This was inspired by the fact that kids grow out of clothes so fast, and while I was going to make a shirt or dress with a heart applique, instead I decided to make this pin (and a few others) so they could be used for a longer time. This looks adorable pinned on a dress or jacket, and would even work pinned to a hair elastic for a cute hair accessory.

You just need:

• felt – old felted sweaters work well for this, or even store bought felt. (Thicker felt will be less ‘floppy’, so use that for the bottom piece, if you can.
• A pretty button
• embroidery thread/needle
• safety pin

Older kids can make these themselves, too!

Here are the instructions and a step by step photo tutorial!

These are fun and easy, and offer a ton of possibilities.. Check out these that Joanne at Ready, Set, Craft made last year

And here’s another version I made, a flower:

I threaded up some big embroidery needles with embroidery floss, and gave him some sweater scraps to use as patches (why yes, I do have a bag of old sweaters in my closet just for the purpose of things like this!) I showed him what to do, and did a few stitches to get him started, and he did great! Here’s a poor cell phone photo of him in action..

I think the patches actually add a great deal of interest to the original snake. He’s also re-named the snake “Patches”. One of the eye buttons had broken, too, so we replaced the buttons with some eyes I’d gotten from the lovely Colleen at Some Art Fabric (who has actually made a sweater snake in the past!). I’m loving Snake 2.0! Here’s the how-to on how to make the snake, if you’d like one yourself!
He loves his snake, and he loves that he did it himself (with a bit of help from mom here and there).

• Go Canada! I love this little drawing from Diana Evans on the Olympic Games.
• I’m really enjoying the color series prints from Little Brown Pen… The Yellow one is so bright!
• The Domestic Scientist has scoured etsy and FOUND DINOSAURS!

Chicken Chili Update:

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And, in case you missed it, while I was off in London last week, we had 3 lovely tutorials last week by three lovely guest posters!

Tutorial – Make Resin Star Christmas Tree Ornaments From Kerry at www.pennydog.com A great project if you’ve been wanting to try crafting with resin!

Tutorial: Make Quick Mittens By Heather from Dollar Store Crafts I love projects that turn old sweaters into something new.. this would be great for when you accidentally shrink one, too!

Moss Terrarium Tutorial – The Gift that Keeps Giving All Year ‘Round! By Lindsay from Shrimp Salad Circus A great tutorial for making a lovely and unusual gift!

Hope you enjoy these! And do drop by the sites of our guest posters and say hi… they have many more great projects, too!

Hi! I’m Heather from Dollar Store Crafts, a daily blog devoted to making cool crafts with dollar store stuff. I’m so excited to be swapping holiday posts with Dot!

Do you love felted sweaters as much as I do? Felted (or technically, “fulled”) sweaters are made from animal hair-based yarn (like wool, alpaca or cashmere), and washed in hot water and dried in the dryer until they shrink up and the fibers are fused together (kind of like dreadlocks on a micro scale). Once a wool sweater is felted, the fabric can be cut and it won’t fray. It’s an amazing material for crafting. You can use a felted sweater as the base for all kinds of cozy winter goodies, like these cute mittens.

You can find wool sweaters at the thrift store. Just make sure the tag says it is mostly or 100% animal fiber. Need to know more about the process of felting? Check out this post by Diane Gilleland at Craft Stylish about felting your sweaters.

Project Materials:

• Felted sweater
• Scissors
• Sewing stuff (sewing machine & thread)
• Paper and pen

To Make Mitten Template:

Trace your hand (or your child’s hand) on a piece of paper.

Add a seam allowance line about 1/2 inch around the outside of your traced area.

Place template on sweater and cut out two pieces for each hand.

Place pieces right sides together and sew around the edge. Be sure to reinforce the seam at the cuff of the mitten by backing your stitch up a bit.

Clip any excessive extra fabric (pay attention to the area near the thumb), and turn mitten right side out. Try on mitten to see if it works. If you need to, you can turn it back inside-out and adjust.

Smile because that was so simple and quick!

Visit me at Dollar Store Crafts for more great holiday ideas and tutorials!

I’m not really blogging anymore, but this site is still up because it has some great projects and inspiration.  Enjoy!

Dabbled is a place for creativity and experimentation. The tagline “Experiments in Art, Craft & Food” says it all. You’ll find artwork, craft projects & designs, tips & tutorials–both original, and links to other great stuff from the vast internets.

Dabbled is the brainchild of Dot, my alter-ego who obsessively creates. She’s a starter of many projects, and finisher of maybe one or two when she feels like it. She loves to design craft projects that can be done with a minimal investment and minimal skill. Probably because she’s notoriously cheap, she likes to create nifty things out of junk… figuring out ways to use interesting materials, like upcycling old sweaters into Elephant Purses or making her own “shrinky dinks” out of #6 plastic. And I have no idea why, but she really has a thing for robots.

Me? I’m an artist, web designer & geeky craft chick who is currently trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

Thanks for visiting!
Nancy (aka Dot)
dot [at] dabbled [dot] org

PS – If you’ve done something based or inspired by a dabbled design, let me know! Or if you just have something cool to share…

Product Reviews & General disclaimer

If you’d like me to review a product or shop, I will consider it if it fits with Dabbled.  Email with details. Mailing address available upon request.  However we don’t sell our opinions, and if we don’t like something, we’ll either say so, or decline to publish a review.

I have an Amazon Associate account and will occasionally link to products on Amazon using it.

