Kelly is a mother to two beautiful girls and a self-proclaimed “maker of beautiful messes.” She has been crafting in one form or another for most of her life and gets the most joy out of watching that same creative spirit growing in her girls. She loves unicorns, cake, peonies and anything that glitters. Her trusty hot glue gun never leaves her side.
In my house, there is a lot of pretend play and dress up happening constantly. My oldest daughter is 6 and quite the “girly-girl.” I swear, I have no idea where she gets this from. No seriously, it wasn’t me. I wear only flip flops, have a handful of dresses shoved in the back of my closet and have been using the same purse for the last 3 years. My daughter however…she’s obsessed with dresses, purses, shoes, and even makeup! She has an entire dress-up wardrobe bursting with princess dresses, purses, shoes, wands, tiara’s, you name it. Nothing makes her happier than to put on a fancy dress with accessories and prance about the house, showing off to anyone who will pay attention.
Her current obsession is with purses. Which she will carefully pack with chapstick, bracelets, toys and anything else that will fit, before we leave the house. She will then last a total of 5 minutes carrying her purse around before getting tired of it and wanting someone else to hold it for her. So now purses have been limited to dress-up play at home only.
This project was inspired by my little girly-girl, who clearly is in need of yet another purse. It’s perfect for playtime and gives me all those summertime feels!
You will need:
- 4 sheets of premium pink felt
- 1 sheet of white felt
- 1 sheet of black felt
- 3 sheets of pink glitter felt
- Hot glue gun
- Needle and thread optional if you prefer to sew rather than hot glue
- Scissors
- Printable templates
If you can trace, cut and weld a hot glue gun, this project will be easy as pie!
Start by printing out and preparing your templates.
On your premium pink felt you’ll be cutting out two of the Body Templates and Feather Templates. The number of Feather Templates will depend on how long you need the purse to be as this acts as the strap. I used 10 for mine.
On your black felt you’ll be cutting out the Black Beak Template.
On your white felt you’ll be cutting out the White Beak Template.
On your pink glitter felt you’ll be cutting out two of the Wing Templates, the Head Template and the Neck Template.
Once you have all of your pieces cut out, you are ready to begin assembly!
Begin by taking your Head piece and hot gluing the Black Beak portion on top, lining up the edges.
Next, hot glue the White Beak portion onto the Head, making sure it butts right up against the Black Beak and lines up on the edges.
Look at that fabulous Flamingo head you just made! That Flamingo needs a neck, so go ahead and grab your Neck piece and hot glue it down onto the back of the Head.
Now we’re going to jump over to the body, which will be just as fabulous! So set the head and neck piece aside for just a minute. We’ll come back to it later.
Take your two Body pieces and line them up together but don’t hot glue them just yet! First, you want to line up your Wings on either side of the body, so that the tail feather portion meets up just beyond the end of the body. Make sure they are even on both sides of the Body before gluing down. I also drew some designs onto my Wings to give them more character, so go crazy and be creative with it.
Keeping those two Body pieces together and lined up, grab your Head and Neck piece and glue down the other end of the Neck in between the two Body pieces. Starting from the Neck, glue just the very bottom of the Body pieces together, all the way to where the tail feathers on the Wings meet up. This is where you could also sew if you preferred, but I’m a fan of how fast and easy the hot glue is and I think it holds just as well.
You’re going to leave the top open, so you can place all the goodies in there, but feel free to add a button, snap or zipper if you’re super talented!
For this next part, you’ll need your little model, to determine how long to make the strap. Start off with at least 6 feathers and glue them together, flipping every other feather over so you have a staggered pattern. Add as many more feathers as you need for the desired length.
You’re going to glue one end of the strap to the head of the Flamingo and the other end to the body. You might need your little model again to make sure everything lays nicely. Or that could just be me obsessively checking and getting eye rolls from my daughter. Just go with it!
And you’re done! Can you believe how fast and easy that was?
To see more fun and colorful crafts, follow Kelly on Instagram @rosyposycrafts!
I share my home with my awesome husband, Ben, two gorgeous children, Jenson and Johanna, and my two hairy feline friends, Fluffy and Shiny. I was born and raised in Vienna, Austria, and moved to England to go to University, where I lived for 10 happy years and met Ben. We decided to move back to Vienna 7 years ago for various reasons, and we are so happy we made that decision! We both love living in this wonderful city so much.
