Embroidered keepsake canvas using children's drawings

I am really enjoying being a Bostik Blogger and receiving a fab pack of crafty goodies each month to create with. This month the theme is Scrapbooking, and when I saw that the box included a canvas I decided to use the theme of preserving memories to make a keepsake canvas which included some of the children's drawings. Mia has just started to produce recognisable art, and I love the way that both children draw.

The box included felt and embroidery silks, and as I love sewing with felt I decided to make an embroidered canvas, decorated with some colourful crafty embellishments which the children could choose and help to arrange.

You need:

Small canvas (mine measures 20cm x 20cm)
Coloured felt for the background
Embroidery silks in contrasting colours
Bostik foam pads
Embellishments - for example buttons, paper cutouts, stickers etc.
Thin tissue paper
Willing children!

Instructions:

See numbered notes below for the detailed instructions.

1 - Gather together all your materials. Plan the layout for your canvas and what you would like to include. I used a picture drawn by each child and their name as written by them, for a younger child you could draw around their hands and write their name yourself.

2 - Take your child's drawing and trace it onto thin tissue paper. It's a good idea to simplify the drawing a little at this point, if of course you can do so without losing the essence of the child's work!

3 - Cut your felt to the same size as the canvas., then cut out all the elements on tissue paper that you want to use and spend some time finalising the arrangement. Make sure that you leave enough space for a border around the edge.

4 - Pin the pieces of tissue paper firmly to the felt, then take your embroidery thread and sew through both the tissue paper and the felt. I used three strands of the embroidery silk and I chose the children's favourite colours - pink and green. It doesn't matter if your stitches aren't that neat, my stitches are often all over the place but it doesn't matter as you are trying to achieve a childish look to your work!

5 - When you have finished sewing, very carefully tear away the tissue paper to leave the embroidery. You might need tweezers to remove all the tiny pieces, and if the stitches have lifted you may need to rearrange them by pulling from the other side. I won't lie, it's quite a fiddly and time consuming process which is why simpler designs work best. You need to be careful not to pull too hard and make your stitches too loose. But I think it looks pretty cool when it's done!

6 - Admire your finished work!

7 - Repeat this process for each piece of tissue paper until the sewn part of the canvas is complete.

8 - When you have finished the embroidery, glue the felt piece to the canvas. I used white glue, and used just a thin line of glue around the edges.

9 - Gather the materials that you would like to use to decorate around the border. I used a mixture of brightly coloured buttons and flower cut outs. I like them because they are the sorts of embellishments that I use with the children when we are crafting together - it's like a snapshot in crafting time to go along with the ages that they are when I created this canvas! The children enjoyed choosing which bits and pieces I should use and where they should go.

10 - To adhere the embellishments to the felt I used Bostik foam pads. These little pads are extremely sticky and easily stuck to the felt. They are also small and neat, and I was able to place them around the edges of the buttons, sometimes using a couple, without them being visible through the holes in the button.

11 - The Bostik foam pads add a nice raised texture to the canvas. They are also squashy enough that the embellishments can be overlapped slightly. I did vaguely plan the arrangement of the border in advance so that I could achieve a good mix of colours and shapes.

12 - The finished canvas! All it needs is the date added on the back. I'm so pleased with it!

The box of craft materials was provided to me free of charge by Bostik as part of the Tots100/Bostik Craft Bloggers Club. I have been compensated for providing this tutorial.

Simbrix - a new creative toy

Recently I received a press release which really caught my eye - an introduction to Simbrix, a new creative craft and construction toy, which is billed as a cross between fusion beads and Lego. As regular readers of my blog will know, I blog all the time about how much we enjoy creating with Hama (fusion) beads, so I was really interested to try out Simbrix.

I was sent a small selection of prototype beads for the children and I to play with. My beads were in ten colours - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, pink, black, white, grey and brown. The little square beads slide smoothly together to create your design, and they even slot firmly enough together that you don't need to have your work resting flat on the table. This means that you can easily carry your partially finished design around without the worry of dropping it and ruining all your hard work.

The beads can be easily ironed in the same way as fusion beads, but I only ironed one of the finished designs as part of our testing as I found to my surprise that the children were quite happy to take their creations apart and use the beads again for different designs.

Simbrix are aimed at children aged 5 and above, but with supervision Mia (nearly 4) was easily able to use the beads, with no problems putting them together or taking them apart. They are a great way to encourage younger children to develop colour matching and patterning skills.

