This Little Project

Link Your Blog Project of the Week

You know that great feeling you have when you create and finish a project? Well, now is your chance to link in and share YOUR ideas and CELEBRATE completing a project (because that is half the fun :) I know that there are a ton of you out there that have great projects that you are just waiting to share.

And a "project" isn't just a craft so you can blog about your gardening, cleaning, learning activity, recipe you tried, book you read, etc.

I'm going to host a "Project of the Week" Meme here at This Little Project so you can do a blog entry on your blog and link in here to share your Project of the Week. I will put Mr. Linky up on Wednesday and he will stay up through Sunday night. Just paste the address of your blog post into Mr. Linky (not just your blog address). Mr. Linky will be up each Wednesday so you can post and share YOUR Project of the Week :)

I've been wanting to do this for a while, and finally got it all together! Get ready to inspire and be inspired by FUN project people just like YOU! Come link in and share Your Little Project!

Be sure to add a link to This Little Project from your blog so your friends will know how to come and share their Project of the Week too! Let me know if you have any questions about how to participate. I hope you will join in!

How to make Wooden and Peg People (The Village People)

The village has come alive as we've made people to be apart of the happenings in the Village. Kay calls them all her "babies." Below are tips for how to make your own village people out of pegs and wooden clothes pin dolls. I purchased all of my wooden materials at Casey's. Search through what they have that might be fun for your village. I purchased a wooden tree and some fun other things too besides the wooden doll stands, heads, peg turnings, angel turnings, etc.

Here is a photo of much of the "Before." I wanted our people to look more "real" so I gathered scraps of fabric, lace, cross-stitch threads, modge podge, paper, chenille stems, and paints to bring them to life. See below for instructions about how to make each kind of wooden person.

I used regular acrylic paints on some, and also tried the paints that come in a tube that are also acrylic. Both worked fine, but the tube paints paints seemed thicker. My sister has a few basic colors and we mixed them to create the colors we wanted. It was a fun way to get just the color you are looking for without buying them all.

You will need a fine tipped brush for painting faces. I didn't have a very good one, so don't look to close at mine! {Little Project Painting Tip:} If you are painting details (like the face) and don't like what you see, simply wash it off with water quickly and redo it :)

Here I used my sister's dremel tool to put a hole through so that we could add arms. There are lots of ways to do arms. For now, we just used flesh-colored chenille stems. Remember to bend the ends back so they don't scratch.

Here is our librarian. You can see that arms come in handy for holding a book. I used a peg person from Casey's that looked like it had a hat on. With Modge Podge all over the cap part I wrapped white yarn around to make it look like a great beehive of hair. She could also be a grandma (but neither of ours have white hair yet :) She has a trim glued on for her dress.

The other guy is our postman or postwoman. I used modge podge on the wood and wrapped paper around. Then covered with another layer of modge podge. Remember that modge podge is a sealer. But, it is waterbased, which means that if you have little ones in the house and they put things in their mouths it isn't a good sealer since they lick it off! Be careful with little ones and peg people. They could be a choking hazard...

Here is our group of Village people so far...

Our librarian is watching over things at the village library:

Here is our mailman at the Post Office.

These peg people were accessorized with stretch lace glued on for part of the mom's dress with "liquid stitch," and the baby has 3 strands of embroidery floss wrapped around her dress and glued on with modge podge (a layer under and a layer over). Embroidery floss has also been a great way to add a belt on the daddy peg doll. The baby also has a bonnet in her hair made from a piece of fabric that is also modge podged on. Those arms let her hold her baby :)

These wooden clothes pin dolls below are quite a bit taller than the others. They have a clothes pin, head glued over that and a stand that helps them stand up. I put a little hole in the middle of a 4-5" circle of fabric and put it over the clothes pin and also made holes for arms.

The chenille stem is just glued to the back of the clothes pin (next time I will make it longer :) I loved the fabric title so I left it on to show some patriotic spirit!

She has some fabric stars and a floss headband modge podged in her hair.

This wooden clothes pin doll has fabric ruffled and then glued on around her. She is awaiting some arms :)

Her embroidery floss headband is a felt flower with a sequin modge podged onto her head.

This is a finger finger puppet doll. I just pushed and glued a square of fabric into a wooden doll head. You supply the finger and she can walk all over the place! I think I may make some animals like this too!

Little arms make giving hugs a lot easier :)

These little village keeps my little people busy for hours!

More village to come... Let me know if you have any questions about how to make your own little wooden friends. For more ideas of how to paint your peg people, or to skip that process and purchase them already made, you might check out Etsy.

And be sure to link your blog here for the Project of the Week linky each Wed. to share and celebrate fun project ideas!

p.s. here are the links to the other places in our Village so far...Swimming pool, Park, Library, Post Office and Stop and Go in the Village, and the village construction site .

Building at the Village

Jay has been into "diggers" lately. Everywhere we go he points them out. They are a fun addition to the village: moving things around and helping us build. I also rolled up some orange foam into cones for our construction site. See the Stop and Go post for how to make your own roads.

We found some great little construction vehicles at a yard sale. They are just right for our building site at the village.

Kay especially loves the dump truck. Putting things in and dumping them out... I stitched through some layered scraps of brown felt to make some "rocks."

We picked up a Scrabble game from the thrift store to make signs for our village. Jay LOVED glueing all the words together onto popsicle sticks.

He loves reading right now and signs are a fun way to separate the different areas of the village. You can see that we have more village to come :)

Daddy and Jay are supervising This Little Project (Mom is keeping an eye out too in the corner :)

Next up in the village: The Village People-how to make and where to find those fun little peg people.

