Craft Gossip

The largest independent craft review site since 2007

Felted Owl and a Butterfly hats from Martha Stewart

by

4114_031309_hats_l

These hats would be adorable for young children for Halloween.  Shown are an Owl and a Butterfly hat for a boy and girl.  There are downloadable templates and a video with step-by-step instructions.  Before starting this project, you will need to felt an old 100 percent wool sweater. Simply wash the sweater in a washing machine with plenty of detergent and hot water, and dry in clothes dryer on high heat.  The soap, agitation, and heat will cause the scales of the wool fibers to open up, lock together, and condense. Washing the sweater with something made of heavy cloth, like a pair of jeans, will speed the process. You may need to wash and dry the sweater a few times — every sweater’s different. Test your sweater for felting by snipping the edge — it should not fray. If it does, wash and dry again.

Read These Next

Have you read?

Printable Houses to Use as Christmas Decorations

I guess this isn’t exclusively a kid’s craft or learning activity (though cutting and folding are great for developing fine motor skills!) but I think kids would love having some of these printable holiday houses around the house or classroom to play with in the holiday season. Because they’re made of paper, they’re inexpensive to make, and while there is assembly involved the results are well worth the work.

If you have a cutting machine you can use the cut files from Delia Creates to make making your own paper village that much easier. She actually cut out all her buildings in different colors of card stock and used them to decorate a wreath, but you could also put them on the mantle or on a low table for kids to play with. Make a whole small world scene complete with fake snow, little characters and other elements, and kids are sure to start making their own stories to go with the setup.

This set of houses is printed and cut out using a craft knife. It’s meant to be an advent calendar, with each of the buildings numbered and you can stick a treat inside. But you could also just play with the buildings! You can get a free download of four buildings from Little House on the Corner, or head to the post to see where you can buy the whole set.

The Mavelo website isn’t in English, but their printable gingerbread house template is super cute to use as a gift box or to play with. If you need the instructions the website is in Polish but Google Translate seems to do a pretty good job.

Bora Illustrates has an adorable little house to print, cut and assemble featuring a cat, bird and gingerbread person. You could probably print it in black and white and have your kiddo color it, too.