Simbrix was invented by Assim Ishaque at home as a way of improving the play experience of his own young children when they made patterns with small fusion beads, and in particular looking for a more robust way to connect the beads together. As a family we really love Hama beads, but they do have their problems. You need a pegboard to lay out the beads which is very easy to knock, and as I've found out it can cause a lot of upset and frustration when a carefully put together creation is damaged before it has been ironed. A design made with fusion beads is also not very satisfying to admire until it has been ironed, which means that we get through a lot of beads.

I was pleased to see how well Simbrix addresses these issues. The design is sturdy as you build it and almost impossible to knock apart. You can re-use the beads easily, and as I said I was surprised by how readily my children took their designs apart once they'd finished with them - perhaps I don't need to iron every single thing that they make after all! The only big difference from Hama beads is that you are limited to designs which can be formed on a grid shape as the beads are square. But on the plus side you don't need to worry about running out of space on the board, so it's easy to make much larger pictures.

Here are some of our first creations! They are all made by Harry apart from the 'rainbow' stripy design which is Mia's work.

I've left the beads out on the table for a couple of days now, and Harry has been asking to play with them as soon as he comes in from school, sitting there for ages playing with them. I was very impressed with this particular creation - he's made larger versions of the Simbrix beads that lock together (he was a yellow bead short so decided that the brown bit could be a bit of dirt!).

We've really enjoyed playing with the beads and I think that they are a fantastic, creative product.

We received a prototype bag of Simbrix in exchange for this review.

How I would spend a spare £100

The TSB Plus Account has just turned one year old, and because the maximum interest that you can earn in a year from this account is £100 (5% AER on up to £2000), I've been asked to think about what I would do with a spare £100. I'm not very good at spending extra money that I receive on myself, it usually just ends up in the joint bank account or goes towards the mortgage. It would be lovely to have some money that I could spend on something that's not normally in the budget.

My thoughts turned immediately towards our summerhouse. I blogged recently about some of my plans for the space without really spending anything, but the truth is that with a little bit of money I think that I could make it a really lovely feature of the garden. Here it is at the moment, it's in fairly good shape but it does need sprucing up a bit:

Many ideas are way out of my budget, but there are a few elements that I think I could incorporate. I'd probably spend a good chunk of the money on some paint, or at least some kind of protective sealant for the walls and decking area to make it look a little smarter. The old pots that are outside could really do with updating, I'd love to have some bright, colourful planters filled with flowers in all different colours. I think it could also do with some outdoor decoration, in particular I'm thinking some bunting strung up across the front, bird feeders and perhaps a windchime.

Inside it is already looking quite colourful, but what it really needs are some soft furnishings to make it a little more cosy. I'd buy some pretty gingham fabric to make little curtains for the windows, and maybe a matching cushion for an armchair. Talking of furniture, a little bookcase would be lovely, along with some sort of small table to hold a drink and some snacks.

The floor is currently covered with an offcut of carpet, but I'd love to have some decent flooring in there, and maybe a pretty mat or a rug. Or perhaps even some artificial grass, for when it's too wet to sit on the grass outside!

Wouldn't it be lovely if I really could dedicate £100 to my project! It's definitely worth saving up so that you can reap rewards over time, just like the other things that improve with time:

This is a sponsored post.

Ram's London Marathon 2015

For a good while now, our life has been divided into 'before the Marathon' and 'after the Marathon'. Ram found out last September that he'd received a place via the ballot after several unsuccessful applications. We were off on holiday immediately after, so he began his proper training in November. It was quite a steep learning curve, with lots of new running gear and equipment to be purchased, not to mention all the different tablets and gels that were required for training and on the day.

Ram stayed up in London the night before the marathon, and I stayed at my parent's house in Horsham overnight, coming up child-free on the Sunday to support him. I spent weeks worrying about it, desperate to find somewhere that I could stand to catch a glimpse of him but anxious about large crowds, and potentially spending the day chasing after him only to miss him at each point. Luckily with some help from online friends I was able to put together a provisional route that I was happy with, and Ram's sister and her partner came down for the day too, which made it all a lot easier.

I began the day in Rotherhithe just before mile 9, a short walk from Canada Water station. It was quiet when I arrived and I found a spot at the front, although it soon filled up with people. I was in time to see the men's elite runners, followed soon after by the fastest runners from the mass start, including Paula Radcliffe and Jenson Button.

I knew that it would be a while before Ram made it to me, but I was still obsessively tracking him via his phone (unfortunately the official London Marathon app wasn't working for me all day!). Luckily the crowds had thinned out a bit by the time he appeared, as I was getting dizzy watching all the runners go by! It was great to see him and he seemed to be doing really well!

