Baby Blocks: New Kids on the Block

After I got involved with Stephen, I found myself kicked out of the "We're young, single and ready to mingle" stage of life that I had been enjoying with all my college friends and into the "We're all married and having babies" one.  Now don't get me wrong, I love all the new friends I met through Stephen - they are totally fun and great great people, but there wasn't really any transitional "We're all getting married and being each others' bridesmaids" time with them.  This is what happens when you marry someone 5 years older than you I guess. Now I find myself sitting around thinking "Am I supposed to be having babies now?"  Ok, I don't really do that (much), and this post is kind of getting away with me. The point is this: I have friends with babies now!! 

Babies are great because they are new, and they are cute, and they get to have lots of cute things with bright colors, and that happens to be my very favorite kind of thing to make!  Since cute little things with bright colors don't really fit in that well in our grown up house, I really like having babies to sew for.  So far I've got primarily little girls to craft for, which is also great because I like pink and purple the best!

On to the project.  I've been making baby blocks!  These are soft stuffed cubes with the babies' names on them with rattles inside!  I made a set for new baby Karis, and soon to be new baby Vivienne!

I really like projects that use small pieces of extra fabric, and I really enjoyed making something personalized for these two who might not have the easiest time finding their name on the racks of personalized pens at Walmart.  Did I also mention that I like bright colors?

While making these blocks I started thinking about baby name that only have straight lines.  No Melissa's or Jessica's for me.  Those curves are tricky to sew over!!  I sewed all the letters K through I on the Karis blocks before it occured to me "hey, I have some fabric glue, why don't I just glue the letters down before I sew them."  Duh -  that was a good idea, the S ended up going a lot more smoothly than I thought it would.  The Vivi letters were extra easy - glue and all straight lines!  YES!!  Good name choice Ken and Jami!!!

Karis got little ribbon taggies on her blocks, but I totally forgot to put them on Vivi's until it was too late.  Bummer, because I also happen to love taggies, and have had a weird obsession to put my finger in any loop of fabric I can find.  I still do it now, and I can't help myself.  One day I was walking to class, and when I got there I found that my finger had made its way into the tag in the sweater I was carrying in my purse.  I'm such a weirdo.

It was nearly impossible for me to give these wonderful, new, "virgin" tags away...

Both sets of blocks have rattles inside, so they make a delightfully annoying sound when shaken!  You're welcome new parents!!  Finding a container to make those little suckers was harder than I thought!  I ended up finding some little screw top containers at the container store for the Karis blocks. I decided to use bee-bees for the rattly part of the rattle, but then I got really paranoid about giving a baby something filled with bee-bees.  I guess I got newborns confused with puppies and thought Karis would rip the blocks to shreds or something...  Anyways, I ended up super gluing the little boxes shut, and then gluing another strip of fabric around the opening, just in case.  

 

Baby proof???

I couldn't make it to the container store when I made the Vivi blocks, so I had to run around Waco looking for something that could work. My new containers ended up working really well! Here is where I make up for forgetting the ribbons on this set.  Vivi's baby blocks have BABY BLOCKS INSIDE!!!

Not as exciting as I made it out to be...

So Vivi, on those nights when you are longing for a taggie to put your little finger in, just be comforted by the fact that your blocks are cute on the inside too.

Change we can believe in

There's an old saying that goes, "Don't change anything... ever."  Despite that, you may have noticed a few changes here on the old blog. I'll outline them for you here:

1) The other day my mom was over at our house, and when she was done admiring all of my latest creations she said, "Jenny, you are just so full of crafts!"  She said it kind of slowly, so I of course thought she was about to tell me I was full of something a lot less polite.  So from that we've got a new name, which I think is marginally more creative than "Jenny's Crafts", and creativity is good, so hooray for that! 

2) We have a new layout!  If you read this on your google reader then you probably did not notice this.  No big deal.  I only changed it because my pictures never centered properly on the old layout, and I'm not techie enough to figure out why, but it seems to work better with this layout, and it's still pink, so everything is good!

3) It's a good thing I changed the darn name of this blog because it's not just my crafts on the blog anymore! We have a new guest blogger!!!  This is the most exciting new thing here at Full of Craft!  My sister, Laura, was telling me about all the cool things she had been making so I invited her to write about them on my blog.  This is unfortunate for me though, because she has better access to cute pictures of Josie than I do, and I know the Josie pictures why most of you read this blog. I'm totally outmatched because I don't have a dog or a baby! I guess I'll just have to start getting cute pictures of Stephen to post.  Still, I'm super excited to have Laura sharing my blog because she is super cool and fun!!

4) I've added my twitter posts onto the right side bar.  Since I don't update the blog that often, I thought this would be a good way to keep everyone posted on what I'm up to.  I can post things from my phone as I'm working on them - doesn't that sound fun?  I'll try to keep up with posting previews on there as best I can.  Also, I noticed this feed doesn't load the pictures in a way that you can actually see them... and since I'm not techie enough to figure out how to change it so it does this on it's own, try right clicking on the links and view in a separate window.  Okee dokee!

That's all the change for now, but doesn't it just make you feel good?

Guest Post - Laura's Crafts

I have been so inspired by Jenny's craft blog that she decided to allow me to contribute! Hooray! For those of you that don't know me, I'm Jenny's older sister, Laura, aka Josie's Mom. I used to do a lot more crafting BEFORE I was Josie's mom, but like I said before, I've been quite inspired lately!

In my previous crafting days, most of the items I made were for my dog, Melvin. Melvin is a Jack Russell/Beagle mix, but is probably the laziest dog I have ever known, and spends most of the day laying around either on his pillows or in his kennel (or on the couch when we're not looking!) In order to give him a little more privacy and also to make his kennel less of an eyesore, one of my latest projects was a kennel cover! I made it out of a insulated curtain I found on clearance at Target. It covers up his whole kennel nicely, but if you want to make one for a larger dog kennel, you'd probably need 2 curtains.

My next project was actually something I copied from Jenny's blog. I made myself a handy dandy grocery bag holder. Although I tried to make it large enough to hold all the bags I have, once it was finished, it only held about 1/3 of them! Darn it! The rest are still filling up all the "green" bags I do have. Hopefully some day I'll use them up and actually be able to bring my green bags to the store...

Another great project was my bedside pocket! I've really gotten into watching that show "Hoarders" on A&E, but it also made me realize, that if you judge me by my bedside table, I probably am a good candidate to be on that show. The pocket I made is great for holding my magazines, books, pens/pencils, chap stick, remotes, journals, etc. Now the only problem I still have to solve for is the 4-5 water glasses.

Lastly, I've been busy updating the Josie Signature Spring Collection. As of right now, it really only consists of PJs, but a couple cute dresses, and shirts are also in the works, so stay tuned. Here's a few shots of the supermodel herself showing off her new Froggy Pants and Weebug jammies (weebug = ladybug).



What a cutie!!!