Long Loom Knitting Video Tutorials For Beginners

My 10 year old daughter got a long loom knitting set for Christmas. I haven't attempted to knit since I was her age so this is a learning process for both of us. She's been making rainbow loom type bracelets for the past year, so she's caught onto this quickly. I've been searching pinterest and youtube for easy to understand (yes, that's the tricky part!) tutorials for us to learn and I thought I'd share the best ones I've found for starting in case you or someone in your home is also starting this.

My girl with her work so far

This first video is the Figure Eight Stitch as seen in the photo above:

This video will not teach you how to finish off your project, so you should watch the video below as well. It's a similar stitch and there are more complete instructions. This is a good, close up view of how to start.

This is a very easy Zig Zag Stitch, the most basic I've seen.

Notice how much thicker it looks? That's working with two pieces of yarn together instead of a single strand. This video will teach you how to finish off your project.

If this one is helpful, check out the rest of the loom-related tutorials from this channel

This stitch is similar to the Figure Eight - Twisted Knit Stitch

There are is a huge Knit (Loom) Playlist here on various different looms, including these two with good information on different looms, buying yarn and tools, etc...

Loom Knit: Looms, Tools & Basic info Part 1 of 2 with CC

Loom Knit: Looms, Yarn & Basic info Part 2 of 2 with CC

How to knit a square on any loom 

There is some really unique and useful stuff on the LoomaHat Youtube Channel, such as looming with elastic bands (hello rainbow loom!). Also check out the website www.loomahat.com for more tips and tutorials.

Are you a loom knitter? What's your favourite pattern or stitch?

Follow Shauna's board Loom Knitting on Pinterest.

Summer Sewing Series #2 - Sew A Pillowcase: The Roll Up Method

This week I taught a beginner sewing class to Petunia and a few friends. We made pillowcases. They're a great beginner project because they're very forgiving and a great, personalized item to go home with.

I learned this method in preparation for the class and it's really neat! We also used french seams to hide our raw edges.

I followed the 15 minute pillowcase tutorial from The Cottage Home to make my sample pillowcase. She has a Google Doc with the instructions, and if you want to see the roll up part with pictures, check out the tutorial from Little Birdie Secrets. It's very straight forward and easy to make but the kids still learned about squaring up their fabric before beginning, measuring, cutting, pinning, and sewing seams - and ripping them out, too. Not too much of that happened, thankfully.

Here's Petunia's finished pillowcase. Isn't that a lot more fun than a pair of boxer shorts?

Summer Sewing Series #1 - Summery Sisters

Summer Sewing Series #3 - Wild Flower Pincushions

How To Make Wide Chevron Friendship Bracelets

This friendship bracelet is a lot easier to make than it looks because although you have quite a few strings, you deal with them in twos instead of individually. Petunia is 9 and she made one for her friend. It's been a great project that kept her busy in fits ands starts for about a week.

OH SO PRETTY the DIARIES has a great tutorial for this bracelet that's clear and easy to follow.

I got the idea for this adding a button to the bracelet from this tutorial from friendship-bracelets.net, but my way was simpler. Finish the bracelet, get some thread that will blend in and just sew it on. 

Creating a button hole is easy too. You can check that tutorial out on friendship-bracelets.net as well. All you do is skip the step connecting the two sides in the middle point for about 3-5 rows, depending on the size of your button.

To end it, because obviously it's all in a V-shape, I just evened off the edges with knots as well as I could and tied them off.


see the rest of the series:

How to make a Simple Knot Friendship Bracelet

How to make Knotted Hearts Friendship Bracelets

How To Make Knotted Hearts Friendship Bracelets

Here is the second set of instructions for friendship bracelets. I was going to post this soon after the instructions for the simple knotted friendship bracelet but camping got in the way. :) If you're going to keep your kids busy for a good part of the summer I guess they'll need instructions for more than one bracelet, right? This one looks difficult but is actually very straight forward, which makes you (or your kids) look smart for very little effort. Nice.

I was going to take pictures and make a nice tutorial, but why redo what someone else has done beautifully? There is a great picture tutorial on how to make a knotted hearts friendship bracelet at honestly... so give it a try.

Check out the tutorial here.

If you still need help, here is a video tutorial that explains how to make the bracelet very clearly.

Happy bracelet making! As I said, we were camping and once nice thing about this project is that it can be brought along and worked on during quiet moments. . . not that there were many of those this trip with 6 kiddos around the campsite. ;o) Maybe next time?

Stay tuned for more bracelet instructions to come and enjoy your summer!

Are you going camping?


see the rest of the series:

How to make Knotted Hearts Friendship Bracelets

How to make Wide Chevron Friendship Bracelets

How to make a Simple Knot Friendship Bracelet

Summer vacation is upon us and for many that means a nice long break from school, which makes for more 'entertain me Mom' time, right? In theory, the words "I'm bored" aren't allowed in this house, but I still hear them from time to time. Friendship bracelet making is an activity that can entertain young ones (I'd say 6 and up) for nice long stretches of time and actually have something to show for their time.

