Craft Tutorial: Butterfly and Bunting Nursery Art

With only 6 weeks left before #3's due date, I've been trying to get busy!  I made this to match her mobile, which has hanging butterflies and flowers, with bunting around the four "sticks."  This piece (a little smaller than a piece of printer paper) will hang on the wall with the ribbon flower and some other art.

Craft Tutorial: Large Ribbon Flower

This flower is for the nursery wall of the on-the-way girl #3. I also made a crochet one and a felt one using other people's tutorials. Though I looked, I couldn't find instructions for large flowers made of ribbon, so I winged it. It turned out about the size of my hand.

Supplies:
Three types of ribbon, preferably all the same thickness. Mine were three quarters of an inch and the sparkly one was an inch.
Small piece of cardboard
Hot glue
Button, bead, or small flower for center

Instructions:
Cut a small circle out of the cardboard. I traced the top of a solo cup for my circle. Then I punched a hole in it in order to hang it on the wall.

Next cut 17 or so 6" pieces of the bottom color of ribbon. Fold them over and glue the bottom together to make a loop.

Start glueing the loops to the outer edge of the circle, being sure to put them close enough together to cover up the cardboard.

Fill in the circle, cutting more loops if necessary.

Cut 12 6" pieces of the middle color of ribbon, fold them over and glue. Start glueing the second layer. Mine covered the cardboard completely at this point.

Again, cut more loops if you don't have enough, and fill the circle.

Cut six or so pieces of the center color of ribbon. If yours is the smaller size you may need more than I did. Fold and glue into loops.

Glue onto center, close enough together to cover the tails of the last layer of ribbon.

Then glue the embellishment onto the center of that layer of ribbon, covering the tails and glue.

To make my double layer button, I glued a small flower button's attachment loop to the center of a larger white button.

And there you have it! Using a thinner ribbon in the center would make our look less like a Christmas bow, but I think it turned put pretty cute anyway. :)

And apologies for the crummy phone pictures. When I get my laptop back from the Nerd Herd I will post the better ones, and of course stay tuned for an early February post of the completed nursery with all its crafty goodness.


©2012 Alli Hyer, all rights reserved.  You may sell items you make with this tutorial, but if you sell them online, you must link to this tutorial.  You may not sell this tutorial or claim it as your own.  You may publish or post a link to it, but you may not publish or post it in whole or in part.

Craft Tutorial: Non-slip Hair Clip

I've been making crochet and felt flowers and bows for my girls' hair for a long time, and pretty early on I realized that most handmade bows are too heavy for the alligator clips, especially with a layer of felt in between the "jaws."  I figured out this way to make the clips stay in their hair better from looking at my non-slip headbands for running.  There's a line of clear plastic on the inside that grips my hair.  That was easy enough to do!

I put the flowers for all my crochet hats on alligator clips so that they can be used as hair bows after the baby grows out of the hat.  Using this non-slip hair clip method ensures that the clip won't slip off the hat or out of the kid's (or mom's!) hair.

Free Pattern: Kiddie Sunglasses Necklace

These are for my girlies, who love to wear their sunglasses when the sun is "shiny" in their eyes, but who frequently toss them onto the floor of the van.  Where they step on them.

I am going to share the method I used to DIY the section that attaches to the glasses.  There is a much easier way to do it - you can just buy a couple of crimp beads in the jewelry making section of the craft store and sl st the yarn to one side of each one.  But I wanted to come up with a way to do it for someone like me who thinks of it and wants to do it without a trip to the craft store first.

Craft Tutorial: How to Make a Diaper Cake

A diaper cake is a great homemade baby shower gift that doubles as a baby shower decoration.  This diaper cake was for my friend's baby girl with a brown and pink nursery, but a diaper cake can be easily personalized to fit either gender and any taste.

Craft Tutorial: Button Rattle Baby Toy

 When my #1 got interested in my keys, I made my first version of this, with a rattling whistle, a jingle bell and beads of different shapes and sizes.  With similar appeal to (but less germs than) my keys, this was my substitute.  

Also, #1 didn't get her fine motor skills as fast as some babies, so it was hard for her to hold many rattles.  This toy is much lighter than many store-bought toys, and the string construction makes it easy for babies like her, with less-developed fine motor skills, to grasp.  It was her favorite toy for a couple of months - one of my proudest crafting moments.  :)