were little boxes of magnets that I gave away to the girls' teachers.  I never know what to give as teacher gifts.

The bigger boxes, which fit about six magnets, were sent off to friends and family.  

The idea was to find little tin boxes so that the magnets would stay put during shipping.  Unfortunately, I could not find any locally and could not find any cheap enough online that I liked.  So I went to the dollar store and picked up six packs of gift boxes.  Then I got some stupid idea to use magnetic tape.  It really wasn't strong enough, so I'm assuming that when everyone opened their boxes the magnets were all stuck together and chaotic.  Oh well.

I have a bunch still that did not get given away, so that's good to have a little present stash on reserve.  I just need to remember that I have it.