Long Sleeve Shirt --- Sensory Processing Tool!

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend a continuing education course given by Children's Healthcare of Atlanta called "Sensory Processing: Behavior, Memory, Learning." The target audience was speech, occuptional, and physical therapists but parents were invited as well (with a nice discount on registration fees, I might add.) So worth the price of admission! The instructor was a woman named Laura Barker and she practically had me crying (tears of hope) by the end of the class. It was an all day course so I won't even attempt to represent all the things I learned in this post but I would definitely recommend visiting her website www.sensoryprocessing.com and looking into a READY Approach class in your area.

One specific tip she gave us was turning a sweat shirt into a weighted (Deep Pressure Input) device. (If you've never heard of weighted blankets or compression vests and don't know what I'm talking about, go here). The weight is sewn into the arms of the shirt. The torso section can be pulled down over the back of a chair, and then the arms can be wrapped around the person and rest in their lap.

I didn't have a sweat shirt on hand that I thought would do what I wanted it to so instead I pulled out one of my old long sleeve stretchy T's. You'll want to pick a shirt made of a sturdy fabric, especially if your kid likes to chew on things the way mine does. (Alexander actually chewed a tiny whole in his wrap in the time it took me to come up here and start this post. So I'm going to need to revamp a little but if you pay attention you should be all good.) The shirt I sewed up is white but here's a black version so you get the "supplies" idea. 

The Homemade Weighted "Hug" Wrap

Supplies:

Adult sized (small or medium) long sleeve shirt

3 lbs* Poly-Pellets (Stuffing Beads)

Sewing machine (threaded)

Rubber band(s)

Scale (optional)

*The weight recommendation for any therapeutic weighted object is one tenth the body weight of the person for whom it's being made. My son weighs 29.25 lbs. I rounded that to 30 and used 3 lbs of beads for his "hug wrap". You'll need to know your child's weight and scale the measurements accordingly.

Step 1:

Grab one sleeve to start with and use your machine to double stitch it shut at the bottom. Keep sewing off both edges to ensure the sleeve is completely sealed off. You don't want any of your little beads working their way out.

Step 2: 

Measure out (or guestimate) 0.5 lbs (ie: 1/6 total quantity) of beads and pour them down into the closed off sleeve. 

I grabbed the food scale and a good sized cup from our kitchen. The scale's tare function allowed me to use the cup to hold the beads while they were weighed. Then I pulled the "mouth" of the sleeve over the top of the cup and flipped the cup over to pour the beads in. (Dealing with these itty-bitty beads is a bit of a pain, but my method seemed to work well this time.)

Step 3:

Use the rubber band to tie off the sleeve with the beads as well packed as you can get them. 

I cut the rubber band and used it more like a tourniquet so I could really get it tight enough not to let any beads through.

Step 4: Double stitch through the non-stuffed part of the sleeve as close to the rubber band as you can without sewing through bunched material. 

If you look closely at the picture above, you can see my stitching about an inch to the right of the rubber band. It took some finagling to get the material to lie flat so I could get a really good closure. Just take your time and don't worry too much about a straight line, as long as no beads can get through, you're good. 

Step 5: Measure out (or guestimate) 1.0 lb (ie: 1/3 total quantity) of beads and pour them down into what is now the top half of the closed off sleeve.

Step 6: Repeat steps 3 and 4 with the top half of the sleeve. 

Step 7: Repeat steps 1-6 with other sleeve.

Finished product

Test Run

Snug as a bug in a rug

I'm considering adding "fidgets" with velcro (might cover that little hole I was talking about) but now you have the basic idea. I plan on caring for my hug wrap by hand washing and then laying out to dry. If I get really courageous all of the sudden I may try a machine cycle on the hand wash settling and maybe even try a tumble dry on low. I just can't imagine what all those little beads would do to my machine if they got loose somehow.

