These black and white striped mittens caught my eye as I walked through my favorite store. What an easy, instant way to make a zebra!
So I grabbed a variety pack of googley eyes, felt, and yarn and introduce Zeal the Zebra!
The part of Zeal that I was most proud of was his mane.

To make the mane: I held out my index and middle finger and using black wool yarn, held the end of the yarn with my thumb and ran the yarn around my two fingers in a figure eight. Then I carefully slid the looped yarn off my fingers and onto a piece of velcro about 5″ long (the soft side). Spread the mane out on the velcro as you desire and sew down the middle holding the yarn in place. Then attach the mane strip to the mitten with fabric glue. I used fabric glue also to stick on the eyes and a rounded pink strip underneath for a tongue. A quick 10 minute addition to your kid’s puppet show!

If Zeal is for you I have one left in my etsy shop and his sweet friend Skip the Skunk!

A slideshow of the bookmark pictures I received (and please, if I didn’t add yours, it wasn’t personal, that was a lot of emails to sift through and I may have missed one or two, I tried not to though )

This year has become my ‘Year of the Bag.’ In the past, I’ve usually bought a bag a year or maybe every other year. Then Kristin La Flamme’s bag pattern
caught my eye and since then my household has been inundated with bags, purses, and pouches.

Currently, my favorite pattern is the basket bag designed by Lisa Lam on her blog U-Handblog.

It is the perfect size, amenable to countless variations and a great gift. I make mine out of felted sweaters, but you can obviously use any kind of sewable fabric. If you are thinking of pledging handmade gifting this year, this would make a fabulous present.

I know I am a few days past Thanksgiving, but I wanted to share an idea that I like to use for my holiday table that you could apply toward your upcoming Christmas plans- stamping placecards, messages, or labels.

I cut cardstock about 3″ by 3″ and love to use metallic ink great for holidays like copper color, gold or silver. Very festive! With a tiny aphabet or message stamp I create labels for each member of the family around the table. Sometimes I have written a small message inside or written specifically why I am thankful for them or love them. You could even make a game of it or hide the winner of a small prize, or first to get in the buffet line! There are lots of ways to be creative here and make your meal more memorable!

I have also used these cards to disperse reminders about the table (like the “Thanks” cards), or as labels when there are many people visiting my buffet. For example to label: Regular or Decaf coffee, a baked dish or dessert, Splenda or sugar, etc. This would be a great craft to let the kids in on too and let them help you stamp or decorate with holiday stickers. These would look beautiful coordinated with the stamped napkins or paper tablecloth posted earlier this month. Get stamping!

I grew up in Germany and advent calendars were always a big deal in my family. I remember this beautiful embroidered calendar my mother made for my aunt with all kinds of interesting little packages attached to it. My brother and I would discover calendars made out of matchboxes and walnut shells or just wrapped up little packages tied together with string. Last year, my mother even put together a calendar for my brother’s dog. So in the spirit of the season, I went online to browse for some inspiration for this year’s calendar.

Paper Calendars

Kids Craft Weekly explains how to put together a cute origami cup calendar. You could also make little origami boxes as explained by Lisa Lam from U-handblog, or just simple cones and fill them with goodies.

Another fun idea from Kinder Stadt is to use toilet paper rolls and to turn them into snowmen, Santa Clauses, or penguins.

If you have the space you could create a whole village of 24 houses. Marilyn Scott-Waters of The Toymaker has a great template for a house complete with chimney.

Fabric

Jenny B. Harris of Allsorts just reposted instructions for her felt pocket calendar. I think you could also re-purpose her elf shoes. You could make 12 pairs of shoes and hang them from a clothesline.

Last year, Susie of Susie’s Country Garden made a garland of little stockings.

Eldrid Røyset Førde from Bremanger, Norway has English instructions for a different stocking type calendar.

I also like this quick calendar by Shizzyknits.

Other Materials

Splitcoaststampers has a tutorial for a calendar using little favor tins.

Miniature terracotta pots are another popular starting point for advent calendars. Turn them upside down, add a Styrofoam ball for a head, and paint them to make Santas, elves, snowmen, etc. Then either glue them on top of the box that will contain the gift, or cover the bottom with felt and/or cardboard to hide the gift in the pot itself. Here is a German tutorial from Creadoo with pictures of “potty” creatures to give you some ideas.

I’ve finished my calendar what do I put inside?

If you are still recovering from a Halloween candy hangover and are worried about lead levels in gum ball machine toys, you may want to consider filling your calendar with different activities. Kiddley has a list of activities you could use. You could also put pictures of friends and family in your calendar and put together a progressive collage, or collect or make some ornaments to hide in the calendar and then hang off a branch or your tree.

For more inspiration, go to flicker and search for pictures in the adventcalendar cluster.

Just a reminder that today is the last day to get your bookmark in the mail! I’ve received emails both from people sending and receiving, and it seems like everything is running smoothly!

If you would like to send pictures of your finished bookmarks to babyblossomsonline @ gmail.com (no spaces of course!) then I will post a gallery of the different styles made. I’ve seen all sorts of wonderful ideas and such different bookmarks, I would love to see more!

I hope that everyone has enjoyed the swap, I know I have! Bookmarks are so quick and easy, but they let you express your creativity in so many different ways!

Thanks again to everyone that participated (all 65 of you!!), and for those who missed it be sure to watch out for other swaps in the future!

I borrowed this idea from an old Martha magazine – stamping napkins, tablecloths, or towels for the holidays. These large napkins could make lovely certerpieces or could line the table length or buffet that you serve from. A great, quick hostess gift or decoration for any holiday!

This is one of those perfect projects: Cheap, Quick, Simple, and Not Messy! Literally, a 5 minute project. As you can see some are stamped all the way around, in the corners only, or clustered around the corners. All these looks using only one stamp!

Needed:
Package of Cloth napkins
Stazon permanent ink pad
Holiday picture stamps or messages

My friend also cut stamped a leaf and cut it out in order to stamp the leaves clustered in a corner without overlapping the leaves. The paper leaf blocks the ink to keep each leaf looking crisp.

Note that I am only using Brown and Plum Stazon ink and one stamp so you can obviously be alot more creative with this idea! I am hoping to find holly leaf or star stamps to decorate for Christmas.

I thought I would gather up some ideas for our bookmark swap!

If you crochet, check out this page at Crochet Pattern Central.

A knitter? Then you’ll like this page at Knitting Pattern Central.

Martha Stewart has some beautiful ribbon bookmarks.

Michaels.com has some great ideas!

Have fun and please share any ideas or links you may have!