An awesome friend suggested gifting during this Lenten season, so I’ve decided to participate in the Little Dresses for Africa project. Details are over at Boulevard Designs, if you’re local and you want to join me, please shoot me an email. (I mean, if you’re local, we can mail them in together…) Even if you’re not local and you want to join me, post a comment and let me know!!!

As some of you already know, I sometimes list diapering or babywearing items over at Etsy. Right now, I have some super fun, super funky tie dye prefolds listed over there. Three for $14, with free shipping. If you want them added on to your Wallypop order, just send me an email!

because I know you’re all just dying to know.

Since I closed, I have:

• learned to batik
• restocked Mei Tai carriers
• delivered some of said MT carriers to The Stork Wearhouse
• restocked more MT carriers (you won’t see the new inventory listed because I’m not updating again until late December)
  
• shopped around for new suppliers
• restocked leg warmers
• knitted my fingers off
• made a baby hammock
• finished up most of my Christmas gift crafting
• cut all of my scraps into mama pads; breastpads, doll diapers, cycle pad bags, and/or snackin bags
• listed many items at Etsy, including small fitteds, small fleece covers, wool covers, and a MT
• broken my laptop

I am in early labor and I will say that this sucks. I’ve had contractions every 20 minutes since last Sunday (that’s almost a week and a half) and every 3-8 minutes (10-12 when I lay down) for the last 24 hours. This is really not at all how things progressed with Wally, but this baby has shown over and over that she/he is her/his own little person and, moreso, not about to make things easy for me.

I just wrote about this over at Boulevard Designs, but couldn’t help but mention it here, too. I ordered a bunch of stuff from Dharma Trading Company, including a screen printing kit. And it came last week!!

Assuming that I get it figured out and enjoy it, I hope to be able to add a few screen printed designs in 2009. I’m thinking Eco-Shop totes with pithy sayings, maybe carriers with screenprinted designs, etc. And I have a whole list of potential additions to the Boulevard Designs product line-up!

My new Etsy shop. Boulevard Designs. I will be selling there all the fun crafty stuff I like to make, beyond the more practical items found at Wallypop.

I currently have listed a few zip pouches, and will be listing some bags and purses over the next few days!

Here’s a preview:

In other news, I’ve got a stomach bug and have not gotten out of bed for much more than sprints to the bathroom for the past few days, so please be patient if I am slow to process orders this week.

I made some baby leg warmers today – it was sooooo easy!! (I am NOT NOT NOT adding these as a product. I will make them on request for friends.)

My original plan was to make a two-layer tube out of some leftover knits that I have, then add a cuff on each end, tucking all the seams away inside. Then I thought about taking adult knee socks, and adding a cuff made from knit fabric to either end. Then I decided to just knit some. (More on that later.) While searching for knitting patterns for baby leg warmers (to no avail), I came across this Flickr set and decided to first try the knee sock idea, but using the foot part of the socks for the cuff.

And this is Wally wearing one of the shorter pairs (the longer ones go all the way up to his hips).

I took a break between working on instock items and sewing for custom orders today to complete a project I’ve wanted to do for a few weeks.

Wally’s carseat gets very cold to sit on in the winter, or so I hear, so I decided to make a carseat cover using some Incredibles flannel I had lying around. I was originally going to draft a pattern, but decided to just wing it. I actually added batting to it, as the original cover has batting, but when I put it on the seat, I decided that it did not have enough batting to be padded enough to be safe in an accident. (Plus I’m sure there are federal laws about that sort of thing.)

Ultimately, I put the Incredibles cover on OVER the original cover. This means that the Incredibles cover doesn’t fit as well as it could, but it still fits pretty good. I think I’m the only one who would notice the places that it fits oddly.

I will definitely make some design changes for the next one (if there is a next one) – it needs to be longer overall to fit comfortably over the existing cover, and the holes for the waist belt need to be longer – but I think it came out really really nicely.

I also cut and assembled the first draft of a new item I dreamed up last week. No details yet. If I can get it working/looking good enough and how I imagined, I will add it to my product line-up and possibly pursue legal protections for the design (or attempt to sell it to a big company). It’s something I’ve never seen before, that I personally felt was sorely needed. Intrigued? Stay tuned.

Wally and I finished up the bath and body items we started a few days ago. We were done before I realized the camera was still on the shelf…

But. We made bath salts (very easy, just stir together), Healing Salve, and Lotion Bars. The lotion bars were made with cocoa butter and they smell n-i-c-e. I’ve never made salve (just like lip balm, really) or lotion before, though I’ve wanted for a long time, and I was surprised at how easy it was! Just melt the ingredients together and pour into containers!

