Monster Hand Puppets

Hola! Hope you all had an awesome holiday weekend for those of you in the United States. I definitely enjoyed having an extra day of rest as it is always appreciated.

While trying to find  a cute gift to make for my sons soon to be 3 year old friends Birthday Party, I came across the cutest monster pillows. I liked the monster theme but really wanted something that I could just lounge around and complete, and decided to create some toddler sized hand puppets. One was for my son Dylan's friend the other for the friends cutie little sister and the guy in the middle with the tie was for Dylan. When I originally came up with the idea, I envisioned a one eyed version like below. But after looking at the pic and sleeping on it, I decided that the puppets would be more toddler friendly if they had a second eye, and I couldn't be happier. The best part about this craft.... I sat on my couch watching a movie as I completed the first one, was on the deck with the family when I completed the second one and the third and final one Mr. D was finished off on my drive to the Birthday Party. Being a passenger definitely has many benefits and this is one of them. Yes I was able to thread a needle and sew as my husband was driving. The ride actually seemed much quicker than the half hour that it took to get there which was awesome.

Just the other day I was thinking that I needed to find a hobby that was really relaxing like reading fun fiction books. Although crafting is relaxing its really hard to just lounge around completing projects... well most of the projects that I work with... but then after hand sewing these babies I realized that doing little hand sewing projects and maybe even doing some crochet (more than the two stitches that I know) would be a great way to both relax and complete little projects. Now I really have to spend some time with my crocheting friends to get me on my way with some Barbie and American Girl Doll Blankets.

                 

             

Now tell me, do you think you could thread a needle, multiple times and do some hand sewing while riding around in a car? You can be honest or even try it and let me know.

Have a great Tuesday.

Darley~

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Earlier this month I had the chance to work on a 9th Birthday Tea Party with my new partner in crime Evelyn and it was sooo much funnn! I'm totally missing all the awesome pictures of the stuff that the mom put together like the cute tea cups and saucers, the hat craft with feathers, the amazing finger foods... because I was so focused on the stuff that I made. LOL 

Now lets check out the cupcakes together. Well more like everything on the outside of the cupcake. I founds  a template online for the wrappers and just used craft paper and some scrapbook scissors to add the cute edges. I then cut ribbon and made the tiny bows and added a rhinestone with hot glue. A little double sided tape and the rest was history. The cupcakes are on a cupcake stand that I own and you can rent if you are in the local area. They are sitting on the cutest paper doilies. Next up, I created a design and printed out some water bottle labels. The labels are Avery and you can go on their website and either use a preexisting pattern or edit your own to get just what you are looking for. The third pic shows how Evelyn set up some of the items on the cutest cart that she got for FREE yes you heard me. She had her husband paint it and it looked amazing. The zippered pouches on the cart were hand sewn at the Hartford Craft Studio over many days and nights...... (next time i'm outsourcing) LOL. I really enjoyed coming up with the design and being able to offer varying zippered pouches to the girls for that sense of individuality. Evelyn loaded the pouches with lip gloss, nail polish, and other girl essentials which made both the girls and their moms very very happy. I am planning on holding a couple mother/daughter private sessions to teach how to make the zippered pouch because it is way to intensive for my group classes and hope you all sign up. 

Overall I really enjoy working on Birthday Parties. And even more I love to see the look on the kids faces when everything comes together.

Can't wait to share my next party items with you. Lets get them booked Evelyn.

~Darley

I know I know But I'm Back Now

Hello Friends.

Hope you all had a great summer! I spent my summer working on projects and having fun, ofcourse. I usually take the summer off from classes but somehow also took a break from Blogging. I do vow for the millionth time to keep up on my Blogging and continue to share cute craft projects with you (I'm giving you a big smile). I am also working on a second Blog.. I know I can barely keep up with this one... but I want to keep Hartford Craft solely for my crafting and craft classes and plan on having a second Blog where I can be completely honest and talk about the other things that are going on in my life. In my head I'd like to think that this Blog is a place that even my young students can come to and see what I am working on so I don't want to pollute it with "old people problems" lol. (More info to come on the new Blog once everything has been updated.)

I hope that you all have had a great summer! I know that some of you celebrated milestones, some of you had babies (very very cute ones), some of you spent a lot of time with friends and family, and others spent a lot of time indoors with the AC on keeping cool. LOL No matter how you spent your summer I hope that you did not spend any part of it wishing that it was over because if you did......then I'll blame you if we have a rough winter (I'm in New England so winter is definitely coming).

