An Elephant's Welcome {cardboard sign}

I did it! I actually finished a craft in a set amount of time (plus a tutorial and a printable template!). In case you couldn't tell by the year-long diaper bag, that's not a strength of mine. :) But here he (she?) is: a welcome elephant.

She (he?) is my second entry (see the first here if you missed it) in the cardboard box round of the Iron Crafter over at Fireflies and Jellybeans. I decided to use cardboard along the lines of one of its first uses: as a replacement for wood. (Instead of building wooden crates to ship goods, US merchants started using cardboard boxes way back in 1895.) I love carved wood signs, but I lack the wood cutting tools and prowess. Until Debra and I have the means and geographic proximity to make our dreams of a shared crafting barn -- filled with tools and supplies and probably a limeade bar (my contribution) -- a reality, I will have to content myself with cutting cardboard instead.

My elephant-loving (yet otherwise completely normal) sister in Oregon just moved into a beautiful new (to them) house with plenty of room for her 4 children and 3 dogs, so I wanted to make her a nice housewarming gift. Hope you like it, Greta! If you are an elephant lover yourself or have one (otherwise normal or not) in your family, you can make your own elephant welcome sign.

Time spent:approximately 3 hours, plus paint/glue drying time
Money spent:$0! Everything on hand. Love that. :)

Finished dimensions: approximately 11W (including tail) x 12H (not including hanging ribbon)

What you'll need

• Elephant and welcome templates (download below or here)
  
  • Giving credit where credit is due: I did not draw the elephant myself. I used this African Elephant silhouette from fun-with-pictures.com to create the separate shapes for the head, body, and tusks.The file I have available for download is the separate shapes.
• Large-ish cardboard box, opened flat (mine was 24Lx9Dx13H, not including the top/bottom flaps)
• Box cutter
• X-acto knife
• Scissors
• ModPodge or other sturdy glue and glue stick
• Craft paint: light gray, dark gray, ivory, and the color you want Welcome (I used Apple Barrel's Country Grey, Pewter Grey, Satin Cream, and Sage Green)
• Paint brush (or two)
• Ribbon 
• Several big, heavy books (I used phone books)
• A small strip (1/2 inch long) of clear plastic, like used in packaging (mine was from my son's first toothbrush! you know your mom is a crafter when...)

What you'll do

First, read these notes:
Tips for cutting cardboard
Don’t think of cutting cardboard as cutting like you’d carve a piece of wood. Cardboard doesn’t cut that smoothly. The technique that works for me is more of a stabbing motion where the small cuts connect to make a (more or less) continuous cut.  Henceforth this shall be called the stab-cut.

1. Start by stab-cutting a 1-2 inch section following your outline. Make sure that your box cutter blade is locked into position (safety!) and the blade is just longer than your cardboard is wide.
2. Then move 1-2 inches one side or the other from that and stab-cut toward the section that you just cut.
3. Rinse and repeat until you've stab-cut your whole outline.
4. Once you’ve completed the outline of your shape, start gently punching it out. Watch the back and carefully re-cut any of the outer cardboard paper that wasn’t fully severed by your previous stab-cuts.

For small simple shapes like the elephant’s tusks, use a good pair of paper-cutting scissors and cut in sections, removing the excess cardboard as you cut so that you don't bend the delicate little shape.

For finer details like the letters and the elephant’s tail, use a good sharp X-acto knife. Start with the inner parts of the letters (the hole in the O, for example). When you’ve cut the entire shape out, trim and even out the edges carefully with your paper-cutting scissors.

Be sure to have a firm surface underneath the cardboard you are cutting to help make clean, even cuts. This is especially important when cutting finer details.  Another sheet of cardboard makes a firm enough surface to cut on without the worry of cutting into other firm surfaces, like kitchen tabletops. Not that there are any box-cutter scars on my tabletop. At least as far as my husband knows (shh!).

About dry-brushing
Dry-brushing is basically painting with a very dry brush (one with very little paint on it) to give a rough, scratchy look.

