You know when you see something and your heart kinda speeds up? That happened today when I spied this from the blog wee wonderfuls.

You can find the patterns here and here and I am sure many more places.

And if you have a moment and you haven' t before checked out Flickr for embroidery it's inspiring. Oh my!





I found this great source on flickr where you can find a variety of free patterns.

I am ready to shout from the roof tops, I am in love with

EMBROIDERY!

If you have ever wanted to give it a try I would recommend the patterns from Sublime Stitching. They are modern little patterns that take the guess work out of stitching and the site has everything you need to know to start. I am all about trying new things and I have wanted to give this a whirl. Loads of fun.

I picked up these suitcases at the thrift store this morning. My daughter will love them.

My girl made her Valentine Cards for school yesterday.

The owl stamp was already made then

she ran some decorated paper through the xyron machine and cut strips for the top and bottom of the card.

I was browsing Jo Ann’s the other day when I was reintroduced to the plastic canvas. I was in need of an easy Girl Scout troop project and wanted to do something different than plain paper valentines. In the past I have dismissed the pre packaged plastic canvas kits as lacking creativity but seeing the variety of blank canvases intrigued me. The supplies for all the girls cost less than $10.00. The girls really loved the activity. Well, after the initial 10 minutes because that was a little frustrating. I heard them talking about different patterns and colors options not to mention the basic technique of hand sewing. All you need is the plastic canvas that comes in a variety of sizes and shapes, smooth craft yarn and either a plastic needle or one of those dull metal needles (Sorry, I'm sure they have a official name).

I have to admit that I am having fun with this activity it’s an easy fun little project. It's easy to take in the car and for sitiing in the doctors office. My soon to be three year old even got into the fun she made her own wild pattern. I found most of the online patterns a little boring but I did find a program that allows you to insert any picture and it creates a pattern. You can download a limited version from the website here for free . I found these plastic canvas portraits that would be fun to try.

I found Ed Emberly's wonderful website last night and bookmarked it. This morning I spent some time looking through it and couldn't wait to share it. It has great drawing tutorials that really encourage kids learning to draw. What I was especially interested in was the Picture Pie Parts patterns and activities. There is a printout full of circles broken down into pie parts and loads of pictures designs that you can make with thes pieces. Here are some examples...









I think this is such a great activity to try. It's a great chance to talk about how easy it is to break objects down to basic shapes. You can find the activities here the above examples are from the February section but I saw some more picture pie activites in other months. I plan on printing out the pie pieces page on card stock and having them lamanated that way my young darling can't bend them all up.


**Okay I went back to the site to explore some more and he has several books out about picture pie drawing I may need to run out and pick one up today. It seems I'm a little behind the times. And he has a book about thumbprint art! What? Where are my keys?