Big Honking Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional. This is a home made item and hasn't been studied or endorsed by any of those fancy government mommysitter agencies. Please judge for yourself whether this sounds like something you want your child to be using (with or without supervision.) You may also want to discuss weight therapy with your child's doctor before proceeding.

Homemade Peppermint Brown Sugar Scrub

Here we have another great Pinterest find:

Tip Junkie Compiled - 14 Easy Homemade Sugar Scrub Recipes

I pinned that honey of a link all the way back in October when I first started getting ready for Christmas. I knew it would make a great "neighbor gift." We recently picked up about six or seven #10 (60 oz) cans of brown sugar from my husband's parents when they were cleaning out their old food storage. The sugar is 'expired' and quite possibly not as good for eating anymore but when I found these recipes I knew they'd be perfect for a scrub. I ended up making sugar scrubs for Alexander's teachers (teacher, parapro, and speech therapist) and for all the ladies at church that I visit-teach (and one or two that I don't). 

All the recipes are essentially the same (sugar, oil, some kind of extract for scent) so I knew I could get away with tweaking and making my own. Corrie's Brown Sugar Body Scrub from Paula Deen's website seemed the nicest, I thought, and I even already had a bottle of Vitamin E to use. My first batch was actually for a bridal shower gift for our brand new sister-in-law and my ever-self-sacrificing hubby braved Hobby Lobby on his way home from work to pick up lavender and peppermint extracts so I could indulge in my homemade gifting plans.

Indulgence for the bride

As you can see, I did one lavender and one vanilla scrub for my bridal shower gift. Then for the rest (I wanted to go more Christmas-y) I went with peppermint. Since I was making so many, I played around with doubling, tripling and quadrupling the recipe and made a few batches over several days. Here's the general gist of my final "mass production" recipe.

4 cups brown sugar

2 cups olive oil

1 tablespoon vitamin E oil (I used Spring Valley Vitamin E Skin Oil from Walmart) 

15-30 drops essential oil (I used Crafty Bubbles Peppermint Essential Oil from Hobby Lobby)

2 tablespoons honey

Combine wet ingredients first (I kept forgetting to do that, but with a little extra mixing they turned out fine). Then add brown sugar and mix well. (When I encountered stubborn lumps of sugar, I just reached in which my hands and smushed 'em good.) Portion into containers and seal tops on tightly. Tie on tags with cutesy ribbon and distribute. :-) 

I used 16oz (2 cups) containers and this recipe only filled two of them. 2 cups is pretty big though so you could definitely go down to 8 oz (1 cup) containers and have a great little gift.

I don't seem to have any pictures of the final Peppermint Scrub product but here are some free printables of the tags I tied on them. 

Click. Save. Print.

Click. Save. Print.

I got the tag itself from the Holiday Recipe Collection over at Shabby Princess. The little blue section is where I put the "To-From" info. I printed the tags on cardstock and then flipped the page over and printed the instructions on the back before I cut them out. That way you've got a nice two-sided tag with everything you need. 


These scrubs would be great gifts any time of year. We've got Valentines day coming up, then Easter, Mother's day, and then it's practically Christmas again right? Just change out the peppermint oil for your recipient's favorite scent and you're golden. :-)

Lost Child ID Tags

On our California vacation we visited 3 different theme parks in one week. Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, and Legoland. I had our whole itinerary planned weeks before our trip and let me tell you, I did puh-lenty of research!

During said research I came across the Legoland affiliated "Model Mom Mary" blog and this article: Five Safety Measures for Visiting a Theme Park.

Model Mom Mary describes a personal experience we all fear. She is obviously a regular at Legoland, but her 2-year-old daughter still managed to disappear for a brief time while they were there recently. This prompted her to write the article and share the following 5 Safety Measures

1) Have a photo of the child from that day so you can show people who are helping you look what the child looks like that day. This one is easy nowadays with the prevalence of smart phones.
2) Pin a piece of paper on the inside of your child’s clothes or write with sharpie on their stomach their name and all of your contact information.
3) Set an easily accessible meeting spot first thing upon entering the Park.
4) Introduce your kids to an employee upon entering the Park so that they can identify a safe person to approach for help if they are lost.
5) Wear bright colors. No need to bring back the 80’s with matching day-glo tees but bright, primary colors are much easier to spot in a crowd.

