CiCi Makes

DIY Valentine’s Crochet Bracelet and Necklace.

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Valentine’s Crochet Necklace and Bracelet.

I had just been given some Valentine’s beads and wanted to put them to use.

I decided that I would make a  Bracelet and Necklace.

My Bracelet and Necklace.

The first thing you need to do is choose your beads.

My beads that I had to choose from..

I used bead hearts and pink yarn.

All my supplies I used were:

One: crochet hook
Two: heart beads
Three: scissors
Four : yarn

These are the suplies I used.

LETS GET STARTED!!!!!

Make a slip knot first.

This is my slip knot.

Now do as many chain stitches as you want.

These are my chain stiches.

 

Next you are going to want to put your bead onto your hook and do a slip stitch.

This is my slipstitch with bead on it.

Now every four stitches just add a bead until you have your desired length.

Now that you are finished with your desired length,you are going to want to grab your end and do a chain stitch but this time you need to do a slip stitch.

I have grabbed my ends and
 did a slip stitch.

Now to make the bracelet just do all the measurements but this time do all of them smaller to fit your wrist.

I love this necklace and bracelet because it is quick, but so fun.

My Bracelet and Necklace.

I can make them in a matter of minutes and you can too.

How to Make a Mattress for an 18″ Doll

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A mattress for 18 inch dolls beauty sleep.

My doll
Is reading
Before bed.

My doll has lots of wonderful friends.

But what better way to get to know her friends then to have a slumber party?

In the past, my dolls have had lots of slumber parties, but when it is finally time for them to hit the hay, they don’t have a good mattress to sleep on.

This past Christmas, my mom made my little sister, Willow, a mattress for her doll.

And my mom said that the mattress was really easy and fun to make!

She also said that she would be happy to help me make one for my doll if I would like that.

Of course I would, so that is what we did.

Supplies Needed:

1: Thread
2: Sewing Machine
3: Scissors
4: Fabric
5: Foam
6: Highlighter
7: And a doll

The supplies
That I used
For this project.

Now don’t worry, there are only 13 steps to make this mattress and most of them are pretty easy.

Step one: Choose your fabric. You will need a little more than twice the total size of your bed size.

My fabric that
I wanted to use
For this project.

Step two: Measure your foam with a highlighter. I marked in three places so that it was easy to get a straight line.

Because I was using thinner foam, I cut two pieces to make a thicker mattress. My total dimensions are 50cm  long by 25 cm wide which is about perfect for a girl like an American Girl doll. My finished depth once both pieces were put together is 3.5cm. (In inches, the dimensions should be Length-20 inches, Width- 10inches, Depth-1.5 inches)

I am measuring my
Foam with a ruler
And highlighter.

Step three: Cut your foam.

I am cutting my foam.

Step four: Fold your fabric in half, then place your foam top of it leaving at least a 2 inch edge all the way around. I just cut it without making marks, but you could mark that out first if you wanted to.

My fabric that
I folded in
Half.

Step five: Use a highlighter to mark roughly one inch away from the fabric you just cut, make marks for you to sew on like I did below. I don’t know how well you can tell from the picture, but one side is folded so we don’t need to sew along that edge. One long edge and one short edge we are sewing up. The remaining short edge we are only sewing about 2.5 inches in on each side. This will allow you to turn the fabric inside out and put the foam inside when you are done.

I am highlighting the marks for my mattress.

Step six: Lets get started with your sewing machine. This is the easy part.  All you have to do is sew over your highlighted lines you just made.

I am sewing
My highlighter marks
That I pinned.

Step seven: Now you will pull all four corners flat.

I am pulling the ends of the fabric
Flat.

Step eight:Grab your ruler, its about 4 cm on a ruler. Put the ruler onto your corner that you flattened and trace with a highlighte going straight across the seam you made. You are making a triangle.

I am highlighting 4 cm
With a ruler.

Step nine: Now pin in a pin and sew over all four of your edges. One at a time. This is making what we call, “box corners”!

I am sewing over the four corners.

Step ten: Now you will grab your scissors and snip a little above the four corners. You are just getting rid of excess fabric so that it will lay nice when you flip it inside out.

I am cutting the top
Above the sewing
marks I made.

Now fold your mattress cover inside right.

Step eleven: WE ARE ALMOST DONE!!!! We are close to victory! This next step is probably the easiest step there is. All we need to do is to fold your foam in half and put it into your mattress cover. This takes a little bit of work to wiggle it it, but you can do it.

I am putting my mattress
Cover over my foam.

Step twelve: Now fold your ends of your mattress in.

I am folding my ends.

THE LAST STEP: Sew your folded edges up with a needle and some thread.

I am sewing my end up with a needle and some thread.

I like this mattress because my doll can have her beauty sleep.

I also like that it was fun and easy to make.
This is a perfect mattress for my dolls house because I get to style the mattress. I can make it fit the style that I have for her house.

I am forever in love with how it turned out.

AND NOW LET THE SLUMBER PARTY BEGIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I hope your doll gets lots of good sleep.
This craft was enjoyable for me to make with my mom. I hope you have as much fun as I did making it.

Since I have made this mattress with my mom, my doll has had the best sleep ever.

DIY American Girl Computer

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American Girl DIY computer

My American Girl doll with her computer.


I had thought of this DIY computer last year when I was 9 years old.

I wanted my doll to call her friends like I call my friends. I decided it was time to take action.

So the first thing I did was gather my supplies.

Then I tried to find a post card. Feeling very lucky that I had actually found one because we hardly ever have post cards in our house.

I proceeded to ask my mom if I could use this lucky post card. I was feeling even luckier then ever when my mom said YES!!!..

