Baby Chloe's 1st Day

Here are some pictures of baby Chloe





Chloe and her Big Brother Gryffin

Our new arrival

Lianne,Paul & Gryffin would like to announce the birth of our daughter (little sister) Chloe Paige Stoddard this morning at 9:30 am 9 lbs 5 oz, 21" long. Mommy and baby are doing great!

Easter Greeting

We like to take this time to wish everyone a wonderful Easter holiday weekend.
~Lianne & Paul

Springtime Swirly Carrot How-to

This project is for personal, non-commercial use.

What’s a bunny without his favorite treat!
This sweet little Carrot how-to project is perfect for your springtime display. Or you can make a string of garland of mini carrots for your entry way, or a few can decorate your gardening tool tote.

Materials
• 2 oz White Polymer clay
• Craft glue
• green twine or ribbon
• 3/4" eye pins
• orange, yellow & red craft paint
• Extra fine crystal glitter
• Glossy varnish
• green floral tape
• paint brush
• toothpick
and
• oven
• ceramic tile



Step 1.
Condition the white clay. (If you prefer not to paint you can use pre-colored orange clay.)
With the palm of your hand, roll the clay into a snake-like form 6" long or so. Have one end smaller, then gradually getting thicker toward the end.

Step 2.
Then with your fingers pinch the small end of the clay and start to swirl the clay around into a spiral.



Keep swirling it to the length of the carrot you desire. You can see the carrot taking shape.

Step 3.
Your piece should look like this. Cut the excess clay off the top. This one is about 1 1/4" big, but you can make yours any size.

Step 4.
Take the eye pin and gently insert into the top of your carrot so that just the loop holder is showing. Cut the eye pin to size, so it doesn't stick out the bottom of your carrot.

Step 5.
Using a toothpick, place four holes around your eye pin hook. These holes are for the green leaves of your carrot.

Step 6.
Then place your carrot on the ceramic tile and bake in the oven according to the packaging. (if you don't want to use baking clay, you can also try air-dry clay which could work too)

Step 7.
Once it is baked, let it cool for about 20 minutes or so. Give it a quick sand with fine sand paper.
This makes the paint adhere to the carrot better. If you don't want to paint, you could try using pre-colored orange clay. We like painting them, it gives the carrot more depth and the color pops because of the white clay.

Once the paint dries add two coats of a glossy varnish and let dry.

Step 8.
Now you can add the glitter!
Take some craft glue and put it into a little cup and add a tiny bit of water so the glue won't be too thick. Adding glue and glitter to small parts is easier than adding glue all over. Don't forget to glitter over a piece of paper or a paper plate so you can put the excess glitter back in the jar.

Step 9.
Take your green floral tape and with your scissors cut out 4 leaf shapes in various sizes
from 1 1/4 to 2".





Step 10.
Place a little glue in the hole on top of the carrot. Take your toothpick and insert the bottom (1/8 - 1/4) of the leaf info the hole. Repeat this for each of the four holes.

Step 11.
Take green wax twine or ribbon and insert into the eye pin hole and tie a knot.

That’s it - that is how you make your very own Swirly Mini Carrot!

An Easter filled weekend

Hoppy Monday!

Hope everyone had a fun filled weekend. Our weekend was an Easter weekend for sure.

We took our 3 year old to meet the Easter Bunny at the mall......
Then he had a blast at the town's egg hunt on Saturday morning......
Helped him make a bird house at Home Depot's Kids Workshop......
Semi-permanently dyed his finger tips painting Easter eggs.....
and finally bounced around like a bunny at a friend's bouncy house birthday party.

We hope we will be able to keep this pace up when our new addition arrives on the 15th.

And just a reminder with Easter less then a week away, TODAY is the deadline to place your order for our Spring Easter ornament collection in time for your Easter celebration.

And finally this Tuesday we will have our carrot how-to ready to post. Have you tried our cute little mini Bunny How- to project? If so, please send us some pictures of your results we would love to see how they turned out.

It's Easter time.....

Now that our Spring/Easter collection is done (Monday April 6th is the ordering deadline) we can switch our focus on celebrating one of our all time favorite holiday. Having a child and one on the way, we get to relive all of our childhood memories again & again.

Something about this season with the flowers starting to bloom and the bright pastel colors of spring just makes you feel good, especially living here in New England. The weather is getting warmer and you can actually venture outside with only a light jacket. We have been searching for any local egg hunts around the community here to take part in. Although we haven't made the trip to visit the Easter bunny yet - maybe this weekend.

We did offer to organize our family egg hunt this year. Not a huge egg hunt, but we do have to fill approx 50 or so eggs. We made the trip to the local candy store and couldn't resist all their yummy treats.


How cute is this little chocolate bunny


Today I spent the morning blowing out 4 dozen eggs and boiling two dozen for our family egg painting event. Here are some pictures of the eggs our son painted last year for the first time. Not bad for a two year old. We found the best tool (I think we might have heard this from Martha last year) to use is a baby nasal aspirator. You make a tiny hole on the top of the egg and a little bit bigger one on the bottom then stick a tooth pick inside to break the yolk and then you cover the top hole with the nasal thing and squeeze it and all the egg runs out. We found by using this tool you have many less egg casualties. We would highly recommend trying it. But please make sure you get your sharpie and mark your nasal aspirator egg blower so you don't accidentally reuse it on your children. Yuck!!












Another find we came across last year that we thought was extremely clever was an Easter Bunny's Magical Key made by Hallmark. Similar to the Christmas key for all those families who don't have a fireplace. With the Easter key your child places it on your door knob so the Easter bunny can get in your home to hide the eggs.
Our little on loved this idea last year and when he heard that Easter is coming soon, he's looking forward to hanging up the key again.



What sort of traditions do you for Easter? Leave a comment and share your thoughts and ideas.
~Happy Spring, Happy Easter

NEW Martha Stewart's Craft Book

We treated ourselves to an early Easter gift. We just picked up the new Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Crafts: An A-Z guide with Detailed Instructions and Endless Inspiration. This very heavy and large book covers it all even though we just gave a quick glance inside. But we can tell you it has beautiful photography, and step by step how tos, with material images you need to have for all the projects.
We would recommend it to all crafters out there. Be sure to add this to your library.

Our only complaint would be that we didn't see any polymer clay crafts covered. Well I guess there is always a volume 2 or maybe Swirly Designs will do our own how to book.