Lined Green Writing Chalk Boards

And some with lines! 

I shared the blank doodling ones (on the bottom in the photo) here the other day...

These are 11"x7"x 3/8" too.   

I love these...I have to admit that I just randomly pick them up and write on them...

 I have always loved writing with chalk...even when I was little.

Then I became a teacher and did it all the time!  

 Now we have one getting ready to start school so I thought having the lines would be a good "fun" way to practice....

I like the green color...the black is nice too but the green just takes me back to school

---which I loved once I figured out how to stop daydreaming so much...
Funny how now the daydreaming is what keeps me coming up with all these ideas....
Still working furiously on our Etsy shop!  I hope to have that open here soon and attempt to have a link here on the blog.

Green Chalkboard Doodlepads

 A few posts ago I mentioned having a new idea for our chalkboard notepads...

 And this is one of them...

(still working on the second idea....)

I love the green color...

 These are 11"wide x7 tall"x3/8" thick and they are perfect "kid" size to doodle on...
The back is sealed with several coats of Tung Oil

Love these!

We're getting really close to opening day for our booth space.  But I've also been working on setting up an Etsy store...

Our smaller, handmade items won't really be appropriate for our booth space, and we've been trying to decide how to be able to continue to make and sell those things too....

50mm Cannon lens

 I got a Cannon 50mm lens for my Rebel T3 for Christmas....mine is the 1.8 which is the lower end model. 

Apparently this is the way your eyes see things.  There is no zoom so you have to physically move around to get closer and farther away....

But it makes life really beautiful ;)

  Check out lego swimmer girl!  My son bought his sister two lego people 

(they come in sealed packages so you don't know what you're getting when you buy them)

Both of which turned out to be girls....

 I've been playing around quite a bit taking an obscene amount of photos of anything and everything I can find.  And using the manual setting to try to teach myself about f-stops and shutter speeds....

I'm not really into editing my photos on the computer.  I've seen alot of great photoshop tutorials and I know you can do some really cool things.  I just prefer not to mess with them too much....

Here's my favorite thing to photograph...

Blue Dog her favorite book for nap time....

And this one who constantly amazes me...

insisted I open my gift (from him) BEFORE he opened his own from Santa...

at only 5 years old???

Makes me a proud momma....I feel blessed...

Lego Train

 We had a crazy strong wind storm this past Friday evening while I was right in the middle of laying the new flooring in our bathroom....it brought down alot of branches in our back yard and a whole tree right down the road.  No major damage --we were just without power for the night.

 This would be my son's (and Papa's) latest lego creation....he specifically asked me to take photos and put it on the blog....

 So we had a Train photo shoot this evening :) and these were the best shots....

My sweet son is constantly amazing me....he has quite the imagination!  I cannot believe he's almost 5 years old....time flies...

Meet Wedgehead the Ugly Doll

A few years ago my son spied these little monsters in one of the catalogues we get in the mail...

"Ugly Dolls"

And I made a couple for him out of felt.  

Out of the blue the other day he announced that we were going to make another one for him because he needs---
and I quote...."Like 25 of them, Mom to make a whole family!"

So we looked them up online, and I have to admit they're really fun for boys...cute but not girly.  So he chose the two I sketched out above and we made "Wedgehead" 

I freehanded my pattern (I do half of it on a fold) right onto the fabric.  But you can use wax paper to draw it out on first...
then pinned the front to another piece to cut the back of him out...

He's around 18 &1/2" long and his head is about 10" wide.... I used felt for his face...

My circle template for his eye...you could trace the bottom of a jar or cup...

I lay it all out and glue it with fabric glue before I sew to keep it from wiggling around.  These pieces are small and hard to pin...

Sew his face on first then pin him together with wrong sides facing each other...

I use a little french knot with embroidery thread for the center of his eye...

Sew him together and don't forget....

to leave an opening to get your hand in to stuff him and turn him right side out...

Always clip your curves---

All your curves--it makes it all turn right side out so much better and the curves don't pull and bunch up.

Then I pinned up the opening after turning and stuffing him so I could sew him up...

I always start the needle from inside then you come up and stitch across the top edges...

the idea is to make the beginning of your next stitch right across from the end of your previous stitch....

Then when you pull your thread it comes together and is totally hidden in the seam...

Knot your thread when your done and you have your very own Ugly Doll!!!

He's really kinda cute.....

I used wool coating fabric which I had on hand but you could use fleece or even terry cloth would be fun....these little guys would make good gifts!!!!

Jess Brown style Doll pattern

I'll start by saying this is not a tutorial....but I have noticed that the post about the Jess Brown style doll I made for my daughter Mighty gets a lot of traffic on my blog,

 so I thought I'd share some photos of the pattern I used....

I have no idea how big her dolls really are.  I saw them in Martha Stewart and drew my own pattern to be the way I wanted it.  I've never seen an actual doll in person....

 Below is the body pattern (folded in half so you would place this on a folded piece of fabric)

 The body itself is about 12" long, however you'll be sewing it so you'll lose a little for the seam allowance.  But she also has some long legs so that adds to the overall doll length.  You'll be cutting 2 pieces for each body part (a front & a back) to sew together....

 I made it about 6" (this is half in the photo) across at the base....

 This is the arm & leg pattern.  I used the same pattern for all 4 arms and legs....

It's about 8" in length

 And 1&1/4" wide.  If I were new to sewing I would make this quite a bit wider maybe closer to 2" wide...just to give yourself plenty of space for your seam allowance.  These are very long and narrow.

You can see that I sewed the 2 body pieces together all the way around EXCEPT for the bottom....so I could stuff it and then sew the legs into that seam on the machine.  If you have a zipper foot you can use that it helps sew right next to the bulk of the stuffed body.  But you can do it without one.

 So here she is all put together and I think she's close to 18" long...

 I said previously that I used the same pattern for the arms and legs.  For the arms I folded the unsewn, raw edge under for the arms....

 Then I cut a little round piece of wool coating material to make a sort of fabric button...this is because the fabric of the doll is flannel which is a pretty lose weave of fabric.  I wanted to sew through the doll's body arm to arm to attach them

and these help keep the thread and knots from pulling through.  You could use real buttons.  I made this for my 1 year old daughter and didn't really want buttons.

 I did notice in the photos that she had used a dark thread even though it was a lighter fabric...I really like the look...

I think she based her doll on a vintage rag doll she found or saw so I'm sure that one was hand sewn...

 I used embroidery thread for her face along with a small piece of fabric for her mouth, and sewed right through to the back of her head as you can see here....

 And here....

 Her hair, which is just torn strips of cotton fabric, hides those knots.  I just wrapped the hair on there and kept stitching through to keep the fabric covering most of her head....

I see there is food of some sort smeared at the bottom of her head there!  She's well loved...

I will probably end up making these as gifts at some point...there is something really beautiful about simplicity....