I must say we had a great Holiday Season, surrounded by lots of family, (a little alcohol) and lots of good food. Now things are slowly going back to normal and the kids and I are always looking for fun things to do around here…which brings me to big, empty cardboard boxes!! Post-Holidays, once the gift-giving season is over, everyone ends up with lots of cardboard boxes. For some, they are just stuff that gets discarded, but in our home, we get excited with the possibilities (yes, they are endless). Most of the time we only have access to small cardboard boxes (cereal, crackers, etc), and before they get to the recycling bin I let the kids have some fun with them. They usually turn the boxes into tunnels or houses and sky scrappers for the little cities they like to build for their cars…but not yesterday. Yesterday was a special day because we had some BIG cardboard boxes, perfect for building something really fun.

We had a quick vote and decided to build an airplane. We gathered our materials and got to work. A few cuts here and there, clear tape, lots of hot glue and we soon had a very cool airplane complete with a little console made out of a carton of eggs and strategically placed on the dashboard, rear lights and even some “smoke” that comes out from the back (all Phoenix’s ideas). The kids loved helping with the build of the plane and had a blast “flying” it. Phoenix even looked the part by wearing a cap and safety goggles.

The plane was roomy enough to fly passengers to exotic destinations:

After flying a while at high altitudes, even the pilot can get a little dizzy:

Happy cardboard box crafting!!

I absolutely have to share this with everyone. If you have little ones at home who still believe that jolly old Santa will come down the chimney with a bag full of presents, you will be happy to know that your child can receive his/her very own personalized video message from the man himself.  I created two messages, one for Phoenix and one for Connor, and they were a HIT!! The expression on their faces was truly priceless as Santa addressed them by name, and told them a couple of personal things.  Santa also showed them their file (complete with their photos) and they got to see Santa asking the elves to check the Naughty/Nice machine to see if he would be visiting us this year.  Both kiddos were delighted to find out they made the Nice list.  Cannot say it enough, watching the messages with my two little guys was truly a heart-melting moment…they loved so much we had to watch the messages several times.

I totally recommend doing this for your kids.  It will really add on to the magic of the season and it is absolutely free.

Take a look at Phoenix’s message from Santa

There are two sites where you can do this: the first site, http://www.magicsanta.ca, offers more personalization and you can add a couple of photos of your child, BUT, some names are not in the data base.  For instance, they didn’t have “Phoenix” (my son’s name) and Santa would say “my dear friend” instead…and that was a deal breaker for me.  I ended up going with http://www.portablenorthpole.tv/home.

Both sites are great, and as I said before, absolutely free. Totally worth taking the time to set up your child’s personalized video message from Santa.

Cheers!!

I love Holiday decorating.  It gives me a great excuse to be crafty and creative.  However, even if you are heavily into DIY, you will find you can still go overboard and end up spending a lot of money on materials, tools and supplies.  This year I challenged myself to make things without braking the bank by using materials and tools I already had at home and by upcycling and reusing items.  I am happy to say I was very successful. I satisfied my crafty side, and ended up with a few Christmas decorations to make my home look festive…while spending $0.  Yeah, I didn’t spend a single penny in any of my projects.

My first project was the garland  (on the photo above) made with left over felt from previous projects. It was super easy to put together.  Basically it is just felt circles of various sizes and colors, sewn together.  I made NOEL felt letter as well to go along with the garland.  The letters are attached to the garland by using small clothespins, that way, I can reuse the garland to decorate for birthday parties and other occasions  that require some cheerful decor.

I also ended up  making a yarn wreath.  A little time consuming, but totally worth it at the end.  I used a swimming noodle (I had an unused one sitting in the garage collecting dust for over a year), lots of white yarn, a hot glue gun for the base. For the flowers I used felt and bits of old sweaters.  If you want to make your own, basically take the swimming noodle and attach the ends with tape. Then cover it with the yarn, remembering to fix it in place with the glue gun every now and then.  Keep wrapping the yarn around the noodle until it is completely covered.  Then spice it up to your liking. To mine, I beautified it with flowers made of felt and old sweaters, and a twig from the garden. This was the final result:

Notice the two Christmas trees sitting on the shelf?  Those are made of old books.  Lots of paper folding but very easy to put together (can be done while watching a Christmas movie), .  A great way to upcycle your old books or magazines.

