Book Initials

Book initials continue to be popular and fun. My friend wanted a Star Wars book for her son (M).  We wanted to preserve as much of the title on the spine as possible. She suggested cutting it on the side, and we both loved it. Might have to try more this way. There are certain letters that might work better than others.

I think my letter designs have been improving. Cutting in curves can be tricky, and straight lines can be plain or boring. I have learned to make gentle curves and pseudo-san-serifs in the design to improve their looks. I am working on a future tutorial.

This J is the most recent one I've cut. After many revisions, I very much like how this one turned out.

Three A's in three variations. The top one experimented again with saving the whole spine of the book because of the title. The second and third ones are basically the same design, but the slants are straight versus curved on the second one. All a matter of taste. I have been working on designs that allow me to cut out center pieces without using a jig saw.

Eighteenth Party

 L. had a bit of an 18th birthday party with her friends. Bonfire and buddies. Can't beat it.

Garden Goodies

 

The girls each had a few things planted in our very relaxed garden this year. We have gotten a few lovely potatoes, squash, green beans and carrots. W. took a distinctly negative view on cute bunnies after they chewed off most of her carrots. She said, "Shoot them!"

Davenport

Husband and I were in Davenport, IA for a few days in Sept for the US Soy Global Trade Exchange, as part of his soybean board duties. The 2013 event was attended by more than 200 international customers and more than 300 U.S. industry leaders representing 41 countries. It was very interesting to see all the different countries represented. The little red tack on the right of this picture is a momento given out at a  signing ceremony between China and other Asian countries and the US sealing a $2.8 billion soybean deal.

We had the car, so I spent some of the conference time at places like this (above and below.) I can't think of a more fun-sounding place than one called "Stuff."

I also hit some Salvation Army, etc. thrift stores. You know you are in a classy establishment when the toilet paper is chained and padlocked to the bathroom grab bar! Yow!

Davenport is part of the Quad Cities on the border of IA and IL and sits on the Mississippi River. It is a manufacturing area, known for John Deer equipment, and more recently one of the cities (Alcoa) is known as the home of the American Pickers TV show.

One day when husband was more free, we spent an afternoon in East Davenport wandering around and shopping. There were some lovely historical buildings and fun stores.

We had some great burgers at the 11th Street Precinct Grill. Lots of firehouse history and charm.

We took a supper cruise on the Mississippi with about 500 other attendees.

City Street Art and Bugs

You will probably get sick of seeing these four kids from my little Friday class, but maybe not, because they are so cute. Our art project this day was drawing buildings and cityscapes on the backs of empty cardboard food boxes. I found this great idea at one of my favorite blogs: Creative Jewish Mom. (Her blog is also a great resource for crochet projects.)

I printed out a few buildings and city reference pictures for the kids and encouraged them to notice and use architectural details. This project would be a nice introduction or companion lesson for a unit on architecture styles. You could do one a week of classic styles for a series. We took a more relaxed approach and just did free drawing.

We used black permanent markers and filled in with colored markers. We combined our boxes into a whole block of buildings. We even had a doghouse (toothpick box) and an empty lot with grass and a tree. It helped to show them an example of what would be folded away when the boxes were reassembled. I tried gluing the boxes together, but I think taping with masking tape or packing tape might work well to re-assemble. I forgot my masking tape so we made do with clear tape.

The same week in our entomology class, we made bugs out of pipe cleaners, pom poms and google eyes. They were supposed to be centipedes and millipedes, but an arachnid snuck in there too. I like to have a simple craft on the weeks when we have lots of reading aloud to do. Their hands can be busy while their minds are listening. W's bugs are the spider and the three on his left. The pipe cleaner worms were two pipe cleaners twisted together and wrapped around a pencil, then pulled a little looser. Glue on some eyes and have fun schooching them around the room. We glued a few pom poms onto clothes pins so those bugs could hang on to things. You could also glue a magnet onto the back of the clothes pins so they could hang out on your fridge.

More Camp Crafts

To go with our other recycled t-shirt camp crafts, I brought along the supplies for these darling little people. I found them on line, but changed a few of the details, such as wrapping a shredded strip of t-shirt yarn around their waists to make ballet tutus and skirts. The skirts were cute, but would benefit from a little hot glue or a running stitch to keep them in place at the waist. I also tied a scrap of yarn on top of some of their heads as bows. Faces were permanent markers, but they did bleed a little into the wooden beads.

Harvest is Happening

Finished by the river and now working just north of our house. They had to take a break for rain today, but then the sun came out, and they returned to that field and finished it tonight. I took these shots at noon when I ran some hot, homemade chicken noodle soup and a glass of cold milk up to Husband.

Camp Crafts

Every year at family camp, I try to have some crafty project for the kids to work on if they want to. This year I brought T-shirt crafts. We made t-shirt bags. (Above and 4th picture.) There are lots of tutorials on line.

We also made headbands from t-shirt yarn. I pre-made yarn from old t-shirts in colors that I thought would be popular. I put my own twist on the tutorials I read. I bought a batch of hair "twisties" at the dollar store then knotted and tied the three braiding yarns (about 24" is a good length to try) to one. Loop the twisty over something (your own big toe works great!) and braid until the right length. Tie the knotted end to the other end of the twisty, and you're done! You can braid a single or a double or as many as you like onto each twisty. You could also just leave off the twisty because the t-shirt yarn is stretchy, but there is more give with the twisty. Trim your ends better than we did, or leave them really long and dangly down your back.

After they had made the first ones for themselves, the teens decided they wanted headbands too, so the girls made a bunch more in custom colors for the bigger kids.

 (Karl), M. Thomas, Nicole

 James, Ann, Canaan, Annie, Katie

Bret, Laura, James, Ann

 Group teen picture-with and without headbands