Woohoo!!!!.. I was on track to victory.

I was not exited for the next step to making this computer because I really needed some cardboard.

We usually are always using are cardboard boxes for holding wood chips after stacking up the firewood.

But my mom had found a good sized peace of cardboard that I could use.

So all the supplies I used for this project were.

1: pencil
2: ruler
3: cardboard
4: colorful paper
5: post card
6: scissors
7: paint
8: paint brush
9: a simple glue stick for school
10: and a happy attitude

These are all of my suplies except for the paint and paintbrush.

The first thing I did was put the post card on top of my cardboard.

This is my post card on top of my card bored.

Then I traced around the post card on to the cardboard like you do when you have a little sister and you trace her hand on to a card to send to your grandma.

I traced the outline of the postcard onto the cardboard.

Then you cut out on the traced lines you just made.

I am cutting out my lines I just made on cardboard with the postcard.

After you cut out your cardboard then you are going to want to fold your cardboard in half.

I folded my cardboard in half.

Then you will get some regular or colorful paper for the outsides of your computer.

My paper that will go on my computer as a cover.

Now you have to glue your colorful paper onto your computer.

I am glueing my pretty paper onto my computer.

I put my post card onto my cardboard and cut it to fit onto my computer.

The next step is to glue you lucky postcard to your cardboard for the picture.

I just glued my postcard to my computer.

Now you are going to need to cut out four long pieces of cardboard and paint them.

You are going to want to paint them black.

I am painting four pieces of cardboard and painting them black.

Now the waiting begins. I am personally not a patient person so I used quick drying paint. Either I had fast drying paint or the time was a rolling.

The waiting begins.

Once it has dried you are going to want to cut them out to fit around your picture.

Cutting out my painted cardboard pieces for my computer.

Then once that is done you will glue them onto your picture that’s on your computer.

This is my computer so far.

Now get a ruler and a pencil and don’t forget to grab your computer and trace lines onto your keyboard. (Or you could make squares on your key bored)

I am tracing my lines(you will want to trace several lines on your computer).

Now you are going to put the alphabet in those squares and also numbers like ( 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0) onto your key board

I put the alphabet in and numbers in on my computer.

And you have just made your first doll computer.

This is my doll with her very own computer we just made.

Now get the address book and get your doll some friends.

My dolls friends.

I hope you have enjoyed making a doll computer for your America Girl.

This is my doll Cristy with her new computer.

I really hope that while you were making this computer for your doll that you always had a smile and a positive attitude.

I hope you had as much fun as I did making this computer.

Make Your Own American Girl Notebook

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A few months ago, as I was getting back to school supplies, I was also thinking about how to make back to school supplies for my American Girl (AG) doll.

I thought maybe there would be a way to make school books for my doll without having spend any money.

I looked into the crafting supplies we had.

We had plenty of paper.

After thinking for a few minutes, I realized all I really needed was a little paper, scissors, a stapler, a ruler, and a pencil.

The final look depends on the paper you use for your cover so if you want a bright and flashy book, you’re going to need some bright and flashy paper.

The inside is a bit different.

If you want a school notebook then just use lined notebook paper or if you want it to be a drawing notebook then use plain copy paper.

Supplies Needed:

1 piece of card stock paper
1 piece of notebook paper or copy paper
Stapler
Ruler
Pencil

The first step in making the notebook cover is to measure your dolls hand from her thumb to her pinky. You can see from my doll it is about 1.5 inches.

Measuring my dolls hand

On the back side of your pretty card stock paper use a pencil and a ruler to measure and mark 1.5 inches from the edge in two places about 1- 2 inches apart. With a pencil draw a line along the edge of your ruler after lining it up on your two marks. Don’t cut anything yet, you have one more line to measure first!

Marking my measurements.

Now to get the other measurement you simply double the first. In our case this means we need 3 inches. So now from the other edge of the paper, measure 3 inches and mark with your pencil. Again, make a second 3 inch mark. Use your marks to draw a straight line with your pencil and ruler. You are now ready to cut out your cover. Simply cut along the lines you have drawn.

I am all ready to cut out my notebook cover.

Mine looks like this.

My cutout cover for my doll school notebook.

Now to make the inside pages you will use the same technique only you want the inside pages to be just slightly smaller. So I just cut mine slightly less than 3 inches long. I use 2 7/8th of an inch. I know that sounds a little technical, so if it works better for you then just “eye-ball” it and cut a little less. One easy way to do this is to simply use your cover as a pattern to trace your other pages and when you go to cut them out just cut them back a little bit. You will want 5-7 pages for your notebook. For this one I used 5. When you fold them over you get double the amount. My finished notebook will be 10 pages plus the cover.

Line up your inner pages and fold them in half. Now get your cover and fold it in half. Put the two together lining them up on the folded lines. Keeping them open to the middle, but face down put two staples, one on each edge.

Sometimes the finished edges still don’t look smooth since I cut them all out by hand. I remedy this by using my scissors to cut off any rough edges at the very end.

You have just completed your first doll notebook! Hooray! Wasn’t that fun? I love making them. When I make them I usually cut out several at the same time.

Now that you have a notebook for your doll maybe you would like a pencil to go with it. Do you have a pencil that you can’t write with because it’s too short and you are ready to pitch it in the trash……WAIT! Don’t throw that pencil away. Use the pencil for your doll. Just sharpen it up a little….in other words, grind it down until it is small enough to be perfect for your doll. Now you’re really done and it’s just perfect.

My finished touches of my doll notebook.

I hope you have as much fun making this notebook as I have. My doll loves her new notebook.

My doll all ready for school.

Happy Crafting!