Handy Hair Clip Holder

A hair clip holder for my girls is something I've been wanting to make for a while now. Today I finally made not one, but two! A quick Google or Pinterest search will turn up endless styles of hair clip holders, but I'm going to share how I made mine today.

Handy Hair Clip Holder Tutorial

First, you'll need to get your materials ready.

Artists canvas (I just used a cheap one from the $2 shop) - choose whatever size you want your finished board to be.
Rectangle of fabric about 3 inches (7-8cm) bigger than your canvas all the way around
Scissors
Staple gun
Ribbon
Rectangle of felt slightly smaller than your canvas 


Now, take your canvas and lay it on your fabric, face down.

Fold up the bottom edge of your fabric by about 1/2 inch, then fold again so that your folded edge meets the inside edge of your frame. Staple it down onto the frame close to each inside corner. Repeat with top edge, making sure fabric is pulled firmly across the front of the canvas (you don't want wrinkles in the finished product).

Fold in the corners as shown in the photo, then repeat the process of folding the fabric edge 1/2 inch, then folding again right up to the inside edge of the frame, for the two sides. Staple and pull fabric tight as you go.

Don't worry if the fabric seems a bit funny at the back - you're going to cover this up at the end anyway, with your felt.

Attach the ribbon by stapling onto each side at the back. Use as many rows as you like - I used three strips of ribbon as this seemed like a good number of rows for the sized frame I was using. Measure an appropriate distance between each row and mark this on the back of the frame before stapling in place.

Turn your frame over and check that the front is neat - now is the time to pull out any staples if your ribbons are crooked, or if your fabric is wrinkled.

At the back, staple a length of ribbon to the top of the frame if you are going to be hanging your hair clip holder on a wall.

Put your piece of felt over the back of the frame and staple around the edges. I also thought of getting my glue gun out for this step, but since I had my staple gun handy anyway, I just continued using that. You could glue if you wanted a staple-free finish as this will hide all the stapling you've done underneath.

Now you've got a handy way to display and store your little girls hair clips!

Art Smocks

My girls have got making mischief down to a fine art.

They love anything messy and I'm sure sometimes they make more mess than is really necessary.  Katherine in particular is always coming home from kindy with her clothes covered in paint.  So I made up a couple of art smocks with this ultra cute pattern (Simplicity 4286) and some plastic raincoating from Spotlight (it's not as nice as laminated cotton, but it was on sale and I thought it would be perfect for this project).

 

Little ties at the back.

...and look at this pocket here! 

Katherine's eyes lit up as soon as she saw them hanging up in the sewing room.  "Wow, painting clothes!  Are we doing painting today?"  She loves painting.  I love when they stay clean.  Now everybody wins.

On a roll

I wanted to do something different for Easter this year, so I decided to try making some crayon rolls for my girls and their cousins. We all went on a big family camping trip - it's a bit of an Easter tradition in our family - so I made up some little packs with a crayon roll, an Easter colouring book and of course the obligatory chocolate egg or two.  I thought they would be handy to take with us and to keep them amused while we were away.  The girls loved them, and I loved how simple they were to make. Google it, if you haven't made one before. There are about a thousand tutes online.

Most of these were made out of scraps I had lying around. I'm a bit of a scrap hoarder, so I love when I find little projects I can make that reduce the size of my scrap pile! 

 

Loved using all the bright colours in these.

This one makes me think of chocolate - I think it's the chocolatey centre!

Something different

I decided to take a break from kids clothes and do something different today.

I'd bought some cupcake print fabric a while back and had planned to make an apron out of it, but that was before I got caught up making clothes for Katherine. But as I said, I felt like doing something different today.

I didn't have a pattern, but I had a basic idea in my head of how I wanted it to look.  The finished product was definitely more kitschy looking than I had envisioned, but I think that's part of it's charm.

Now, just point me towards the kitchen!  I feel a baking frenzy coming on...