Such a sim­ple idea, but so mean­ing­ful, not to men­tion cute! A par­ent made these for tod­dlers to ease their first-day-of-school jit­ters. Hav­ing some­thing to hold and squish def­i­nite­ly helps ease anx­i­ety some­times. From Curly Birds.

 

Glit­ter and home­made play dough! Def­i­nite­ly adds anoth­er dimen­sion to plain old salt dough. How-to on Fairy Dust Teach­ing.

 

I know exact­ly who to give this to! Now they just need to come up with a new baby! :P I espe­cial­ly love the fish. I hope I can find a sim­i­lar fish… Tuto­r­i­al on how to make sushi with baby tow­els, one­sies, and socks from Cre­ative Dol­lar.

 

Baby food jars have a love­ly quaint qual­i­ty to them, I’ve used them in my art­work before, and I love to see herbs plant­ed in them. Here’s anoth­er clever use of baby food jars, and its shape works so well! Lego head con­tain­ers! Bril­liant! How-to on obSEUSSed.

 

I’ve been want­i­ng to make a hook case for a while. This one uses the love­ly star stitch (I made a belt with star stitch a while ago) and I love how sim­ply the hooks are held in place, no need to make com­part­ments. Fol­low Tan­gled Hap­py to see the pattern!

 

I saw rings with fab­ric flow­ers in a small shop in Hong Kong once. They were very pink and whim­si­cal. These from Martha remind me of the ones I saw. Would­n’t it be cool if the flow­ers were on met­al ring blanks? Might try that sometimes…

 

What do you think these love­ly ros­es are made from? Paper, of course. But what kind of paper? :D Any guess­es? Alright. It’s cof­fee fil­ters. Cof­fee fil­ters! Anoth­er excel­lent exam­ple of turn­ing some­thing ordi­nary and hum­ble into some­thing extra­or­di­nary. Total­ly fit for  a cen­ter­piece at par­ties… at a wed­ding even! :D No one would ever be able to tell that you’re dec­o­rat­ing the tables with cof­fee fil­ters. Unless of course you tell them. And telling them would be the best part! :D And the even bet­ter part? There is a How-to! From Kuch­nia Pel­na Cud­ow.  The blog is in Pol­ish but the pho­tos are pret­ty self-explanatory.

 

Also in Hong Kong I came across lots and lots of minia­ture food tuto­r­i­al books. But they all call for a kind of latex air-dry mod­el­ing clay mate­r­i­al that I’m cer­tain I won’t be able to find in Cana­da. But here is a tuto­r­i­al for minia­ture pas­tries using the hum­ble salt dough! :D From the­craftar­tykid on Instructa­bles.

 

Here is anoth­er tuto­r­i­al using air-dry clay, which can be bought in art sup­plies stores. I love that it incor­po­rates tex­tures of every­day things. (There are exam­ples of small wal­nut bowls and a wood grain plate as well.) From Fam­i­ly Cir­cle.

 

A bril­liant tuto­r­i­al on how to make foam­ing soap! It does require one to get a bot­tle of foam­ing soap first, because the foam­ing action comes from the mag­i­cal mech­a­nism of the bot­tle (I’m sure it’s not all that mag­i­cal, I just don’t know what it is and pre­fer to think of it as mag­i­cal). I’ve come to pre­fer the foam­ing soap rather than the straight liq­uid soap because the foam­ing stuff does­n’t leave as much residue on my hand, and there­fore does­n’t take a lot of time/water to rinse off and feels less dry­ing after­ward. (I suf­fer from dry, flak­ing hands all year long) And I think one real­ly does­n’t need that much soap when wash­ing hands. So this hand­made foam­ing soap would make soap last much longer! :D Give it a try if you like foam­ing soap too! From The Fru­gal Girls. 

Have a fab­u­lous week­end, every­one! :D