She also points out that the best thing you can do is tell a park employee. Of course it's good because they can help you look but they can also radio to all other employees and have the front gate locked if need be.

Those exact same 5 tips can be found on multiple websites geared toward child safety and I think they're great for use with children who are able to effectively communicate with grownups and remember things like phone numbers or where we decided to meet. Knowing, however, that my toddler does not yet fall into that category of children, I was instead inspired to use the knowledge I have of my child to come up with my own ideas and plan for keeping him safe.

I really liked the part about putting our contact info on his person somewhere. For some reason I wasn't loving the idea of writing on Alexander in permanent marker (maybe it's just the OCD in me thinking it wouldn't look nice, what can I say?) It also occurred to me that pinning a piece of paper inside his clothes could turn into an immediate fail the second he started playing in any water (which is his favorite thing to do). So I took the basic concept and left off the specifics and decided instead to make little fabric tags to sew into the clothes he would be wearing at the parks.

Originally I was planning on sewing the tags on the inside of his collar where the sizing tag usually would be. Then I decided that if he wanders away and is actually noticed by a helpful adult, I wanted them to be able to find my cell phone number without having to look for it. One, they might not think to look for it at all; Two, if my son is missing from me, the 15+ seconds it would take a thoughtful person to look for some sort of ID, is 15+ more seconds that my phone is not ringing to tell me he is safe. Outside of right sleeve it is!

Slight side bar: I have read that putting a child's name too large, say on the back of their shirt (jersey style) isn't a good idea because then a "non-helpful" person could possibly use the information to act familiar with the child and lead them away with out them protesting. Alexander doesn't come when people call his name anyway so I wasn't overly worried about that but it was still a consideration. I wasn't planning on making huge tags but the thought did influence me to go even smaller.

There are lots of products out there that can serve this purpose if your child gets lost but I made these out of what I had at home. I typed up Alexander's name and both my husband's and my cell phone numbers in Corel in 10pt Arial font (nothing fancy, easy to read). I made it so 10 tags would print on one sheet so I'd have extras and printed them out on HP Iron-on Transfer Paper. I cut them out and ironed them onto some plain white fabric. One more round of cutting, then I sewed them on the sleeves quick quick like a bunny with my sewing machine.

To finish I'll share what happened while we were in Legoland. While Kevin sat with the baby at some tables nearby, I took Alexander to play in Hideaways (a huge jungle gym type play area). Alexander thought it was one of the best things ever and I was having a good time, too, watching him and climbing and sliding after him. Well, there was a climbing section that I was too big to follow him into and he got to it and started going down before I could stop him. I whirled around and shot down the nearest slide, hoping to meet him at the bottom. Well the slide came out on a different level than the rope course so I had to run up the regular stairs trying to find him. He wasn't there. The park had employees stationed on all the levels so I turned around and told the nearest one that I couldn't find my son. She asked me what he was wearing and I told her it was a yellow shirt with black stripes with his name on a tag on the sleeve. Hair color? Blond! I got his shorts color wrong (I said green instead of blue) but that employee found him (happily playing and completely unaware that his mommy was lost; he certainly wasn't lost, he knew right where he was - on the slide, silly mommy) in 10 seconds flat.

I didn't know where he was for a total of about 1 minute but let me tell you, knowing he had one of these tags on his shirt kept me from going from zero to hysterical in those same 60 seconds. Mind you, the tag didn't actually help the girl find him but it kept me sane enough to ask for help in the first place. Definitely worth the 30 minutes spent making them before we left.