So, for your enjoyment and inspiration, here we go! (Click through on the pics to see larger, as usual)

Lots of great crafty goods, and tons of inspiration could be seen at the Supercute booth. Aren’t these stuffies by Lorigami just too cute? The owls and bunnies are so clever! And you know how I love anything made from recycled sweaters… And isn’t that a sweater snake I see (I think that was by Lorigami as well)? ..Much better than my attempt, I think! Apparently I don’t have more pics from this booth, but also I met Becky from Glue & Glitter, and she had adorable lunch bags and aprons. All in all, a very cool booth!

Another fun booth was the one with Love Yu and Lil’ Sprout Knits. These lovely ladies had all kinds of cute. Knitted stuffies — are those pigs? Too cute! And baby knits like these adorable booties from Lil’ Sprout Knits. And more clever stuffies from Love Yu… a totally different take on owls and bunnies. And who couldn’t love a little cupcake?

Moving on from cute to pretty, we have some really neat work by Original Leigh. She does reverse painted pendants and other cool stuff on glass. Very cute designs–Check out the cool little birdie in pink!

And finally, I also liked these pendants by Wingo Designs. These metal pieces have a great simple graphic quality.

This would be a great project to do with friends for your own craft night, or to make with kids.

Behold! The Flying Purple People Eater and the Fluffy-head –>

This tutorial is less ‘step by step’ than my usual ones, since the object is not to create what I created, but to make your own monster up!

So, what do you need?

• Sweaters, preferably already shrunken/felted. You’ll need a sleeve that is big enough to be the body of your puppet.
• Scrap felt/sweaters to make your embellishments.
• Eyes – either safety toy eyes, buttons, or you can make out of the felt scraps if you like. That’s of course assuming your monster has eyes! (I was lucky enough to have a few toy eyes that the lovely Colleen from Some Art Fabric had given me, and they worked great!)
• Embroidery thread.

First, pick your sleeve. You can use a solid color (we both did purple here) or stripes, or whatever works for your monster. Cut off the sleeve, trimming the part near the shoulder so it is even all around (like a giant sock).

Next, plan your head. We did a couple of different things here, but here are a few options:
1) Square – just turn inside out, and sew the cuff together in a straight line.
2) Curved – sleeve inside out, trim a curved line, and stitch together.
3) Rounded – See the example below. Although my ‘spikes’ should have been shorter. It was pretty messy, but that was ok, since I was adding a horn.
4) Fluffy – See the example below – with sleeve right side out, gather a few inches from the top. Weave thread back and forth, and pull tight. Afterwards, you can cut the cuff to resemble hair! (Note, in the pictures, this was done after creating the mouth. Either way works)
One thing we would do, in hindsight, would be to stitch in some scraps or padding in the inside of the top of the head. This would help the head stand up better on a small hand.

You’ll also need a mouth. Here’s a couple we did:
The Fluffyhead has a mouth with lips, created by turning the puppet inside out and stitching an oval of fabric on the inside.
The People Eater’s “scary” mouth was done by whipstitching on the mouth from the outside.

The rest is all embellishment and adding personality.

Arms: Since ours were for 3.5 year olds, we decided against arms, as they are hard for small kids to manipulate. If you like you could just stitch on non-functional arms.
Horn: For the people eater, I made the horn by cutting out a circle of sweater fabric, cutting a 2/3 “pie piece” out of it, and wrapping it into a cone. Very trial and error. I stuffed it with a few fabric scraps and stitched it on top of the head with a whip stitch.
Eyes: Sew on buttons, press on toy eyes, cut fabric circles for eyes… For the People eater I used a fabric circle cut out of felted sweater, made a hole in the center for the post of the toy eye, and pressed it through. Then I used a blanket stitch to attach the felted circle to the head.
Nose: Holly’s Fluffyhead had a couple of felt circles bunched and stitched on in the center. You could also do buttons, or whatever.
Other: I cut out wings out of sweater material and used a simple straight stitch (it was getting late!) to sew them to the sides of the People Eater Body. Holly attached a felt star to the belly of the Fluffy head. Use your imagination here!

The finished puppets!

Hope you enjoyed this and it gave you some ideas for a fun evening of puppet making!

Related:

• Octo-puppet – this one is more of a typical tutorial, making an octopus puppet out of old sweaters and buttons.
• Sweater snake
• Elephant Purse

• Somehow I had missed this cool Crafting Green contest from Dabbled buds, Chica & Jo! I’m going to enter… and so should you. Hurry, you just have til April 20!!
• Some good ideas on what to do with easter trash at Crafting in a Green World..
• Love these bunnies from old sweaters at Polywog’s Cakewalk
• Recycle Junk Mail into beads (via Whipup)
• Great recycling crafts at Craftypod. Love the VHS tape ideas!
• Love this little bird at Lorigami, and all of the lovely recycled items in her shop!

And finally, a flickr roundup to give you some inspiration for your green crafting… Think Green – Recycled Fashion from around Flickr. Click through the links below the picture for more information on each, and to see the other cool stuff these artists & crafters do with recycled materials!

1. piglinks, 2. Ad Bracelet, 3. Recycled Tunic, 4. RCA Record Comb, 5. a batch of studs – copyright amalia versaci 2009, 6. Madonna Wine tote, 7. Olive and Teal Sundress, 8. recycled plastic earrings, 9. around the world in 80 stamps upcycled vintage bag

Not directly related, but I’ve been meaning to post this:
Blog friend and artist Diana Evans has a new website, Bees For A Cause, where 50% of proceeds of the sale of her cute “Bee” print go to Heifer International to help struggling families earn income through the sale of honey, beeswax and pollen. Every $30 Raised purchases a package of bees, the box and hive, plus training in beekeeping. It’s a little thing, but it shows the direct impact that people can have on others.