Cat Tepee

Posted in craft, Sewing by peppermintsandhoneybees

Hey Peeps! I have a super cool project that I actually made a few years ago, but it’s still a good one so I thought I’d share it. All you need is a yard of fabric for the panels and a 20″x20″ piece for the bottom piece, a sewing machine, and 8 dowel rods that are 1/4″ wide. I got the original idea from a book titled “One-Yard Wonders” by Rebecca Yaker and Patricia Hoskins.

After you cut your panels out you need to sew the sides of each three side panels together, leaving 1″ of space between the seam and the edge of the fabric. Then sew the ends of the insides of the panels leaving a pocket to push 4 of the dowel rods thought. Don’t put the rods in till everything is sewn though. Next sew the seams on the tops and bottoms, leaving the dowel rod openings.

Next for the Base cut a square that is 20×20″ wide and cut a square notch on each corner that is 2″. You will fold the sides in 1″ and sew the seam like in the picture, only I made all sides the same. Don’t forget to leave an opening for your last 4 dowel rods. These will have to be cut smaller to fit. Leave a few inches sticking out on each side.

After the bottom is sewn, attach it to the rest of the tepee by sewing the top of the bottom section onto the inside of the tepee. and then insert your dowel rods. I also tied a piece of fabric around the top to secure the dowel rods.

As you can see Gatsby claimed this one and still uses it! Lucy will sit in it occasionally but if your cat likes hiding in things (like most cats), then they will love a tepee!

This is the picture of how to cut the three side panels and two shorter front panels out of the yard of fabric. Lay the piece out in a single layer

Here are my crazy homemade patterns for the side and front panels since I made more than one

They don’t like to share!

So Happy!!!

23Dec2014

Clay Pet Paw Ornaments

Posted in diy, Holiday by peppermintsandhoneybees

I made these ornaments of my cats’ paw prints for Christmas, and love how they turned out. I used crayola model magic because I needed something that was light and easy to press into since cat paws are not very big, plus it air drys so there’s no baking! For dogs you could also use polymer clay, or salt dough as well. I might experiment with some more clays to see what I can use also.

notice the claw marks Hehe!

Have an Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

20Oct2014

Halloween part 2

Posted in diy, Holiday, home by peppermintsandhoneybees

Here is a little bit of my Halloween decorations for this year. This month has been crazy busy and I didn’t get to make all of the things that I had planned to decorate for the holiday but here’s what I did put up.

The Bats are just made from cardstock. I traced a plastic bat and taped them to the wall. The cat is a few years old from Michaels, and the crows and pumpkin LED lights are from Dollar Tree. The glass owl is an antique bank that was given to me as a gift and the skull candy dish was given to me by my mom last year from Hallmark. Happy October!

Ombre Dyed Curtains

As I mentioned earlier I am all about dyeing so when I saw some thing similar to this on pinterest from a blog called http://www.vitaminihandmade.com/. I thought I would give it a try to add some color to my boring white living room. I went with sunshine orange in the Rit dye and bought some inexpensive white curtains at IKEA. I didn’t want to spend a lot in case it didn’t work out.

I got the curtains wet in my double kitchen sink and filled one side up with hot water and the dye. I kept both curtains together at the top to make sure the dye pattern was the same on both. I wanted the top to have a little color so i dipped the whole curtains in for a few seconds and then removed all but about a foot, leaving the rest in the empty sink. I soaked it for about five minutes and gradually kept putting more and more in for about half way up.

After I had what looked to be good I rinsed the curtains in cold water and washed and dried them in my washer and dryer. They were a little lighter than I had hoped they would turn out so I bought one more box of Rit, just to do the bottoms. After this time I liked the way it looked. I guess it just depends on the look you are going for and the color, so you may or may not need two boxes of dye. I’m pretty happy with the way they turned out!