Crafting for the Kiddoes

Actually, this is the stuff I crafted for a 13 year old girl (a tween? a teen?) in a swap, because what kid doesn't love getting packages in the mail? In return, I received some very exciting things for the bug, but I'm holding out until her birthday to deliver her package, even though it's killing me! I tried a lot of new stuff for this swap, and perhaps even advanced my sewing skills from the super duper basic beginner level (though, I did still want to throw the machine out the window most of the time). Some of the things my partner's daughter wanted were things to decorate her locker, a t-shirt, and monster stuffies. She loves rock and pop music, she's a tomboy, and bright purple, green, and pink are some of her favorite colors.

First, and what I am probably most proud of, the purple and green skully zippered pouch:
I did accidentally sew it shut inside out, and had to bust out my seam ripper to pull it through, but it made it, and I think it's perfectly punky.

Next, I made a French ribbon message board for her locker and a little monster keychain. I loved the safety pin fabric! And I think my monster is a cutie petootie.

While I believe that young people should be able to choose the music they want to listen to, I just couldn't bring myself to endorse Hannah Montana. We need more rocker girls in the world (and not the tie-wearing-Avril-Lavigne-loving kind, Avril Lavigne ruined tie-wearing for girls!). Her favorite AC/DC song is Thunderstruck, so I made a freezer paper stencil t-shirt that is colored (or un-colored?) with bleach. This project was the most intimidating for some reason, but I will definitely be trying this again. It was so easy, and I really like the way it turned out. The only down side is that I could only use the stencil once, because it got pretty wrecked when I took it off of the shirt (after all that fun exacto cutting, my favorite!).

And everything together. I also included some Emily Strange (a grumpy gothic girl popular amongst the tweens) magnets and stickers and Happy Bunny (a sassy, sarcastic, well... bunny, obviously) stickers, because her mom said they are some of her favorite characters. I think my favorite Happy Bunny quote, which is included on one of the stickers is, "hey, you made me throw up a little"

She received her package today (I think the waiting is the worst part of swapping. It's out of my hands, but if the post office messed up and lost or damaged the package I would feel awful!), and here's the message I got, which I'm assuming is from the 13 year old, and not the mother:

"yo fool thanx so much 4 my coolio package...it was of the hook ...peace tripple a what?" followed by a whole lot of smiley faces

I think that's good, right? I'm not really down with the teenage lingo these days, mostly just trying to translate two year old speak.

Peace tripple a, I'm out , yo.