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Earlier this month, I mentioned the possibility of making customized garden stepping stones/plant markers. One of the great products I found on amazon.com was the Make Your Own Poetry Stones Deluxe Kit. It was a great price, looked pretty simple and offered so much creative flexibility that I had to buy one for myself. Today, I wanted to share with you the results of my first test stones.

Contents: The kit comes with 6 different shape molds, 5 rectangular:

• 3 ¾” x 14”
• 3 ¾“ x 10 ½“
• 3 ¾“ x 7 ½”
• 3 ¾“ x 4 ½“ and
• 2 ½“ x 3 ¾“

and one circular (12“ diameter). It also comes with two bags of plastic letters, large and small, along with numbers and punctuation, including the @ symbol, a comma and a period. There is also a generous bag of glass stones to use as decorative accents, a 2 ½ pound bag of cement, two small jars of concrete tint (reddish brown and and orange/copper tint) and a small trowel.

You will also need to supply two buckets (preferably ones you can discard if they happen to get ruined by the cement), a large plastic garbage bag or dropcloth to protect your working surface from spills, a plastic-coated surface to let the stones dry on for at least 2 days (I used cardboard covered with plastic garbage bags for my test projects).

There is a nice sheet of directions in the kit guiding you through each step of the process. The steps are relatively simple.

Empty the concrete into a bucket.

Add 1 ½ cups water.

Mix with the trowel. Continue adding water one teaspoon at a time until you have a consistency “somewhere between soft-serve and scoop ice cream”. This was probably the trickiest part of the operation. After 1 ½ cups of water, there was a lot of dry concrete still in my mix. I kept adding the water and probably put in close to 2 ½ cups of water total.

In the end, I would say I added just a little too much water. It seemed like the ideal consistency would look almost dry and crumb-like when mixed but would pack down flat. I also added just a small amount of the reddish-brown concrete tint. I wasn’t sure what color I wanted to go for. With just a little of the tint, I ended up with a brown earth-tone color, which I quite like! You could add a lot more to get a terra cotta look or add none for a gray stone look.

Next, it was time to scoop the concrete into the molds. The instructions say that the 2 ½ pound bag of concrete included in the kit is just enough to make one 14” rectangular stone or several of the smaller rectangular stones. It is not enough to make the round stone. I chose 3 of the smallest rectangular forms that combined were just a little bit larger than the 14” rectangular stone. They did use up every last bit of the concrete and there was none left over. (The directions indicate that you can buy a type of fine-grain concrete called “vinyl patch mix” at any hardware store to make more stones.)

Before starting the concrete mixing step, I had chosen the mold sizes I wanted and the letters I wanted to use, making sure the words would fit inside the molds.

I plopped the concrete mix into the molds and kept adding concrete and packing it down as hard as I could with the trowel to get out any air pockets. At first, it didn’t look like it was working very well and might be too dry. However, after my third mold was poured, I went back to the first mold and all the water in the concrete seemed to have traveled to the surface. It was almost too runny and wet on the surface but was still solid enough to work.

Now it was time to press in the letters. I was a bit too aggressive in my space planning here. Ideally you would have your word fit in the mold space plus at least one extra letter space as buffer room. I packed my words right to the edges of the mold, which worked, but just barely. You need a little space in between each letter for the concrete to expand and emboss the letters for the best look. I also pressed in a decorative accent stone as well. After using each letter mold, I put it in the second bucket, filled with water, to soak, so the concrete would not dry on the letters.

At this point, I was ready to set my stones aside to dry for the required 2-days. Fortunately, I remembered that I also needed to remove the mold forms to prevent them from being permanently adhered to the test stones! This was just a little tricky. The molds removed generally well but sometimes a corner would get stuck and I had to carefully poke the brick free with my finger, trying not to leave any impressions in the brick. At this point, you can cut off part of the excess mold if your word is not very long, round the edges of the stone with your fingers or do any other shaping you desire.

We also tried a test footprint in one of the molds to see how it would come out.

Cleanup was relatively easy. I grabbed the hose and squirted out the bucket, molds, trowel and letter forms in one of the leaf-covered areas of the yard. You probably don’t want to do this in your kitchen sink just in case the concrete hardens in your pipes.

Now to see how long it takes for the concrete to cure. Because my mix was a bit wetter than it needed to be and because of Virginia humidity, I will be surprised if 2 days is enough to dry the test bricks and think it could be closer to a week.

So far, though, I think this product is great and really fun. My children enjoyed helping with this project and are already coming up with ideas for what our next stones should say.

What would you write/impress if you were using this kit? Are you intimidated or encouraged by the results of the test? Please share in the comments.

With a houseful of girls, Valentine’s Day is a big deal at our house.  It is the most frilly, girly holiday there is.  Making crafts with hearts, lace, glue, glitter and markers is right up our alley.   Last year, I took a homemade approach and shared my recycled crayon valentine project.  This year we went with a prepackaged approach.

We happened to be in Michael’s in early January for some errand when the Valentine’s Day craft supplies had just arrived.  My 5-year old zeroed right in on the foam sticker selection.  We found some really cute make-your-own Valentine teddy bears where all the foam pieces were pre-cut and self-adhesive.  They came in a pack of 12  bears for about $5.

When we got home from the store, my young art enthusiast wanted to get started on them right away.  She sat for an hour dutifully making all the valentines all by herself.  This was a fantastic craft for this age group because it was entirely self-created.  I did not need to help with anything at all.

