Y is Also For Yellow Yo-Yo

Yesterday, I shared my first "Y" craft, the Yellow Yarn Yolk.  Here's the other one I made, a Yellow Yo-Yo.

Materials: yellow, tan/brown, and blue cardstock, a screw-style bottle cap, white yarn or string, glue, scissors.

Begin by tracing your hand on the tan/brown cardstock and carefully cutting it out.  Set it aside. Cut (or punch) two circles from the yellow cardstock.  Glue them on either side of the bottle cap.

Glue the end of the yarn to the side of the bottle cap, then wind it around until the bottle cap is no longer visible. Leave about 6 extra inches of yarn, cut it off, then tie a loop at the end.  Slide the loop over the middle finger of the cut-out hand.  Glue the hand to the paper.  I chose to leave the fingers loose.  Gently pull the string taut and glue the yo-yo to the paper.

Here's what it looks like from the side.

I really like how this turned out.  Another fun addition to my Children's Crafts from A-Z!

Y is for....

After six months of making crafts from every letter of the alphabet, I am finally adding the final letter to my list.  If you've never done it before, try googling "crafts that start with Y."  You'll find yaks (not the easiest animal for young children to create or even to recognize) and a handful of cop-outs, like Yellow Sun (come on... you're not even trying). I started with a list of all the possible Y-nouns I could think of.  I immediately removed:

• Yak.  There are plenty of cute yak crafts out there - no reason to reinvent the wheel. 
• Yam.  No matter what I do, it's going to look like a sweet potato.
• Yacht.  What young child wouldn't look at it and think it's B-is-for-Boat?
• Yeast.  Not a very fun or eye-catching craft.
• Yeti.  Do little kids know about yetis?  The only reason I do is because of Rudolph.
• Yardstick.  Unless it was 3 feet long, it would probably look more like R-is-for-Ruler.  

That left:

• Yarn
• Yolk
• Yo-yo

 Hmm.... Yarn.  Yolk.  Yarn yolk?  A yellow yarn yolk?  Yes!

 

Materials: cardstock (silver, reddish-brown, white, yellow), yarn (yellow, white), scissors, glue.

Cut a frying pan from silver cardstock and set it aside.  To make the bacon, cut a rough rectangle shape from the reddish-brown cardstock and add white yarn.  Glue it to the frying pan. To make the egg, cut a rough oval from white cardstock.  Cut a circle from yellow cardstock and cover it with glue.  Starting from the center, place yellow yarn onto the wet glue, winding it around until the cardstock is covered.  Snip off the end.  Glue the yolk to the egg white and the glue the whole thing to the frying pan.  

Now, before anyone says anything.... yes, I realize this looks a lot more like F-is-for-Frying-Pan, B-is-for-Breakfast, or E-is-for-Egg.  How's this?

Convinced?  If so, great.  If not, return tomorrow to see my totally legitimate, no doubt about it, Y-is-definitely-for-Yo-Yo craft.

The Stampin' Up Card Challenge

Last week, I shared that my friend Amanda had challenged me to make a card from this Stampin' Up kit:

I'm always up for a challenge, so I jumped in.  Upon careful inspection of the elements, I realized that there were only a few ways they could go together.  The red polka dot paper was cut as an envelope liner.  The diagonal striped paper fit vertically onto the turquoise card base. The white sentiment card (which is hidden in the above picture) also fit vertically onto the base. The piece of baker's twine was not long enough to wrap around the card, so it was obviously intended to thread the button.

I used the baker's twine to thread the button, but wasn't happy with how it looked.  So I cheated a bit.  I swapped out the small 4-hole red button for a slightly larger 2-hole button and ditched the green & white baker's twine in favor of green embroidery floss.  I gathered my other supplies: a Fiskars Christmas sentiment stamp set, some silver ink, silver embossing powder, and some teensy rhinestones. 

 

Here's my finished card:

What a fun challenge! Thanks, Amanda!

Monster Cupcakes

After making our Caterpillar Cakes, we had plenty of extra cupcakes and green frosting left over. We brainstormed and decided to make Monster Cupcakes. Trevor and I went to the pantry and started digging around, looking for interesting materials to decorate our monsters. Then we sat down to start frosting.  

The plan had been that we'd each make our own, then one of us would make a second one for Steve, who was in his office working. But right at that moment, Steve came out for a break, saw what we were doing, and decided to join us. He said it was his first time using a piping bag. Surprising, given how often we use them around here! Trevor showed him just what to do and he picked it up quickly.  

He was very proud of his Monster! He used candy eyeballs, three Mike & Ike candies, a gumdrop, and red licorice.

Here's Trevor's. He used five candy eyeballs, Mike & Ike candies, a pretzel, a gumdrop, and blue licorice.

 

 

Here's mine. I used candy eyeballs on green gumdrops (attached to the cupcake with pretzels), Mike & Ike hair and nose, and a licorice smile.

I love how different they all are.  Such a fun activity!

Project 41: September

It's time for September's Project 41, my effort to try each flavor-of-the-month at Baskin-Robbins with a different friend as a year-long celebration of my 41st birthday.  This month, my companion was my friend Amanda.  I've known Amanda for about 4 years.  One day, I was browsing through the gallery at Scrapbook.com and saw a graduation layout with the name and colors of Steve's small-town high school.  I left a comment saying that my husband had gone to the same high school.  We exchanged a few messages.  It turns out that Amanda was a good friend of Steve's younger sister.  What a small world!  We became good online friends.  Amanda and I met in person in the fall of 2010 and traveled together to CHA in January of 2011.  We'd seen each other only once since then when we attended an Amy Tan / Kelly Purkey workshop together in April of 2012.

Amanda lives about 2.5 hours away from me, so it took some coordinating to find a time and place for us to meet up.  But everything came together and we were able to meet up in my hometown.  (This brought my total number of different Baskin-Robbins stores to five in seven months....)

On to the ice cream. September's flavor-of-the-month is German Chocolate Cake. It is described as "Swiss chocolate ice cream with coconut, walnuts, and fudge brownie pieces wrapped in a caramel swirl ribbon."

 

It was so good!  The brownie bits were amazing and the caramel was fantastic.  The amount of chocolate was perfect.  I could have done without the coconut, but it wasn't offensive or anything.  Overall, it was a really good flavor-of-the-month.  (Take a lesson, Triple Vanilla.)

Here we are.  It looks like we were sharing one scoop, but I assure you that she was holding her own ice cream just out of the frame.  The problem with ice cream is that you can't spend too much time working to get the perfect picture!  

It was absolutely wonderful catching up with Amanda and the time flew by.  As we left, she handed me this and issued me a challenge:

This is a Stampin' Up card kit. She explained that all the pieces were included, but that she was not going to show me what the completed card is supposed to look like. Challenge accepted!  I'll share my version of the card next week.

Another awesome month of Project 41!