The other day Chace (my four year old) saw me coming out of the bathroom after changing the toilet paper roll. I know, random but I have a point. Before I got to the recycling bin he said “Mommy, can we make something with that?” The craft loving designer in me had her heart grow three sizes that day (oh, whoops, that was the Grinch) but needless to say I was happy. DIY something crafty? Of course!

I asked him what he’d like to make and he said “a pirate”. Of course he did. Because he couldn’t have just said something simple like “an orange toilet paper roll”. But my little four year old wanted a pirate so this mommy was going to do her best to dream up one with what I had on hand. 

Oh, and did I mention that Chace’s favourite show right now is ‘Jake and the Neverland Pirates‘? Yo ho let’s go!

Ahoy Matey!

Okay, so obviously this is not the best thing ever crafted BUT, more important than that is what this means. Having Chace ask me to make him something out of a piece of material destined for the recycle bin was a bigger question than that. What I heard was a little boy asking his mommy to come and ‘play’ with him. 

To digress for a moment, with all the ‘stuff’ going on in the world these days and the horrible events unfolding in Boston and all over the world right now this simple question was a reminder. A reminder to take a deep breath, to get off the computer, log off of Facebook, turn off the news. Let the dishes sit dirty in sink, don’t worry about Chace’s bath night that night and needing to rush because of it. Just. Be. Present. Sit down. Make a silly craft and soak up some of the best medicine the world has to offer (in the form of a four year old boy who wants his mommy to do a craft with him). 

I’m a big believer in doing stuff like that. Of course I love my blog, I have freelance commitments, a full-time job and I love my house being tidy. But more that all of that, I love my family. My Chef Kev, my dog Belle and my little nugget Chace. Spending time with each of them is a silent way to say “you are worth all of my attention. You. Nothing else matters right now”. Time to breathe.

Easy to forget to do at times isn’t it?

So, to sit down and make a little pirate for my adorable little crew mate as he finished his dinner was something I was more than happy to do. 

Impromptu as it was, I just went upstairs to my craft bin and grabbed what I had on hand. It didn’t need to be the best pirate ever to be valuable. 😉

I grabbed a bunch of leftover felt and pipe cleaners (used here at one of my annual Christmas Craft Night’s for making elves!) as well as some other left over pipe cleaners, little pompoms and googly eyes (from a kid’s Halloween craft party where we made spiders out of mini pumpkins). I also grabbed some white glue (and not pictured but grabbed after was a paint brush, coloured markers, a T-pin and my glue gun).

Originally I was going to get Chace to help me make the pirate but it was a bit too difficult for his skill level (he just turned four as mentioned) and he said he wanted to watch me make it as he finished his dinner. Good gig kid.

If you have any desire to make a little pirate then you’re in luck as a I documented the steps. If not, then I hope you like pictures of ‘how to make a pirate’ because you’re going to see a lot of them. Buckle up.

First, line up your ‘pant’ felt about halfway up the toilet paper tube. Disclaimer – none of this has to be perfect. I will show you evidence to support this statement below. You have been warned. 

Apply some white glue to your tube.

Wrap the felt around.

PANTS. Done. As easy as dressing a toddler. Scratch that. Strike the oxymoron from the record.

Next up was a shirt. I chose my blue felt (well, Chace did) and decided to wrap this one a bit differently for interest. I started on a bit of an angle…

So that when finished it had a neat ‘seam’. As you can see I used the ‘cut a strip and apply glue’ method as mentioned above for the pants.

I overlapped the pants too just for fun (like a real shirt).

Moving along to the hair now. I made simple cuts to create some hair texture…

And glued this on as well. This piece was not as long as I didn’t want the ends to meet. Have to leave room for a face!

It was about this point that Chace exclaimed, “Mommy, this is a really cool pirate!”. Melt my heart kid.

This little pirate needed a hat and I’ll admit, I totally winged this part as well.

I folded my red fabric in half and just started cutting, figuring it out as I went.

I knew my pirate hat should have some sort of a ‘bill’ that was big and floppy. The rest I just made up. It looked like this after I was done.

Here is where I used my glue gun. I glued the top part (where the fabric folds) together so that the top stayed closed. If not then the hat would have looked like a big round ball on his head.

I glued the hat on to my pirate and added some googly eyes as well!

He kind of looks like a bandit here! Oh well, perfection was not my goal here remember? 😉

A pipe cleaner and pompom later and we had a belt. I used the glue gun here too. I cleaned up the rough edges with scissors after (where the glue strings are).

To add the arms I used my T-pin and poked a hole.

Then I popped in a pipe cleaner, pulled it down (through the bottom) and tied a knot in the end. Then I pulled the arm back out to the point where the knot stopped it and trimmed the arms to size.

Every little pirate needs a sword right? Well luckily I had a pipe cleaner that could turn in to one!

To make the handle of the sword, make a small loop and twist the pipe cleaner end back on itself.

Next, fold the long end roughly in half.

Bend the right side out like a little blade and twist the bottom end back on to your handle shaft.

SWORD!

With some coloured markers, draw on a lopsided face as well as some buttons and feet and guess what? You. Are. Done.