1. Dip your brush (very stiff bristle or foam) in a tiny bit of paint. 
2. On a scrap piece of cardboard, dab until almost all of the paint is off the brush, so that you can see the texture of the brush when you dab. Too much paint will go on smoothly, and you want a rough texture, so err on the side of less, not more, paint. 
3. Gently dab and brush with round strokes to spread a very thin layer of the paint to give your elephant (or whatever else you're painting) a mottled, rough look.

Now you can get going...
Preparing the elephant

1. Print the templates and cut out the elephant's head, body, and tusks.
   • The elephant's body is just barely too large for a single piece of paper, so when you print that page, look for Page Scaling and select Tile large pages. My printer has an extra large bottom margin, so I scaled the image to 95% so that the elephant's body would print on two sheets instead of four.
2. Trace two heads, two bodies, and one set of tusks on the non-printed side of your cardboard box.

3. Using your box cutter and/or X-acto knife, start cutting out the traced pieces. If you've never cut cardboard before, you might want to check out my tips above if you didn't already.
4. Keep cutting until you have two… three… four… five, six pieces: two heads (identical), two bodies (identical) and two tusks (one left and one right). 
5. Line up your identical head and body pieces and trim any rough or uneven edges so that they match perfectly. Almost perfectly is also acceptable. :)

6. Spread a generous coat of ModPodge on one of the head pieces.
7. Lay the other head piece on top of the glue and press them tightly together, making sure they are lined up properly. The cardboard will start to curl and warp with the moisture, so...
8. Flatten on a hard surface underneath several large, heavy books (like phone books... or family history) until dry.
9. Repeat the gluing and flattening for the elephant body pieces.

10. Once the glue is dry, paint the double-thick head and body pieces with two coats of the lighter shade of gray paint and the tusks with two coats of ivory paint, allowing the paint to dry between coats
    
    • Bonus Iron Crafter points for also using cardboard scrap for your paint palette ;)
    • Also, I paint inside... on carpet... using one of the diaper changing pads that they give with the free diaper bags at my doctor's office. I was using it for a painting mat long before I had a baby! Works like a dream, then fold it up and stow it away. 
11. Dry-brush the head and body pieces with the darker shade of gray. See my note above about dry-brushing. Just in case you skipped it. ;)

Preparing the Welcome (or other words)
If you'd like to have an elephant with other words, you can download (free) the same font I used. The font is Lauren Script and it's available from DaFont here. If you'd like just the elephant, skip this section.

1. Cut the printed Welcomes apart, leaving plenty of paper around the edges.

2. Lightly glue (glue stick) both printed Welcomes to your cardboard
   
   • In the file I provided, one Welcome is reversed. The letters require more cutting precision, and sometimes that's more achievable cutting from the back of the letters. So I gave you options. :) If you use it, you'll glue the reversed Welcome (the emocleW ;) ) on the printed side of your cardboard instead. Either way, be sure you have two Welcomes.
3. Using the X-acto knife, cut out both Welcomes.
   Be sure to read my tips above! Cardboard isn't really built for precision cutting, but some practice has helped me learn. :)

4. Glue the two Welcomes together with a good amount of ModPodge, inserting the small piece of plastic piece in between to two in order to to hold the W to the elcome.
   
   • I originally included the plastic piece because I was going to hang the Welcome beneath the elephant. If you decide to glue it on top, like I did, the plastic is unnecessary but still nice to hold the word together.
5. Flatten the double-thick Welcome beneath your thick books until dry.
6. Paint the Welcome with two coats, allowing the paint to dry between coats.

Assembling the sign
As you assemble the sign, you might want to look back at the original African elephant silhouette on fun-with-pictures.com for help with the positioning of the tusks and the head.

1. Glue tusks on elephant head, using a small amount of ModPodge, and let dry.
2. With a more generous helping of ModPodge, glue elephant's head on his (her?) body. I chose to glue only the top portion of the head and let the warped curve of the trunk add some character and depth to the elephant.

