Handmade Alpaca Wool Felted Adult Indoor Booties

We waved goodbye to 2016 surrounded by pristine winter beauty, thanks to a well-earned mini vacation.

I got to make a pair of felted alpaca wool booties while on vacation, which was both a relaxing and rewarding enterprise.

The wool came from these lovely beauties, my favorite alpacas I know by name.

The indoor booties fit perfectly and seem like a well-matched pair. This wasn't a given, considering how easily they could have turned into a size 7 for one foot and a size 12 for the other if I wasn't paying attention to the template.

The subdued abstract marbling of strands of dyed merino wool add the rustic charm I was going for. They make a wonderfully warm boot liner for those extra cold days when socks alone won't do. Worn with the cuff turned down, they make a cozy pair of indoor slippers.

Kids Cards: Endangered Animals Valentine Card plus Crossword

The ten year old wanted to make Valentines cards rather than buy some generic ones from the store that did not gel with her ideas. She settled on giving Endangered Animals cards for her friends. We  attributed/credited the image source, and only tried to use images that allowed Free Reuse for non-commercial purposes.

Rather than the usual well-known endangered animals that many would have come across here, we went with Endangered (and Vulnerable) Animals of India: One-horned rhino, Indian pangolin, Asiatic lions, Asiatic Cheetah, Nilgiri marten, Sloth bear, Barasingha, Hoolock gibbon, Khur, Red panda, Gaur, and Clouded leopard.

Some info about each animal, plus a picture, plus a crossword was what she settled on. Rather than random info, we decided on a theme: The crossword is tied to the write-up/information provided.

Incidentally, among the many popular mnemonics, kids at home simply love this one:

Kings Potty Cautiously On Fine Golden Stools

They can simply picture the royalty comically eliminating, plus it helps that "Stools" has more than one meaning.

Anyway, this was our way of keeping track of Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.

So, we decided to make up crosswords that will reinforce these for the various endangered animals. The write-up included information about Class, Family, Genus, and Species names which was reiterated in the crossword clues to make it an entertaining and educational Valentine card.

The back of the card got the usual valentine messages.

She also wanted to add some treat for her friends as she knew they were going to give her some. So, what was left to do was to package this in an attractive way.We went with tissue papers we had saved from other gifts and it seemed like a good idea to reuse/recycle them this way. A little tag hinted at the crossword inside.

I am glad she found something worthwhile to share with her friends on this day that celebrates friendship.

Kids Cards: Valentine Cards: PvZ Friendships for Fun

The younger child has been a huge Plants versus Zombies fan for a couple of years now. The various plants and their powers fascinated him enough to come up with a whole set of plants on his own. Like, Push Bush (pushes zombies two squares away), Bamboom (bamboo that explodes at zombies, sort of like cherry bomb or potato mine only more zen), Plant-in (sounds like plaintain, but is a plant in which you can plant other plants so that they have extended powers), Booberry (Boos at zombies and makes them go back), to name a few.

Anyway, his heart was set on making PvZ Valentines this year just for fun. What can define friendship and peace better than the plants and zombies coming together on this special day?

He had a lot of fun pairing up a particular zombie with a particular plant, and then coming up with a Valentine-like message for the card. We also added the names of each plant and zombie so that our curious friends can look it up and learn more.

Of course, that alone is not enough, so, he wanted to add a fun PvZ-themed crossword to the Valentine card. But, I talked him out of it for now. So, we just did themed animals Double Puzzle instead.

All in all, a creative and enjoyable exercise in making these unique and fun Valentine cards this year.

In his spare time, he hand-wrote a whole story book much like Plant Your Path Junior Novel where the reader makes a choice at each critical point in the story to go forward. Example, you have come to a fork in the road as you are fleeing from a wave of zombies; if you want to take left turn go to page 26; if you want to take right turn go to page 72; or something like that. So, if you as a reader chose left turn you continue the story from page 26. Some choices end in disaster, some take you towards a favorable ending (where Zombies don't eat your brains). It has become a favorite bedtime read, where he reads it aloud to me and I get to choose the path the story takes each time.

Valentine's Day Cards So Far

Thanks to schools adopting the day as "Friendship Day", the older child has always looked forward to Valentine's Day preschool through lower elementary. The younger one, not so much. He could take it or leave it. But, what they both like is an opportunity to create something fun and share with friends.