Then we cut across to the mile 11 point, again busy but getting quieter, and we made it to the front as other people saw their runners go by and moved away, and we were able to catch a glimpse of him. Then our plan was to head to Canary Wharf, but announcements at Canada Water were warning about large crowds and I was worried about being stuck across the river, so instead we headed to Shadwell, where the route doubles back on itself for quite a while. We just missed Ram at the halfway point, and as he headed to Canary Wharf himself I lost contact with him as his phone battery died. We realised we wouldn't see him again for a little while, so headed off to find some lunch.

It was a bit more difficult to work out where he would next, so we walked down the route from Shadwell towards Tower Hill, finding ourselves a spot around the 23 mile mark with a nice view over to the Tower of London. We were here quite a while, desperately looking out for distinctive runners that we recognised and hoping that he'd be along soon.

Fortunately we managed to spot him, although he was so absorbed in the run that he nearly missed us! I wasn't able to grab a photo of him as we were too busy yelling at him so that he saw us, but it was lovely place to stand and watch! The runners were looking pretty tired by this point but the crowd was really cheering them on, most of the runners had their names across their tops so you could cheer them individually.

Ram was looking tired too but running well, and I knew that he'd make it. We walked all the way from mile 23 to St James's Park, following the marathon route as far as we could. Many of the runners were walking at this point and the crowds had really thinned out along the barriers as people headed for the finish. We ended up having to walk round a little further than we expected, and arrived at our meeting point at almost the same time as Ram. He was looking good, and was completely buzzing. We found out later that his official time was 5hrs 30mins which he's really pleased with, and he managed to keep running throughout for all that time, amazing!

We headed straight back to my parents, stopping on the way for a quick takeaway pizza, collected the children who had been brilliantly looked after by my Mum for the day, then drove home. It was a fantastic day, albeit it tiring not just for the runner (us supporters walked over 12km during the day without much to eat or drink!) and it's a big relief to have it successfully out of the way, I feel that we can get back to normal life now! We are all very proud of him!

Summer crafts from Baker Ross

Summer is nearly here, and Baker Ross have a huge range of craft products to keep children busy! As a member of the Baker Ross Bloggers Network I receive a regular bundle of craft kits and supplies. Here's how we've got on with some of the latest items from the new summer craft range.

The Kaleidoscope Scratch Art Hanging Decorations are a simple idea, but I was very impressed with them. We were visiting friends and so I took a pack around for all the children to do together. The kits were perfect to take along as they contain everything that you need, and don't create any mess. The younger children loved how easy it was to scratch out a design on the black to reveal the colours underneath, and Harry in particular spent ages on his creations, as well as being fascinated by the process. Baker Ross offer a huge range of different Scratch Art sets in all different shapes and designs and they really are brilliant and much easier than trying to replicate the idea yourself, which we have tried and failed to do!

Next we used Fluorescent Coloured Sand to fill up some Animal Sand Art Bottles. This was something that the children had never seen before and they were fascinated. The set of bottles comes with a little funnel which you place into the lid of the bottle and then pour in the different colours of sand in turn. Harry was able to do this by himself, and Mia was content to let me know which colour she wanted to use and to watch while I poured it in. It didn't make nearly as much mess as I was anticipating, and both the children loved it. The finished bottles look really pretty on the windowsill. The coloured sand went a very long way too, even after filling these bottles and the sand picture art craft below we still have plenty left.

Next we decorated some Gnome Suncatcher Stakes. To decorate them we used Glitter Porcelain and Glass Pens which we received in a previous box from Baker Ross and have used for several subsequent crafts, they are still working well, and I remembered to put newspaper down on the table this time! Colouring in the stakes kept the two of them quiet for a long time as they concentrated on their individual designs.

Back to the coloured sand, and we made some Sand and Glitter Art Picture Sheets. This is definitely a summer craft, because it is best done in the garden!

The top layer is pre-cut and you peel it back to reveal a sticky surface underneath. You simply remove the paper from the area that you want to colour, then sprinkle the sand over the sticky paper, rubbing it down with your fingers so that it is stuck securely. There is actually very little wastage of coloured sand (although enough that I was glad we'd done it outdoors!).

Harry was able to get on with this entirely by himself. At first I wasn't sure about letting Mia loose with the bottles of sand and I sprinkled it on for her, but she actually surprised me with her control over it, and she loved choosing her colours. The both really enjoyed making their pictures and were so proud of them, the colour of the sand is really vibrant and it stuck brilliantly. We'll be using these gorgeous pictures to decorate our summerhouse with!

Finally, they each decorated a Ceramic Castle Coin Bank. We don't have any porcelain pens or paint, so we just used poster paint as a base layer and then decorated with acrylic paints and sparkly poster paint which worked really well.