The toughest part of balms and lotions seems to be finding the right mix of ingredients to suit your own personal tastes. There are lots of website out there to help, though! My two favorites are Majestic Mountain Sage (where I purchased all my supplies) and Prairieland Herbs. I also remember browsing the Not Martha site, which then led me to see what Martha herself had to say on the subject.

So now we’re done with Phase II of making Christmas presents. I even finished up the (french seamed) gift bags that I’m going to put these little goodies in during Wally’s nap today.

So….I spent $70 on supplies (yike), including containers but not including things like honey and oatmeal that I already had in my cupboard. I used only a small portion of the ingredients I bought, intending to keep experimenting and making these well past Christmas. Plus I’m hoping that the recipients will return their empty containers when they’re done, so So…let’s say that 2/3 of that amount was for Christmas, which is still pretty generous, I think. So $46. I’m making gifts for 7 women, so that comes to $6.60 per person.

Add in the fabric for the gift bags: I bought it for $1.50 a yard, used 1 yard: $.21 per person. Add in some incidental expense for the labels (I already owned the label paper, but will undoubtedly need to replace it in the future). Those are $30 for a box of 100, $.30 each. I used 6 sheets, $1.80, so $.26 per person.

Total for all the women in the family: $7.07 each. Not bad.

Today I started on the next set of Christmas gifts – lotions, balms, and other bath goodies for the ladies. I meant to take pictures of the process, but the processes are either time -sensitive, or I needed to keep a very close eye on my little helper, so I didn’t get as many pics as I intended.

First up was Natural Hair Rinse, an excellent alternative to commercial hair conditioners. Made from apple cider vinegar, water, and essential oils. Easy peasy. I’ve been using this for much longer than I’ve been doing anything else Granola-like.

Next, Sugar Scrub. Mmmmm. Also very easy. Brown sugar, oil, and vanilla. (Edible, too, as Wally discovered. “Mmmm. That’s Good!”)

Here’s my adorable helper, making his “smile” face. He helped dump ingredients into the bowl, stir, and spoon the scrub into the tubs while I labeled them. (look at how efficient I am – the crockpot in the background is actually cooking our dinner – leftover turkey mixed with BBQ sauce.)

The most involved item of the day was the lip balm. First we measured out the ingredients (Shea butter, olive oil, beeswax, avocado oil, EOs) using my digital postal scale (which is actually a kitchen scale), then we melted them in a glass measuring cup placed inside a hot water bath.

After everything was all melted together, I stirred in the essential oil and then quickly quickly filled up my little containers. This was my first time making lip balm, and I didn’t realize that the recipe I was following would make about a metric ton of balm, so I filled all my containers and had a LOT left over. I’m going to see if I can find more containers locally tomorrow, then remelt the leftover and put it into containers and store it in the fridge.

If you decide to make your own lip balm at home, you might think about covering the floor and work surfaces with old newspapers.

Just in case.

Just in case you somehow manage to knock over your glass measuring cup still half-full of melted lip balm.

I’m just sayin’.

This year, again, we’re going 100% homemade for Christmas presents. Here’s the first batch of gifts, all finished and ready to go. I even have the fabric gift bags done, though those are not pictured here. (But you can see them here. I’m swiping the SpongeBob and Scooby ones for these presents unless someone buys them in the meantime.)

First, raw-edge applique Tshirts for all of the kids in the family, except one teenage boy, who we deemed to be too cool for such a gift.

This is actually not raw-edge applique like the others. I mounted the circles to a separate piece of fabric, put them BEHIND the tshirt, sewed around the circles, then cut out the red Tshirt to expose the circles. I found myself mulling over whether this would work one day while driving, and am pleased to report that it turned out really good!

Yoda, a pig, flowers, and a ballerina. All raw-edge applique.

And the elephant one is for Wally!
Next: Pillowcases. Pillowcases are fun, right? And they’re easy. I made all of these with French seams, so there are no raw or serged edges sticking out. They’re oversize, to make it easier for children to get their pillows in.

Hannah Montana and Lizzie McGuire iron-ons, Star Wars for both nephews.

Tink and Bratz. (Don’t get me started on Bratz. I hate them.)
So there you have it. It feels good to have these done. It took, all told, about a day and a half of work, a nice diversion from diaper sewing.

As a side note, I bought all of the Tshirts secondhand. Factoring in all materials used, average Tshirt cost was $1.43

The pillowcases are all new material, purchased over the course of a few weeks using 50% coupons. Even after factoring in $2 for the 2 sheets of iron-on transfer paper, the average pillowcase cost is $1.91.

So, there you go. Presents for all but one of my neices and nephews for an average of $3.34 per child.