3. Flatten the head-body combo under your heavy books until dry.
4. Glue the Welcome across the elephant's feet and let dry. (If the cardboard starts to warp again, press with books to flatten like before. Mine didn't on this step, though.)
   OR glue 3-inch lengths of 1/4-inch ribbon to the back of the W, l, and e to hang the Welcome beneath elephant, as was my original vision.
5. Determine and mark your elephant's center of gravity so that she (he?) will hang straight once you've attached the ribbon. (I held the elephant at different points between two fingers to see where it would hang straight.)
6. Spread a generous coat of ModPodge all around your center-of-gravity mark.

7. Lay one end of a 24-ish-inch ribbon piece flat in the ModPodge on one side of the mark and the other end flat on the other side of the mark.
   AND glue your Welcome ribbons to the back of the elephant if you've chosen to have a hanging welcome.
8. On top of your ribbon ends, spread another generous coat of ModPodge.
9. Dry the ModPodge well.
10. Display! Or, in my case, ship.

Also, since I'm sending my elephant off to rainy Oregon, I will be spraying him (her?) with a coat or two of a clear finish to help protect from the extra moisture in the air. We have very little moisture in this desert state of mine. :)

You may have noticed that I'm having trouble determining the gender of this elephant... It is a him? a her? any insight as to the gender of a cardboard creation? I think he or she needs a name, but I guess I'll leave that up to the recipient...

I'm entering Round 5: Cardboard Boxes of the Iron Crafter at Fireflies and Jellybeans with my fantastic elephant friend. There's some pretty stiff competition over there! My favorites so far are the playhouse, stick horse, and treasure chest from a diaper box. I value my diapers above gold but I've never thought "treasure chest" when looking at a diaper box... Genius.

He (She?) is also a proud product of Stashbusting September.






And I'm linking up at these lovely parties:

It is finished! The year-long diaper bag

My baby will turn the big 1 in two weeks. The day before (mere hours before) he was born, I started sewing a diaper bag. What possessed me to start a project like that then? ON my due date? I was using Murphy's Law to my advantage. Hmm... if I start a big project, the baby is sure to come so that I can never finish the project! And, hey, it worked for me -- the little man was born the next morning. :)

So... without further ado, here it is. The year-long diaper bag. If you decide to make one yourself, rest assured that it will NOT take you a year to make... unless you want it to. :)

I followed this Moda Bake Shop tutorial from Melissa Mortensen of The Polkadot Chair. The thing that caught my eye and made me say, "That! I want that!" was all of the pockets inside:

6 big pockets and two divided sections! Wooee! Plus a pocket on either end.

This bag is huge. Enormous, in my book. Finished dimensions (mine): 16" length x 8" width x 11" height. Before I put the divider in, my almost-1 Pudge could fit into the bag quite nicely. And it's larger than our road-trip cooler. And much bigger than my every-day diaper bag. I won't be carrying this every day, but it will be perfect for day trips or even Pudge's over-nighters to grandma's house.

I followed Melissa's instructions quite closely, however, you may see a couple of big differences between Melissa's bag and mine...

I loved the bag design (all those pockets!), but I have a serious thing for messenger bags. So, I improvised and created a flap and a longer handle that can be worn on your shoulder or across your body.  I love it!

Time spent: one year... :) probably actually about 2-3 days of work, from cutting my own fabric (instead of buying the Moda precuts) to sewing the last stitch.
Money spent: hmm... I started this so long ago I don't even remember! Probably around $35 total for all the fabric, plus the three types of interfacing used for the bag.

What I did differently
The messenger bag flap. For the flap/top/lid (whatever you want to call it!), I created a third front/back piece and lining. If I were to do it again, I would make the flap about 6" longer, since it doesn't really hang down in front of the bag as much as I would like.

My three bag front/back/flap pieces, labeled so I could keep them straight :)

As I sewed the bag together, I sewed the flap lining piece to the back lining piece before sewing that back lining to the side linings and the front linings to make the lining section of the bag. I did likewise with the flap piece, sewing it to the back piece before sewing the back piece to the side pieces and the front piece to make the outer section of the bag.

