felt ornaments with tutorials

here are a few of my handmade felt ornaments from years back, stockings...
and candy canes! the candy canes are an especially easy project for your very first time making felt. they are wrapped around a pipe cleaner and then felted by hand. super fast, great for kids.

tutorials for both of these project are in the archives, stockings here and candy canes here, and they are also linked to over there on the right in the tutorial list!

sneak peek: new lego and paper sets from muji

here's just a glimpse of the fabulous new designs added to muji's lego and paper sets this year. this is the ocean set,
the circus set,
and the zoo animals set.

i'll post a complete round up in the next week or so, but here's just a peek, and there's a flickr set here.

make your own pick up sticks

last week i was telling my students about pick up sticks. my students are all japanese adults who take english conversation class, and once a week we have a chatting hour. i don't remember how we got onto the topic of games, but after comparing hide and seek, and different kinds of tag, which are pretty similar across cultures, they wanted to know about games that i used to play as a kid, the kind with toys. oh, and jump rope is international too, although what we called chinese jump rope is called something else (i forget) in japanese. the 2 games that involve things that i thought of were jacks and pick up sticks. i loved jacks as a kid. and apparently it doesn't exist in japan. although according to youtube (very helpful for chatting hour) it's an 'ancient' and international game. we found a set of pick up sticks at the school, and enjoyed a game (also the first time for my students). although they were the plastic kind, not the nice wooden ones.

and, if you fancy making your set of pickup sticks, here's a tutorial from chez beeper bebe, via whip up.

what were you favorite games as a child? i also loved hopscotch and foursquare.

castle peeps summer camp

have you heard of castle peeps summer camp? it's a brilliant idea from lizzy house, with craft projects using her new castle peeps fabric line.
this is the 2nd project, a memory game made from fabric that is laminated. i love this idea! it's so simple, but so brilliant! also, i have a used laminator that i haven't tried yet...
here's a photo from the 1st project-finger puppets! more castle peeps summer camp projects are coming every thursday for 8 weeks this summer, check them out.

children's books illustrators

last weekend i saw this exhibit of the swiss illustrator hans fischer at the itami city art museum. i loved his books when i was little, the story of pitchi the curious kitten, and the birthday cake surprise planned by the animals. i don't know if most people have read these books, or if we just had them because of our swiss family friends.

recently i've seen some very cute pitchi stationary products here in japan, and this exhibit had all the books, including original drawings.

another all time favorite, the very hungry caterpillar has been made into a fabric print! just in time for the new japanese school year that starts in april. there are actually 2 variations of the print, this one with the dots and large images is my favorite, and it's available on a light yellow or blue background. it's sold out in my shop right now, but i will be restocking it later this week.
it's also available in the wonderful quilted fabric, which is used to make a whole slew of products required for japanese kindergartens.
i used it to make a laptop sleeve, which has has the intended effect of making me more happy to schlep around my laptop and crave a new ipad less. well, a little less maybe!

wee easy stuffed animals project, fabric crayons

this is one of the projects i was working on last month: tiny stuffed animals.
they are super easy to make, i used a cute cotton ed emberly print, and just sewed around the animals.
i made a simple background cloth with fabric crayons.
here's how to make them.

i used 1 piece of print fabric with animals on it, and one piece of plain white fabric for the back. if you are using a print where you have animals facing both directions, you could match them up and make a reversible project-mine only have an animal on one side.

put the 2 fabrics right sides together, and sew most of the way around each animal, leaving an opening. i found it easier to sew them all before you cut any out.
cut them out.
turn them inside out and stuff. hand sew the rest of the way around. (sorry, no photo!)
these are the fabric crayons (from muji, my favorite store). they worked great. after using these or other fabric crayons, heat set with an iron on low heat, put paper on both sides of the fabric before ironing.
fabric crayons are great for kids too! here are my little pals that i made the animals for, helping me give the fabric crayons a test run.

if you wanted to do this project with small children, they could draw the background, or you could also turn their hand drawings into little stuffed animals.

ribbit from from spud and chlöe

free pattern for this cute froggy, 'ribbit' is available from the spud and chlöe blog, where they are also having a giveaway right now!

via craft gossip

win bookhou animals from bloesem kids

would you like a chance to win these lovely soft stuffed animals, made by bookhou? for the details and to enter, check out bkids.

girls' day in japan

march 3rd is girls' day in japan, celebrated with special food and doll displays. the photo above, with the full display on 7 stairs, is from ping magazine, which also has a great and in depth explanation about the dolls and the culture of the festival.and this bag was made by the super nice and talented seamstress jacqui of mee a bee. and she's giving it away! check out her blog for the details.

vote TODAY on change.org to save handmade!

have you been following the news about the c.p.s.i.a.? it stands for 'consumer products safety improvement act,' new legislation slated to go into effect on february 10th.

the idea behind the new law is to protect children from toxic products. but the way the law is currently written, even small and home based business who make all natural items in small batches for children would be forced to pay exorbitant testing fees to say in business legally.

the image above is from cool mom picks.

there is a lot of information available at http://www.handmadetoyalliance.org

most importantly, today is the last day to vote at www.change.org!!

hand made baby gifts japanese craft book

i just listed this book in my etsy shop. it may be the cutest book yet of hand made craft projects that would be the perfect gift for a new baby.

"sweet baby, hand made gifts"
ISBN 978-4-07-246385-7 i love that it includes such a wide variety of projects and different kinds of crafts, from sewing, embroidery, applique, and handmade rubber stamps. you can more pictures on my flickr account, in the japanese craft book set, but here are just a few more.

i'm on bloesem kids!

irene from bloesem has been so kind as to feature felt cafe on her kids design blog:
bloesem kids. you can see the full sized post here.

irene also curates the lovely blog bloesem, which is always chalk full of wonderful things.