So here are a couple things that happened in the last couple of months. I still have more to share with you so the pictures and posts will be coming (I promise!) 

18 Inch Doll Bedding/ American Girl/ Journey Dolls

Ladies Craft Night/ Crochet Bracelets with my friend Kristine

Kids Key Chain Class hosted at a Local Church

I definitely had a lot of fun working on these projects and cant wait to share my other projects with you. If you want see more up to date, minute by minute, projects, Follow me on Instagram 

Enjoy the rest of your Hump Day

~Darley

New Classes

Hello there! Hope you had a great weekend. I started off my weekend with a super fun Ladies Night lined zippered pouch class which lead me to offering a new class. Mother/ Daughter sewing, YEAH!!! I'm not going to go through how great it is for girls to work on a craft with their mom and how sad I am that I don't have a daughter to craft with.....or will I lol. My age recommendation is at least 7 years old up through teens. Since I design my class to be very low pressure and simplify many of the steps, it's just what families need to unwind. I'm starting off by offering the Zippered Pouch Class but will be posting other classes and am open to suggestions and requests.

Here's a pic from the last Ladies Night class. Due to the small size I was able to give the ladies instructions on how to use the machine and know that they left the class not only with a cute pouch but with more confidence around a sewing machine than they expected. 

Thanks for checking out the Blog!!! If you are interested in scheduling a class send me an inquiry on the Class Registration Page. Invite a friend and their child for a fun small group class.

Have a great week. 

Darley

More No Sew Doll Dresses

My Journey doll is back modeling her new clothes from our old clothes. Chavonne is modeling a sporty strapless top and a cute skirt. Both from my sons old long sleeve shirt. I used the top of the sleeve to make the shirt. You can see the image on the bottom right. In order to get the tie finish in the front just cut a slit down the front of the shirt, knot and tuck.

For the second dress, I used the other sleeve to make a tube dress. The shirt was created by cutting one of my old snagged shirts. I will admit that there is a stitch in the back but it is a very basic beginner stitch.. everything else has remained unfinished. The key to ensuring that this does not unravel is making sure that you cut below the current stitches.

I hope that I have inspired you to create something new from something old!!!

If you do create someting, don't forget to share.

Enjoy your day!

Darley~

Getting Carded for Fathers Day

Hello there.

I recently had my Fathers Day kids class and it was amazing! Unfortunately I will not be posting the pics until next week, only because the dads haven't seen the cards yet. To come up with the class design, I first spent some time on my favorite app Pinterest of course. Once I found a basic idea that I liked, I visited the site and used the template from Stamp n Design, I adjusted the size of the template and sat with my good friend Jan from 2gurlzllc. to come up with my actual simplified class idea. I really enjoyed creating with her not only because she is really funny but because she is an experienced paper crafter and stamper, which is something that I am now getting into. My final card design is below along with a little something for Grandpa. The funny thing about the class is that some of the girls didn't seem to enjoy the class as much as usual. I did find out why.... they weren't allowed to use pink or anything related to pink lol. I definitely had to remind them that the card was for their Dad and not for themselves. Sounds simple, but when your usual go to is a shade of pink it is a bit difficult. The good news is once they saw the final product they were extremely proud and happy with their projects.  

Did you create something for Father's Day? I'd love to hear about it! Feel like creating a card similar to this one, visit the blog listed above and have some fun. 

If you are in my area don't forget to check out our upcoming adults class Class Schedule

Enjoy your day!

Darley~

No Sew Doll Dress

Happy Friday!!!  I hope you all get to enjoy the long weekend. But before you go off to start your exciting plans heres an easy DIY Doll Dress Tutorial modeled by my Journey Doll Chavonne. 

These dresses were made using two sleeves from a long sleeved thermal type shirt from Old Navy (Medium Size). I loved the pattern but hated the fabric which felt itchy on my sensitive skin. As you can or can not see, the shirt was snagged in the middle probably from washing or regular wear. I figured it would be of better use if worn by Chavonne instead of being discarded. 

All you will need for this project is a long sleeved shirt made from a stretchy fabric, and a pair of scissors. For the second dress I used some already embellished tulle type material on elastic that I purchased from the fabric store months ago with no project in mind, however you can use ribbon, a piece of edging from the shirt, or any material that you may have to make a belt.

1. Begin by cutting off one sleeve as shown below. The cuff on my shirt was pretty long so I folded it over after sliding the dress on my doll. I then cut off the bottom the dress right above Chavonne's knees.