As a reminder, if you have a fun project to share, be sure to link your blog in at the Your Project of the Week Meme post below so others can enjoy your ideas too!

p.s. here are the links to the other places in our Village so far...Swimming pool, Park, Library, Post Office and Stop and Go in the Village .

How to Remake a Wooden Puzzle

For Father's Day we made a Wood Photo Puzzle for Daddy. It's so fun to have a puzzle that means something to YOU. You may have an old puzzle laying around the house that the kids don't want to do anymore. They will want to use it again after you finish This Little Project :)

Here is how to make your own:

For This Little Project you need: a wood puzzle (we picked one up from the dollar store or you could recycle an old puzzle your kids don't use anymore), an photo (we used 8x10), modge podge, pen/pencil, brush, xacto knife and/or scissors.

Here is what our puzzle looked like BEFORE:

This puzzle turned out to be a Little more than a Little Project for me. But you can learn from my mistakes. The first thing you will do is trace the puzzle onto the back of the photo. Use a SHARP pencil to get As close as possible to the actual size of the puzzle pieces. Then use scissors or an xacto knife to cut out each piece.

{Little Project Tip:} you want the pieces to be as close as possible to the actual size of the puzzle pieces. This was the hardest part for me. I checked each piece to the actual piece I was gluing it to BEFORE gluing. If it wasn't a perfect fit I trimmed it down. You may loose a tiny piece of your actual photograph, but it is worth it. Your puzzle won't fit together if your photo hangs over the sides of the puzzle pieces. It is worth it to do this step (even though it takes awhile!)

I traced each layer at a time like this:

Next, put a layer of modge podge on each puzzle piece with your brush. Let it dry. Then put another layer on and attach each piece of your puzzle picture to the corresponding pieces of the puzzle. Let it dry. I didn't put a layer of modge podge over the top of the photo yet. I'm going to see how it holds up. But you may want to just to seal it.

Here is what our puzzle looked like AFTER:

This was a Fun Little Project. It's fun to enjoy at home or to give as a gift!

YOUR Project of the Week Meme

And a "project" isn't just a craft so you can blog about your gardening, cleaning, learning activity, recipe you tried, etc.

Project of the Week Participants

1. Kelly

How to make Shatterproof Frames (mailable or for kids)

You know that idiom, Necessity is the Mother of Invention?

Well, it's true. I discovered an easy and inexpensive way to frame art that has the perk of being shatterproof- and it even looks pretty! You may remember back to Mother's Day when I was working on doing some sillouettes of my kids to send off to grandparents. Well, I had a problem: I didn't want to send them in frames that might brake in the mail, and I felt lame telling them to go buy their own frame for it :)
Since then, I've determined that these frames are awesome for mailing (think mailing a portrait of Grandpa for Father's Day that your child did) AND they are also a great way to frame kid art in a kid-friendly way ie: shatterproof. You know how it is: your child loves the art work he made and wants you to hang it up. But he also wants to carry it around and show everyone what he did. Well, now he CAN :)

Bonus: They are easy (and inexpensive) to make!

Here is what you need to make your Shatterproof Frames: Ribbon, scissors, xacto knife, electrical tape (I used black for this project but different colors would be really fun for kids' art work), punch tool, foam board (cheapest I've found is at Dollar Tree), glue stick, craft/tacky glue, Transparency film or laminating sheet, and piece of thin cardboard cut to size.

1 - Cut the cardboard to size for your piece of art work. I used the thin packing kind. I think cereal box cardboard would work too.

2- You need to punch 2 holes (be sure to measure so the are equal apart) in the back and then thread ribbon through and glue.

3- Cut your foam board to size for your art work and use a little glue stick to attach the art to the foam board. Here's Jay's silhouette glued on:

4- Then glue the cardboard piece to the back of the foam board/art work.

{Little Project Tip:} The side of the cardboard you saw in that first photo is the side that you should not see when it is glued to the foam board.

5- Now cut your transparency sheet/laminating sheet to size for your art work.

6- Then cut 4 pieces of black electrical tape corresponding to the size of the edges. This next part is the trickiest because you want it to be STRAIGHT when it sticks. The electrical tape should only be covered part-way. Leave the other half still sticky (see the photo). The best method I found was to lay the black tape on the floor sticky side up. Then put one edge of the plastic sheet down at a time being careful that it was lined up straight. I only had to take it off and try again a few times :)

When you're done, it looks like this:

7- Now you line up your art work with the sides of the plastic. The black sticky edges of the tape should be extending past the edge of your art work.

It looks like this:

8- Now you just fold up the edges of the black electrical tape and they stick to the sides of the foam board and trim the corners so they lie flat.

9- Since the tape won't wrap all the way around the foam board, I cut 4 more pieces of black electrical tape corresponding to the size of the art work to secure it better. Just match one edge of the tape along the table that the art is sitting on so that it goes on straight, like this:

10- Here's what it looks like on the back after you have pressed down all of the sides. I should mention that you will have to trim the corners so that they lie flat.

These ended up looking very classy (you can't tell from the photo). I should have taken some shots with them hanging but I had to get them in the mail!

They may not be heirloom quality, but that was ok for this project :) They were nice and sturdy, had a cover on the front that looked like glass if you weren't up close and had a frame that you could not tell was just electrical tape.

In other words, an invention success!

After I made these I had the brilliant idea of making a frame that is interchangeable so your child can decide that he has a new favorite that he would like you to hang up. It's the same basic idea with a little twist. Let me know if you want directions and I can put them up.

Enjoy This shatterproof Little Project!