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So I’m going to try to pull off 30 Artist Trading Cards in 30 Days (lets see how good my stamina is, shall we?).

Per Wiki - Artist trading cards (or ATCs) are miniature works of art about the same size as modern baseball cards, or 2 ½ X 3 ½ inches (63 mm X 89 mm), small enough to fit inside standard card-collector pockets, sleeves or sheets.

I’m going to attempt to make 30 of them – no subject list, no set materials – just whatever I can get my hands on and get done.

Here’s # 1:

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So I’ve been contemplating frugal gift ideas for awhile now and honestly the whole Homemade bath gifts have never really appealed to me until I came across the Honey Cinnamon Face Wash (link below) and the author listed out all the healthy benefits of three whole ingredients it takes to make. I must say I was impressed. I’ve been trying to move to a more organic diet (the salt in can goods alone is scary as heck) so really it makes sense that the biggest and most absorbent organ in your body, your skin, get some healthy lovin’ too.

All you need are a few simple ingredients and some pretty jars! Be sure if you’re giving these as a gifts to check for likes, dislikes and – most importantly – allergens! I never would have thought it but a friend of mine can’t be within 10′ of a rose, nevermind having the oil in her products.

Honey Cinnamon Face Wash

Candy Cane Sugar Scrub

Not as wild about this one just becuase it calls for ingredients you have to by from their website – but it all seems ‘all natural’ and they have tons of other recipes on their site so if you do purchase some ingredients you’ll have plenty of ways to use them.

Bath Salts

Making your own bath salts seems pretty straight forward – Epson Salt or Sea Salt + Essential Oil of Choice = Bath Time Goodness! This website sells some pretty fancy types of salt (like Himalayan Pink) and gives some suggestions for what type of oil to use to get what effect (relax, invigorate, etc). Not a ton of recipes but I liked how simple it was.

Homemade Shampoo

Homemade shampoo is just as straightforward as the bath salts: Castille Soap + Water + Oil (Jojoba, Veggie, Olive, Grapeseed, etc) = Basic Shampoo. The link above goes to the Instructables tutorial with 10 different recipes using the base recipe plus various essential oil combinations. I’ve been told you can get Castille Soap at any grocery – I don’t know for sure, I haven’t looked for it yet.

Other things I found:

Easy Homemade Coconut and Beeswax Lip Balm

Make Your Own Deoderant - I really like this one considering all the badness associated with commercial deoderant.

Bath Bombs – I’d leave out the food coloring myself. I believe there are alternate recipes for the bath bombs on the same site as the Candy Cane  Sugar Scrub above.

Hand Scub – I think this one would be the most used out of the bunch.

And for all the loyal Bacon-ites out there:

Bacon Lip Balm - I think my lip chewing would only be made worse by this…

Bacon Soap – like ya do.

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I know I’ve been kinda AWOL lately – but I have been productive!

Check out this little beauty! My first knit sweater!

I made the 18 month size – the biggest size offered – and it fits Freyja perfectly (at 7 months she’s wearing 12-18 month clothes already!). It’s made with Malabrigo Worsted (100% Merino Wool) in the Little Lovely #92 colorway. The pattern is the Bernat Baby Pullover. It was super simple to knit (although there was a discrepancy in the length vs. number of increases so I just dropped about 10 rows of stitching). The pattern called for 420 yards of worsted weight and handily the Malabrigo comes in 210 yard skeins – so 2 of those at $11 a pop, it’s a $22 sweater. There was quite a bit of yarn left over though, enough to make a hat but it was too small for my girl, still it was pretty. I’ll post a picture after I make the puff ball for the top.

And yes I realize that I just made a handwash only sweater for a baby; brilliant. Still, it’s pretty!

Several folks on Ravelry said they did a 2x rib along the bottom hems to stop the rolling… wish I had read those before I cast on but really the rolling isn’t bad, just toward the middle (you can just make it out in the picture).

