Disney DIY: Road Trip Pillowcase

As a kid, we made many a road trip to Walt Disney World. From our place in the Midwest, it was about 18 hours. That's a LONG time to be on the road for any kid. We were lucky to be traveling in a motorhome most of that time; my heart goes out to those who must travel in a car.

These pillowcases, looked like they would be perfect for a Disney road trip. Anything to make the magic last a little longer! I think they would also be a perfect surprise for your kiddos at the start of the trip. Of course I used my fairy wand to make them Disney-ready. I could EASILY get carried away with themeing these! As always, think about the color palettes of your kid's favorite Disney characters, licensed fabrics, iconic images. The list seems endless!  And of course, you could use a Mickey or Minnie silhouette in place of the monogram. Anyhoo, on to the tutorial.

Materials Needed for Standard Pillowcase:

24" x 43" rectangle of main fabric (Toy Story)
2.5" x 43" strip of fabric for trim (wagons)
12" x 43" rectangle of contrast fabric (orange)
2  15"x12" rectangles for pocket (yellow polka dot)
1 fat quarter for monogram (wagons)
3" piece of velcro
22" piece of cotton webbing
matching thread

I combined two tutorials to get just the look I wanted: for the case, I used this 15-minute Pillowcase Tutorial from The Cottage Home, and for the pocket and handle I mostly used this tutorial from Amazing Mae. I recommend printing them to reference as you follow these directions.

Specifically, I followed steps 1- 7 of the 15-Minute Pillowcase. Trust the directions, they are amazing!

Because I wanted this case to be completely washable I chose to use quilting cotton for the monogram. I also wanted to hide as many rough edges, hems and seams as I could, so I chose to do the monogram at this point in the process. I ironed-on sewable interfacing from Silhouette to the fabric for the monogram. I sent it through the Silhouette to cut out a "J" in Franklin Gothic Medium Font, ironed it onto the right side of one pocket piece (12" x 16"), and zig zag stitched all around it. (If you don't have a Silhouette machine, just print out a letter in a font you like, trace it onto the wrong side of your fabric and cut it out.) Now it can go through any number of washings without that the monogram falling off.

At this point, I picked up Amazing Mae's tutorial at step 5 to make the pocket.

At step 7, I pinned one side of the velcro in the middle of the top edge of the pocket, so that the middle of the strip was 1" from the top edge and directly over the monogram. I then topstitched 1" from the top edge of the pocket with a decorative stitch sewing right over the strip of velcro. This way, the stitching for the velcro doesn't show.

From here on, I referenced Mae's tutorial, but followed these steps instead:
Fold your pillowcase, right sides together, aligning the opening edges (in my case, the orange fabric). Iron the crease (or the bottom of the pillowcase). Open the fabric and place your pocket (but don't pin) on the pillowcase where you want it. Remember, you will have a 3/4" seam allowance around all raw edges. Pin the other piece of velcro on the pillow case, aligning it with the piece already on the pocket. Remove the pocket and sew around all sides of the velcro so it is firmly on the pillowcase. Now pin your pocket back on the pillowcase, aligning the velcro pieces and topstitch around all three sides.

Take your cotton webbing (handle) and pin it along the top of the pillowcase so that is it aligned with both sides of the pocket. Pin it in place. Fold your pillowcase in half (along the pressed crease), right sides together, making sure that the webbing is tucked into the right sides and not twisted (so when you turn it right side out it will indeed be a handle). Sew around the two unfinished edges (side and bottom) of pillowcase.

And that's it! You have a pillowcase that is road-ready! Fill it up and enjoy the ride. Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust.

Toy Story DIY Birthday Party Report

We had a rootin' tootin' good time at our party! I had a blast creating this party for Little Chef! There were so many amazing ideas on Pinterest (my party idea pinboard can be seen here)! Little Chef and I took some time looking at all the ideas and he told me what he wanted to do and I filled in the rest with my ideas. Here's what we did:

The Photo Booth

I love the fun photo booths I see at special events! I'm a big time picture taker and its a way to dress up and have fun without everyone looking at you like your crazy! This one was super easy to construct. I found an empty wall, covered it with light blue wrapping paper and taped it down with painters tape. I then cut out the toy story cloud with my Silhouette. I cut 5 of the small and 5 of the large clouds and adhered them with scotch tape. I then used a couple of hats I found through Amazon, and these adorable (and free!) cut-outs from Merriment Design for the props. Easy and lots of fun!

