A'maze'ing Demolition

It is amazing how easy it is to tear down something that you worked so hard to build. The one exception is unpicking a seam. The sewing machine works much faster than me.

For the girls birthdays we combined the party this year. I got this funny idea in my head and because of my brilliance and Shannon's back-breaking dedication to me (thanks for your help also, Papa and Michael) this idea came to life.

It took 4 days, 300 feet of construction plastic and 51 poles to create 'The Maze'. That is 51 holes each having to be dug a minimum of 1 foot. When I was doing the designing I thought that we should have the poles around 2 feet deep. It only took one hole to convince me that one foot was enough.

Well, this maze survived through 3 separate kid events, 2 wind storms and just over 2 months.

Today, we decided that it would be best if in the interest of presenting a nice house, it would be a good idea to get rid of the black plastic monstrosity in the front yard. Four days got demolished in less than a half hour.

Z

Z is for zipper and zebra.

I bet you had a hard time guessing what was going to be on this page. Or not. It isn't original but I love it's simplicity.

I don't know why, probably just not thinking, but I got the kind of zippers that you find on blue jeans. The nice thing about them is that they have a great strong zipper look. The bad thing about them is they have a great strong zipper hold, the kind of hold that makes things difficult for toddlers. Oh well, it's a good thing that there is stuff to do on 24 other pages.

THE END

Y

Y is for yellow, yo-yo and yarn.

The yo-you goes up and down in the same way that the elevator in E does. Except on the yo-yo it also can go round and round.

In all honesty this is my least favorite letter. I don't know if it is the yo-yo (it doesn't work very smoothly) or it it is all the yellow. I don't really like yellow, even though it is my mom and Claire's favorite color.

Claire's favorite color can change by the minute and it is a topic she really likes to discuss. She asks everyone in ear shot what their favorite colors are and then she demands of someone, "Now you say, what's my favorite color." When she first started doing this I used to tell her a color that I thought was her favorite and she would get angry until I realized she needed me to say, "What's your favorite color, Claire?"

When she answers it can be any color but yellow is the one that occurs the most often and with the most conviction.

Really the only thing I like about this page is the cute little yarn ball I made. See, isn't it cute:

X

X is for x-ray and that is about it. There is still a surprise.

Open up the skeleton and you will meet...

this guy. He is currently nameless. Maybe you could give me suggestions for a name for him.

W

W is for wings, wheels, and waves.

The wings can waver.

The wheels on the W go round and round, round and round, round and round. 

V

V is for volcano, vines (a bit of a stretch but it was the best material I had) and...

velcro.

I thought that this would be a good idea until I had it all made and realized for a 'quiet' book velcro is really noisy ripping off.

You can't see it it in the photos but even the V is attached to the page with a thin ribbon. It goes from the top corner of the right side to the bottom of the same side. I was really paranoid about pieces of the book going missing.

U

U is for umbrella but...

before I let you know what else U stand for I need to give you a warning. The following picture includes graphic scenes that may be disturbing to some viewers. Before you scroll down you may wish to make sure that you are sitting down.

and udder.

I truly am sorry about U but I just couldn't think of anything better.

I love guys reactions when they are flipping through the book and then they are all the sudden confronted with the udder. Typically, they give the teats a gentle squeeze and then try milking them.

T

T is for train, tiger, trees and turtles.

The turtles drive the train or you could drive the train.

I really don't have anything else to say about T.

S

S is for snake, stars, stripes and...

snap.

I am not sure how long this little snake is going to stay sewn on to this page. You see that gap between the snap on the tip of the tail and the next snap up the body? That is where it is sewn on. Don't ask me why I separated 2 snaps with and area of sewing because I wouldn't be able to answer you. I just don't know what I was thinking when I did that. What I do know is that it really encourages toddlers to pull very hard when they get to that bit of resistance and can't get to the last snap.

R

R is for red, road, rainbow and race car.

The race car can race around the road.

I can't believe I haven't told this story before R but what started this whole letter experience was a trip to Costco. Costco was selling kids books that were soft with thick foam covers. They snapped shut and made a pillow when not being read.

I thought that it was really clever and I could make my girls one. I would have been cheaper if I had just bought the books when I first saw them.

I made each of the girls a book where each page was a letter of their name. The letter was an object of some sort. In Claire's book her R was a road just like this one. I will have to show you them some time. Anyway, I thought that I couldn't improve on it so I just made another road.

I found the jeweled ribbon in WalMart and it works so perfect for a yellow line. I even used the same black print for the road.

Q

Q is for queen...

and quilt.

Yes, I made a mini quilt. My father-in-law thinks quilting is silly because, "You have a perfectly good big bit of material, then you cut it all up into little pieces, just to sew it all back together again." There are some fabric patterns in WalMart that agree with him and have a 'quilted' pattern printed on the material. This to me is the ultimate in cheap. I couldn't do that even in a small scale, things have to be done right.

I bought the little crown for the queen and at first the thought was just to perch it on top of the Q but then it just looked like a crown and not a queen. So I had to paint this little lady. This is a fabric paint. I tried to make this book washable. I don't imagine that I will even stick it into the washing machine and dryer but at least it can be spot cleaned and hand-washed.

P

P is for piggy bank, purple, pink paisley and...

pennies.