An impeccably timed episode of Knitting Daily on KET showed me proper mattress stitch (my other projects looked kinda funky!) and the still ongoing struggle with my Mom’s Kimono Vest taught me to pick up stitches pretty efficiently so little this guy just whipped right up.

I am so freakin’ impressed with myself right now.

Bernat Baby Pullover Leaflet Pic

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In the same vein as the Color Book – how about a customized Memory Game?

Here’s one made with rubber stamps on wood discs that I love – it’s got owls!

Found this one through Pintrest – looks like Jenga pieces with scrapbook paper on it.

This lady made a game from used metal canning lids (since you can only use them once for food storage).

I would think you could different styles for different age groups – the canning lids or coaster size wooden circles for the 3-5 year old crowd, then just use smaller items and more of them for the older crowds. Here’s another good example of a game for the younger set:

You could even use dominos (fill the dents with Fimo clay maybe?), Scrabble Tiles, wooden tags… you could even try casting some out of resin, opaque with a different tiny object imbedded in the bottom (like jewelry charms maybe?). You could take plastic soda bottle caps – or metal ones even – fill with resin and an object too. You could make individual quilt squares! The possibilities are endless and it’s definitely an interesting way to reinvent an age old game!

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Ok the Monday was completely unnecessary… but it started with an M!

Anyway – Mobiles are cool! Let’s face it – since we were kids we’ve wanted to hang stuff from the ceiling, it was just something you HAD to do, and of course the Authority Figure probably wouldn’t let you even if you could find something reasonable to hang. Well now you can! Here are some good ones I found:

From Create Loves (with tutorial):

From The Red Thread (with tutorial):

From DottieAngel: (no tutorial on this one…)

 A lovely ribbon mobile from A Fanciful Twist (with tutorial):

And last but not least from Homemade By Jill (with tutorial):

My BIL suggested a Halloween themed mobile using the lamp shade frame like DottieAngel’s above – I have a whole bunch of little 8″ skeletons, some foam skulls and some little skeleton hands… hmmm…

Go make something! And send me pictures!

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Found this through Pintrest (LOVE Pintrest by the way) – it’s a make-it-yourself book about colors for the littlens! Check out the website My Everyday Chaos  - its pretty nifty – and for the tutorial just click one of the photos below (its pretty self explanitory really). You MUST see the author’s awesome photos! I’m drooling over the photos… here’s a taste:

Now I must make one for all the itty-bitties running around.

Actually – instead of laminating these you could Modge Podge them onto a board book… that would make the edges more child friendly – I worry constantly about eye poking and laminated corners are SHARP!!!

You could also do the same thing for Numbers and Letters and general object identification. I did an image search for homemade alphabet books and there were not that many – the few I found were pretty Eh. I’m surprised really with the plethora of great imagery out there that more of these aren’t floating around. Shoot – just go to the scrapbook section of your local hobby store and the sticker aisle will practically make a book for you!

Now I must go make a book… or 2… or 3…

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I got this great copy of Vogue Guide to Knitting circa 1972 this weekend – it’s so neat! I love vintage craft books and am slowly building a pretty respectable collection. This one has the usual basic knitting instructions plus several more decorative stitches, some of which I’ve never seen before (but my knitting collection is still pretty sparse); the Anenome Stitch and the Sailor’s Rib were very nice.

I love the Embroidered Jacket (not sure why it’s called that) – it’s also on the cover. I would do it plain with a either a cabled edge or a bias edging (which I just learned about on Knitting Daily last week – neat stuff).

Next is the Butterfly Vest – I can totally see this with the butterflies replaced with Skull Snowflakes (on Ravelry I believe) or PacMan and the Ghosts… Or the 1UP mushrooms from Mario Brothers… or Galaga/Space Invaders – the possibilites are endless!

And of course, who can live without a Cabled Knit Bikini?

Overall this is a fun book – useful as well, in my opinion. Don’t pass it up if you run across it (knit this bikini – or there is another one in the book if you don’t like cables!). Love it! (Also – if you noticed the improvement in the scan quality from the top of the post to the bottom… on the bottom I figured out to change the scan option from document to picture… duh… much better quality).