I revamped the stocking as well and made them look more modern and playful by reshaping them into elf boots and adding felt dots.  I was going to personalize them, but instead I opted for hanging each stocking below a framed photo of its owner wearing a Santa hat.  Now that I think about it, this works out great since my kids (4 and 2) don’t read yet…the photos make it really easy for them to identify their own stocking. Here’s the final result:

One of my favorite Christmas touches is this tree branch with hanging ornaments:

I was going to spray paint the branch white but I decided against it, mainly out of laziness.  Notice the vase the branch is in?  This is an inexpensive glass vase from Ikea…I wrapped it in the turtle neck portion I cut off from an old knitted sweater, added a ribbon, and voila! instant festive decor.

I also used tree branches in my kitchen to display our Holiday cards.  I simply inserted the tree branches in a metal bucket with a chalkboard label (which we usually use in the playroom for the kids’ toys), wrote Season’s Greetings on it and attached  the Christmas cards with small wooden clothespins. Easy, peasy.

 And finally (for today anyway) I made more reusable Christmas gift bags.  Last year, appalled by all the wastefulness that goes into packaging and wrapping presents we decided to make our Holidays more eco-friendly  by making reusable fabric gift bags in various sizes.  So this year, I only had to add a couple of smaller bags to the ones I already made last year.  Making the bags is really easy, especially if you use felt (check out my Reusable Christmas Gift Bag Tutorial).  And I must say wrapping present was a breeze! Just insert into the bag, attach ribbon and tag (mine are reusable chalkboard labels) and done. Here is a photo of my fabric gift bags under my tree:

And here is a final peek of my home:

There will be a part 2 to this post in the next couple of days.  In the mean time, I hope you are inspired to be creative and use what you already have in your home, reuse and upcycle the old into new to add Holiday cheer to your home.  A lot of the projects in this post were inspired by my DIY Christmas Board over at Pinterest.  Check it out, you will even be able to find detailed tutorials for some of them.

It’s that gift giving time of year again, which means a lot of wrapping. Last year, tired of all the waste in packaging during the Holidays, I decided to stop using wrapping paper, boxes, and other materials that get discarded. Instead, I decided to sew several simple felt bags to present my gifts in. Yes, this requires some work, but these gift bags are extremely easy and quick to make, you will have several in no time. The best part, once you make them, you can keep reusing them year after year.  They make a great environmentally friendly alternative to paper wrapping.

Felt is a great material to work with, as it doesn’t fray, therefore, it requires minimal sewing. This tutorial is for a bag that measures 8.5 x 11in (you can use a regular printer paper as a template) but you can make it as bit or as small as you need to.

Materials and Tools

- red felt 2 (8×11.5 in), scrap of off white felt and pink felt
- embroidery floss in black and pink
- embroidery thread
- scissors, pins, ruler, chalk pencil
- sewing machine
- ribbon

Gather all your supplies and materials. The sewing machine is optional, as you can easily do this entire project by hand. I like to use it to save time.

How-To

1. measure carefully and cut two pieces measuring 8.5 x 11in out of the red felt. If you want to skip the measuring, just grab a sheet of paper (printer paper will do the trick), pin it onto the red felt and cut around it.  Put the red felt aside for now.
2. Take your cookie cutter shape (I chose a star for this project) and trace it onto the off-white felt.  Cut it.
3. Pin the star felt shape into place on the lower part one of your 8.5 x 11 piece of red felt. I chose to use my sewing machine to stitch on the star, but this can easily be done by hand using a running stitch.
4. Once the star has been stitched on, it is time to add some details. With embroidery thread and an embroidery needle I added eyes and a mouth.
5. Cut 2 small circles out of pink felt and using a running stitch them, secure them onto the star.  Almost done.
6. Take your 2 pieces of red felt, align them carefully and pin the edges. Using your sewing machine (you can also do this by hand), stitch around the sides and the bottom edges. Leave the bottom edge open.  Voila! your reusable felt gift back is ready.

All that is left to do now is insert your present, add a pretty ribbon to close the bag and you are done.  Customization options are only limited by your imagination. Instead of a star, try monogramming it with the recipient’s initial.  You can also make bags in other colors to match you Christmas color scheme.

Blueberry Junkie is joining the shops offering discounts this weekend.  Get 20% off entire shop + a small gift included with every purchase. No coupon codes needed to take advantage of this sale.

These are some of the items you can find at Blueberry Junkie:

After you check out Blueberry Junkie, head over to EtsyMom.  They are an amazing Street Team made up of moms. They have compiled a list of team member shops that are offering discounts this weekend.

Thank you for supporting the Handmade Community!

Do you have an Etsy Shop offering a Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal this weekend? Please let us know all about it in the comment section.