The bag outer section with the top flap sewed on.

Then, once I had both the lining section and the outer section of the bag and was ready to put those two pieces together, I *first* sewed the two flap sections together, right sides together along the three sides (all sides but the side attached to the back of the bag) with a diagonal stitch across the corners. Then I clipped the corners, turned the completed flap right side out, pressed it lightly, and topstitched around the three outer edges of the flap.

Sew two flap pieces *right sides together* with a diagonal across the two corners.
Clip the diagonal corners and turn the flap (just the flap) right side out.
Topstitch around the three edges of the flap that you just sewed.

With the edges of the flap finished, I just followed the rest of Melissa's tutorial to finish the bag, with juse a small variation for creating and attaching my special messenger bag handle.

The messenger bag handle. I made a pattern for my handle out of newspaper. It is just over 45" long (the width of the full newspaper spread) and tapers from 8" at either end to 2.5" at the center.

Using this pattern, I pieced together a pattern and a pattern handle from the scraps of the fabric I used for the bag. I applied heavy-weight interfacing to the handle lining (just like I did for all the other bag lining pieces) and two layers fusible fleece interfacing to just the 6 inches in the center of the handle for padding.

The wrong side of the handle piece, with the 6 inches of fusible fleece (white)

Then, instead of making the handles like Melissa did, I sewed the handle lining and the handle pieces right sides together along the two long sides only, turned the handle right sides out, pressed the handle, and topstitched along the two long sides. I attached the handle at the same point and in the same manner as in Melissa's tutorial, just at a different location on the bag. The 7"(ish) finished width of the handle ends fit perfectly along each side of the bag.

What I learned
Interfacing is your bag-sewing friend... I had made several bags before and been disappointed with their floppiness. The interfacing makes the world of difference for this bag. In particular, fusible fleece and I have become besties. I plan on using as much fusible fleece as possible in future bag-making endeavors.

as long as you are smart enough to apply it properly. It doesn't take a whole lot of smarts (textured or shiny side is the adhesive-when-heated side) but somehow I managed to iron not one but two sections of interfacing incorrectly (with the bonding side up toward the iron instead of down toward the fabric). The only thing that saved me was the fact that I was fortunate enough to

Use a pressing cloth! It's nothing fancy, just a square of natural fabric (like cotton) that you dampen and put over whatever you're ironing. My interfacing instructions suggested it "for a stronger bond" and I will never use interfacing again without a pressing cloth. It not only made it easier, it saved my iron from being caked with interfacing due to my idiocy.

If I were to make the bag again
Hmm... I honestly won't make this bag again. Really, who needs TWO bags like this? This bag will hold all the other bags in my house! If I did decide that I needed another bag this size, I would seriously consider just buying one. Even hitting the sales and using 40% off coupons, it got expensive, at least to my bargain-loving self. The interfacing was probably the biggest expense since you need three different types of interfacing. (And yes, you actually need all three. None are optional, in my opinion. But remember, fusible fleece and I are besties now and I'm not one to leave friends out.)

Since I won't probably be making another, I'll just offer my advice to you who decide to sew the bag:

Before you dive in, I will warn you: this tutorial isn't the best for a brand-new beginning sewist. I'm just barely beyond beginner myself, but I've sewed together enough bags that I could understand the construction a little bit better. Melissa's tutorial includes lots of great pictures, but some of the explanations still confused me a little until after I was done with that step. And my lining section ended up being over an inch taller than the exterior of the bag, so I had to improvise on my finishing, probably due to seam allowances and cutting my own fabric. In short: be prepared to improvise a bit. :)

Make the bag flap a little bit longer (6 inches or so) and attach a buckle closure or ribbon tie. The flap doesn't come quite far enough around the front of the bag for my tastes and I'd love to have a way to secure it closed.

