She Made It

Mermaid, originally uploaded by BeckyKay Designs.

I am so stinking proud of this that you would think I'd made it myself! My sister Jessica showed me this beauty last night, and it was love at first sight.

This pretty little mermaid is at least two feet tall. (I haven't measured her yet.) She's made from fleece, so she's soft and cuddly, and I'm thrilled with how the fleece hair turned out. What little girl wouldn't want to snuggle up with this friendly beauty?

She will be debuting at the Hillsboro Arts & Crafts Fair in Hillsboro, KS in September. If there are any left, we'll add them to the She Made It store after that!

Transformation

Earlier this summer, I picked up this cute little sewing box at an auction for about $12. I've been wanting one of these for ages, but have never actually won the bid. This was my lucky day, I guess! It was one of several items up for grabs in a "your choice" kind of deal. I waited as the bigger pricier items were snatched up, and then managed to get this for a song.

I brought it home, slapped on some primer and paint and voila! Total cuteness!

I have to admit that I meant to go for a deeper redder red, but I'm a total nincompoop when it comes to choosing paint color by those silly little swatches at the paint store. I need a 12x12 swatch to really get the feel for how a particular color will look. But I'm still happy with the results. My favorite part is the vinyl decal I purchased from Single Stone Studios! It is actually a 23" long decal that I cut in half so I could have birds on both sides of my sewing box. The directions that came with the decal were super-easy to follow, and the quality of the decal is excellent! I'd highly recommend them!

I've always wanted to be one of those people who can take a flea market find and turn it into something lovely!

If you'd like to see a play by play of how this project went down, you can check it out here!

The King of Pillows

I have today and tomorrow off work, so this morning, Lil' Kay and I met my mom to choose fabric for Sally's baby quilt. While Mom and I were choosing fabrics (and let me tell you, that is a time-consuming task) Lil' Kay found a dinosaur fabric panel that he absolutely loved! Now, fabric panels are typically used to make a wall hanging or small blanket, but we decided to turn this one into a giant body pillow!

I did the cutting and sewing and then turned Lil' Kay loose with a bag of polyfil! He did a fabulous job of stuffing his pillow, but it took a lot of "fluffy" to fill it! He kept telling me, "It's almost done!" and I kept say, "No, it's not!" He was quite the trooper. I really expected him to get bored when it didn't fill up as quickly as he wanted, but he just kept stuffing.

Lots of "fluffy" later, Lil' Kay had a huge body pillow covered in his favorite dinosaurs. Lately, he's been trying to determine the "king" of everything -- king of dinosaurs, king of animals, king of candy (which, by the way, is chocolate). He was very quick to dub this project the King of Pillows!

Stay Tuned

Tiki Mon, originally uploaded by BeckyKay Designs.

I know I haven't blogged for a while. It's because I'm working on lots of projects that I want to share with you, but not until they're finished!

My new craft area is in the works. I have my cute little sewing box almost done. My belly is getting bigger by the minute. And, I've got a fun little project for the nursery that I just ordered supplies for yesterday.

That little guy up there is my most favorite firework that we blew up this year! How could I resist that face?? And when we ignited him, his eyes and mouth lit up! So that's what I'm up to! Working on projects and blowing things up!

Check out my interview

I'm featured today over at Pixie's Purpose! Check it out and learn everything you wanted to know about me!

Lil' Kay Creations

Space Godzilla & Godzilla, originally uploaded by BeckyKay Designs.

I am always blown away by the creatures that Lil' Kay draws and colors, but keeping the reams and reams of drawings he makes just isn't practical. I was really excited to come up with an cute and fun way to make his drawings a bit more permanent.

I started out by iron a piece of muslin fabric onto a sheet of freezer paper. This creates a nice crisp "canvas" for Lil' Kay to draw on. I gave him a black fabric pen and let him draw on of his creatures on each piece of muslin. He's a big Godzilla fan, so that's Space Godzilla on the left and plain old Godzilla on the right.

After he drew the outlines, he colored them in with ordinary crayons. I encouraged him to color fairly dark so the colors would show up. When he was finished coloring, I placed a paper towel over the image and ironed the paper towel until I was no longer getting any colored wax on the paper towel.

I then peeled the freezer paper away from the muslin and placed the muslin image down on a piece of colored cotton fabric. I pinned the two pieces together and used the sewing machine to stitch around the image leaving a bit of a margin around the actual drawing and leaving an opening at the bottom of the image for turning and stuffing. I cut around the stitching leaving about a 1/4" seam allowance. Next, I turned the creatures right side out, filled them with stuffing and hand stitched the opening closed.

Super easy and fun. Lil' Kay was thrilled with the results. The only problem? He drew both of the creatures facing the same direction, so they can't fight! I told him he'd have to work on that design flaw for next time!

Giant Squid Attack!!

I made this for Lil' Kay. It is the one and only that I will ever make, so don't ask me. He's a cute little fella, isn't he? Last night he attacked a pirate ship, so he may look all cute and flowery, but he's deadly!

Actually, if you want your own squid, you can get the pattern for FREE at Bit of Whimsy Dolls! And while you're there, look at all the other patterns you can purchase. They're fantastic! I'm really tempted by Lenny the Guinea Pig and the B-Movie Monsters.

The squid pattern is actually a very simple project. The only problem I had was attaching the legs to the body. I'm not a patient person, so it was frustrating for me, but I got it done! And look how adorable! He's supposed to have a little smile, but my resident squid expert informed me that his squid should not have a mouth, because squids don't have mouths. They have beaks hidden up under their bodies. It was all I could do to convince him that I should make it in multi-colors rather than just orange.