Tag Archives: kids craft

Monsters: Stuffed Toys

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As mentioned previously my son and I make monster birthday cards together. This weekend we decided to take that one step further.

Based on monster drawings made by my son, I transformed one of those pictures into a stuffed monster toy. Some of the things my son designed/choose includes the 3 fingers, all his drawings at present have 3 fingers, his favorite color is orange, and he chose the buttons for the eyes.

Here is our first monster.

  

It was very cute – he slept on it as a cushion the first night and then he carried it in the car to track out camp – he is very proud of his monster 🙂

Some of the materials and steps I used to make these:

  1. I drew free hand the shape of the body onto scrap-book card, from that original shape I got out a stomach shape….this way ensuring that it fits in the main body. I pinned the body shape onto dark blue corduroy, and on orange kona cotton for the back body and cut out the two shapes together.
  2. The other two templates I used, were one for the legs and one for the arms. I pinned the leg and arm templates to patterned fabric which I folded into quarters so when I cut the shapes I would have 4 pieces (2 pieces in each direction).
  3. I cut the mouth free-hand using the stomach fabric as a guide out of the same dark blue corduroy.
  4. I cut the teeth out of white felt, using the opposing triangles so they can be top and bottom teeth.
  5. I sewed the hands and feet inside out using a 1/4 inch seam. I then turned them in the right way, stuffed them with stuffing. I sewed the top of each limb close leaving about 1/4 inch so that I had room to sew the limb into the body.
  6. The pieces for the body – the stomach, and the mouth I used zig-zag stitch to attach them, and the teeth I just used a normal walking stitch. I sewed on the buttons.
  7. I cut a piece of straight 2 inch blue stripped cotton fabric – this is used for the width of the monster and joins the front and back together.
  8. I pinned the front and middle edging together, with the arms and legs placed between the front and middle piece. The fabric was pinned together in reverse. I sewed a 1/4 inch seam. I ironed the seams.
  9. Now for the back piece, I put all the limbs in the middle of the body, I pinned the back to the unsewn middle edge, so everything was inside out. I sewed a 1/4 inch seam leaving about 2-3 inches on the bottom open.
  10. From the opening, I turned everything in the right way, and started stuffing the body. I hand stitched the opening closed to finish the monster.

Art projects for your kids: Making Cards

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It has been a chaotic first full week back at work this week, I definitely got writers block this week. For the first blog of the week, I wanted to start sharing art projects I do with my son. Doing art projects with my son helps us do something together, I am not really a “play” kind of person – so this give me some mummy time, and I hope it allows him to be creative later on in life.

About 12 months ago, I stopped buying children’s birthday and thank you cards. Instead my son and I make the cards. Our favorite cards are monster birthday cards, each one is unique. We start with a standard white card, a body for the monster made out of adhesive foam. Then for the arms, hair and legs my son helps by instructing me the shape he wants and he colors in the arms, legs and hair. We add glue on eyes.

For his birthday recently we had a dinosaur theme and went to the Life and Science Museum in Durham. For the Thank You cards, I got my son to draw dinosaurs on adhesive foam using dinosaur stencils. He then helped cut out the pieces and we added spots.

Inside we used fabric for a background and color card for the area in which we wrote our note. We also included a photo of the child in the card so they have memories to keep as well.

Today, he was off to a girls birthday party, we decided to make the card match the strip birthday paper we used. We added flowers to the card, using left over buttons I have from the Four Seasons Quilt. My son was able to cut the strips, choose the buttons he wanted to use and do all the glueing (with supervision).

I think this helps add a personal touch to the kids gifts we give.

I would love to see and hear what you do with your kids. I will continue sharing other art projects we do and some of the products/books we have – we are trying to recycle when we can.