2. Cut off the end of the cuff on the other shirt sleeve. On my shirt there was no stitching on the end so when I opened up the fabric it was pretty wide. I just tucked the raw edges inside. 

And you are all done! Yes that easy. 

For Dress two. You will be using the top side of the sleeve that was cut off of Dress 1. When you open up the dress and put the seem in the middle and flip the fabric upside down you will have a dress like in the 3rd pic with a cute fish tail. Simply add a belt and you are all done.

I hope you try this super easy, cost efficent project this weekend. As I go through my winter clothing that will not be worn next year I will be coming up with little porojects to share with you all.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend.

If you do happen to make your own dress be sure to post it or tag me on your Instagram!

~Darley

Mothers DayCards

Hello there. Hope all the moms enjoyed Mother's Day and are still getting the awesome treatment from their children and loved ones. For Mother's Day I held a kids class where we created cards and decorated tiny pots which held Cilantro seeds that my little helper planted me. I originally asked the moms to provide me with pictures of the kids but later thought the cards would be even more personal if they included pictures of the mom and their child. Since most of us do not have great pics on hand and definitely don't have them printed, I took pics of the moms and their daughters when they dropped them off for the class and printed them out on my home printer directly from my phone (thank you blue tooth/wifi). The kids cards were so beautiful and filled with love! I also created a couple cards using some of the materials from my kids class. Someone keep me from spending even more money at Michael's LOL. Here are some cards that I made and managed to sell (Yeah Me!) and a picture of the super cute plant holder. 

 Both of these cards are designed to have a pic added to the top.

   

I've already decided that our Fathers Day card will be more like a booklet... Hope the moms aren't too offended but we always have to one up ourselves on every craft right? I know you share the same sentiment. LOLThanks again for stopping by.Darley~

Ladies Night class- Wall Art

Hi there.

So happy to announce that my second ladies night class was a success! I had a completely different group of ladies from the first class but they were just as hilarious. Trust me there's nothing like crafting and laughing and having wine. The idea for this class started with Margo wanting to do wall art on canvas. She wanted to stencil the words live, laugh, love. You should already have that phrase drilled into your head by now. Michael's had canvases on sale so I said lets do it. I've done stenciling before and tried steciling with acrylic paint for my first demo and decided that it would be too messy and time consuming. I may have also had a mishap where I didn't pay attention to my spacing and didn't have enough room for the last letter of the word that I was creating but I'm not going to admit to that lol. Since the steciling was out I had to come up with plan B which is where I came up with the felt flower. I couldn't actually find a tutorial with a template so I had to come up with my own plan, and all of the ones I saw used hot glue guns on the petals which wouldn't work if I had 9 women trying to do it all at once and the risk of burning fingers....so I came up with a mostly basic sewing and minimal glue gun method.

The ladies definitely had a lot of fun and so did I!

Can't wait to see you at my next Ladies Night Class.

Darley~

Getting Organized For Spring

Happy Monday.
I hope that you all had a great weekend! I definitely enjoyed mine. The cold crappy New England weather has finally disappeared and SPRING IS HERE! As you can tell I'm very excited. Overall I enjoy organizing and am always looking for ways to get more organized but now that the weather will be beautiful and I will be spending more time outdoors (my toddler insists on living outside), it is even more essential that I am very organized and focused during the week so that my weekends are free. During Easter weekend I began my office re-organization by moving the furniture around and making some decorative changes which I will share on another post when everything is finished. The main reason for the change was not only so that I can stare at the window while I "worked" but because I didn't feel like the previous layout was functional and allowed me to be my best.


One issue I was having was the pileup of magazines as they came in, so I came up with the solution below. Well I saw something similar on Pinterest or somewhere and decided it would work great for me, and it has been! Now when the new magazines come in, I just put them in the magazine holder and am able to easily access them when I finally get a moment to read one. By the way there are more magazines in there since I took this picture. Sigh....

I also decided to get rid of my big bulky calendar and wanted to have one on a clipboard. I founds these cute Free Printables on ThirtyHandmadeDays I also found a cute Blog template on the same site which I am planning on trying. I've printed out a couple others, but you know how it is. Even though something is a great idea, it doesn't mean it will work for you. But I will give it a try. The website also has may other templates that are useful for everyday life budgeting, organizing, and such so I do encourage you to check it out.

Staples Clipboards transformed by just adding a cute burlap sticker.





Hope you have a great day and thanks for stopping by!


Darley