handmade toys: recycled robot

This was a fun spur of the moment toy that I just made up as I went along. You see, my daughter LOVES to cut paper, and she loves whenI give her old flyers to look through and cut up before I put them in the recycling. But all this cutting can get a little out of hand and there ends up being little tiny pieces of paper everywhere! So in order to contain the mess, I made this little roboto, that she has to "feed" the pieces of paper to while she cuts.

Materials:
To make a robot (or any other character you wish) for your little one you'll need:

- pop bottle
- x-acto knife
- duct tape (I used this heavy duty one my husband had lying around, that has sort of a fabric quality to it)
- markers

Directions:
- cut off top of pop bottle with x-acto knife (this will make it easier to dump paper into the recycling when done with the cutting activity)
- cut out a hole where you'd like the 'mouth' to be
- cover entire bottle with tape, making sure to cover the sharp edges of the mouth and rim
- decorate with markers!

:) Eva

Kindness of Neighbours

In my apartment building there is a really sweet elderly couple who are both around the age of 95 years old. They always go out of their way to try and help people out and are very very friendly :). Today there was a knock on my door by the husband, and he came bearing gifts! These lovely Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls! He said he found them sitting in one of his cupboards, and that my daughter could probably put them to good use. I was soo thrilled :). What was even more cool was that he said these two dolls were handmade by his wife! Aye loves the dolls, they're exactly as tall as she is :). <3

handmade puppet theatre

I made a doorway puppet theatre for my daughter last night.. another project to tick off from my super long project list !! :) It was pretty simple to make. I used two dowels, one at the top and one under the window to give it structure and hung it from a some yarn I had. I think I might sew a case for it so I can roll it up and put it away when it's not in use.

Annnd what goes perfect with a handmade puppet theatre? Well... handmade puppets of course!!

Exciting News!!

I opened my own etsy shop :)!! This is super exciting for me because ever since I was a little girl I always dreamed of having my own craft shop (though I admit that I never thought it would be online, technology has come a long way!). You can find my shop here: www.handmadebeginnings.etsy.com ...Since I have just started, there is only one type of item in my shop right now, an item that my family and friends were looking for: Eid Banners! I plan on having more items up in my shop soon!

New Banner

After several months of blogging I decided it was time for a new banner!!

And I also moved all the links to blogs and websites to a resource page (see button on menu bar) since my computer was taking really long to load and kept freezing.

Sorry I've been MIA, hopefully lots of cool projects lined up soon :)