Repeated, simplified, four (maybe five) step process:
1 - Create in word processor or graphics program
2 - Print on Iron-on Transfer Paper (follow package instructions)
3 - Iron onto plain white broadcloth or other fabric of choice (also following Iron-on package instructions)
4 - Cut out individual labels and sew into clothing (precise location is up to you)

Alternate Software

One of my readers asked if the DIY tissue paper photo canvas could be done with different software than the ones I listed.

Absolutely it can!

One example of a good (free) downloadable software is GIMP. That's actually what the original tutorial author used, I just like what I already have. I've never used GIMP myself but I've heard good reviews about it and I figure you can't beat free.

I'd love to see the canvases you all are doing! Please leave me a link if you do a blog post about it and I'll be sure to check it out!

Printable Foldable Mothers' Day Cards

I wanted these cards to be quick and easy to make for any forgetful child (of any age) or husband who happens to hop online at the last minute looking for something to give the mama. So I've included the full page sheets formatted to be printed on 8.5x11 printer paper and folded in the quarter fold card style.

Quarter fold instructions 

Not overly elegant but it will give you something to sign your name to in about 60 seconds flat. It's the thought that counts, even if that thought is in the wee hours of Mother's Day morning.

Of course if you've found this post ahead of time and want to get down and dirty with some cutesy, scrapbook-esque card making, by all means reformat my little project anyway you see fit.

Generic Mothers' Day Card

Full 8.5x11 foldable sheet

From Husband to Wife on Mothers' Day

Full 8.5x11 foldable sheet

Mildly Humorous Mothers' Day Card

Full 8.5x11 foldable sheet

Digi-Scrapbooking elements used are from:
-Winkart Graphics and Kiss This Designs. Found in Rakscraps Nov 2010 Megakit
-Shabby Princess Designs Festival Collection

Put your photos on Canvas

There are a bunch of great online stores out there that will make your photos into books, print them on canvas and give you about 500 other fancy and fabulous options to display your favorite pictures. I've seen the occasional promo for getting one of these free (+ $6.95ish shipping). In reality that's probably a great deal but I'm one of those people who can't bear to pay shipping for anything (I call it the Amazon Super Saver complex). Add to that my major case of OCD indecision (should I use this picture or this picture or this picture?) Even if I could move fast enough, I wouldn't want just one canvas, I would want several and I'd end up spending more money than if I had never seen the promo deal in the first place.

Enter my sister, author of Fostered Attentions.

Becca found this ingenious tutorial on how to put any picture on canvas using your inkjet printer and tissue paper!

Now, between the original tutorial and my sister's blog entry you can definitely figure out how to do this yourself. I just developed some instructions of my own to add some extra advice based on my past 3 days of experience. I'm going to list the exact supplies I used so I can be extra specific with the shortcuts I share. We got everything that I didn't already have at home at Hobby Lobby. They had canvases 30% off and we brought two 40% off coupons and got a pretty good deal over all. I'll give you the complete price per finished canvas at the end of the post.

My Tip-Covered Tutorial

Supplies:
Mounted Artist Canvas (18x18)
Tissue paper (20inx20in sheets)
Regular printer paper
Krylon Workable Fixatif
Elmer's Multipurpose Spray Adhesive
Roll/large sheet of brown butcher/kraft paper
Scissors
A glue stick
An ink jet printer
CorelDraw graphic software

Note: Any graphic software will work, I just like Corel best. Use what you know. I was originally going to include all the details of how I worked in Corel for this project but I've decided I'm going to do a separate tutorial for that in a day or two for anyone who's interested.

Steps:

Choose a photo.

This step probably took me twice as long as all the other steps combined. Told you I'm indecisive.

If you haven't already edited for red eye and anything else you really want fixed, go ahead and do that now. It's never a bad idea to go ahead and save a copy of your picture before you start any editing. That way you can crop and segment and resize and generally experiment to your heart's content without worrying about destroying that precious original. I decided I wanted to put a stone wall from a different photo in to cover the trash cans for my canvas piece. I used Photoshop for this part. I rotated and cropped it just a little to get the wall to look right and then saved it as a new jpeg before I moved on to the next step.