And the best part? This.

Cutest toilet paper roll ever. And cutest toilet paper roll player.

So that is the tale of the Potty Pirate. The tale of Chace and the Neverland Pirate. The tale of the ‘totally tubular dude”. Aaarrrrrhhhhh! Me’s off to scrub the decks. Actually I’m going to go watch ‘the Voice’ that I pvr’d but same diff right? Ursher baby!

The process was simple enough to do in my graphic design program (Adobe Indesign). First I made a block of colour (background) which was 7″ x 5″. I chose a warm gray (Pantone Warm Gray 5), then I typed the words “LOVE” and “EVAN” in a font named “Cabin” at 125 pt. (a free font that can be downloaded here).  I overlapped the last two letters of ‘love’ and the first two of ‘Evan’ and set the ‘Evan’ font block to “multiply” in the effects palette.  I then set an opacity of 46%. And for those wondering, the colour I used for ‘Evan’ is Pantone 322.

Then I typed “the sweetest little baby boy…” below it in the font ‘Bickley script’ (download from here) and set the colour to “Pantone Cool Gray 11”.

This is just how I did it of course, you can get the same affect through Photoshop or other programs that have some design capability.

The neat thing about the typography in this gift is that the last two letters of the word ‘love’ are reflected in Evan’s name. (i.e. in ‘love’ we end with ‘ve’ but in ‘Evan’ we start with the opposite arrangement ‘ev’).

Here are a few other examples of how you could play with something like this: SPECIAL and LAYLA – see how ‘special’ ends with ‘al’ and then ‘Layla’ start with the opposite ‘la’. Or, how about LOVE with EVIE, EVA, or even EVELYN. Or, JOY and YOLANDA. SWEET and TEAGEN, PURE and ERIN, or (my fave) LOVEABLE and ELAINE (ha!). See, the possibilities are endless!

Here is a better look at the the script line…

To frame it, I used a white frame with an interesting wood grain detail.

I got to meet baby Evan this weekend and give him a lot of cuddles. Mommy and Daddy enjoyed this gift and hopefully one day when he’s old enough, little Evan will too.

What did you get up to this weekend? Any highs from ‘new baby smell’? Any impromptu artwork projects? Regardless, I hope it was a nice one. Have a good week all!

Linking to:

… Jenny from the block I’m not.

But I DO have some new sparkle! This post is all about jewellery upcycling yo.

I’ve been meaning to do this for years. A long time. Are you with me when I say I had a super stylin’ Ziploc full of battered jewellery that needed some lovin? You know your fave pieces that break, go out of style, wear out or just get generally dingy? 

It’s like that orchid you received as a gift in 2008 that you accidentally killed yet you still hold on to it in case it comes back? Well, I’d like to introduce you to my orchid.

So much potential… Let’s get to fixin’ and revamping these pieces shall we? All you need is a bit of imagination and a few sets of pliers and wire snips as seen above.

This first upcyle was made from the chain of a broken necklace that I owned and a necklace that my friend (she’s a manager at a accessories store) gave me as a hand-me-down (#thanksKaelayourock). I’ve lucked out many times getting things she no longer wants (score for me). Some I wear as is, but others have made it to my pile above for the reasons mentioned.

 This piece was actually inspired but one of my favourite Stella and Dot necklaces.

This next one was from a necklace that my neighbour gave me. It was hers, but she wasn’t wearing it. She asked if I wanted it as I tended to wear chunkier pieces than her so I gladly accepted! The only problem was it hung at a weird length for me so I didn’t tend to use it. But then I had an idea…

I love the double strand chain.

This next one was a simple revamp of one of my favourite necklaces. I adore the rose clasp and used to wear this all the time. The chain had worn down and due to loosing it’s finish tended to kink and roll on itself. I noticed in the multi-chain hand-me-down from my store manager buddy that there was a chain that I could use to bring my favourite necklace back to life! I know the multi-chain necklace looks really pretty from this far view but unfortunately when you got up close you could see that some of the strands and overall condition had seen better days.

Moving along I made a new necklace out of a silver chain I had. The pendant was originally a white flower but had started to degrade and yellow. The leaf was actually an earring! I had lost the other one but loved it so much that I kept it thinking it would made a great pendant. I also used a piece of chain I had on hand to make an ‘extender’.

If you follow me on instagram or Facebook, you may have seen this ‘sneak peak’ on Tuesday…

This is one of my favourites. The chunky teal necklace was a hand-me-down from the same neighbour who gave me the gold and orange one above. It came on a brown suede rope and the beads had a simple knot between them. The suede broke one day and so I revamped it into this new piece, adding yet another orphaned earring as the centrepiece. I also added an extender to this necklace too from another fragment of chain that I had.

This is so fun!

Okay, moving along. This next one combined two strands of pearl from the multi-strand necklace, as well as a link from the gold/orange one and a little cluster that had broken free of the chain used above in Stella and Dot inspired piece.



This last necklace again used a few strands from the multi-strand necklace along with a few gray beads from another one and the clasp from a bracelet. Again, all hand-me-down pieces.