Snacks

Little ones don't need a lot of snacks during the party if you schedule it before lunch. We went with cheese crunches (ala Al in Toy Story 2) and "snakes in a boot" - my own idea. I used plastic boot shot glasses and organic gummy worms. Two worms fit exactly in one boot! And they were the hit of the party! I loved hearing kids and adults alike say they needed another snake in their boot!

Decor

This was so easy. I used the barrel of monkeys design from the Silhouette shop and cut dozens of them from primary colored card stock scraps. And since I used to be a paper scrapbooker, I had a whole bunch of Memory Makers snaps to use up. I just attached the hand of one monkey to the other with the snaps and it was done. You could easily use brads, but the backs might show.

Little Chef also fell in love with some directional arrows to all the fictional places in the Toy Story movies that we had seen on Pinterest. I just downloaded some images I found on the internet and cut arrows from them. The arrow shape was already in my Silhouette library! I used painters tape to adhere them to the wall for the party.

And you've already seen the Luxo Ball Boxes that held all the goodies! To this I added loads of balloons. I bought a helium tank at the party store and in 30 minutes I had 40 balloons blown up and tied down all over the house. They made everything just a little more festive. And of course, we set up our Toy Story toys around the house as well, ready for a play date with destiny!

Activities

I cut out these rocket shapes from card stock using my Silhouette. I gathered up some craft supplies in the dollar bins from the local craft store, put out the glue and crayons and let the kids go for it! It was really fun. And then they played in the photo booth and with the toys we already had out and the ones we unwrapped. It was just enough for these 4 year olds.

I can't say enough how much fun this was to put together and how much fun the kids had! I'd love to see what you do for your Toy Story party! Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY Disney Pixar Toy Story Birthday | Luxo Ball Party Favor Boxes

I had a hard time deciding what we would do for goody bags for the Toy Story birthday party. I thought about making lunch sacks with the Pizza Planet logo on them, but that wasn't really what I had in mind. Pinterest is chock full of ideas, but they just weren't as exciting as I hoped. Then, I stumbled upon this 3D bowling ball box in the Silhouette design store and I had a great idea! I wanted to turn it into the famous Luxo ball from Pixar!

How did I do it? Here's the skinny:

1. I downloaded the 3D Bowling Ball Box shape ID 57679, and used a generic star shape that was already in my library.

2. Once opened in Silhouette software I resized the box to be as big as my Portrait will allow, 16.5" x 25.15" on the full design. Then I separated (or ungrouped) the pieces of the design in order to cut them out in different colors of card stock, base blue and lid yellow.

3. I sized the star shape to the lid (4.865"x4.635") and cut it out of red card stock.

4. I created the names on each one by using the Gill Sans Ultra Bold font and adjusting the kerning (or character spacing) until I had the look I wanted. I then used the offset function to create the red background for each name. Each name was approximately 1" tall.

That's it! It was easy to assemble, although time consuming. I spent one day's nap-time cutting and another day's nap-time assembling. And it used a fair amount of paper! I needed 3, 8.5"x11" sheets of card stock for each lid and each base. And it was TOTALLY worth it! I love the look of these and it's not just another goody bag like every other birthday party!

Most of my readers will probably know that the short film, Luxo Jr., was one of the two shorts that really catapulted Pixar into computer animation leadership, in as much as it relates to animated films. Here it is:




This Luxo ball shows up in all the Toy Story films and shorts and many other Pixar films. It's exactly the sort of thing Pixar likes to do. So when I realized I could use it at the party, I knew I needed to! Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY Disney Pixar's Toy Story Birthday Party | Creating A Digital Invitation

There are a lot of invitations available on Etsy if you are not so inclined as to create your own. But I love creating this sort of thing, AND I wanted something that could be used in a text message. I don't know about you, but texting is a huge part of my life and seems easier for moms in my circle to use than anything else. I also seem to get an RSVP from most everyone. And since we all send a very informal "save the date" message via text anyway, it seemed logical to just have the invite be a text and let that be that!

If you are inclined to want to do this, here is how I created this invitation.

Start with a 4" x 5" canvas in photoshop.

I used a selection of scrapbooking supplies from two sources: Papelland's Toy Story Collection and Frontier from Project Mouse. Select the plaid paper and size it to your background. Remember it's going to be on a digital screen, so don't make it so small the checkers go all funny on your eyes.

Select a custom shape; I chose this 8-pointed star frame. In a new layer, create the frame in any color. Move the cow print paper onto the shape and reduce the size the same way you did for the background. Then group the paper to the shape (paper layer on top of the shape layer). Your shape should now be filled with this cow print. To outline it, use the stroke function.

To create the inner star, I selected the same custom shape, but the solid version, and made it in white. Then I layered on the cloud paper and changed the opacity to about 30%.

