Back when I was a child, I liked to play with paper dolls! I was of the generation where we would cut out the dolls that were in paper doll books–or maybe they had perforated edges where we could punch them out. Then we would cut out all the clothes with the fold down tabs. Oh, they were such fun! And if you talk to my parents’ and my grandparents’ generation, they would talk about how they cut girls and clothes out of the Sears Catalog and used them as paper dolls. And when you read Little House in the Big Woods, you read of how Laura and Mary would make and color their own paper dolls. Yes, I’m sure every generation of girls has had their own version of paper dolls.

Today’s generation has magnetic dolls. It’s the same concept as before, but now no paper tabs get torn off, and the dolls stay in good condition for a long time. They are even easy to make as long as you have a computer with internet access and a color printer. I made some for my daughter to take to a birthday present, and I made some for my niece’s birthday.

Here are the materials you need:

• Color printer
• Magnetic paper
• Scissors
• Metal pan to stick the dolls on
• Fabric cover, if desired

Directions:

1. Find a pan to stick the dolls on. The easiest thing to use is a cookie sheet. You can get a brand new one, or I used old ones that were ready to be discarded. I spray painted them, and they were ready to go!
   

   Here is the cookie sheets I spray painted for a couple of the presents.

2. Get some magnetic printable paper. This paper is getting more expensive! I use this brand: Avery Magnet Sheets. Hobby Lobby has a pack of 3 sheets for $6.99, and you could use a 40% off coupon with it. I have found that you can sometimes find better deals on Ebay.
3. Print off free paper dolls onto the magnetic paper. At the bottom of this post I have included some links to the paper dolls that I have found. To print off the sheets, I would right-click on each page of paper dolls, click on “save picture as” and save the page into my pictures file. Then I would right-click on the picture in my picture file, click on “print”, make sure my paper size was set to the “letter” setting, make sure that the little box next to “fit picture to frame” was not checked, then click print again. (This is how  my printer worked; every printer might be different.)
4. Cut out the dolls.
5. Make a fabric cover for the dolls. Here is the tutorial I used to make the cover. I usually use  1/4″ elastic and not 1/8″ elastic. I also do not put any letters on mine! (She bought paper doll books, cut out and put the paper dolls on adhesive magnet sheets, then cut the magnetic dolls out. This way wastes less magnet space, but you have to buy the paper dolls.)
   

   The magnetic paper dolls with the fabric covers.

Links to some free printable paper dolls:

• Teri Lee–An early 1900s Paper Doll
• Debbie Reyolds Paperdoll Set

Do you know of any other free printable paper dolls? Please let us know and leave a link in the comments!

**Someone asked me if I thought printing the dolls and regular paper, cutting them out and putting them on adhesive magnet paper would be cheaper, so I looked into it a little. It would be a little more work, but it would be cheaper from what I found as of June 4, 2013:

• Oriental Trading offers 12 sheets ( 8 1/2″ x 11″) for $10.50 plus shipping.
• Walmart has a pack of 5″ x 8″ adhesive magnetic sheets, but only for in-store shopping. I could not tell what the price would be.
• Ebay has some that are again reasonably priced. The hard thing to tell with Ebay is how thick the magnet paper is. I liked the thickness of the Avery magnetic paper shown above, but I ordered some magnet sheets on Ebay, and they were thinner. I ended up not using them for magnet paper dolls, but for another craft present that I’ll show on a different Make-it Monday. 🙂
• It did not look like the adhesive paper was any cheaper at Amazon or Hobby Lobby–however, you could get more on each sheet as you could have hardly any wasted space. There are other companies that sell magnetic paper, but in my little bit of searching, I did not see any great deals. If you find some, please let us  know in the comments! Thanks!

So if you could get it cheaper, and you have time, then go for it! The ones I have done so far have been for presents, and I got really good deals on the magnetic paper. But if your daughter is old enough to cut well, and this is her craft, then you may want to just print the dolls out on paper and then stick the dolls to the adhesive magnetic sheets.

Last year, I saw an idea on how the children could decorate the outside of terra cotta flower pots for presents. I can’t find the original idea anymore, but the basic idea was that you covered a terra cotta flower pot with model magic clay, took broken mosaic pieces in the clay, let it dry, and voilà! You have a decorated flower pot!

For what I wanted to do, there were a couple of problems with this set of directions. I wanted these flowerpots to be able to go outside for our mothers (It was to be a Mother’s Day present), and my dad, who has worked in the flooring industry for 30+ years, said Model Magic wouldn’t hold up in the outdoor elements. Model Magic is also costly if you are doing a big pot (or many pots like we were doing.)  I also did not want to use broken tiles, as I wanted my children to do the decoration part, and I did not want them cutting themselves.