Petunia - who by the way wants credit for modelling ;) - has been doing this off and on since her birthday in February when she received the supplies (mostly LOADS of thread!) and now Ironman is getting in on the action too.

The chunky bracelet with the beads in the photo above is the same technique as the skinny knotted bracelets, but the kids used waxed string to make them. I think they'll last a lot longer than the ones made with embroidery thread, sometimes also called craft thread.

This is an easy bracelet to start off with, and a good foundation for more complicated patterns because this knot is used in many other patterns like the heart bracelet in the photo above. It's an inexpensive hobby too. Walmart carries a pack of 105 skeins of craft thread for $15 Canadian.

This video shows you how to make 3 beginner friendship bracelets. The first one she shows you is the simple knot pattern.

If you prefer written instructions with pictures, the red kitchen also has a tutorial for this bracelet. They both use a safety pin to anchor their work, but we prefer to use a clipboard. Just tuck the top end up to the knot under the clip and you're set. It's especially good for smaller kids and beginners but when I'm making them in front of the TV in the evening I grab a clipboard.

Here's a better picture of the bigger knot bracelets made with waxed string. I know there are other designs pictured here and I will be posting more instructions for other bracelets - we've got a whole summer to fill up!

What's your favourite friendship bracelet pattern?

see the rest of the series:

How to make Knotted Hearts Friendship Bracelets (like the one above)

How to make Wide Chevron Friendship Bracelets

DIY Stamped Paint Chip Bookmarks

Here's a quick and simple craft to do with the kids. We were given a bag of stamps a while ago and I was inspired by these  paint chip bookmarks. One of these is kind of not like the other, but that's ok, we had fun.

I went to Home Depot to pick up some paint chips, and since they were the wide card type, I cut them down to 2.5" wide, taking off the paint colour names.

I punched the edges with an old punch, so old that you have to turn it over and push the metal piece back up so you can punch the next corner. Fun. Good thing we were only doing a few. ;) 

Hole punch for ribbon if you want it, and you're all set. We did this out in the shade on a beautiful sunny spring day.

Here's a few of our completed treasures. Bookmarks disappear faster than water on a hot driveway around here. Might have to make them again in a few weeks. 

How to cut a perfect star from a piece of paper with one cut!

This was our 'art project' this morning. Cutting out stars first of all because it's a pretty cool trick to know, and second of all to decorate and hang in the kids room. Oh, and the third reason I picked this is that all it takes is scissors, paper, and maybe some markers or glitter glue. :)

Here's a video tutorial by Amanda from ohamanda.com:

Even Better DIY Silly Putty!

I came across this post on making your own silly putty and they had the same ingredients as we used to make Gak the other day except that they used 1/4 cup of cornstarch place of 1/4 cup of cold water.

What a difference!

The New and Improved Silly Putty

1/2 cup white glue
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup hot water
1/2 tsp Borax
food colouring (we used 8 drops for bright dough)

Mix 1/2 cup white glue and 1/4 cup cornstarch in a glass bowl (easier to clean, I think). Add the food colouring and mix again. 

In a separate bowl, mix 1/4 cup hot water and 1/2 tsp Borax until it is dissolved. Add it to the glue mixture and stir again. Get your hands in there and work the putty until it's no longer sticky. It takes a little longer for this step, than the Gak did, but it's worth it.

The kids really enjoyed making the Silly Putty and the Gak and trying to guess what the different ingredients would do. 

We also compared the results and this was the clear winner, although it made a bigger mess. It's really sticky at first. It's very stretchy, soft, and much warmer than the putty from the other day. Apparently if feels like chewed gum. :)

We've been having a lot of fun with this experiement and we have one more recipe to go, but it will be a little different and we'll hopefully get to it next week. 

Homemade Gak (Silly Putty) DIY

We had fun with science today. We made Gak, or Silly Putty, whatever you want to call it. It worked out pretty well. It's super easy to make, very little mess and a lot of fun. 

We tried changing the amount of Borax in the mixture to see what would happen in our quest for the perfect Gak (I'd call it Silly Putty but Gak is such a fun word ...). I'll give you the best recipe here first:

Homemade Gak 1/2 c White Glue 1/4 c cold water 1/4 c hot water 1/4 tsp Borax food colouring

Mix 1/2 cup white glue and 1/4 cup of water together in a glass bowl, just because I think it's easier to clean the glue out of later. Next, mix 1/4 hot water separately with 1/4 tsp Borax. Then, when it's mostly dissolved, pour it into the glue mixture. You'll see it start to make the glue stringy right away. It creates a polymer chain, meaning that the molecules in the glue stick together.

It immediately starts to separate and get stringy.

Mix it around until most of the water is absorbed, then take it out of the bowl and keep squishing and squeezing it by hand. The longer you play with it, the drier it gets. To a point, anyways.

The first batch we made was the purple one. I didn't want to have a food colouring mess so we only added one drop. Not enough. It turned out very pale. We also started with 1/2 tsp of Borax. That wasn't bad, but it wasn't as stretchy and nice as the green batch in the end.

