DIY Princess Leia hair!

Boy, time for crafting has really gone by the wayside for me!  (And the rest of the contributors, I assume, based on the recent blog activity!)

I realize that this blog post won't have relevance for many of you out there, unless you have a Star Wars obsessed daughter like I do.  My darling 5 year old girl got ahold of my husbands old Star Wars toys circa 1979 about six months ago and hasn't looked back.  She talks at great length about power droids, the differences between a Cloud Car and a Sand Speeder, and asks why Padme Amidala's last name isn't Skywaker since she got married to Anakin.  She also frequently request that we all act out the characters as a family.  She usually asks me to be Darth Vader....I'm still not sure if that is a compliment or an insult.  Anyway, it sure beats playing Barbies every day!

She was recently invited to a neighborhood boy's Star Wars themed birthday party, and was told she could dress in character, if she wanted.  Um......YEAH!   She decided on Princess Leia (over Padme Amidala and Ahsoka Tano of the Clone Wars animated series) and I thought it would be fun if I could figure out a way to give her Leia's hairdo.  Her hair is pretty short these days, so I started to envision using brown earmuffs and making some buns out of yarn to attach to them.  Here's the end result.......

What's that you say?  You'd ALSO like to have some Princess Leia hair?  Well you are in luck because I created a tutorial so that you can make your own! 

Supplies needed for PLH (Princess Leia Hair)

• A pair of earmuffs
• 165 yards of brown yarn
• Hot glue gun
• A spool of brown grosgrain ribbon, either 5/8 in. or 7/8 in. width.  (optional)
• The force

First, locate yourself some earmuffs.  I was trying to find the old school brown furry kind that you used to be able to buy for about a dollar.  The earmuff selection was sparse in my local stores in March, so I ended up with these bad boys.  The white part that is up against the ear is really too fluffy for optimal results, but it's all I had to work with. 

Since Leia does not have orange, purple and green stripes on the top of her head, I decided to wrap the headband part of the earmuffs in brown grosgrain ribbon, overlapping the ribbon and hot gluing it on the inside every time I looped it around.  I had about 100 spools of ribbon laying around my house (I'm a member of Girls Hairbow Makers Anonymous), but none plain brown.  I took a polka dot print and turned it so that the "wrong side" faced out, making it the right side.  What the what?  Refer to Exhibit A below.



Exhibit A

Next I took a strand of the brown yard and cut a length of 55 inches.  Then I did that 8 more times so that I had 9 pieces of yarn 55 inches long each.  Next I knotted one end very tightly to prepare the strands for braiding.  I realize that Leia's buns aren't really braided, but I couldn't think of another way to secure all of the strands of hair to the earmuffs with a glue gun without creating a huge, gluey gummed up mess.  If any of you in cyberland can improve upon this step, please share your ideas in the comments section at the end of this post!

 

It helps to have some tension on the yarn when you are braiding, so you can either find a willing participant to hold the knot while you braid, or you can stick a safety pin through the knot and pin it to your couch "friendship bracelet style"!

Braid all of the yarn until you get to the last two inches or so, then put a loose knot in that end in case you need to make adjustments later. 

Fire up your glue gun and have extra glue sticks handy - I used about two and a half for the entire project.  Take the braid end with the tight knot, squirt some hot glue in the center of the outside of one earmuff, and glue the knot down so that the braided yarn is flat, not on its' edge.  Then, start gluing the braid down flat in a spiral pattern taking care to ensure there are no gaps.

Keep going until you've nearly covered the whole earmuff with the braided yarn.  When you get near the end, you can take out the loose knot in the remaining end and adjust the yarn/braid longer or shorter, then knot it back together tightly.  Trim the ends of the yarn close to the knot, then tuck the knotted end partly under the rest of the braided area (or don't) and hot glue that sucker down.  The end result should look something like this.

Repeat this process on the other side.  Give them to your giddy daughter, or keep them for yourself to wear to Pick N Save/Kroger/Jewel on double coupon day!

May the force be with you!

Paper Bag Scrapbook

Greetings loyal blog readers!  I'm Natalie, a new contributor to 11 Spring Street, and am thrilled to share my craft/cooking/DIY successes (and many failures!) with all of you! 

I do not consider myself a scrapbooker.  The process of sorting, printing and arranging photos seems daunting to me, and with a 5 and 2 year old, I just don't feel like I can put that kind of time into one project at this point in my life.  I'm more of an "insert-photos-into-prearranged-layouts-and-purchase-a-book-through-Shutterfly" kind of gal.  The expense of all of the decorative do-dads, cutting/punching tools and paper has also been a deterrent for me to embrace this hobby.  However, for Christmas 2009, my Mom, Sister and I decided to do a handmade gift exchange.  I was racking my brain for an idea when I remembered some cute scrapbooks I had seen at a friends' house.  This friend, (let's call her Amy since that's her real name), told me that the book was constructed out of brown paper bags!  Yeah, that's right - the kind you can buy 100 of at Walmart for about $2.  I could hardly believe it and immediately knew this would be my gift idea for my Sister's Christmas present. 

I went home and Googled the term "paper bag scrapbook" and lots of links came up.  I've included a link to one tutorial that shows how to assemble the book, and one way of binding the edge.  To keep it simple, I decided to limit the photos for the book I made to those from the most recent calendar year.  Lucky for me, my sister had recently had some very nice family photos taken, and I had enough of my own photos of their family from the past year to supplement.  Basically, you cover the paperbag pages with scrapbook paper (card stock weight works best), design your layout, add photos & embellishments and voila!

I was super happy with the result, and although it did take me about 6-8 hours worth of work to finish up this bad boy, I have to think that it was a lot less time than a traditional "from scratch" 12x12 (or whatever the traditional size is) scrapbook. 