Open a new blank document in CorelDraw and import your selected picture.

If you're not sure how to do these next few steps, I'm going to be including it all in the CorelDraw/General Graphic Software instructions but I'm only going to post that tutorial if people leave comments to let me know they want it.

Resize and Crop picture to 18.5x18.5 square.

Create a grid pattern and break your picture into pieces.
Since we're using a regular size printer for this, we need to make more manageable sized pieces for the printer to print. My printer will go all the way to the edge of an 8.5x11 but to be safe I wanted to leave a margin. So I made sure none of the sections were larger than 8x10.

Now it's time for a definite experience tip. For your grid layout: Make sure you do a regular grid pattern where the corners all meet at corners. Like this:

Do not, whatever you do, try to get creative and reinvent the wheel/grid and do something like this:

For some strange reason I thought my way would be better and I did my first canvas' printing like that. And getting the pieces to line up properly when I didn't have a single corner to work from was not fun. I made other mistakes on that one too and if you look at the end result (it's the black and white wedding shot), you can see lines where I had no choice but to overlap my pieces. I'm going to have to get an Xacto knife and do some tweaking when I get a chance. So there you go, random tip number one.

Assemble your tissue paper/printer paper combos for printing
In order to get your printer to print on the tissue paper, the tissue needs a backing to carry it through the machine. So that's what the printer paper and glue stick are for. You want to put glue just around the outer edge of the printer paper and then smooth on the tissue paper. This is another reason for leaving a margin around your pieces for printing. You don't need very much glue at all but you want to be able to peel up the tissue paper afterwards without worrying about tearing the part with the picture.

Random tip number two: Since you're going to need 6 separate sheets for your 6 separate sections, I wanted to share the bulk assembly system my sister had going. Instead of cutting the tissue paper out and then sticking it to the printer paper and then trimming around the edges, we spread our 20in square tissue paper sheet out on the table and did four at a time.
Like this:

Just lay out the tissue and then stick the printer papers (with their nice glue borders) in the absolute corners. This will mean you only have to cut out two sides for each paper. I also don't know how helpful it actually was but we folded part of the tissue over one short side of the paper and glued it down so it would have a better grip at the top (the end we were feeding into the printer first). It just gave it like a 1/4 in lip. Like I said, I don't think you really need to do that but it made us feel better. Plus our bulk system left the perfect little amount of tissue paper to fold over.

Print.
You'll want to change your print quality setting to High. I left my media type setting on Plain Paper, and it worked just great.

Print each newly segmented piece of your picture on a separate sheet of tissue/paper combo. Make sure you have it printing on the tissue paper side and not the regular paper backing.

And now random tip number three:
This is my brand and model of printer.

(Stay with me on this.)

See how it has a rear feed paper tray in addition to the bulk paper tray underneath?

We tried three different times to get the tissue paper sheets to feed through the rear tray. It did not work. It demolished the tissue paper, tearing it from the regular paper backing. You may be smart enough to have already figured out the reason but I can be kind of slow on the uptake at times. This step was actually why we originally thought of folding one of the edges over to give the tissue a better chance of hanging on. Well, I finally realized that the rollers for the rear feed tray are top rollers and they were pulling on the tissue without touching the regular paper at all. Now, I'm very fond of my rear feed tray. It makes me feel all professional when I'm printing photos on photo paper. However, the moral of the story we have before us is: Use the regular underneath bulk paper feed tray! Just open it up and leave whatever paper you already have in there and then lay your tissue/paper combo tissue-side down on top. The awesomely fabulous bulk paper tray rollers will now pull on the paper instead of just the tissue and zip your project right through the machine. Yeehaw!

Spray newly printed sheet with ink fixative.

