A Neice's Second Birthday

My sister's daughter just celebrated her second birthday. Months ago (like in February), I decided I was going to give her a completely handmade birthday gift, and, at that time, I bought all of the necessary supplies to make her gifts. Then I procrastinated, put it off, figuring I had tons of time. Then I got pregnant and spent week after week feeling miserable and trying to get enough energy to finish her gifts. This is when I realized that there is nothing like some pressure to give you the boost to get things done. I completed these presents into the wee hours one night and priority mailed them to arrive just in the nick of time.

Here is her felted wool birthday crown! I got the basic pattern from my crafty friend Wintry who makes adorable birthday crowns as gifts and to sell. I was hoping to adorn the crown with some needle-felted designs, but since I was doing this so last minute, I just had to knit in some designs before I felted it. Some good instructions for how to felt a knitted project can be found here.

Next I made her bean bags with her name stenciled on. I have already shown a set of these that I made for my son, and included a link to some instruction on a previous post.

However, this time, to prevent the paint from bleeding, I ironed a piece of freezer paper onto the BACK side of the stencil.

There was still a tiny amount of bleeding around the edges of some letters, but I thought it was a great improvement from my first set! Next time I think I may try a different brand of fabric paint as well....

And I also threw in a few homemade super-star recycled crayons. I have already posted instructions for these on a previous post. We have a great little used art supply store where I can buy a bag of broken crayons for 50-cents and this is a great way to turn them into a new treasure.

And no birthday gift would be completed with a birthday painting from Finn!

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