Instead, my dad told me to use premixed adhesive and grout. I use the Mapei brand that is available at Menards in the quart size for around $10. It will do several small pots, and around two of the big pots you see in the pictures below. He also gave me some beautiful glass mosaics where the sheets were missing a few pieces, so they could not be sold.  If you check with a local tile store, they may agree to giving you some broken sheets of mosaics that you could cut apart or tear the small pieces off the netting to stick on the pots.  Or you could buy a few sheets of mosaics. Amazon even sells mosaic pieces! On the left is a picture of some of the pieces my dad gave us. So I would spread some of the adhesive onto the pot with a butter knife (spread it rather thick), and the kids would stick on the pieces. We came up with a design beforehand. For the pot that says, “I ♥ U”  Kaylin worked on the top; Karis worked on the middle, and I helped Kristi on the bottom with the letters.

Putting the tiles on the flowerpots:

Then I took a damp cloth and very carefully tried to get wipe off the tiles before the adhesive dried. I let the pot dry overnight. After it was totally dry, I would wipe with a damp cloth and scrape with my fingernail off the rest of the adhesive off the tiles. The adhesive is not perfectly smooth, but I wanted a project the kids could do. If you want to make a mosaic flowerpot that looks professional, you could follow the direction on Craftbits.com.

The finished product:

If you live in a cold climate, you will want to put these flowerpots in a heated garage or inside your house somewhere in the wintertime. I made one for my mom last year, and it was fine outside on her porch all summer. But they put it in their shed, and the freezing temperatures that we get made the grout expand, and it all cracked off. So we my dad brushed off the outside of the pot with a wire brush, and we re-did it. I think they will put it in their garage this year, and it is not heated. It will be better than outside, though, so we’ll see what will happen.

Finally, you get to do the fun part! You get to plant the flowers! I read somewhere that I should put some Styrofoam at the bottom of a big pot to help with drainage so the dirt doesn’t pack down so much. I don’t know if that is true or not as I am not a huge gardener, but I did it!

I got some spikes and other full to part sun annuals at Menards and went to work.

Kiley “helping” water the flowers.

Here they are on my benches waiting to go to my mom’s house:

Here they are on my mom’s porch:

We did little ones (about 4″) for the girls’ teachers at the end of the school year last year. They would also make great anniversary gifts. You could use the mosaics to put years or how many years they have been married (1973-2013 or 40 for 40th anniversary).

Here is another affordable, yet custom-made, present you could make for girls (or boys) of any age. It only cost me $1 out of pocket as I  already had glue, scrapbooking paper, ribbon, and all the other paraphernalia. I use the notebooks that are roughly 10″ x 8″, and I was able to  find them at the Dollar stores. If you think way ahead, you can get them at going-back-to-school sales for awesome prices! I have made these journals for each of my children for Christmas and for Kaylin and Karis to give as presents at birthday parties. They do take a little bit of time to do–depending on how much decoration you desire, but the notebook along with a cute pen make such a nice present, that the work is worth it! I originally saw this on The 36th Avenue blog, but I’ve made some variations to the idea. She made 13 tabs and gave it to her children at the beginning of a year. We give them out mainly at birthdays, so I just make 6 tabs and leave the tabs blank so thebirthday child can decide what they want to write in their journal. I also decorated mine more and put duck tape to cover the black binding–an idea I got from seeing Martha Stuart do this more for adults and using book binding tape. You could use not as much decoration and even make these journals for teenagers and adults!

So,  I’m sure you can figure out how I made these by journals just by looking at the pictures, but I’ll take you step by step through how I did it along with a lot of pictures! 🙂

1.  I gather all my supplies. I do have the oldest Cricut made (I think) that I got from a garage sale for $15, and two cartridges that I bought at a different garage sale. If you do not have a Cricut, don’t despair! If you wanted to personalize your notebook, there are precut letters that could be bought. Using ribbon and other accessories would also make your notebook look beautiful. So I gather my spray adhesive (which is not necessary, but I like it better than glue sticks for putting the paper on the actual cover), my ribbon, my cricut, my paper, glue sticks, X-acto knife, Tacky glue, duct tape, paper cutter, and  glass beads. (I probably forgot something!)
   

   Most of the supplies I use

2. If it is a birthday present for a friend, the girls help me choose the paper.
3. I put some newspaper on the floor, spray with permanent adhesive spray the back of the paper that will cover the notebook cover, and then put it on the cover.
4. I then flip the notebook upside down on top of a piece of cardboard (so the scrapbook paper is on the bottom), take an X-acto knife, and cut off the excess paper. I used to measure the cover and try to cut the paper the right measurement, but I never got it exactly the right size, so I find this easier to do.
5. After I get the main paper done for the front and the back, I cover the binding with a matching color of duct tape. This is not necessary, but I like how it looks.
6. I cut the paper for the tabs. When I do 6 tabs, I cut them 1 1/2″ thick, 12″ long. I divide the notebook into 6 parts (I just eyeball it), and put the papers as bookmarks where I will want to glue them. Then,  I fold the first paper in half, and glue the front half to the front side of one paper, and the other half to the back side. I start all the way at the top of the paper. I make sure that there is about 1/2″ left outside of the notebook for the tab. Then, for the second tab, I make sure it is under the first tab and that it sticks out the same distance.
7. Then I start embellishing the cover. I like to put a ribbon on first so that it will be under the name, and I will cut out flowers and hearts. I will put glass beads on the front of the girls’s notebooks with the regular tacky glue–not the spray kind. There are so many different ways to decorate the notebooks–let your imagination go wild!
8. I will then make a bookmark for their notebook. Many times, I will put their name on the bookmark as well. Lastly, I slide a pen onto the cover of the book.
   

