Dinosaurs ROAR

My dino hat is now available as a Crochet Pattern!

If you crochet this is great news! The pattern comes with instructions for 4 sizes: 0-3m, 3-6m, 6-12m and Toddler 1-3years. The hat and spikes are detailed in this written pattern. A wonderful hat for those little boys that just LOVE the dinosaurs!

You can find it here: http://www.etsy.com/listing/96830888/crochet-pattern-dinosaur-baby-hat-pdf
For just $3.50 it is so worth it to make for all those little baby boys about to be in your life!

Find other patterns from me here: www.thecraftytortoise.com

Christmas Ornament Tutorial

I was making Christmas ornaments for my family this year and realized about halfway through that it had been a while since I did a free tutorial... so Here it is!
This is a common recipe I tweaked to make the ornaments a bit darker. I got about 12 large snowflake ornaments out of this recipe.

Cinnamon Salt Dough Ornaments
1/2 cup Table Salt
1/4 cup Cinnamon
3/4 cup Flour
1/2 cup Tea or Coffee (I used Carmel Vanilla Tea to make them smell awesome)
Puffy Paint to decorate

Measure out your ingredients and mix them together in a large mixing bowl. Knead together until it makes a dough. Add flour or water as needed. Dough should not be too sticky. Place dough on floured surface and roll out with rolling pin. Cut out with Cookie Cutters and place on backing sheet. Punch hole to hang your ornaments with a bamboo skewer or straw. Place ornaments in 200 Degree Oven for 4-6 hours or until centers are hard. Turning if needed to speed up the process. Let stand until cool.
Decorate with puffy paint.

To make this look as professional as possible I traced my cookie cutter on sheets of paper (I took advantage of my copier making this much easier) and practiced my designs. I find this is a good way to make your end result much nicer!

These when dried and finished will be my gift to my family members. Along with designing the front I will add their names and the year to the back to make them a bit more personal. A cheap but heartwarming gift for anyone! Merry Christmas!

Rag Rug Time

It is summer and the one thing I love about summer is color. Everything is so green and beautiful. It is so hard to be in a bad mood when the world is blossoming.

Another thing I love about summer is the time I have to crochet. I have just started to get into making rugs. My Doily Rug just sold and in honor of that I felt like I really had to replace it.

So I sat down and made some Rag yarn.

• Here is the tutorial to do so
• It is for a braided rug, but if you scroll down it tells you how to add fabric to create a long strand of yarn.

I made my rag rug yarn and here is what it looks like:I used a twin sheet to get enough yarn to crochet about 3/4 of the way through my rug.

• I would suggest to buy up a few sheets that coordinate. It is better to have too much than too little.

Crochet Rag Rug

Use S Hook.

1. make magic circle, hdc 8 into ring, join, ch 1.
2. 2 hdc in each stitch around, join, ch 1.
3. *2 hdc in next stitch, 1 hdc in next* repeat around, join, ch 1.
4. *2 hdc in next stitch, 2 hdc in next* repeat around, join, ch 1.
5. *2 hdc in next stitch, 3 hdc in next* repeat around, join, ch 1.
6. *2 hdc in next stitch, 4 hdc in next* repeat around, join, ch 1.
7. *2 hdc in next stitch, 5 hdc in next* repeat around, join, ch 1.
8. *2 hdc in next stitch, 6 hdc in next* repeat around, join, ch 1.

• By now you should be seeing a pattern. You continue to increase until you get a rug the size you want.
• If your rug starts to get wavy unravel a row and skip to the next row (example: if on row 5 my rug starts to get wavy I would unravel and instead crochet row 6)
  

It is as easy as that! Enjoy your rug!

Homemade Diaper Cake

When my Mother in Law came to me and asked me to create a diaper cake for a baby shower I was hesitant. I had never heard of them let alone seen one, and really didn't know how difficult it would be to create on my own. I started looking into it. They can cost as much as 300 bucks to have someone else create them. I went looking for a tutorial and found a ton of them online (especially youtube.com). I decided to combine a few of the tutorials I found (mainly because I found things with each that I liked/didn't like) and went shopping for the ingredients.
My list was this:

Diapers (too many is better than not enough):

• 8 for the top layer
• 19 for the second layer
• 40 for the third layer
• 60 for the last layer (I added a 4th layer)
  

Ribbon:

• 2 different colors, 2 different widths

Rubber bands Assorted kind
Dowel rods (at least 2)

And a few things I already had:

Hot Glue Gun
Decorations
White Felt

Once I had everything I needed I started with the basics. I rolled all of my diapers into little jelly rolls (similar to when you roll cookie dough). I rubber banded them together with one rubber band on each in the center of the roll.

After that was done, I started standing them up and rubber banded them together in the center with a larger rubber band. I did this a little differently than the tutorials. They say (say for the top layer) to stand all eight up and then put the rubber band around them. I started with the rubber band around 2 or 3 and then pulled the band out to place the other diapers around the center.

I did this for all rows making the previous layer and then placing the next layer around that. (It is better to see it being done. A good tutorial is here)

I placed ribbon around it just like in the tutorial. I decided that I didn't like the color on the diapers showing (my diapers had a blue picture on the front) so I cut felt for the top (I cheated and it doesn't go all the way around. If yours does do not forget to cut a hole for your dowel rod to poke through). My felt also acted as a base for my decoration. I glued some silk flowers to the felt (you don't want to glue anything to the diapers) and added a bear.

I sewed the bear's arm to the second layer felt, and his leg to the third layer felt so he would stay on.
The bow on top is just something I stumbled upon while searching for ways to tie bows.

Right now it does not have the dowel rods in it to help it stay together and not fall over during the baby shower, because I am going to transport it in pieces.

I hope this helps anyone who is making one of these for someone you know. I cannot wait to show it at the baby shower.