Making the script was fairly simple. I already had the Gill Sans font. Bump it up to Extra Bold and use the stroke function to create the blue border. Then use the emboss function to make it stand out. I then drew a red rectangle behind the word "turns" and used the skew function in the transform menu to shape it like the Toy Story logo.

And that pretty well sums it up! I love having something so easy and it will transition to the scrapbook with no trouble at all! Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY Pixar's Toy Story Inspired Gift Tags with Silhouette

We are about to have the Rootin-ist, Tootin-ist party this 4-year-old has ever seen! Pixar's Toy Story has become an obsession in the cottage. There are days when we frequently view the Toy Story trilogy in a day. We are, in fact, still watching the Toy Story That Time Forgot (thank heaven for DVRs!) and calling it "the new Toy Story". That said, there will be some Toy Story toys joining our toy box soon. Wrapping them has been fun, knowing Little Chef is going to be so excited to see them.

I've been having some fun with gift tags too, using my Silhouette machine. I rounded up some of the shapes from the silhouette store that reminded me of Toy Story. Here's a list (with links!) of the designs I used for the gift tags:



Cowboy Hats (ID 30733)
Sheriff Badge (ID 29056)
*Dinosaur (ID 6784)
*3D Army Envelope (ID 58554)
Rocket Ship (ID 16622)

Some of them needed an offset (background), so I used the little offset operation at the bottom of the screen to quickly create the background shape. (It's the one that looks like a bullseye.) I put an asterisk next to the design shapes for which I needed that function. In all it was a quick and easy way to add a little Toy Story magic to our gifts. I'll be posting more great Toy Story ideas this month that we used for our party. So stay tuned! Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY Disney Pocket Scrapbooking American Frontier Kit NOW AVAILABLE!

Today I am thrilled to release a product I have been working hard on! As many of my regular readers will know, I am an avid digital scrapbooker. I have fallen head over heels for pocket scrapbooking! As such, I have been on the lookout for a kit that will accentuate my "Old West" pages. And not being able to find exactly what I was looking for, I made one for myself. So today, I am releasing it to the public!

This kit originally came about for some photos we had taken at a local museum that's all about the American West. I especially needed trains and cowboys, and what I was finding for sale was very cutesy. Not really what I had in mind. As this kit was evolving it occurred to me that it would be fantastic for those shots on the Walt Disney Railroad in the Magic Kingdom. And then I thought about how I would like to use it for the Frontierland pages and the Meet and Greet photos for Woody and Jessie. And then I remembered I had some Hoop Dee Doo photos (from the way-back machine) that needed some attention as well.

But you don't have to stop there. This kit could work for Fort Wilderness photos, Crocket's Tavern, the Circle D Petting Zoo (is that place still around?), even Mickey's Backyard BBQ. There's so much potential with this kit. If you're convinced you need it too, you can find it for sale in my Etsy Shop. It's got plenty of elements and word snippets to keep you busy, as well as a total of 33 cards in both 3x4 and 4x6 sizes.

You can see more detailed views of the kit here:

If you use the kit, I'd love to see what you come up with. Tag me on Instagram (@MerryweathersCottage) or leave me a comment on this post. Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY Disney 12 Days of Christmas Ornaments | From Toys to Ornaments

 You've probably seen this idea on Pinterest, at least some version of it. It's so simple, yet I love the idea, especially if you do a kid tree. Especially if you've collected a bunch of random Disney toys. Especially if you live in a household where it's so hard to throw anything away!

I thought I would paint all the toys, but as I was looking at Rexie from Toy Story, I realized he's much more recognizable without the paint. So I left him alone. Donald was already discolored and having a little trouble, so he was the perfect candidate to be gilded! I am certain that spray paint would have been a much easier choice, but I didn't have any gold spray paint on hand and didn't want to buy an entire can of it just for this little toy. I'm all about trying to use what I already have. So I decided to give brush painting a try. And I'm quite pleased with the result! He looks much better than he did, and as I've said before, I love a sparkly Christmas tree!

This was extremely easy to do. I used 3/16" Screw Eye Rings to attach the hanger. I would recommend finding a smaller size if possible; these are just a little too big for my taste. Perhaps these 12mm ones would be better, although I haven't used them. You can tie thread to the eyes, or use traditional ornament hooks to hang them from the tree (or anywhere else you may have in mind!). I think these would be darling attached to a gift for a child, as well.

And that brings our 12 Days of DIY Disney Ornaments to a close! I've had so much fun putting this together this holiday season. I hope to bring you another 12 Days of Disney Christmas next year. Until next time, may all your holidays be filled with fairy dust!