I also had a charm bracelet but the charms weren’t really my ‘look’. So I simply removed them creating a new cleaner look that was much more ‘me’.

And this last little one is more of a ‘tip’ should you have any pieces in need of the same help. I have this adorable ring (again, thanks Kaela) but one of the little ‘diamonds’ fell out. I simply dabbed a small bit of white nail polish into the recess and now the little discrepancy isn’t so noticeable!

So there you have it. Nine ‘new to me’ or refurbished pieces of jewellery that come in at a bank busting total of zero dollars spent. Now that’s my kind of shopping 😉

What about you? Any jewellery surgery as of late? And ridiculously generous friends and neighbours who shower you with hand-me-downs? If nothing else, you now know another use for nail polish aside from fixing tears in your pantyhose!

And that makes a good day doesn’t it? TGIF friends!



Now, I like me some fun reindeer games a fun party so I’ve been really looking forward to my husband (Chef Kev’s) Christmas work party this year. It’s always been a blast in the past (not a blast from the past – but a blast IN the past) so when I was asked to design this year’s party favours (to be on the table when guests arrive) the discussion went something like this…

Kev: “hey, will you make the party favours for my work party this year. Only if you have time, no pressure”

Elaine: {inside voice – what! Christmas! crafty stuff! Designy things! party favours? I’m SO in! … but play it cool…} Outside voice: “sigh, oh, okay… but only if you make me dinner for a week”

Kev: “I already do. Oh, and thanks”

Elaine {inside voice again – Dang! Foiled again by my quick tongue. Must. think. out details longer. next. time.} Outside voice: “right”.

So that was that. Operation design party favours had begun.

Before I lose you, here is what I did. Details below if you’ve read this far (and thanks if so).

And here is how it came to be.

I went to pinterest for some inspiration and searched ‘Christmas party favours’. I had a few criteria when searching. 1) It had to be relatively easy to do as I had to do 50 of them and 2) It had to be relatively cost effective, as well… I had to do 50 of them!

This caught my eye.

But I wanted to give it my own spin. So I set out redesigning the header card portion.

And today (well every day) it is free for you if you’d like it!

Click here to download to download the free printable instructions
Click here to download the file containing the header
Click here to download the circle label file

Once I had designed my header card and sticker I purchased my brown and red reindeer noses. You can buy whatever you’d like of course, but for mine I bought: milk chocolate covered caramels, malt balls and jujubes as well as dark chocolate covered espresso beans and almonds. Rudolph’s nose is a cherry sour.

I then purchased 4″x6″ treat bags (lollipop bags) at the craft store (Michaels) and convinced Chef Kev to help me divy up the chocolate!

I trimmed down my header cards that I had printed on card stock (which are actually 4.25″ wide so there is a slight over hang on each side) and scored them with my paper cutter. I happen to have a trimmer that has a setting made for scoring but you can use a bone scorer or even lightly score with an exacto blade if you are comfortable with that route (do not press hard as you will cut right through – you want to apply very light pressure to simply cut only the top fibres of your paper). You always want to score on the side that you are folding away from (so in this case, the printed side).

Score right along the edge where the red ‘front’ meets the green ‘back’.

I put the headers aside for a moment while I moved on to folding the top edge of the treat bags over (about 1/2 – 3/4″ and stapled once on each side. Chef Kev helped here too!

Then I used a tape runner (that I already had but you can get them at the craft store in the scrapbooking section) and applied a strip along the inside BACK ONLY of the card (bottom part). You don’t need to do the top/front as your round circle sticker will seal that side.

Then I lined the top of my bag fold into the crease and pressed down along the tape.

After I folded the top over I applied my round sticker (printed on “Avery 5294″ 2.5” circle label stock) to close the front part of the header card and attach it to the bag.

I actually found if I applied the sticker upside down I had more control. You may have noticed in the free template image earlier in this post that I left a blank spot where the label goes. The label stock has a bit of ‘show through’ so you could see it through the sticker if you had the pattern run across the whole card. It actually works well as you have a ‘guide’ to line your sticker up to so that each favour looks the exact same (sticker isn’t lower and higher as you look at different packages). Bonus 🙂

And now the really fun part – gluing Rudolph’s little nose on! For this I just used white craft glue and a toothpick to apply. I let the noses dry a few hours so that none would fall off in transport.

Here are a few pics of my workshop mid-nose application….

Did I mention I had to do 50 of these!?

Once they were dry it was time for the ‘after shot’!

And here is close up of the back. I changed the colour palette in the pattern for futher interest.

I’ve left the ‘contents’ box blank on the template so that you can simply apply a label or hand write your own contents or message here.

And one last ‘after’ shot!

You’ll probably notice a little message under the title. It reads “Wishing you the very best this holiday season from your (husband’s company name) family” I deleted this in the template for download of course! 

Chef Kev loves them and says he is proud. I know someone else who would be proud too…

Thanks Rudy 🙂

Have you done any Christmas favours recently? Been busy decorating and enjoying the holiday spirit? … or just eating a ton of chocolate? Me? All of the above.