Spontaneous crafting -- you should try it.

I almost forgot.

This is supposed to be a somewhat crafty blog, right? About crafts?

Well, then, here you go.

A couple of weeks ago, my son was invited to a five-year-old birthday party for a girl, and instead of running to Target (like I usually do), I thought, I should make her present. Actually, last year I had made the same girl a superhero cape -- pink with a Supergirl symbol on one side, purple with a crown and her initial on the other side -- which she loved. And most little girls love fun homemade things!

Right? Riiiiiiight?

(Just lie if you don't agree. I don't want to know.)

Anyway, I have seen tons of cute little covered notebooks on various blogs here and there, and I thought, oh, I can do that!

Snicker, snicker.

Then I got to thinkin' (a dangerous pastime), and I figured I should opt for some sort of a covered sketchbook since my son and his fellow Pre-K cohorts don't really know how to write a whole lot yet. So I went to Michael's and picked up two Crayola brand sketchpads (using a coupon) for less than $2 each. And I grabbed some random girly looking fabrics from my stash (hello, FREE!) and set out to make some sort of a contraption off the top of my head.

Unfortunately my ideas in my head were a bit loftier than the actual reality of just randomly making something up, so in the end, after much fussing and ripping and lots of dadgummits, the finished product ended up a whole lot different than what I had originally imagined. It's a good thing you're not looking real close so you won't see all the stupid issues I ran into. I'm not known for figuring out things the easy way, so if I had it to do all over, I would've changed quite a bit. And if I tried to retrace my steps and remember how in the heck I made it in the first place, well, it's a lost cause.

Regardless, here it is. More of an "art tote" that opens up like a book (using the buttons and ponytail holder idea similar to my coffee cozies) and stores two sketch pads. I bought the pencils and stickers and erasers at Michael's as well. Total cost for the project: somewhere in the ballpark of $6 or $7.








Hopefully she liked it.