As the kids started thinking about what sort of card they want to make for their friends this Valentine's Day, we started to casually look back at the ones we have done so far. We were quite happy to visit the memory of how they arrived at the design and how they executed it and how incredibly satisfying it was to them.

While the cards we've made over the years may not all look polished and stylish and sophisticated, the emphasis at home has always been on being creative and enjoying the process without much weight on the end-product's superlative finish and appeal. After all, what is slightly unappealing to my eye could be dazzling in theirs.

The arts and craft supplies are on low-level shelves and cubbies, organized in a way to help them find things and make sure they are returned to the right spot for next use. They each have their own space to create, which is a luxury as I keep reminding them way too often.

Anyway, the younger child's favorites were Prehistoric Splotch Creatures, Shaving Cream Marbling, and Lettuce Stamping.

The older kid preferred the more crafty Valentine gifts like her Salt Dough Heart-In-A-Box and Kisses Mice Envelope Card.

The Hanging Decorations she made a while back are still cherished in our house: Striped Hearts and Plump Hearts.

Of late, the older child has played with PicMonkey to create some custom graphic cards. One of my favorites that I made for the kids using picmonkey is the Valentine Coupons.

Boy were they thrilled to see a coupon that said "One single serve dessert you pick at the bakery"... and another that said "Stay Up Late Till 10 p.m."  Quite a dilemma for the kids to "Save" the coupon for a special day or just go out and splurge and get that dessert eaten right away! 

Of course, being the artful mommy, the coupons came with the restriction: Not Valid on School Days, Limit One Coupon Per Day.

Some art exploration that became Valentine's cards include Watercolor Cling Wrap, Textured Paper Hearts, Oil Pastel Masked hearts, Reverse Stamped Hearts, DIY-Scratch-It Cards.

My favorite in terms of the idea is the younger child's "Flags Valentine" cards, and crosswords. He picked out some interesting flags of countries and designed a simple card with a One-line Joke for each. I like that he tried to match up his friend's roots with the right country flag where possible to personalize the cards.

The older child is not quite gung-ho about Valentine cards and that's okay. No obligation, no pressure. If it seems like fun and she wants to do it, then it's a lot of fun for me to join in. She is still convinced that it has to be something unique that she has made, not store-bought.

For now, the younger child is strongly leaning towards his current obsession and trying to come up with something he thinks is fun to create... We'll see how it shapes up over the next two weeks.

Kids Art: Winter Holiday Card

Although we don't usually get much snow, or perhaps because of it, the kids seem to love wintry scenes with piles of snow, roaring fire, trees laden with white, snowflakes and all things magical.

That was the inspiration for this particular set of cards done by the ten year old.

Together, we pored over wintry scenes online to fill our hearts with the cool beauty painted by various artists. Then we decided to make up a simple winter scene with pine and birch trees.

Items used:
White oil pastel
Some Cobalt and Prussian Blue water color paints
Salt crystals - either table salt or rock salt for bigger crystals
Flat brush for wash
Water color paper and card stock paper
Light and dark blue, yellow/orange, and brown oil pastels
Green, yellow, and purple color pencils
Silver glitter glue


What we ended up doing:

1. We cut the water color and cardstock paper to required size
2. We used white oil pastel for masking - to draw a hint of snowy foreground, pine tree outline, bare birch trunks
3. We did a graduated wash with blue watercolor; and while still wet, sprinkled salt as in the usual Salt Sprinkled painting exercises we've done many times before
4. We allowed it to dry completely, which didn't take long because we left it by the heating vent
5. We then took the green and purple color pencil and filled the pine tree in
6. We then highlighted the pine tree with dark and light blue oil pastels and some brown for the trunk; added a hint of blue oil pastels to the birch trees
7. Finally, we painted a thin layer of glitter glue - both to seal the work and to add sparkle

To finish the cards, we mounted the water color paper on to card stock with dimensional tape, adding framing layers as we fancied.

Kids Art: Penguins and Snowmen Winter Holiday Cards

The younger child is still fascinated with penguins and wanted to do some penguin cards, much like the penguin cards done in previous years.

So we pulled out our favorite Usborne book 365 Things to Make and Do from the book shelf and looked through for inspiration.

