Up cycled baby grows

When you first meet me I promise your first instinct will not be 'wow what a maternal woman' it's much more likely to be 'wow how has this person survived on her own so long'. You think I'm kidding but my nearest and dearest often joke that I'm on day release and they are my carers.
My point: I'm probably the least likely person to be interested in baby clothes. Now I haven't gone to the lengths of Sarah Millican who accidentally collects baby clothes for when Cheryl Cole pops by but I do think they are cute.
This is not your invitation to suggest I start having babies, I know I'm a person in possession of a uterus that is still ornamental but I promise you, I'm merely making a statement.
My latest craft fix comes from taking the baby grow that the child has grown out of, (taking the clothes from babies while they are still wearing them is probably more frowned upon than taking candy right?) cutting it up and making it into something new. This something new happens to be a love heart made out of covered buttons using the baby grows. The parents pick the clothes so they get to treasure the memories for much longer than it's acceptable to keep the baby grow, if Sarah, you are reading this perhaps it's time the tiny jeans go, and you get a keepsake for their room. And it's not just for girls. When a colleague passed me a bag of boys clothes I had a mini melt down but then came up with the dinosaur you see at the bottom.
Both sets of mummies at least liked the pictures from what I could gather and it kept my hands from shoving cake into a reluctant face for at least a day so it's all good. Ok so the face wasn't reluctant. I want cake.

Decopatch-ish?

It happened again. I read Crafts Beautiful and had to succumb to its crafting compulsives. This time it's a crafty hoop art thing. 

This is something I find really frustrating about my hobbies within craft I find they don't really have a real name. 

Anyway, before I get too involved with my rant, these 3D pictures caught my eye and with one of my besties having already had a baby and another one 18 weeks along, these were what I thought great ideas as a replacement present. Although I made a baby blanket for the first bestie, the second has a mamma that is essentially a knitting machine and I know when I'm beaten so thought I'd give this a go instead. 

To start I got a large embroidery hoop, weirdly enough I had one lying around the house. I then used this to draw the required circle shape onto a piece of wall paper sample - also just lying around and the perfect colour to boot. I cut the circle and attached some green material for the grass to give a 3D effect from the outset. I also had the fabric lying around, it was last used 12 years ago for a school project. I then cut out geometric shapes from patterned paper that, you guessed it, was just in my craft stash for the trees. The rainbow was the hardest and part of me wishes I had printed this off to save time but I quite like the uneven element, I mean how many times do you see a perfect rainbow? It then was about assembly and deciding which parts belonged where. 

I decided that it looked far too bland and as the magazine had a bear I thought I would copy their idea, except the baby is due in June when it's sunny (hence the rainbow) and I didn't have a bear. I did have a printer and laptop so I printed a cartoon Dino for the baby boy who already has a Dino themed room and a puppy for the baby that is unborn, I know the parents are dog people so thought this was a safe choice. 

I printed them out three times and gradually just built up the characters to create the 3Dness using foam sticky pads that were in my craft corner. After that it was about assembly again before sticking the lot down.

The flowers were a strike of genius that I can take no credit for, I found them when looking for a craft knife and thought they would look awesome. I think that they do anyway. The spaces at the bottom are for names or messages for the parents to decide on. Next to what Crafts Beautiful made I'm pretty pleased with it.

It's not as good but I do love it. My other half is already listing the variations we could do although I'm going to have to find a better way to attach the picture to the hoop as my elbow is still sore from the carpet burns I got from crawling on the floor with my glue gun!