As always, we've had a lot of fun with our Baker Ross craft products. I think that they are amazingly good value, and you can find craft kits themed around almost any theme imaginable, as well as very reasonably priced basic crafting supplies.

I received these products as a member of the Baker Ross Bloggers Network.

Review - Disney Cinderella Junior ReadyBed

For the last couple of weeks, Mia has been reviewing the Disney Cinderella Junior ReadyBed, an all in one sleeping bag and bed for young children.

I can't quite describe just how thrilled Mia was when she opened the box. Like many little girls she adores the Disney princesses, and she loves sleepovers, whether in Harry's room or when we visit family. She also has a slight obsession with tucking her dollies and teddies up in bed, and we have a huge collection of little blankets and pillows for them scattered throughout the house. 

When we explained to her that this ReadyBed was her own little bed that she could take anywhere with her, she was so excited and couldn't wait to pump it up and organise a sleepover in Harry's room that night. Throughout the afternoon she was having a lovely time reading her dolly a story and tucking her up in the bed, and when bedtime came she jumped straight in and went to bed with a great deal less of the usual fuss!

The ReadyBed has its own little pump, which is very handy and fits neatly inside the bag when packed away. It only takes a few minutes to blow up the bed. The bed comes with a built in pillow which seemed pretty comfortable although Mia did like using her own pillow with the bed. The entire bed folds away neatly into the integrated carry case, and the built in cover can be easily removed for washing, very important for those younger toddlers that can't quite be trusted overnight!

I know that we are going to find the ReadyBed very useful when we go visiting family overnight. We'll be spending a night at my Mum's this weekend, and Mia is adamant that she's going to be sleeping in her 'Princess bed'. It doesn't take up too much space to pack, or too much room on the floor once it's out. I'm also thinking that it's going to be useful for her if we manage to spend a night or two in a tent in the garden this summer. The cover is a little thin, so it would probably need an extra blanket if it was going to be used outdoors in a tent.

I can see that over the school holidays the ReadyBed is going to become a permanent fixture in Harry's room, as both children love having 'sleepovers'! Mia's sleepover in Harry's room was very successful and she had a lovely night's sleep all tucked up with her teddies. When she's a bit bigger and perhaps having a sleepover by herself at a friend's house, it will be a nice familiar bed that she can take along with her.

The ReadyBed Junior is suitable for children aged 3+, and I can see that Mia will definitely still be using it in a few years time - Harry at 6 easily fits in. The Disney Cinderella Junior ReadyBed is new for 2015 along with a Star Wars Junior ReadyBed, and additionally there are lots of other ReadyBeds available featuring different characters and designs, as well as different sizes to suit children of all ages.

The Cinderella Junior ReadyBed has an RRP of £29.99 and is available at Tesco Direct and Asda. We received a ReadyBed in exchange for this review. Amazon link is affiliate.

How does your garden grow?

Every year, around about this time, I excitedly publish a post detailing my grand garden plans for the summer. In fact I've already started this year, with a post about the work that I've done to our summer house. The trouble is that I do struggle a bit in the garden, the children aren't particularly interested in helping me and they aren't always the best at occupying themselves while I get on with things. It's much easier now that I can trust them enough to turn my back on them for a few minutes at a time, but I still find it difficult to carve out a decent amount of time to get something done.

I was a bit lazy at the end of last summer and never properly cleared out our vegetable patch. It's tucked away behind our garage so I can't see it from the house and it's easy to ignore. So for months I had been able to forget about this, lurking away:

But since the weather has been so lovely for the last week or two and we've been out in the garden (we've even enjoyed our few barbecues of the year!) it's been impossible to ignore, so over the weekend I announced that I was going to get it weeded. It was hard work, we had grown some pretty impressive weeds and there was a big patch of nettles by the fence that come through from the green space beyond. There is still more to do, like taming the large climbing plant gradually coming over from next door that I need to prevent from swallowing up the garage, and the planters still need a bit of work.

I'm pretty chuffed with what I managed to get done though, and I only had to stop because our green bin was stuffed full, along with extra waiting in bags to go out over the next few weeks.

Every year I usually manage to grow some tomatoes, and this year Harry was desperate to get started with planting, especially after I printed him out this fab Planting Tomato Seeds Fact Sheet (Twinkl subscriber resource) from Twinkl. I had some ancient tomato seeds which we planted together over Easter with our fingers firmly crossed, and although they took a while to get going it looks as though we'll have a few plants to pot out soon. I usually have some success with spinach and carrots, and my Dad has some other vegetable plants for me too.