The thumbprint snowmen and penguins project idea immediately caught the kid's fancy.

It's an easy enough project by itself, but, he wanted to add fancy backgrounds and action scenes inspired by Carol and Mark Buehner's Snowmen at Night -- an all-time favorite with both kids that comes out of the book shelf every winter to be read to bits.

But, acknowledging our combined limited abilities, the kiddo settled for something playful and silly but colorful.

Chalk pastels being his favorite, we settled on cool winter colors for background, with white oil pastel making the snowbank in the foreground.

All in all, it was a fun Saturday afternoon making these cute penguin and snowman cards.

Kids Craft: Duct Tape Bags

The ten year old is very much into animal prints - something about the fur patterns of leopards and giraffes and zebras and tigers seem to fascinate her.

She was fiddling around with some old white sticky duct tape making small handbags, using fabric for the inner lining. It wasn't working out smoothly but she stuck with it and added some silver tissue paper fringes to make it pretty (rightmost picture in the collage above.)

And, being partial to crafting myself, I always keep an eye out for fun craft materials at bargain price. I chanced upon these fancy duct tapes with animal prints at the dollar store. And some sparkly silver craft tape as well.

The girl was thrilled beyond words when I gave them to her and soon she went about making a few more purse/handbags. They all have fabric lining - basically, the duct tape goes over the fabric to make the purse usable. Some even have pockets for smartphone and such.

If one is objective, one must admit these are not terribly practical for everyday use. But, I don't have to be objective. I like the effort she put into it and the joy she got out of making something like this. She claims she is more into designing anyway and that these are prototypes. Someday, someone will hopefully care enough about her designs to make viable products, but until then, I'll happily watch her do what catches her fancy.

Kids Craft: Administrative Divisions Study and Flags T-Shirt

For a while, the six year old was into Administrative Divisions of the countries of the world - be it Russia's oblasts and krais, or Germany's Bundesländer, India's states, he wanted to know their names and their flags.

Armed with an oversized and large parchment paper, he traced many countries with their administrative divisions and colored them in, to make his own book of Admin. Divs.

This enthusiasm got me pumped and I ended up making a unique Admin Divs. Flags shirt for his birthday. He claims that's the best birthday gift, second only to a book we gave him. The shirt front has flags of 6 Russian oblasts, krais and republics; the back of the shirt has 6 German Bundesländer flags.

Kids Craft: Easy Dimensional Stamp Greeting Cards

Nothing much to elaborate on, but, the 9 year old got interested watching me mess around with some stamps and papers one weekend... paper crafting is a meditative zen-like activity for me and after a tight week, it seemed like I could use this relaxation technique..  and when the girl joined in, we ended up making a few simple cards together.

Simply stamp, cut out, use dimensional tape, and layer as needed. Cupcakes was a favorite. Sea horses, sea stars, and sea shells was not as dreamy as she had hoped, but it was fun to make anyway.

Seashells and Sea stars

Picmonkey Valentine Fun

This year, I just gave coupons for the kids, plus a customized card, all made using my favorite Picmonkey. They have helpful tutorials that make creating fun!

The coupons were a big hit, of course, so now they don't have to plead and negotiate for these little luxuries that they cherish.

Kids Craft: Valentine Mice Kisses Envelope Card

The nine year old has not been a big fan of cliched cards and candy fad for Valentine's day; her class does a simple card exchange with an optional candy element keeping in mind allergies and sugar content. Participation in card-exchange is optional as well, and handmade cards are encouraged.

Pretty much every year so far, she has been making custom valentine cards for her friends, and this year she still seemed interested, so we brainstormed together.

To candy or not? That was the question.

The candy mice made of Hershey's™  Kisses was an instant favorite the minute she came across it on web search and that settled the issue of candy this year.

We cut out little pink hearts to serve as the mice ears which was sandwiched between two Kisses and glued with rubber cement. The eyes were the most fun to do - spacing them, mismatching them, all seemed to add character to each mouse.

For a while now, she has been playing around with Picmonkey, so it was fun to create a simple card with the timeless message: "Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other's gold." She didn't want to make any standard one-liner jokes or cloying sweet messages that play on word sounds.

