Nikita the hobby horse tutorial

Nikita, the horse lady was sick last week. The poor girl had to withstand shots and hammering in order to get better.

 

 

  

As I posted my sock doll bowling set tutorial, Britney from jandmseyecandy said that she was glad that I was letting go and creating my own stuff. Thank you so much Britney for encouraging me! So here it is: Letting go phase 2 - The Hobby Horse.

Wanna make one too? You can download the pattern here. Enlarge it by 200%.

Materials:

- about 50 x 100 cm fleece fabric

- scrap of felt for the nose

- scrap of fabric for the ears 

- about 46 cm bias tape or a scrap of fabric 48mm wide x 46 cm

- hot glue gun

- yarn for the hair

- wiggle eyes to sew on

- 1.2 meter ribbon for the harness

- 2 d rings or similar

- wooden dowel about 60 cm

- polyester stuffing

Lets do it

1. Enlarge the pattern by 200% and cut: 

-1 face piece on fold, one neck piece on fold out of fleece

- 2 ears out of fleece and 2 out of other fabric

- 1 nose front piece out of fleece

- Nostrils out of felt scrap piece

- 1 strip for the neck band out of cotton or use bias tape 25 mm wide

2. Place the ear pieces right sides together, sew and clip corners, turn and iron. Set aside

3. sew the darts into the nose front piece as marked.

It should look something like this from the front and back.

4. Sew the nostrils on

5. Fold the face piece right sides together and sew the side

6. Pin and sew the front of the nose

7. Cut some strips of yarn and lay it on top of the face piece. More or less in the middle. Secure with a line of stitches.

 8. Cut strips of yarn for the hair and lay it on the right side of the neck piece. Fold over, pin and sew.

 9. Sew the bias tape on as marked and pull a ribbon through it

 10. Fold the ears onto the inside of themselves as seen in picture and pin into place. 

 11. Pin and sew the neck and the face piece together

 12. take a scrap of any fabric and some stuffing and wrap the wooden dowel. Use some hot glue to secure.

 13. Stuff your horse. When you get to about 3/4 of the way down the neck, insert the dowel pushing down firmly. Continue to stuff. When you are finished stuffing, pull the ribbon tight and make a double knot. secure the fleece fabric onto the wooden dowel with some hot glue.

14. If you like, pollster the bottom of the dowel in a similar way as we did on top, but make it a bit nicer. Secure with hot glue. This is to prevent injury and scratched floors.

15. Give your horse a haircut and sew the eyes on.

16. make the harness. Cut two 28cm pieces of ribbon and sew it onto your d rings. Sew another about 60 cm long piece of ribbon for the top. Secure one side of the harness with a couple of stitches onto the horse to prevent choking hazard.

 17. Voila! Name your horse and have a cup of coffee.

Let me know how yours turned out.




Thank you K for showing me how yours turned out!



I am showing this project at 

This project was featured at

Birthday Crown or a Loo Queen Crown

I made this crown for Tina's 2nd. B-Day.

 I was not really intending to post it here, because there are so many crown projects out there and honestly, I even forgot that I made this. We are potty training. We have this book about a Toilet King.

So today Tina wanted her crown. I think this is actually a great idea, because the way I made the crown is that you can each year attach a new number or whatever you want. So I promised her that I will make her an emblem for the toilet.

Dear Tina, please forgive me that I have posted a picture of you at the quiet place. I promise that I will not show it to your first boyfriend. Mom.

 Before I write you some instructions on how to make your own, I have to tell you another story from today that is hilarious. I had some panty liners laying on the cabinet in the bathroom. Tina asked me if those were my diapers. I did not think about it much and said: , yes. Following, she asked me why I still need diapers, because I am big and go on the toilett alone. I did not think much and replied: "I also leek sometimes". Few hours later, she took herself one of the panty liners, opened it and glued it onto her bottle. "My bottle leeks sometimes too" , she said.

