Peg Dolls

Busy little hands at my place have been crafting their way through the holidays! Joy!

I love peg dolls and have been wanting to make some for a while. I love that they can be beautifully simple with just a scrap or fabric tied around them, or beautifully intricate with gorgeous little detailed clothes.

I made up some templates for our dollies clothes; a skirt, shirt and pants and then let the kids choose their fabric scraps. We drew little faces and shoes on them and then dressed them in their nice clothes. Then we knotted and glued their hair on and gave them sweet little necklaces and a neck tie.

Such fun! This was a good project for my boy to handle, but my little one needed my help. They are so quick and fun to make that they were being played with in no time!

More Holiday Crafting

So much time to do crafty things on holidays! I love it :)
We've made these little bowls before (see this post), but I was inspired to try them again by Amanda Blake Soule's book 'Handmade Home'. (this book is such a treasure to look through - so nourishing in the best crafty way!)

(they look like the Three Bears' bowls!)

As it had been over a year since making these bowls, it was nice to try them again with my bigger kids. A year on means better dexterity, (slightly) longer attention spans and a little less mess!!

This time we made them using old 'window' envelopes that I'd saved - I really love the patterning on the inside of them, don't you?! We used a diluted PVA mix for the glue, but a proper cellulose papier mache glue, like 'celmix' would be much better (and much safer!).

We used little glass mixing bowls as the molds and put on about 2 or 3 layers of paper. My boy went for the largest bowl - which obviously takes longer to do - and so his only has one layer and is sweetly delicate. The little bowl was for my girl - she attached scrunched paper balls to the outside of hers for a bit of texture.


I'd considered painting them, but the lovely patterning is quite perfect, so they're staying as is. Now they're ready for some special treasures to go inside!

School Holiday crafting

Over the past recent years I have been accumulating gleefully a stack of wonderful crafting books - both new and old. I decided that right now is the perfect opportunity with both kids at home and me on holidays to try out some of my favourite projects!

The little activity we did today was to make some lovely paper flowers from the "Phoney Flowers" project in the 'Meet Me At Mikes' book. We used old book pages and twigs from the footpath for ours. The kids painted the paper with ink beforehand. (nb. the old book pages are so lovely - yellowed and crinkly ... but beware! they can be quite brittle!!)


I was pleasantly surprised how this went with my 5 1/2- and nearly-3- year olds - they really enjoyed the project, and while I helped quite a bit, they had fun creating.

We are very pleased with our new blooms! (and are looking forward to our next fun project!)


Today has been such a strange weather day. We have been enveloped in a big cloud of dust - there is an eerie light around and a layer of dust on every surface of the house. And now it's chilly. These images were taken from the back deck - looking out from the second picture you normally can see the hill behind our house - it is totally lost in dust.