Handmade Christmas, part 2

I finally finished up the design for Henry's play mat!  It will be delivered in the next few weeks on a cotton twill that is 58x36 inches.

He saw the picture of it on the computer and got all excited, yelling "Ooo!  That my house!  That library!  That d's house!"

The roads are 3 inches wide and I am thinking of buying a few plan city cars to drive around this town.

-Meghan

Handmade Christmas (part 1-point-something)

I've been thinking non-stop about this playmat idea that I have for Henry.

I am getting more and more excited.  I've been really busy and my scanner has been soooooo slow that I haven't gotten much done on it yet, but what I do have I'm excited about.

I have the base for the streets and green spaces done!  It is to scale at 42x36 inches and each road is 2" wide.  I have draw the library, our home, daycare, the farmer's market, a bakery, a fire station, a park and a few other trees and stuff so far that I need to get placed on the mat.

Here's what I have so far, I'm still making some decisions about which direction things should face.  I'm deciding between having them all face the same way or all face the streets they are on.  So tough to choose!

-Meghan

Silhouettes on iheartfaces

This week is for silhouettes on iheartfaces.com  Every time I go to this one hill I make people do a silhouette for me.  I have fun editing them later on and it's super easy to turn a silhouette into fun stationary (coming up later on that long list of projects)!

The best part about this shot was how quiet and reserved the little boy was.  Until he found this dandelion!

-Meghan

A Handmade Christmas, part 1

Last year every single gift we gave was made by hand.  From the photographs to the frames we built.  We did a fake wood learning tower for Henry and a felt house.  People got reusable grocery bags and muslin tea bags.

And, frankly, it was a lot of work.

But the principle of it was great and it was a lot of fun.  We're doing a mostly-handmade Christmas this year.

Lowell is building a mini-workbench for Henry and I have been inspired by all of the car playmats.

The time it takes to applique all of the things like Jill did on her blog seems overwhelming.  There are some great fabric ones on etsy where it is one yard of fabric with the pre-made design backed onto a cute print.

But, I think that I will design my own fabric and print it using Spoonflower's printing services.  I have designed fabrics in the past and been pleased with them.  Plus, if I design the fabric I can then make it personalized just for Henry.  It can have his library, Daddy's work, our playground and the grocery store.

I'm pretty excited and realize this is going to be a lot of time in front of a computer designing it!  But, I will be so proud of it when it's done.

-Meghan