The second batch we made was the blue one. We used 4 drops of food colouring and that made a nice bright colour. I asked the kids whether we should add more or less Borax and they agreed that more would make it more like store bought silly putty so we added 1 tsp of Borax. It did make it stiffer and hold it's shape better, but it breaks much more easily.

Batch number three was green, and it was the best by far. Only 1/4 tsp of Borax made it much more malleable and stretchy. We added about 8 drops of food colouring because the green seemed to need it. It's nice and bright.

They are all fun to play with. The blue can still be made to stretch out quite a bit, as you can see. . .

It really was quick and easy and well worth the play time we're getting out of it. We've got another recipe to test out, hopefully tomorrow. We'll keep you posted! Ha ha, blogger joke. Get it?

8 Sweet Free Printables found on Pinterest

I love printables, have I said that yet? Here are a few things I found around Pinterest last week for you, your kids, and one early idea for Father's Day. . .


For when Mom needs some quiet time:

Sewing Cards

aren't they sweet?

Build your own cupcakes

and then, if you need to extend the activity they would look sweet on the front of cards, don't you think?

ClickNColour

Slightly more advanced designs to colour online or print out to colour.

Tool Box Robot Masks

I just think these are so much fun. :)

For you:

chalkboard verses

I love these but that's a lot of ink. I'm going to try printing one, maybe not a full page. Wouldn't they look good in a white frame?

Instagram-style photo cards

These are going on my fridge!

Mini office supply book covers for matchbooks

Be organized and look good. What to do with the matches when I foreclose on their homes?

For Father's Day:

A book about Dad

You really should check this out. Quick, easy, nearly painless and it's so much better than a plain card.

Have fun and may your printer never run out of ink. 

Or, if it does, here's hoping it's cheap to fill. :D

The Bunny, The Egg & The Cross

My friend Alicia from Two Hens In The Kitchen sent me a copy of their Easter ebook and I think they've done a fabulous job of putting together teaching materials and crafts for kids. It's aimed at 2-6 year olds, but if you are working with a variety of ages in your home it could definitely be stretched further without issue.

It's a 9 day program that covers Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday with a little devotional and craft each day. I enjoyed learning more about Easter. I had no idea what Shrove Tuesday or Maundy Thursday were before this. Do you?

My favourite crafts are the Greek Easter Eggs (pictured above, as done by Alicia and kids) and the puffy tissue paper perfume bottle, sorry no picture yet. All the crafts have easy to follow instructions and are made from things either around your home or found at any dollar store. There are various template included in the ebook as well.

Anytime I come across something that helps me explain the real meaning of Easter in a meaningful way that's as fun as Easter Bunnies and chocolate I am always grateful, so thank you Ladies!

For more information, or to buy the ebook for $4.99, visit the Two Hens In The Kitchen post about The Bunny, The Egg & The Cross.

Happy Easter!

Glittery Easter Eggs

The kids and I made these colourful glitter easter eggs yesterday. I used the tutorial from No 2 Pencil for instructions on how to colour the eggs and it worked well, except that ours came out very dark. Neon food colouring and white eggs would probably turn out better. Still fun to do, though.

Then, after I used a hair dryer to finish drying them, we used Mod Podge to glitter one end of them. I got the idea from create. craft. love. I had the idea that white glitter would look really nice and just using one colour would be easier besides. Not so much. Almost half we did that way and it's chunky and uneven. The other half turned out much better with coloured glitter.

I had the idea that white glitter would look really nice and just using one colour would be easier besides. Not so much. Almost half we did that way and it's chunky and uneven. The other half turned out much better with coloured glitter. 

Here's our finished product.

HAPPY EASTER!

Last Minute Quick Easy Valentines Crafts

The kids and I did a Valentines craft this afternoon. First I had to do my research. Find a worthy craft. One that wouldn't make too big of a mess, take too long or continue for days.

Want to see what I found? I figure even the least crafty parents could tackle these, or have your kids tackle these, and feel pretty proud of the results.

First, the instructions for the one we did. Obviously their confetti wasn't homemade, but we'll forgive them for that. Quick and easy, I promise!

You can find the instructions here. We used these instructions to make our homemade confetti. Or rather, I did. Had I given that job to the kiddos we would have fallen into the 'dragging on for days'. No thank you.

I love this bookmark. It's simple, yet elegant. I don't have a heart punch, but I think the kids might cut out the heart. Add a bit of rustic-ness and heartfelt-ness for the Gra ..ahem, for someone.

The instructions are here.

I couldn't believe how easy the instructions for these are. We're going to make these too. You can use scrapbooking paper or origami paper, anything patterned and preferably not too thick. Much more fun than regular bought valentines day cards.

Check it out here.

See now, you don't have to be crafty. You can bake but you should share with me because I probably won't bake. :) If these were make from paper, well that's different. Aren't they neat?

How to make chaos cookies here.

A stitched heart tutorial and an easy, adorable card. Keep your kiddos busy for a little while with minimal supervision. Supposedly Not really.

The heart tutorial and card here.

Can't get enough of the stitched hearts or want a longer coffee break? Make a garland! Of course! 

Instructions are here.

Happy Saturday!