Steps:


1.Trace and cut the pattern out of your felt. It should measure about 60 cm end to end and 15 cm at its highest middle point.
2. Trace and cut the other fabric for the inside of the crown on the dotted line (you can skip this step if you like) I cut mine with pinking scissors to have the scalloped edge. Iron it onto the felt using the seam a steam
3. Sew the Velcro on. One part on the inside on the crown and one part on the outside. Or another way one part on the right and one on the left side of the crown.
4. Decorate the way you like with what you have and make your center piece -a number, an emblem etc. Sew a snap onto your middle piece
5. Sew your snap on the crown by hand
6. Hide your panty liners in the cabinet if you are using the crown for potty training in order to avoid weird and uncomfortable questions.

Porcelain Paint experiments

I think I mentioned several times that I put my fingers into everything, This is slowly supposed to start to be funny. I am smiling. You?
I have been experimenting with porcelain pens and paints from Marabu. you paint on a clean, fat free surface and heat sen in the oven. They have pens where they claim that you do not have to heat set and the finished works is dishwasher safe - does not work. I made a beautiful plate with a cow and cookies and milk, let it dry for over 24 hours and it washed off like it were some food smeared on it. So if you try those do not listen to the manufacturer and heat set.

This was my first try. I traced the design with carbon paper - not the best idea because as you can see the lines burned into the picture, but not everywhere. I also used way too much paint on the tree trunk. This plate was already washed in the dishwasher about 15 times.

Here I drew the cupcake free hand and as you can see it worked a lot better. The plate was also washed several times in the dishwasher. I also made a bowl in the same design, however there the cupcake is peeling.
I suppose that the surface while applying was not entirely fat free. Will continue trying. If you also try, let me know how it went.

Recycled and not so recycled experiments

Did I already mention that I put my fingers into everything? I have been experimenting with resin and shrink plastic using either bought scrap-booking paper or my own digital designs. I made those wooden “circles” a couple of years ago using a two part epoxy resin. I intended to make rings or necklaces out of it, but did not come to it yet. Working with two part resin is messy and time consuming. Maybe that is the reason why they are still laying there. 

As I have mentioned, I also played around with some shrink plastic. The results are nice, but I have not found a real use for the finished pieces yet.

The only useful part to the shrink plastic experiments were the little charms for childrens jewelry. While I was at it, I made some little gift boxes using my paper designs. Amazingly they are very stable.

We live in the south west of Germany. A nice wine region 15 minutes away from Switzerland and France. Pretty cool to have to drive through 2 countries to go to work or to casually drive to France for some shopping. Lots of green, nice weather, slow pace of life... What could you want more? PLEASE some Us kind of shopping!!! Lots of choice and decent prices . Pretty please?!
Most of the cool scrap-booking stuff comes here in shops with a 2 years delay and costs about twice as much as in the US. Ugh. I get care packages every now and then and abuse my husbands colleagues who fly on business to the Us. Not to mention the empty suitcases when I am on a visit in NY.

Do not ask me why but I have been saving crown bottle caps for a while with the thoughts of using them someday for something. Maybe filling them with resin etc and making jewelry out of them or for scrap-booking. As Tina was about a year old, she loved filling them from container to container. So I did save them for a reason - :) As I was searching on the internet for ideas what I could do with those I came across a tutorial for bottle cap necklaces using Glossy Accents from Ranger. The same effect as with the resin, but no mess. Removing the lining from the bottle caps was a nightmare. I was able to purchase Glossy Accents here in Germany but none of the pretty colored bottle caps. A care package was necessary.

You know these for sure. They seem to be a big trend among the kids in the US. You always have a base necklace and the bottle caps are attached to the base with a magnet. Cool idea.

This brought me to another idea: what else can one recycle into pretty things? I do care for nature a lot, but I am in no way a tree hugger. I have truly learned to appreciate nature since we have moved here. Germany has a very intricate recycling system. We recycle just about everything. Things get separated into special containers and bottles can be brought back to the store and yes, we do turn off the water tap when brushing teeth or while showering. Searching for ideas, I came across a Turkishdesigner, Gulnur Ozdaglar who uses PET bottles for jewelry. Fascinating! I had to try it.

Did I ever mention that I put my fingers into everything? Oh, I did not think so.

The last 3 weeks I have been cutting bottles up and experimenting. We even drove to France and bought some drinks in colorful bottles (in Germany you only get translucent, green and brown bottles). I have to thank my husband at this point for drinking all the weird tasting things that so I could have my bottles. Thank you Tim!

Trying and trying this is what I came up with so far and I must say: I like it. What do you think?