How best to package this card? was another question. Should it be just a small postcard-style card with message on one side and name on the other like previous years? Nah, that seemed too blasé.

That's how we hit upon Envelope Card: make a template square to fit the card, with appropriate shaping on all four sides to fold in and make it envelop the card.

We also made some labels to add the From and To at the front using Picmonkey. Since there were about two dozen envelope cards to make, I helped her make some of them and we both had fun creating these simple no-fuss unique cards for her friends.

All that was left to do was hot glue the mice to the card and hand this unique and thoughtful token to her friends in class.

Kids Craft: Customized Valentine's Day Flags Cards

Valentine Flag Cards

The six year old vexillologist designed a "Friendship Card" for Valentine's day to give to his classmates. He was particular about choosing flags that he considered interesting; he also tried to match up some of his friends with the flags of the countries of their ancestry. With classmates from Armenia, Azores, Serbia, Russia, Germany, Scotland, Sweden and Italy, he had a fabulous time getting the cards ready with me.

At first, he wanted to draw and color the flags, which I whole-heartedly encourage usually. But, considering the time constraints and his flu-like symptoms, I decided to print it. Much like last year when Prehistoric Life was all the rage, which led to unique valentines, this year, it is all about flags and countries.


We did add a kid-friendly joke inside each card with the answer at the bottom. Og picked out a few special jokes and knew which friend would enjoy it the most so he made sure the right flag and the right joke went together to the right recipient.

All that was left to do was stamp some sweet treats and color them in and add some custom drawings to personalize the card with an inside story. The kid enjoyed this process to his heart's content, relating a story about each. For example, he chose to color one of the cards with a jar full of sweets in a jumble of colors claiming that the jar was left out and the candy inside got all sticky and gooey running into each other. In another card, he added a table on which the jar rests (rather than being suspended in mid air), and proceeded to add a few candy on the table and on their way to the table from the jar, explaining that some of the candy from the jar started escaping before the lid was tightened.

Finally, he wrote his name in the "From:" part of each card. He had typed the recipients' name when we were designing the card layout, rather than writing the names by hand. I didn't mind it this time as he did the typing himself to make sure the recipient's name is readable.

Rather than a cutesy finished product that looks all perfectly adorable and cliched, it seemed more appropriate to let the kid decide on what sort of a card to make for Valentine's day. In another year or two, he may not be interested at all, which is fine.

His friends may not even realize the fact that he put in so much thought and effort into creating these unique cards. But, going by his current interest, which is all Flags, flags, and more flags, the cards gave him a sense of ownership and pride in making something special as a token of friendship. And that is all that matters.

Kids Craft: Paste Batik Christmas Flag

The younger child wanted a "Christmassy" flag to hang up as decoration near the wreath outside on our front porch. So, we made a paste batik flag, pretty much the same procedure as we've done many times before.

The elements he chose were pine tree, snowman, mitten, and bird. I drew the composition using flour paste under his watchful eye and approval. He wanted to do it, but was not confident of his drawing skills and said he'd be too upset to start all over if he made a mistake because the project takes a long time to complete.

He let the paste dry near the vent overnight. Next day, he was ready to add in the colors, his favorite part of the project. Once all the colors were painted in, he let it dry again overnight by the heating vent.

Then, picked and removed the dry paste.

Then, I heat set it by ironing on the reverse side, and then washed and dried it; then ironed it out flat. Then, added the finishing touched with 3D paint and let it dry overnight again.

Finally, I sewed the edges. The plan was to insert a dowel and hang it right, but, didn't have a dowel handy. So, we made do with ribbon and yarn.

Kids Craft: Paste Batik Place Mat

The 9 year old wanted to give a handmade present for one of her friends. Since her little brother was making a paste batik flag anyway, and we had enough flour paste ready to go, she settled on a paste batik place mat for her friend. Rather than an arbitrary design, she wanted to personalize it with her friend's name.

Same procedure for paste batik as always, using unbleached muslin. Once the paste letters were dry, she added the colors using acrylic paints.

When paint was completely dry, she removed the dried paste to reveal the masked areas the whites of the fabric. Then, ironed the reverse side to heat set. Then, washed and dried it. Then, ironed it out flat again. And, with a little bit of help from me in pinning the edges, the 9 year old sewed the place mat.