Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Name Bean Bags

My daughter and 2 of my nephews were all born within about a 3 week time period of eachother, so that means 3 birthday presents to figure out all at the same time.  I made these for my son a while back, and thought it would be fun for the 1 year olds. 
With my son's, I had upper case on one side and lower case on the other, but since I was doing 18 bean bags at once, I opted for just one side with a letter on it.  (Didn't want to get burnt out since the birthdays are only a few weeks before Christmas time as well).

And a fun part was that my 2 year old son was able to help fill them up with the beans.  He love that part!

They are about a 5 inches square, and I used my cricut to cut the letters out on freezer paper to be able to paint them on.  The hardest part for me was picking out the order for the fabric to go in.  And as you can see, 4 of the 6 letters in my daughters name are "E," so I guess it didn't really matter what order I tried to put the colors in since they will get mixed up anyway. 

This is a great way to use up fabric scraps - and all the beans in your pantry!

4 comments:

  1. great idea. my son will be 3 on January 18th and I'm looking for some ideas to make for him. this is definitely a contender.

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  2. What the trick to running your freezer paper through your cricut? I have a silhouette but I'm sure it's the same. I want to do this with the whole alphabet and numbers 1-20 for my son for a little preschool thing. I think painting the letters/numbers on will be easier than applique. But I've never done the whole freezer paper thing. Any tips? I'm worried about it bleeding on the edges. Thanks!!

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  3. Trina - just make sure you put it on the mat shiny side down and then I've just had to play around with pressure and blade depth depending on how new my blade is. I've only had bleeding of paint with the white (it was a cheap brand from JoAnns...but the rest of my colors have been Tulip or Jacard from JoAnns as well and they haven't bled.)

    Just make sure that you are brushing the paint from the paper toward the center of your shape otherwise your bristles may poke under. Also, I've had better luck with less bleeding if I set my iron on a medium setting instead of the cotton one. That seems to wrinkle the paper and cause waves where the paint will seep in.

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  4. Thank you Serena Max loves them he thinks it's a ball he throw at somewhere and pick them up.
    and sometimes he sleeps with it with a hugs!
    and we are thinking to decorate this when we move in to new places in Max room. ^^

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