The day got even better when we arrived early enough (first time ever!) to grab spots at the very front, securing prime viewing positions (also great for the kids to interact up close and personal with all the characters in the parade and to receive goodie bags and other freebies). Here we are, waiting for the parade to start, with our red noses (meant to be reindeer noses, not clown noses):

Here are some images from the parade:

After a couple of hours of floats, marching bands and people in colorful costumes parading down the street, the kids didn’t care about seeing Santa anymore. They just wanted to go home…but he finally arrived! Santa Clause came to town…with the Mrs.

One of the things that I worked on this past week was coming up with a small item that I could include with all my orders.  This item is meant to function as a token of customer appreciation, and also as a marketing tool that will remind my customers of Blueberry Junkie. The criteria for the item was simple: easy to make, extremely affordable and lightweight as to not increase the package shipping costs.

Being a shop that is targeting babies and young kids, my original idea consisted of including pacifier holders.  They are quick to make, and wouldn’t break my marketing budget.  However, after a couple of my orders came through for hats in teenage sizes or for older kids, I realized those pacifier holders wouldn’t do.  Plus, I figured including a little something for the person who is actually buying my product wouldn’t hurt.  So, I ended favoring small felt and fabric bookmarks.  On one side they have a small piece of fabric stitched onto felt, and on the other side it has a Blueberry Junkie tag that includes my web address.  Take a look:

Another thing that I paid attention to this week was packaging. I designed thank you labels, address labels and mailing labels to start creating cohesiveness in the way my items are packaged for shipping.  Since I don’t have breakables, I try to ship my items in envelopes.  This results in more affordable shipping charges  for my customers.  So, what I have been doing, is carefully wrapping my products in a couple of layers of white tissue paper, then I use an orange strip of tissue paper and add a “Thank You” label on top. I then insert the whole thing into a clear cello bag.

Then, this package goes into an envelope that has a Blueberry Junkie address label and a mailing label. Voila! Ready to be sent on its way (well, except for the stamps).

What kind of packaging do you use for your handmade products? Do you include freebies or discount codes to encourage your customers to return?

But what does all of this have to do with a D.I.Y tepee?

Well, enter the playroom.  Having a playroom has created this very distinctive space association in my kids’s minds . They know the playroom is where the fun is at, since all their fun belonging are there, and their bedroom is for relaxing and sleeping.

So I tried to create a fun and inviting playroom for them where they could dream up adventures.  Even before I was ready to set up the playroom I knew that I wanted to have a tepee in there. I had seen some child tepees online and fell in love with them.  So I found a great no-sew tutorial online for a DIY tepee and got to work:

 I actually made it a little over a year ago, and it’s still a hit with the kids. It functions as comfy reading nook, and it has been used as a rocket ship, alien cave hideout, jail for the bad guys, home of the yeti…the list goes on, and on.

{And now, time to give credit where credit is due}

The tutorial for this great no-sew child teepee can be found via Sew, Mama, Sew!: Child Teepee Tutorial

Innerspiral $47.00	ekohaus $79.00	whiteliliedesi… $49.00	KnottyNotions $13.99
aureliaLT $119.00	SwedishGuyDesi… $37.00	dellcovespices $15.95	Lavenderharves… $35.00
mlmxoxo $40.00	dolangeiman $99.00	1byliz $42.00	PCwoodcraftand… $239.99
NikkiCrossAppl… $15.00	rainwheel $35.00	sacredsuds $22.00	socksandmitten… $31.99

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

If you answered: “bikes without any cool bike baskets”, then YES!! you are totally right!  That’s the very same thing I too noticed today when I took both my kids (the lovely boys in the photos) out for a bike ride  and had to hold all the stuff little boys tend to collect and carry around with them (cars, rocks, leafs, sticks, etc).  Right then, with the sun gently caressing my face, I had an epiphany: “must make bike baskets!”.

Well, I have never made a basket in my life, so I asked my best friend Google for help and came up with two amazing tutorials to make adorable (and very practical) fabric baskets for your child’s bike.  Here they are:

Bicycle Bucket Tutorial

Click on the image to head over to Noodle for the complete tutorial.

 Bike Basket Tutorial

Another great tutorial. Click on the image to head over to the step-by-step instructions.

Also, you can check out my DIY Bike Accessories board.  I’ve been collecting interesting DIY tutorials for bikes, so you will be able to find more grown up baskets, and other types of bags for your bike, and even a cute bike seat to transport dolls.