Make your own Bean Bags!

Ok I have been kinda crafty lately and have been wanting to share! The other day I read about making your own felt bean bags on Our Big Earth and I decided that Brandon would love them and that I wanted to make them too! Off I went to pick up some more felt and some bulk beans. Turns out they didn't have bulk beans and I didn't like any of the felt colors, I am a bit picky!

So I let Brandon pick out the fabric we were going to use and grabbed a bag of beans! I cut the fabric up into the sizes that I wanted it and decided that because Brandon is so rough on things I couldn't just make it one layer thick because how annoyed will I be with myself if after a week it ends up split open and ruined! So we did 3 layers and they should hold up great!

I sewed up three full sides and half of the fourth and then left the needle and thread attached and turned it inside out and filled it up with how many beans I thought I would need and then finished sewing the last bit! I had originally hoped to use my Nana's sewing machine but its broken so I had to hand sew all of it! It wasn't what I had hoped for but really didn't take as long as I thought it would!

I got 4 out of 5 done and the last is 3/4 done just waiting for some more beans! Brandon loves them, so does Kristina, we played some catch in the house, it snowed today, and I am sure we will get lots of use out of them!

Do you have any other easy sew projects for me? This one was fun!

How to make your own dryer balls

So I had been wanting to get some dryer balls for quite a while now and really wanted to make them myself because it seemed so easy and then they could look however I wanted them too! the first time I tried to make them I just bought 100% wool, wound them into balls and wet felted them. They looked great but only lasted a week or so in the dryer before they fell apart. Clearly I wasn't doing something right!

This time I got 100% felting wool that was very soft and fluffy, much easier to felt. They have worked great and I am thinking about making some up for Christmas gifts for next year! Here is what you do!

Once you buy the wool, here is what mine looked like, you start to wrap in into a ball. Its easier if you start wrapping the wool around your two fingers and then once you have done that about 10 times you pull it off and start wrapping the wool around the opposite way! Once it gets a bit bigger you can start changing the direction of the wool and just continue to wrap and wrap and wrap until its at least an inch bigger than you want it to be (felting will cause it to shrink.)

Once you have the ball at the size you want it, I use about half of the wool off of the ball, you need to cut off the wool and then use a crochet needle, or something similar, to stuff the end of the wool into the center of the ball.

Next it is time to felt. I like to wet felt my dryer balls because its so simple. You put the balls into a pantyhose or knee high and knot it between each ball and then knot the top. You put them in the wash on as hot as you can make it, lots of agitation, and then dry on high. If you do the whole process twice, it makes them even stronger! This time after the first cycle through I took a needle felting needle and needle felted in the loose ends. This worked great and just made everything that was a little bit loose tighten up and look great. The end piece of wool sometimes can come a little bit loose and this worked great for that!

Do you buy or make wool dryer balls, or do you even know what they are?

Crafty Mama!

So I have never really considered myself crafty at all, I guess because I can't draw a good stick figure I thought I wouldn't be good at any kind of crafts! I don't like messy crafts, glue and sparkles but with a little boy who will be 3 on Saturday I have to craft with him. He absolutely loves it and I can't not let him experience the fun of doing crafts! His sister went to a preschool like daycare so she had lots of opportunity to do crafts and still loves doing them!

When I came into the kitchen the other day this is what I saw! How can you say not right now to this! He was so excited to do it and then so proud of himself when we were all done. If you are nervous about crafting with a little one, like I still am sometimes all you need to do is ask them what they want to make. We have a bunch of containers from the dollar store filled with sequins, pom poms, stars, foam pieces, letters, craft sticks, googly eyes, and more. He just tells me what he wants to make, yesterday was a monster, so I cut out a head shape from construction paper, and he wanted it to have sunglasses so I cut those out too and he glued them on. Then he just choose what he wanted to glue on and where. It was very easy, stress free, and best of all he loved it!

What crafts do you make with your kids, I need more ideas :)