The downside of a prepackaged craft is that it doesn’t allow for much creativity.  Well, you might think that (as I did) but that underestimates the creative powers of children.

“Mom, now I am going to make a Valentine’s rabbit.”

“Ok, great!” I said, not looking up from what I was doing but curious as to how she was going to make a rabbit out of a teddy bear shape.

“Look, mom!  It’s done!”

She proudly showed me her work, in which she discovered that if you turned the teddy bear shape upside down and used the bear’s legs as “ears” it did make a convincing rabbit shape!  It was a moment that would make Martha Stewart proud.

We found some Dove heart-shaped chocolates that were the perfect fit for the heart on the bears (and rabbits) and taped them on.  She wrote her name in Sharpie on the animals’ arms and added some small drawings too for a personalized touch.

After weeks of asking when Valentine’s Day would ever come, she took great pride in delivering the valentines she made herself to her preschool class this morning.

Yesterday, Michael’s offered a free Valentine making session for children that we attended and had great fun using punches, glitter glue and markers to create unique valentine art.  We also wanted to take advantage of Michael’s 60% off foam valentine craft kits to stock up for next year.  Sadly, the store was almost completely denuded of anything valentine-related.  All the valentine shelves were bare.  There was hardly a heart-shaped anything to be found. An elementary school teacher was lamenting what craft she would do with her class the next day and the Michael’s staff was helping her come up with alternatives.

So, if you love Valentine’s Day like we do, next year, put it on your calendar to check out Michael’s Valentine’s Day supplies in mid-January!    Also, if you intend to do any crafting for St. Patrick’s Day (March 17) or Easter (April 24), you might be interested to know that Michael’s has its stock in now for these holidays!

Happy Valentine’s Day to all my readers!  Wishing you lots of love and happiness throughout the year!

When money is tight for a fashionable woman, she just has to find new ways to be resourceful. The movie classic example is Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, making a dress out of curtains to feign wealth and attempt to impress Rhett Butler to loan her money to save her home. You can watch the clip here.

Most of us when we think about making a wearable clothing item out of something else, picture a result similar to Carol Burnett’s parody, Went with the Wind.

Recently I did my own clothing recycling experiment. I just cleaned out our linen closet and discarded numerous blankets. There is a limit to how many blankets a person needs and we were way over. So, when my daughter received a “Knot-A-Quilt” craft kit as a gift, I thought it was a darling idea but I just didn’t want or need another blanket. Could I repurpose it for something we did need . . . fall wardrobe items?

The Knot-A-Quilt kit requires no sewing. You just tie the fringed edges of adjacent squares together in knots. I liked the bright colors and fringed ends and thought it would make some adorable dresses for my little girls.

The first item I made from the quilt squares was completely no sew. I made a jumper with criss-cross straps. I used 8 squares for the main body of the dress, tying them into a tube, then I used 16 squares for a ruffled edge along the bottom, tying two of the ruffle fringes to every one of the dress fringes. For each strap, I then used two squares tied along one side and then connected each end of the strap to the dress by tying 3 fringes of the strap to every 1 of the dress.

My daughter wore the dress to preschool this morning. It really turned heads!

“Did you make that?”

was the first question everyone asked. My daughter’s teacher then added:

“You know, not everyone can get away with that look.”

which I am not sure if I should interpret as “Good for you, it worked!” or “She really shouldn’t be wearing that.”

The preschool teachers, who are all a very creative and crafty bunch, were really fascinated by the concept of this outfit.

For my littlest one, I made a “tutu” version with four squares connected into a tube for the main skirt and 8 squares for the ruffle. Again for the ruffle, I tied two of the ruffle fringes to each one of the main skirt. The final product did require a little sewing. I folded the top fringe of the skirt down ½ inch. (I folded so that the fringe was showing on the front but you could also fold it to the inside.) I ran a line of stitching, excluding the knotted junctions between squares and threaded 1/2 inch elastic through the casing, sewing the elastic together to finish it off.

I still have a few squares left over and might experiment with either a scarf or hats. This could be a really fun no-sew clothing project for children. Boys could make shorts or funky pajama pants. The knotting was a bit too much for my 4-year old and a child would probably need to be able to tie shoes to do this project on their own, so maybe for age 7 and up.

Despite the fashion risk I think we will wear the blanket outfits again. These pieces will add a much needed punch of color and fun to the drab winter months and the fleece material will keep them warm to boot.

One of the most incredible clothing recyclers I have seen, however, is the Internet phenomenon, Giannina Lezcano, otherwise known as Giannyl. Giannyl resides in Paraguay and speaks both English and Spanish. She makes these wonderful videos, however, where, with no words and just some positive music and a few pantomimed gestures, she shows you how she transforms her clothes or makes wonderful but simple garments from fabric. Her tagline is “Do it yourself has never been so sexy.” And she’s right!

Here she is transforming a pair of old jeans into a miniskirt.

And here she is transforming a winter staple, the turtleneck, into a summer tube top.

And not all of the projects are sexy-oriented. Here is a cute dress for little girls made out of a pillowcase.

I love Giannyl! I get so much inspiration from her projects. Any creative sewer would do well to subscribe to her blog feed or fan her on Facebook.

Have you ever recycled a garment? What were the results? Please share in the comments.