Make Stuff Together book giveaway
I’m so excited to share this book with you. Bernadette and Kathie are fellow Austinites who are doing inspiring things and connecting community in meaningful ways. I was thrilled to meet them IRL!
I appreciate the cool projects in the book not only for what they are, gorgeous sewing craft projects, but also for what they represent, more time spent sharing and communicating with each other, enjoying each other’s company without so many of the common distractions. Reading this book connects me with the values that inspired my own book.
Here are some of the things I like the most about this book:
1. The tone of is charmingly conversational and makes me feel like I’m sitting on in Kathie’s screened front porch drinking beers with the authors. I giggled at the intro to an upcycled hat project, “Who doesn’t like a hat?”
2. The photos and illustrations are beautiful and well-thought-out for assistance in directions that can be tricky to describe in words.
3.The list of ‘Tips for Crafting with Kids’ is realistic, not ‘and everything will go as planned and life is perfect’. I especially like, “If you have a clear and definite vision of how something should look in the end, make it yourself.”
4. Project: Art Roll Up, a roll-up holder for colored pencils, pens, markers and other small crafting tools. They encourage you to grab your roll up, bring the fam outside (or gathered together anywhere) for a family sketch-a-thon, passing around the drawings you all make in a collaborative drawing session.
5. Party project: Birthday T-shirt party is a brilliant idea that requires little to no sewing technology.
6. Project: Family flags, which I had the pleasure of making at a joint book event over the summer at our local feminist bookshop, Bookwoman. Our family is still very small, but this flag project will grow with us through the years!
I’ll add that most of the projects in the book require access to a sewing machine. This would be a perfect sewing club project book.
Bernadette & Kathie’s publisher, Wiley, rocks because there are NO shipping restrictions; that’s right, they’ll send copies anywhere in the world. I invite my international contingent to enter away!
Two winners will be selected at random on Nov 17, 2011 at midnight CST.
Enter by leaving a comment here describing any craft project you’ve attempted with kids (or friends), successful or not!
Kate
Thanks everyone for entering!
Congrats to the lucky numbers selected by Random.org:
Hooray Kristin and Joanie!
Reader Comments (54)
I would love this--so much fun to have with my two boys in the future. We recently painted a pumpkin (safer than 3 year olds with knives; I'm not even sure I'd carve a pumpkin without cutting myself) and my son painted a great face on it!
My son (10) and I recently made a collaborative collage-it was an underwater scene. We started by coloring a piece of white paper with cool colors (greens and blues). The page ended up looking like tie-dye. Then we cut it into wavy strips and glued the strips onto a piece of blue construction paper with spaces in between. We also cut out some fish, starfish, coral, and treasure chests from scraps of construction paper and glued them on. The whole project was my son's idea and it turned out beautifully!
A friend hosted an ornament-making party last year and it was really fun!
My daughter is nearly 3, so many of the crafts we do together include lots of glue and construction paper. However, she loves watching me cut and sew, and I often give her the scraps along with a safety scissors and measuring tape to "sew" her own projects.
The look of glee warms my heart when my children behold the finnished project!
I'd absolutely love this to use when my grandchildren visit! We've done some simple sewing and jewelry making, but can always use new innovative ideas - thanks!
This does look like a great book, and even if I don't win, I am going to request it at my library....
This is a book that should be in every town's library. xxoo patty
I would love this book - I can see the fun with my girls!!
My 6 year old daughter has requested a starter sewing machine so we can sew together. In the meantime I'm teaching her on mine. Our first foray is making pillowcases for her bed.
Love your blog. Would love to win the book.
My kids and I have colored pictures together (freehand-- woo hoo! lol), but we're ready to venture out into more challenging territory. :-)
One of my most favorite crafts with kids is doing tie-dye. It's messy, colorful and creative - and it involves smocks and stained fingers. I did this for years as a camp counselor, and it brings me almost to tears and laughter simultaneously to think back on it. This is one project where you certainly cannot predict the outcome, but that's half of the fun of it!
This book looks like it's full of fun crafts for our family! I really would love to win it!
I used food dyes to dye yarn with my god-daughter. It turned out amazingly well, probably because she slapped the dye on any old how. Now I've taught her to knit, and she's really good at it. I have no kids of my own as yet, so it makes me happy to be able to pass on the knowledge I gained from older women to another generation
Wow, this book sounds amazing! Now that I am a stay at home mom and lead play groups, this would be a great on hand item to help with ideas. Always want to keep moms and kids busy with make it your self crafts that you can take home and mean something!
Sounds fun! Lucy just got a corner of our office set up as an art station and she loves it. Lately we've been making rainbow. Rainbow anything. Particularly Glitter glue rainbows. Messy =)
This book looks great and I would love to add it to my collection!
Would love to have this for projects to work on during the Winter months. Looks like a good addition to a crafter's library.
When I was still teaching preschool/daycare, I'd bring in a bunch of 3-4 lb pumpkins, one for each kid (3-4 years old). We'd paint the heck out of them with tempera paint - often to the horror of my co-workers. The best time was when I had this all planned out, and we found out we were having a semi-surprise inspection by Children's Services (routine inspection for the business license, and only surprise because our boss forgot to tell us they were coming). My co-worker panicked about all the messiness. But I insisted on going ahead with the project. The gal from Children's Services was thrilled that the kids not got to do messy stuff, in front of her (which apparently hardly ever happens, as everyone wants to look their best in front of the authorities), but my kids had done enough messy artwork before that they knew how to handle trading colors, not painting their faces, and getting washed up afterwards before playing with other toys. My classroom got an astoundingly rave review.
I have been teaching beginning sewing for our homeschool co-op for a couple years. I have had fun finding projects for them to make. This year I encouraged my students to enter a project into our local Pumpkin Show. Three did. Two took both first and second place for their quilts. The third put her reversible bag into the adult section as there was not an entry for bags in the kids section. She took 2nd place. I am so proud of my students and all they have accomplished.
blessed.mama4 at yahoo.com
so excited for this book! cannot wait for it to come my way!
Our most successful craft projects have been collages. We are going to do some leaf artwork now that the fall is here, but we mostly stick to drawing and cooking :)
Looks like an awesome book! I love doing crafts with my kids (they are 4 and 1). The latest project we did was for Halloween. We were given a bunch of small pumpkins from my Mom and they were too small to carve. We used masking tape and taped off the letters of each child's name (one letter per pumpkin) and then let the kids paint the pumpkins. After the paint dried we removed the tape and lined them up and they each had a row of name personalized pumpkins :)
I let the kids I nanny do painting all the time, because I know their parents don't have the patience for it :-) I pull stuff out of their recycle bins for them to paint - tp tubes, berry boxes, etc.