Work quickly (at least more than I) and label your pieces. This bag has a lot of sewing to get to the basic pieces, and once they are sewn, there are a lot of pieces to keep straight. Since I had an extreme amount of time between cutting and sewing and sewing some more, my labels were the only thing that kept all the pieces straight for me. Each time I picked the project up, I had to re-remember how everything was supposed to be going, so it was extra confusing.

Since this project has literally been sitting in my stash for a year, this is one major Stashbusting September victory! Now, onto the fun projects... the ones that haven't been nagging at me for a whole year. :)

Happy Monday!

The Stay-Tucked Boy's Dress Shirt

My little boy wears a collared shirt to church every Sunday. Even though he has a nice pin-striped dress shirt, most Sundays, he wears a polo shirt onesie instead. Why, you ask? One reason: the stay-tucked factor.

Cheri over at I Am Momma - Hear Me Roar has solved this dilemma with The "Always Tuck Me In" Shirt tutorial, which turns a dress shirt and a onesie into a dress shirt that always stays tucked! This is a winning solution for so many reasons:

• Baby looks snazzy wearing a dress shirt that stays tucked. Nothing less snazzy than an untucked and rumpled dress shirt.
• Mommy escapes insanity caused by needing to tuck dress shirt back in every time she picks baby up.
• Mommy saves money by buying great-condition boys' dress shirts and stained-neck onesies at yard sales. Compare the maximum $1 for both of those items to the $20 price tag on one of these or $40 for one of these. Or don't bother comparing because spending $1 will always be better than spending $20 and waaay better than spending $40.
• Daddy is happy because Mommy is saving money and because Baby looks oh-so-handsome and garners more "handsome like his daddy" compliments.

Time spent: 30 minutes (and that includes snack time :)
Money spent: 25¢ for dress shirt (last summer's yard sale-ing stash); free hand-me-down onesie; all other materials on hand

Following Cheri's instructions, I cut... and cut...

Turned and sewed...

And... done! So easy!

Perfect for little boys who love to play with sticks...

What I did differently...

• My onesie didn't have side seams like Cheri's, so after I cut the bottom off the onesie, while it was still laying flat, I marked each side with a marker so that I could match my marks with the side seams of the dress shirt.
• Before sewing, I pinned my marked sides to the side seam. When it comes to evenly distributing stretch, I must have pins to help me.
• As I stretched the onesie to be the same width as the dress shirt, I noticed that the button-down front (the overlapping button strip thing whose name I do not know) was coming open, so I pinned that part of the shirt closed to prevent any distortion or gap.

If When I do this again....
Absolutely no changes! This is so simple and I will for a certainty be doing this again. Maybe even to The Mr's shirts if I can find a onesie large enough... ;)

UPDATE 9.9.10:  One possible change... apply this treatment to a polo shirt! The lovely Nora commented that she used to do this to her boys' polo shirts... so now I can't wait to get my hands on a polo to try it out! 

This project is also my first Stashbusting September project (since I purchased the shirt last summer... before my almost-one-year-old was even born!). I'm fairly confident that I can go the whole month crafting only the planned-and-never-started projects in my stash... add to that the started-and-forgotten projects and I could probably go until Christmas!

My next stashbuster is a project I started last September: the diaper bag I started sewing the day before my son was born! I gave myself a one-year deadline and it's approaching all too quickly...


Linking to

Stashbusting + guest posting

Today I take the oath of a stashbuster:

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays this crafter 

from the sworn diminishment of her appointed stash."

Okay, I may have my oaths a little confused, but here's the gist of Stashbusting September, so graciously hosted by Robin of The T-Shirt Diaries:

Craft for an entire month 

with only the supplies 

that you have on hand 

{and in my head I add "or that you can beg, borrow, or steal-with-forgiveness/permission from your known crafting associates"}

You can read the full oath of Stashbusting September plus some FAQs (and join!) over at The T-Shirt Diaries. You'll want to join. All the cool kids are doing it. Plus, if just a few more cool kids join, Robin will add another prize to the kitty.


In other news... It's Wednesday! Pop by my weekly guest post at Housewife Eclectic to find a reason to celebrate today. And tomorrow. And next week. And next month. :)