Always have the holidays on the brain....

We had an impromptu Lego day at the studio this week when the kids came home from school. They wanted to build some lego cars and have a race. So we sat down and dove into our sons many bins of Lego pieces to start creating. We had recently spent a whole weekend organizing his legos giving each bin its own color. But of course now we're thinking it might have been even more helpful to have each bin have sections for each different sized pieces. Alas that organizing challenge is not really the point the of this post...

When I was trying to think of what to make for my speedster, I was getting pretty overwhelmed with what to do. I was trying to approach this project as I would a new design collection - lots of research and sketches..blah blah. So I just stopped and observed how the kids were working. They just jumped right in and started building! No worries, no second guessing... just having fun. So I took a deep breath and dove in to make what I love and here are the results....I was rather impressed with my trio of Holiday Hot Rods.

 We have the Easter Bunny in his souped up carrot car.

 a haunted Halloween hot rod equipped with claws and spider web wings

and Santa's magical horse drawn sleigh.

All and all it was a fun afternoon even though the kids weren't as impressed with my creations as myself and Lianne were. It didn't help matters when I told them these were just too good to destroy so Daddy is going to glue them together when they were asleep ;)

Any fellow Lego designers out there?

Crafts n' Things Magazine

 Here is a fun holiday how-to project we created for the December 2012 issue of Crafts n' things magazine. We supplied them the step-by-step text and the finished snowmen magnet pieces so the magazine could photograph them.  Here is how the how-to looked in the issue.

These pictures below are shots that we took ourselves to submit the how-to project for consideration in the holiday issue.  The idea behind this project came to us when our son would keep ripping out pictures and writing down all the new toys he wanted for Christmas and sticking them all over the house. With these wish list magnets it could help us organize all his requests in one spot. 

Happy Holidays!

For the birds!

We survived! What you ask, did we survive? Turning our clocks back!! I don't know about you, but this pesky little thing we do in fall is quite literally "for the birds"! We have so many clocks to make sure we turn back, it can drive us bonkers. BUT we did it and now we are settling into the days getting darker MUCH earlier. Winter is right around the corner.

And with the cold weather upon us we thought it would be a good idea to make a few bird feeders to hang in our yard to help our little birdie friends during the colder months.

We wanted to do something inexpensive and easy that our 6 year old would enjoy helping with.

The only supplies we used were a liter seltzer bottle, wooden spoons, birdseed and some twine.




We got a 4lb bag of birdseed for $1.32.



We started out by having our son mark where the holes go for the spoons. Basically the spoons act as perches for the birds and the seeds spill out onto the flat part of the spoon. We cut out the holes with a sharp pair of scissors. The spoons were cheap too...a pack of 4 for $1!



Once the spoons were put in the bottle it was time to fill 'er up! The 6 year old thought this was the best part because he got to use a scoop and a funnel! Be sure to use a pan with a lip to catch any spills!

The last step before hanging is to insert an eye screw to the cap of the bottle and then you are ready to add your twine to hang.



Now off to go find places to hang them! We made two, so we put one in the back yard and one in the front. We'll see which place draws more of a "crowd".



Here he is checking out his handy work.



And lo and behold, our first feathered friends! Here is a little chickadee munching on the seeds and the photo below shows a bluejay checking out the seeds that have fallen from the feeder. He's in the lower right of the picture.



So for a little over $3 we think that this is a great project for little ones to do. It teaches them about wildlife and responsibility. We told him that he has to make sure to check the feeders often because the birds will come to rely on them and not to let them get empty. We also are hoping the squirrels don't get to the seed before the birds do!

Hope you all have a great week!

Pumpkin painting fun

Over the weekend we had a lot of fun with the pumpkins we've gathered this fall season. Through our visits to the farm for some apple picking and visiting the local farmers market we've built up quite a nice collection of pumpkins and gourds.

We finally set aside some time to play around. We carved a few, but then decided to experiment with painting on some and these are the fun results.

Our little guy went straight for the glow-in the dark paint. Painting pumpkins is a safer alternative for the kids who might find it challenging carving with sharp tools.


We chose to paint this pumpkin with metallic teal blue paint and adding dimensional red dots.


This one was created by masking tape off areas and painting the top part black and the bottom part is painted first with white paint with added glow in the dark glitter and of course embellished with dots. Everything looks better with dots!









Boo! This is our little ghost gourd. His unique shape helped us choose what he would become.


Here is our colorful collection displayed under our tree in kitchen for all to enjoy!
Have you painted any pumpkins?

Check out our Tweet little shadow box

We thought we would share with you a quick little project we did this week for a friends daughters 3rd birthday gift using one of our swirly ornaments.

Our friend really liked our Swirly birds ornament we created for our Spring collection. Unfortunately we sold out of the designs before she could order one. So we told her we would create another one. By the time we got around to creating a new one, her little girls birthday was coming up. Perfect we thought, we can create a cute shadow box so she can hang it in her room all year long. It's very simple and with a few supplies you too can create this tweet little shadow box.


We picked up a simple white shadow box frame at our local craft store along with a piece of scrapbook paper, some paint, embellishments & tissue paper. Take the frame apart and set the glass aside until your done. Use the background cardboard of the frame as a template for your scrapbook paper. We used Mod Podge to glue the paper to the cardboard. Then we dry brushed with white paint over the scrapbook paper to dull down the pattern a little.


We then cut up small rectangle and square shapes out of tissue paper.


Using Mod Podge again, we glued the tissue on the top and bottom of the frame for a punch of color . Then we painted a light green wash around the front and two sides of the frame.


The shadow box came with a thin piece a paper for the frame mat. You can use that paper as a template on a piece of really nice decorative paper. We picked a metallic white glitter cardstock and embellished it with paper flowers.


The creativity is endless when decorating your frame. Just remember you want to make sure the frame compliments your artwork/ornament and not competes with it.


The frame is now complete and all that is left is hot gluing the ornament to the background. Assemble the frame and hang it on your wall!

We hope Catherine will enjoy this for years to come. Happy Birthday!
~Lianne & Paul

Easter eggs & crafts with the kids

It's been a busy few weeks around here with school vacation and preparing for Easter, all while we are in the middle of a major reorganizing project in our studio closet (we'll post pictures of that project soon). With Easter only two days away we wanted to squeeze a few fun projects for our little ones this week.


egg decorating:
Always a fun treat and the kids love it but this really requires a lot of preparation ahead of time if you want to do the really fancy stuff so we just stuck to the basics. We had approx 5 dozen eggs - half of them boiled while the other half were blown out.


Our little guy always prefers his hands for dipping the eggs instead of the wire holders.


Our two year old got the hang of it very quick and then became very bored with the whole thing.


The white eggs turned into colored eggs very quickly!


Letting the eggs drip dry on a styrofoam piece with tooth picks works really well. We got the idea from a similar one we found on the Martha Stewart site.












Craft projects:
Today we spent the morning doing some quick craft projects. Our two and our five year old's attention span for doing craft projects is very limited these days, so the faster the project is the better.

We made paper eggs and painted them with water colors and dot markers.


This fun paper bag birds nest idea from Family Fun magazine was a perfect quick project for the kids. We spent some time outside collecting branches in the yard and glued them on a crumpled up paper bag.



it's another way to display your painted eggs.


How funny are these little bunnies! Using a white paper bag, some googly eyes, white and pink felt, stickers and pom poms (for the tail) you can make your own cute bunny puppet!

Happy Easter Crafting!!