I decided that the bedroom would be the perfect spot. We drove to IKEA and found some amazing grey geometric wallpaper, and this happy looking yellow chair, and table. It was lovely. And I enjoyed sipping my coffee in the lounge chair during the occasional quiet moment.
But it wasn’t quite the creative space I desired. So, for my birthday in April, I asked Ben for my very own desk. Off we drove to IKEA again, I love IKEA!
I was tempted to sand them down and paint them an awesome colour, but when I put them against the wallpaper I thought they looked awesome just as they were. They had a rustic charm to them. That decision saved me a lot of work, which meant more time for crafting and wine. Hurray! (There’s Ben again, doing all the manual labour.)
This space continues to be a work in progress. Eventually I want to add some shelving so that I can put the cacti and other more useful items on it, which will allow the desk to be a bit more spacious. I also want to add some extra storage to house my small fabric stash that I am desperate to transform into a LARGE fabric stash.
I would also like to get a record player in the room somewhere. I’m in the habit of automatically turning the telly on in the evening, and then I inevitably find myself distracted by zombies or Tom Hardy, depending on what I’m watching. I think it would be lovely to listen to some records and fully immerse myself in my creative little space. I have my heart set on a Crosley X UO Sterling Vinyl Record Player in turquoise from Urban Outfitters. I think this would make the perfect Christmas present (she says with her fingers and toes crossed, hoping a certain husband will get the hint).
Currently working as a graphic designer, Lisa resides in Los Angeles with her two cats. (They are jerks.) She is an avid tea drinker who often laments about the lack of good tea shops nearby and also the lack of puppies in her life. She dreams of “making it” as a lettering artist, who also runs an alpaca and goat farm.
I have a list of words, quotes and ideas, but a lot of my pieces start on whatever catches my fancy. I tend to sketch really rough and loose thumbnails. I have also developed the habit of keeping sketchbooks everywhere, so I’m always ready to jot down an idea. I honestly keep a sketchbook by my bed, just in case!
Once the sketches are getting to a place I like, I rework them on regular printer paper. Nothing really fancy. This can go from one round to six rounds of just refining the artwork. When it’s at a place I am okay with, I ink the art, and scan them in. With a little Photoshop and Illustrator magic, I add texture and clean up little mistakes.
I’m not sure where this will take me. I’m still trying to find my style, and it can definitely get frustrating, but despite this frustration, I find a lot of joy from the work. I have so many ideas and mediums I want to try out, like chalkboard lettering, sign painting, quilling and embroidery. It just really gets me jazzed up that there are so many avenues that lettering can go and I want to explore all of them.
Samantha is from England but has been in the U.S. for almost 8 years. She has been an amateur knitter most of her life after her grandmother taught her at an early age. She loves crafting but struggles to complete projects. She has recently started making what she calls “cheat-quilts” – sewing quilts without using any correct technique. Samantha loves making gifts for friends kids and any time she completes a project she is very happy. She says that the best part about crafting is the relaxation it provides so she never takes any project too seriously.
LAUREN AND I HAVE BEEN BEST FRIENDS FOR OVER 20 YEARS AND SHE IS MY “GO TO” PERSON FOR ANY AND ALL THINGS CRAFTY. HER TECHNICAL MIND MIXED WITH A LOVE OF DESIGN MAKES FOR A BEAUTIFUL AND EASY EXECUTION OF WHATEVER SHE DECIDES TO CREATE.
Gail is a native of Florida, but has now adopted California as her own, thanks to her love of avocados and mountains (one of which Florida is lacking). She has been working as an in-house book designer for over 8 years and works on freelance illustration projects in her spare time. She has illustrated one educational digital picture book and hopes to publish one of her author/illustrated stories one day as a classic picture book. For her, picture books bring together her love of illustration, typography, and printing–and she will yammer on about them for hours if you let her.
I decided to make use of what I had lying around: scrap watercolor paper (Arches, 140 lb), remnants from larger sheets that I cut down to sizes needed for various finished projects. I cut the remnants into 5×7 sizes, with any smaller pieces heading straight to the scrap bin, to be used later to test watercolor mixes before I apply them to finished pieces. Each large sheet of watercolor paper is too expensive to let anything go to waste.
Drawings were done in pen-and-ink, sometimes being sketched out first in pencil, sometimes drawn freeform and impulsively. That is particularly true with some of my favorite animals: foxes, elephants, giraffes. They are fun to draw and I’ve probably drawn them a few too many times.
