Wednesday, 25 August 2010

Brooke Sews (Part Two) ... Felt Coloured Egg Game

Firstly, my apologies for horrible pictures. I'm actually very disappointed that I put in so much work to make these creations and I'm letting them down by poor photography work. I'm very much in the learning stages and am yet to find a well lit room in the house that works for me.

My second sewing adventure was for Sarah's (Brian's 2 year old friend) birthday party. A quick little email to Sarah's Mum discovered that yes, she had a small little play stove and that a great present would be a book on colours.

This is where the 'inner me' went "ding, ding we are now officially making all of Brian's friends birthday gifts". The Felt Coloured Fried Egg Game instantly came to mind. I thought I had seen something similar on Etsy a while back. A lot of searching later I found nothing. Whether it was an illusion or not I was going to bring this image in my head to life. I had been in love with felt food for a while and it was on my "give it a go, crafty to-do list" (along with quilting and smocking - I don't dream big do I?!?). So one fine day, off to Spotlight I trotted.

If you read my last sewing post you will know that I can't sew and I don't own a sewing machine (my Mum however does), let alone anything I needed to make this project. My Spotlight shopping list went something like this:
  • Felt (red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, pink, white)
  • Cotton (same colours as above)
  • Squishy stuff they fill crafty things with (found out it was called Hobby Fill)
  • Bobbins
  • Vellum?
  • Glitter (white sparkly)?
  • Ink that works on Vellum?
Note: Brooke's shopping list code goes like this - If it's on the list you are allowed to buy it, if it's proceeded by a question mark (?) Kevin will not like that you might buy it. And the Kevin shopping code goes like this - If you need it you get it, if you want (but don't need) it, you don't. (This is the secret to affording a house, let me tell you). It all makes sense now, right?!

So, I came out much later with a total that required hiding from Kevin (this post could blow my cover), but according to my fellow customers on the day, was nothing much at all. It turns out that sewing is much like scrapbooking, (most) people don't cringe when they hear the total is $200+. (No, my total is never any where near that amount!).

From this point most of it's a blur (I believe it included a late night/early morning session with the sewing machine). At one point or another this chicken laid some coloured felt eggs, fried and all:
Mission #2: Packaging.

You see, the vision that popped into my head as I was reading the email from Sarah's Mum also included explicit details of the packaging. That's the reason for all of those question-marked additions to the shopping list.
I made the box from scratch. I didn't think I would be doing the eggs justice if I wrapped them up as normal.

I traced a little box I once got from a bakery, cut and folded it up. Made a little sleeve for the box out of an overhead transparency (those things are nastily expensive!!), but that didn't quite fit so I taped the transparency to a firm cardboard base. The eggs were wrapped in tissue paper, placed inside the box and then a ribbon tied to the outside. Basically, you pull the ribbon and the box slides out - gorgeous.

The tag idea came from a picture I had seen on a blog a long time ago and had stayed in my head since that day. A bit of searching and guess work last week turned out that it was this post from the MondoCherry girls. I must have known a good thing when I saw it because today I read their blog religiously. And you must know they handcut everything! By hand cut I mean SCISSORS!!

As for the 'game', you can really just make up anything you like. Eg: "Sarah, I would like a fried green egg please". Sarah can then fry it up and serve it to you.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{FELT EGG HOW TO}

1. Draw a circle onto paper. Pin it to your yellow felt and cut it out.

2. Place your 'yolk' onto the paper and draw a fried egg shape around it. Pin it to your coloured or white felt and cut out. You will need two per egg.

3. Sew yolk onto fried egg shape, almost all the way round. Stuff with Hobby Fill.

4. Be sure to change the colour of your cotton and then sew both fried egg shapes together.

Easy, you're done.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2 comments:

  1. All I can say is wow Brooke! You've really done a great job with the present and making it all by hand is so rewarding. Thanks for sharing your handy work, I can see you'll become addicted to sewing soon too:)

    P.S.I haven't seen that ad before but will have to look out for it, alas it's not me but I'm curious now.

    Have a good week.:)

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is darling and very clever!

    ReplyDelete