Making Soap for the Mothers Day Stall

I have been looking at things to make for the school Mothers Day Stall on the internet, and found lots of inspiration on the HomeLife website which got me thinking about making soap.  I looked into it a little bit but it all seemed a bit complicated to source the ingredients etc.  Then I hit upon the fantastic idea of melting down existing soap and adding stuff to it, then remoulding it.  You can add colour, smell, texture etc. and you can buy the soap at your local supermarket, or use up soap that you have in the cupboard.

To melt it down all you have to do is get the soap you want to use and grate it.  I just put it in a saucepan and added water (somewhere I read you need 1/2 a cup of water to 1 cup of soap and I loosely followed this ratio). When it melted it went all sticky.  I think that technically speaking you are meant to use a double boiler, but I am impatient, so I was very careful to watch it the whole time to ensure it didn't burn.  I then added essential oils (I also read that you can add bees wax for a honey smell which I would like to try) along with dried lavender, dried rose petals (you can also add oatmeal or ground coffee ...) and some food dye.  One lot I put in a milk carton to dry and then cut it up with a sharp knife.  Another lot I just did in a baking tray.  Apparently you need to leave it a few days to dry out before you use it.  But it looks good within a few hours.  I have used strips of the pages of an old Alice in Wonderland book that I sourced at an Op Shop to wrap it. 

Paving

Here is a project that took up a good week of our family time - paving our backyard.  We have used old bricks that were piled up in the corner and 45 cm concrete pavers to create a sitting area outside our back door.  It was a lot of work and created quite a lot of mud, along with two large piles of dirt (one in our front yard and one in the back corner of the backyard) that are still there, but it had made a real difference to the outlook from our lounge.  Before it was even finished my 2 year old was busy doing 'mud cooking' on a section of it, and yesterday morning all the kids took their drawing stuff outside to sit in the autumn sun and be crafty.

Pin cushions and leather purses for the Mothers Day Stall

Over the last month I have been so busy doing that I have had trouble documenting.  Mainly I have been thinking about mothers day.  This year I am helping out with the school Mothers Day Stall and have been busy trying to come up with things that kids would like to buy for mums that mums might appreciate.  Inexpensive to make, handy and/or use-up-able (and thus disposable) are my priorities when choosing projects.  To get some inspiration I did a trip to Reverse Art in Ringwood and filled up a bag with all sorts of goodies including brown glass bottles, quilt wadding, timber offcuts, cardboard, leather offcuts, elastic and other bibs and bobs. 

The first project I undertook was to make some pin cushions.  This involved sewing together two circles of fabric and stuffing them with some tubular foam shapes from Reverse Art.  I then sewed all the way around the outside and in doing so sewed up with stuffing hole. 

They look quite cute, and I would be happy to receive one for mothers day, which I think is my fundamental criteria.

My next project was making some leather purses from the brown leather offcuts that I got at Reverse Art.  I cut out a basic rectangle and rounded the corners on the top edge.  I sewed along the bottom edge.  I then folded the bottom edge a bit more than 1/3 of the way up the leather to create the purse.  I started on one folded corner at the bottom and sewed all the way along the sides and top to the other folded corner at the bottom.  Then I just put on the embellishments (different sized circles made of olive leather and floral silk ) which helped to hide the velcro that I sewed on to keep the purse closed.  I like these little purses.  I did make some last year in vinyl, but I think they look a little classier (although admittedly still rustic) in leather.