Sitting with a hot bowl of alphabet soup, who amoung us hasn’t tried to string words together from the noodle letters floating within? That urge struck me recently when I opened a box of Eden Organic Vegetable Alphabets and found the letters were forming words in lovely, earthy hues of spinach, carrot, beet and annatto. These noodles…they wanted to be a craft project! Here are two ideas that use them to good effect, and are quick, easy and inexpensive to boot. These crafts would be fun for children to make, but since mine are too young to do these, I acted as a stunt double on their behalf.

See the full article and instructions on inhabitots.com:

I just completed these fall-colored velvet acorns for a woman in California. Fifty of them are carefully packaged and in transit.

In related news, it’s a bumper year for acorns in my corner of the world, but I’m noticing many of them are dropping from the trees without their caps.

Hey, oaks! Gimme some craft supplies!

Clearly I’m still a new parent because I’m encouraging my kids to make art. I understand that before long, we’ll be buried under more objet d’art than you could shake a paintbrush at, but for now, the kids rolled up their smock sleeves and made some art for Father’s day.

The labels read:

Claire Mary Catherine Donohue
Da Da
(Study in Applesauce)
2009
Applesauce and food coloring

Lachlan John Donohue
For Daddy
(I Wanted to Eat This)
2009
Applesauce and food coloring

The artist as a young girl

Lachie tests his medium, which is dyed applesauce.

If you live with babies and small kids, you may also live with heaps of outgrown clothing, slated for hand-me-downs. With spring cleaning and re-organization underway in most households, why not revisit those old clothes and give them new life as recycled crafting materials? As a new mom with twins under a year old, I have approximately eleventeen zillion pairs of wee socks waiting to be repurposed (or at least moved out of our basement).

Read the full story:

Originally published on Inhabitots.com.

Claire and Lachlan in the New Year spirit

What is mom putting on my brother’s face?

I tapped my New Year’s tiara stash to find something for baby Claire to wear, but I didn’t have any glitter-encrusted bowler hats or other dude-appropriate finery for baby Lachie, so I made him custom “2009″ glasses to suit his wee face. I used sparkly blue pipe cleaners, and am still surprised my son didn’t just rip these off his face.

It didn’t occur to me to get out noisemakers this year.

This was the babies’ first Christmas, and since I haven’t made stockings for them yet, I hung a couple of vintage ones this year, shown at right.

Good thing I have extras in my yuletide stash…just goes to show you can never have too much Christmas decor. ( Whee! )

Dear Reader,

Sorry to have gone missing for a spell. I was working on a very special project that didn’t involve felt, acorns or seqins. The mixed media here involved ten fingers, ten toes, and a wee button nose. And that’s just for the first one! You see, I am a new mom to boy/girl twins named Claire and Lachlan.

Claire and Lachlan, a couple weeks old

What does this mean for my crafting? In the short term, very little crafting is getting done. Velvet acorns are in progress and available on etsy, and I am able to fill acorn necklace orders. Custom Christmas stockings won’t be available this year, and frankly I wish I were further along on the stockings for the kids. So far, the felt has been chosen. Lachlan’s will be off-white, like my childhood stocking, and Claire’s an antique pink. Now I just need to distill all the great things from childhood Christmases into the design of two stockings. More on this later.

The birth announcement was made by the talent at Parcel.

More of my handiwork graced the Wedded Bits blog recently, where I show the step-by-step process for creating flowers from dotted swiss fabric.

These handmade flowers can be made way in advance of the big event, and can be used for centerpieces, bouquets, corsages or anything else that strikes your fancy. They would also be fun for a bridal shower, in either white or something punchy.

This bird cake topper was custom-made for Lisa, who will be getting married in an environmental center this fall. Her colors are fuschia and chocolate brown with a little green, which inspired the brown pinstripe groom with his pink necktie made from ribbon.

The bride bird is made from white dotted swiss fabric with a tulle pouf on her head. Fuschia lace was added to the tail of the bird as a fun way to add a little more color peeking from the back. After I assembled the bride, it occured to me that the tail reminds me of Gwen Stefani’s wedding dress a little bit.

I will ship the topper with swatches of the fabric and other materials used so Lisa can leave them with the baker, assuring the cake and topper look perfect together.

Generally I don’t mention my day job on this blog, but since it’s at Condé Nast working on the Brides.com website, I’m proud to finally divulge that information. My colleagues on the edit side of things have noticed that a certain Web Project Manager (me) has things such as handmade cake toppers and velvet acorn placecards at her desk from time to time. You know, in case anyone wants to see them….

And now my crafts kung-fu has graced the fun, content-rich blog, Wedded Bits in the form of a couple of shout-outs! Check them out here, and visit the blog regularly to keep up with the latest in wedding news and inspiration, updated multiple times a day.