Making Valentines at the Makery

Love is in the air at Beattie Chicks Makery! We have been putting our Valentine's kits to good use, testing them out on all age levels and finding that they are, indeed, the sweetest things evah!

We made these canvas and paint lovlies at the last two of our You and Me classes. It's funny to watch the children experiment with paint...how the younger ones just want the experience of PAINT, while the older ones will follow the directions and use the different methods of applying the paint. I find it so rewarding to watch the parents/caregivers get excited about the projects. These are, of course, a way to get into everyone's creative self, not just the kids'!

We hope these photos will inspire you to try your hand at fun painting. We used our tried and true and wicked fun method of scraping two paint colors together. We then added some white with bubble wrap and finally some red circles with bottle tops. These were cut into circles, parents sewed and...voila! Lovely Valentine hearts! If you have photos of your own creations, please share them. We LOVE to see what our creative friends are up to!
Happy Crafting!

This class started as a craft project with my girls in the kitchen...I took brown bags, sponges and craft paints and let them cover the bags with paint. I then cut hearts out from the newly decorated bags and sewed them together. I actually stuffed them with plastic grocery bags because I didn't have anything else on hand at home...they worked magically!

We decided to take it up a notch at the studio and used canvas rather than paper bags. We also decided to slim down the color selections to make it more "Valentiney." We taught this project at our You & Me class and plan to have our Junior and Senior Girl Time classes do it as well

With the younger children, the parents had to do the sewing. Our Junior Girls will use glue to adhere the hearts together and our Senior Girls will (hopefully) tough it out and sew theirs together. (Just a warning...it's a bit challenging to sew through two layers of canvas...)

We love this project SO much that we're offering it in a kit. You can either download the PDF instructions or purchase a complete kit from our Etsy store.

We promise it will be fun!

Having Sew Much Fun at Beattie Chicks Makery!

The "sample" scarf that I created. Surprising that it's purple...NOT!

"Yes, I did this!"

Holly modeling her AMAZING scarf!

Hannah and I are thrilled to be offering women a 4 week sewing class. We have been asked to do this for a while...people just wanting to have a safe, nurturing environment to both learn and practice machine and hand sewing. We are accepting all levels of sewers..and we're right there all night long to help where needed.

We took a general pattern from Sweater Chop Shop by Chrispina Ffrench. We tried to keep it simple, and then have each person customize and embellish as they wished. At the end of the evening, we had lots of beautiful, inspirational work to show!

We're on to Hats next...can't wait to share our results!

Let Them Eat Cake!

Erin's soft colors...

Harriet's brilliant cupcake!

Meka's bright cupcake!

love the purple, Molly!

Check out Alison's fun fiber!

We had so much fun with the Sr. Girl Time girls yesterday. We made these cupcakes inspired from Betz White's book Warm Fuzzies. The girls really thought this would be an easy project...then we heard a little grumbling and "oh-my"ing...a good reminder to us all that things may not be a simple as they seem.

I had polled the girls last week as to what kind of cake they like the best. Harriet was emphatic that it be red velvet cupcakes. Well, then they all chimed in and said that that would be the overall pick. I surprised them this week by making red velvet cupcakes! The were thrilled!

It's these little things about working with girls that I love...the ability to make a small difference in their lives. To be another person who listens and cares. We can never have enough of them, can we?