Fort Building Kit

Growing up, my brother and I dished out quite a bit of abuse on the living room furniture, from building forts to playing Hot Lava. I came across a fort building kit on one of the craft blogs I read and thought it would make a great children's gift. Of course my three nieces are always the guinea pigs lucky recipients of my handmade children's gifts, so this year for Christmas I made them their very own fort kit.


I bought all of the supplies, except the sheets, at the dollar store. Then, during a trip to IKEA (to buy the bins for our laundry room), I was super excited to find three cute curtain panels in the clearance section. I hadn't thought to use curtain panels but they ended up being better than sheets, with the added bonus of tabs at the top, which meant more places to attach the ties and clips. 

I made bias tape out of some cotton fabric I had on hand, and used it to add looped ties to each curtain panel.

In my ever-expanding stash of fabric I had some vintage linens, including a small floral printed pouch and an embroidered pillowcase.  The pillowcase was turned into a tote bag to hold the "sheets" and supplies.

I opened up the top hem of the pouch and added a ribbon, turning it into a drawstring bag to hold all the supplies.

Using a black paint pen, I wrote inspirational words on the clothespins (idea found here).

I also included a tag to explain what the gift was. I pretty much copied the tag from the tutorial, but changed up the font and colors a bit.

Moss Letters

Image from Pottery Barn

Image from dear lillie

What you'll need:

Wooden craft letters (I used 6" letters)

Reindeer moss

Hot glue gun + glue

Total project cost for 6 letters: $11

Using a got glue gun, glue the moss to the front and sides of the letter. I suggest doing one small section at a time, so the hot glue doesn't harden before you have a chance to stick the moss on. For six 6" letters, I used one 4 oz bag of moss. The moss tears easily and is very pliable, so it's not difficult to fit it to the shape of the letter. However, to help define small curves, I found it helpful to wrap the moss around to the back of the letter and secure with a drop of hot glue.

Heart Throb

I just added this quirky little Valentine to my Etsy shop.