As soon as a page is finished printing, pull it off the printer immediately and lay it printed tissue side up on a flat surface covered with butcher paper (newspaper or any other covering you don't care about will work as well). Shake your Krylon Workable Fixatif really well and spray a very light, even layer over the printed tissue. This will lock the ink in place so it doesn't run together or smudge badly. Let the Fixatif dry (the instructions on the can say let dry for an hour before handling). You can get all your pieces printed and sprayed while you're waiting for your first one to dry and then you can move on to...

Trim the printed images.
Once your pages are dry you need to very carefully trim away all the white (non-image) tissue paper from around the picture sections. You're not going to want any overlap or gaps between the tissue on your canvas so cutting exactly on the edge of your image is important so things will line up perfectly. At first I removed the tissue from the paper before trimming but after a couple fairly botched attempts at cutting a straight line, I discovered that leaving the paper backing in place (and holding it there once you've trimmed the glued edges off) makes for much less paper wiggling and made it easier for me to cut straight. (Random tip number four.)

Apply tissue to canvas.

If you haven't already been using a table as your "flat surface covered in butcher paper", you'll definitely want to be working at a (perhaps newly cleared off) kitchen table at this point. I did all the work for my first canvas on the floor of our computer room (so it can be done) but you'll be able to work more effectively at a table. Lay your canvas on the butcher paper and set your tissue pieces somewhere to the side but close at hand so you can work quickly. Break out your Elmer's Multipurpose Spray Adhesive. Shake well and spray an even, but not too heavy layer over your canvas. Start with a corner piece and remember we printed a 18.5in square picture so there will be a quarter inch to wrap around the edge of the canvas on all sides. Lay the tissue down, lined up how you want it. Gently smooth and pat the tissue to get rid of creases and bubbles. The Elmer's allows for repositioning so you can take a little time and try to get it just right. Just be gentle when you try to peel the tissue paper up if you want to move it. Tissue paper is pretty good about hanging on even to minimal tackiness but don't take too much time or you might have to start over and respray.

After all the pieces are stuck to the face of your canvas, take your glue stick and add glue to the sides of the canvas. Wrap your extra quarter inch border of tissue around the edge of the canvas and stick it down well to that glue.

Random tip number five:
I definitely agree with the original tutorial that having someone (like your awesome previously-an-architect-major-so-she-knows-her-way-around-a-straight-edge sister) to help you work and eyeball the straightness of your layout is a good idea.

Display your new artwork!

Project cost:
Money spent on stuff I didn't already have:
18x18 Canvas - $5.75 ($17.25 for 3)
11 oz can Krylon Workable Fixatiff - $7.59
11 oz can Elmer's Multipurpose Spray Adhesive - $6.99

Then we'll throw in a couple bucks to cover the ink and tissue paper and glue we used from our stash at home. I did three canvases so...$2.50 sound good?

So, since the Fixatif and Spray Adhesive still have a lot left in them and can be used for future projects, I think we can comfortably say that the cost for this project was a little less than $10 a pop. You could even go cheaper and easier by doing a smaller size canvas like Becca did. 18x18 is pretty big. I just needed a serious punch for where I'm planning to display these (more details to come on that later).

I hope you love your new display pieces! Now when people come over you can either: smile and just quietly let them think you're wealthy and can afford expensive mounted canvas artwork, or you can explain and wow them all with your savvy money-saving crafting prowess. Either way, people are bound to be impressed.

P.S. Can you say Mother's Day gift?

P.P.S. I'm linking up:

     

       

Preview of Coming Attractions

My sister has been in town for the past week and we've been having a lot of fun working on different projects. She's helping me at least make some decorating choices before she leaves so I don't have to start from scratch on my own. I probably won't be able to go into detail about all of them until after she goes home on Wednesday so here are some photos of things to come.

Guest room before I cleaned it up for her to come to visit.

Guest room decor concepts (Gotta get something on those blank walls!)

Tissue paper canvas art 

(link to my sister's tutorial)

Stay tuned here for tips! (aka: learn from my mistakes)

 Three main reasons we haven't gotten more done this week.
Pretty heck-a-cute reasons, no?