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.

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.