All in all, I spent about $40 on materials.  That included a large pack of fancy scrapbook paper, Mod Podge adhesive (more on this later....), embellishments, paper bags and photo printing.  Use those 40% of JoAnn Fabric coupons, of course!  Now, $40 might seem like a lot, but I have enough of the materials left over to probably make 2 additional books of the same size.  So, let's say the cost was closer to $15 for the one book. 

A few things I liked about this style of scrapbook vs. a traditional book:

1) The novelty of it being made out of paper bags!
2) The little pockets where you can tuck additional photos or momentos
3) The size - easier to leave out on a desk or table for people to actually see and enjoy

Here's a tip that I will share with you if you decide to make one of these books.  Use double sided tape to stick down things that need sticking.  I used an adhesive called Mod Podge to glue everything down that needed gluing.  Only later did someone suggest to me that you can also use double sided tape - DUH, why didn't I think of that??  I would definitely try that next time, as once in awhile the Mod Podge would seep out from under the edge of the item being glued and get on my fingers or worse, one of the photos, and kind of smear up the finish a little.  Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, using tape would eliminate all of the drying time required in between pages.

Here are some photos of the finished album I made.  Names have been removed to protect the innocent!

Front cover - I used an accordian-fold binding method, but you can punch holes along one edge and tie with ribbon, among other things

Here's an example of the pockets created by some of the pages and how you can tuck additional photos or momentos inside. 

Other hiding spots for additional photos can be created when you only glue/tape down three sides of the main photo on the page, as in the page on the left.  The photo behind it is on its own individal card that can be pulled out.   

Vellum and transfer letters came in super handy to create the look I wanted. 

Some of the additional photo cards I made for inserting into pockets within the book. 

I love the idea of making one of these for a kiddo for their birthday, or for a spouse to have on their desk at work. 

I'm greatly looking forward to seeing the projects of other contributors and hearing what our readers have to say!

 Happy crafting!

Blizzard Socks

I am a total delinquent with this craft blog. If it makes you feel any better, I've been a total delinquent about most things for the last 6 months or so. It's to the point that a couple nights ago at dinner, my husband jokingly told me to write a letter of resignation from the chores I am abandoning, so he'll know what he needs to do to pick up the slack. (I say"jokingly" just because he wasn't mad about it, not jokingly as if he thought it wasn't true that I had decided to pawn off household chores on anyone who will do them.)

Anyway, I digress. I am finally back today to show you all what I've been up to.... You see, I caught this disease..."Knobsession", "Knitsession", er....I'm obsessed with knitting, ok? I can trace it back to the day last July that my photographer friend Kara (ps, check her out because she rocks) asked me if I could knit her a sock monkey with a matching hat to use ith babies in her photo sessions. I had never heard of such a thing and honestly, the idea of it didn't say "cute" to me. It said, "creepy baby picture that these babies will grow up to roll their eyes at and make fun of". But because Kara takes great pictures, I figured that she probably knew something I didn't, so I told her I'd give it a try.

I figured it would be easy enough to find a knitting pattern for a sock monkey hat on Ravelry.com (it's like facebook for knitters & crocheters). Kara had said that she had seen these hats "all over the internet", so there had to be patterns available, right? Well, that could be correct if I knew how to crochet, which I don't. I felt super-lucky when I finally found a site that listed a "Knitted Sock Monkey Hat" pattern. So happy, in fact, that I downloaded it immediately without allowing myself to believe that the site looked a little shady. What I actually ended up downloading was the virus that put the final nail in the coffin for our 6-year-old pc. What kind of monster attaches a computer virus to a KNITTING PATTERN, I say?!

Anyway, after that whole fiasco, and now in need of a new computer, I decided to write my own freaking pattern. Not that I had ever done that before, but I'm not one to shy away from a challenge. I found a sock monkey toy pattern here and made that sucker first while deciding how I was going to pull a matching hat out of thin air. In the end, I just figured out how to knit a basic earflap hat (which turned out to be not-so-hard, except for the part where I had to find children of friends in various sizes to fine-tune the sizing of the thing). Then I modified the face features from the sock monkey toy pattern so they would work with the size of face I was trying to create on the hat. Voila! Knitted Sock Monkey Earflap Hat Pattern was born and put up for sale at the end of July, and it's still the only one I can find on the internet (well, except for a few ugly "stocking cap" styles, but I'm not afraid of that competition!)

Since then, I think I've sold about 70 or 80 monkey hats to friends and in my etsy shop, and written 4 more patterns. Total sales at my etsy shop just topped 300 this week, and in honor of that (and being trapped in the house for 3 days because of the blizzard) I decided to write a pattern to offer up for free!

I've been wanting to do hand-knit socks, but my first few attempts were disappointing. Nothing more annoying than socks that don't stay up, or are baggy around the gussets (those are the little triangular sections on the left and right sides of your heel...the patterns I've encountered so far have not had nice, tight gussets!) So I decided I was going to write a pattern for The Best Fitting Socks Ever. And, here they are (drumroll, please......)

Nice, right? Look at those tops staying where they're supposed to be! Check out my nice, tight gussets! (Is it hot in here or is it just my socks?)
Anyway, I'm offering this pattern for FREE for the entire month of February, so if you want a copy, all you have to do is go to my etsy shop, click on the left sidebar where it says "Contact" and send me a message (including your e-mail address, so I know where to send the pattern!) saying that you saw the free sock pattern on the Sprint Street Blog. I'll be sending patterns out at least once a day, so you should get yours within 24 hours of contacting me!

Robot Diaper Cake

another cute baby, and a robot-themed diaper cake

(And fully lined).

After!

During...