Australia went to dollars and cents on Valentines Day 1966. Before this they had the English standard of pounds, shillings and pence. Shannon is a bit of a coin collector and he made me some buttons out of these two pennies he had doubles of. They are both from the year 1951, which really means nothing. However, the US pennies are from 2009 (the year I finished this book) and 1980 (my birth year). I considered having a penny from 2006 and one from 2007 (the years the girls were born) but I figure there is a good chance there will be more babies and I didn't want anyone left out just because they might be born late.

O

O is for octopus...

overalls...

and owls.

I am a tiny bit of an impulse buyer, unless you talk to Shannon he might say more of compulsive buyer and not just a little bit. In all honesty, we are probably both wrong and I am somewhere between the two.  The tiny overall buttons on this owl were one of those purchases without a plan. The funny thing was that I had been working on O got stuck and moved on to another letter. When I came back to O I had purchased the buttons and re-discovered them during an idea search of my stashes, and personally, I think they work perfectly and I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner and spend a lot less time thinking about what to do with O.

I had all manner of ideas and I even bought the ribbon that I used on the jellyfish to use as octopus legs. I was going to have all the legs have little magnets that would connect to the main part of the octopus and I was going to stretch things by saying the legs 'Opened' and really the Magnets had nothing to do with it and we didn't have to mention an M word in O.

Back to the impulsive/compulsive buying, after I used these buttons on the octopus I went back to the store and bought another pair (in my defense they were on sale) and again without a plan. I guess I just really felt I needed to have them on hand for something.

You should see the enormous bag of buttons I got for the golf club on G because you never know if, in the future, I might need a button shaped like a dog house or ballerina slippers as well.

N

N is for numbers, nails and...

nest.

I had a hard time finding a number material that didn't also include abc on it. This is a print from an Eric Carle illustration line. The same line that I got the bear and bird from in B, there are a lot of cute prints if you enjoy Eric Carle. Beverly's carries them.

The nails I made. I had some silver fabric paint that I thinly painted onto some black material. I had to paint thinly because I was running out but really it probably turned out better this way. The tiny bit of black material showing through makes it look more like a cheap nail.

M

M is for mountain, mailbox, music, and...

monkey.

I think that M is my favorite. I love the little monkey and his cute little smile. I love that the mailbox works including the flag.

I love the snow capped mountains and the music in the sky. "The hills are alive, with the sound of music, la la la la..."

L

L is for leopard, lady bug, leaf and laces.

The laces do come undone but this book has only been through one church service and already that last blue rivet on the bottom of the L has come off. I think that I need to go invest in some larger, quality rivets. 

Personally, form a design standpoint, I find L tacky. I really think that it is the leopard print. I am just not that into the jungle scene. However, overall, I am still congratulating myself on my cleverness of the laces down the L.

I made the leaf applique and if memory serves I even had it on the pages before I remembered that I had the leaf buttons. So I went for the over-kill and put them both on. 

The more that I blog about this, the more that I want to actually put it all together in a pattern book. That would probably involve making another one so that I can do illustrative pictures of the process. I'm not sure Shannon could handle that. 

K

K is for knit, key, khaki, and...

keyhole.

I have everything that can be moved tied down in ribbons. I thought that with little kids pieces that can go missing, will. This little key is something that I have had for so long that I don't even clearly remember where I got it. I think that it might have something to do with collecting things from the neighbors perpetual garage sale with the Fitzpatrick twins. The other keys I found in the scrap-booking isle, another one of those great finds in the paper section.

I knit the K without a pattern or really knowing how large it might turn out. So of course with this experimental way of doing things I did it twice. I gave the first and larger K to my cousin Katie. I have the pattern all written up for one of those days I get my act together. 

J

J is for jalapeno, jellyfish and...

jumping!

Sometimes I had to let go of the fact that some of my ideas where cheesy and just do them with a smile. J is one of these. I am not a big fan of these jellyfish or the way that they jump, but they work. On my next version of this book (grandchildren one day?) I will do it better.

The jump was made by sewing an elastic in a small tube of the background fabric.

I

I is for icecream, iguana, and ivy.

You smart ones out there might recognize that there is nothing interactive about this page. This is because I was my nemesis. Of all the 'hard' letters I really wasn't expecting to get stumped by I. J, K, X or even Q but I?

This one was the last page I did. It sat on my desk for weeks and I attempted so many different things, ice-skates, ivy that you hook on, ivy with paint, pen and ribbon.

I then decided to do hand-stitching of the vines. A bit time consuming but so much faster than doing nothing.

The ivy leaves were buttons that I cut the loop off the back so they would lie flat. I hot glued them down and then stitched them down around the stem. You can't be too careful if kiddies are going to be playing with it. 

H

H is for hearts...

hangers...

and horses.

So sorry for the blurry photo with the hanger and the lens shading on the horse, but I was in a hurry when I took these.

This page was one that I wasted a lot of material and time on, had to set it aside and do other pages and return with a clear head. The plan was always the same - a H on a hanger but at first I was trying to get the horse print on the H. Also I was having a hard time working out how to sew the H with the 'arm' holes but still have it neat with no fraying.

In the end I used iron on seam tape around the 'arm' holes and sewed the rest together. The H was actually 2 H's on top of each other and folded in half and sewed/ironed.

The hanger I had to draw a hanger shape on a piece of paper and then bend the wire while aligning it on the piece of paper.