DIY Madness

It is wonderful what some free time, coloured paper, inspiration (mostly from Pinterest) and some imagination can do! What started off as an effort to engage my daughter soon became an obsession.

As an infant, I always thought Baby A got bored of simply staring at the ceiling and other random objects in the room. So I made her a cradle mobile out of chart paper, with huge shapes, contrasting colours and some glitter. Oh boy! She loved it. 

Egged on by her reactions, I made her the dragon (which I picked up from a felt toy design by Dawn Treacher on Flickr) and hung it by the window. She would watch it while daddy dearest played her Puff the magic dragon…

When she began focusing a bit more and recognizing bright objects, I made a series of sunlight catchers. The one on the left is made out of wax paper and crayons. Again an idea that I picked off Pinterest, I threw multi coloured shavings of wax crayon in between two layers of wax paper and heated it gently with an iron. Some brilliant shapes emerged and I cut them to shape and gave it a chart paper outline.

Caution: The wax tends to become brittle on ageing. You can see this on the top left corner of the wax paper. So ensure you do not hold this near or directly above a baby. This is best appreciated from a distance.

 I would have liked to name the one on the right something Notre-dame ish,  but I call it the "Brahmastra", which is the deadliest weapon according to ancient Sanskrit scriptures. This worked like magic on Baby A and hence the name. 

The disc is a paper plate with shapes cut out of it and filled with glass paper. We would just lie on the bed, looking at the sunlight streaming through it for hours together. Also, when she grew older, she loved the rustle of the paper and was a great source of entertainment.

The octopus and starfish below are made of felt, stuffed with polyfill. Pretty run of the mill. I used googly eyes for the starfish and hand embroidered the rest. I hand stitched the felt inside out as well. I got a little lazy with the octopus and just stitched it from the outside, used foam for the eyes and mouth of the octopus.

I converted a carton of raisins into the pink handheld puppet. The tongue is made of felt and has space to slip in a finger and wiggle the tongue around. The eyes could have been much better, I botched it up. The hair of the puppet is made out of quilling paper, loosely wound.

Caution: If you do end up making this puppet, ensure you get a picture before you little one can lay hands on it. In a matter of seconds, it will look nothing like the original.

Have you done anything of this sort before? If so, please let me know. You plan to do something like this soon? Keep me posted on how things turn out! Bouquets and brickbats are welcome.