   The completed journal with a picture of the front and back of the bookmark.

Here are some more pictures of a few of the journals I have done.

The 4 oldest with their journals they got for Christmas

Kaylin and Karis already writing in their journals.

Front of another journal

This is the back.

Joshua and his notebook with pen.

Journal I made for my niece–here you can see where I slid the pen on.

One I made for my mom–this is taken months after I made it, and the pen pal got moved a little.

We have made these post-it pad presents for many of Kaylin’s friends for birthday presents, and I have made one for each of my sisters. I got the original idea off of pinterest from Paper Wings blog.

Materials needed:

• 5″ x 7″ clear plastic photo frame–I get mine from Walmart for $1
• post-it pad
• Pen Pals–I get a pack of 3 at Walmart for $3
• Pencil/pen
• Scrapbook paper and any embellishments you want to use (ribbon, chipboard, etc.)

First, I cut a piece of scrapbook paper so that it is 5″ x 7″.

Then  I pick out the color of ribbon, post-it pad, and pen pal I want to use.

Seeing what looks good together.

Next, I put on the post-it pad. I have read that if you get the super sticky post-it pads, that they don’t fall off. I have tried double stick tape and glue dots, and I don’t like how they work. So I just hot glue the next-to-last page to the last page, and glue the pad onto the frame.  After I glue on the pad, I put on the pen pal and insert the  pen or pencil.

This present I used tacky glue and glued glass beads all over the frame.

All done!

I am not that fond of Barbie dolls. In fact, I even considered not allowing our girls to have them. But my husband and I gave the girls a “Barbie” doll house for Christmas a year ago. (Smart move, right! Well, my oldest daughter was going to garage sales with me, saw it and liked it, and I thought it would be a fun and cheap present for all of the girls.)

I do not know if it is a real Barbie house, but it is a house that is the perfect size for Barbie dolls or princess dolls that are the size of Barbie dolls. So of course, my girls wanted Barbie dolls to play with in the house. The girls already had a couple of dolls, but I told them I would look for more when I went to garage sales. I did get a few that next summer, but most did not have appropriate (if any) clothing.

So we needed new clothes–and here Kaylin will take over the story of our homemade Barbie clothes.

My sisters and I like to play with Barbies, but we don’t have many clothes for them. The clothes in the stores were expensive and immodest. One day, I was flipping through a magazine (Family Fun), and I saw how to make Barbie clothes out of socks. My mom got one of my younger sister’s socks that already had a hole. She cut off the foot part of the sock, and then cut a tiny hole in the middle for the head and two more on the sides for arms. The sock was small, so she added a piece of pretty material on the bottom. It fit perfectly! We did that to other old socks, and we had plenty of clothes for our Barbie dolls.

Here are a little more details:  The original picture that we saw were from big socks, like an adult male white sport sock. The article said that her daughters then used fabric markers to decorate the “dress.” We did this, which you can see in the picture on the top of the page; and I also took red socks from my two year old, and added material to them to make it long enough for the Barbie dolls. I will attempt to show you how I did this.

First, I cut off the foot of the sock.

On the top part of the sock, I sewed in from each corner, leaving a hole in the middle. Then I sewed a diagonal line up so the shoulders would be more rounded. You could just do this step if you wanted to (not sew the straight line in from each corner.) You want to leave about a 1″ hole in the middle for the head to go through.

I cut off the excess material on the corners so that it would not be so bunchy.

Turn the sock right side out so that the seams are in the inside and try it on the doll so that you can see where to cut the arm holes. I just made a VERY little hole for the arms.

Dress is done, but since it was a small sock, it was too short.

If you used a white adult sock, the dress would be done!

Barbie doll using the top of one of my husband’s white sport socks.

This is how I added material to the bottom of the sock:

This is the hardest part to describe. I turned the sock inside out. I put the material for the skirt up inside the sock this way: I put the skirt material ‘s right side facing the right side of the sock (as the sock is inside out.) The bottom of the skirt material is towards the neck of the sock, and the gathered edge of the skirt material should be lined up with the bottom of the sock as you will sew those two edges together. Sew very slowly and carefully the edges together, making sure to not sew the sock and skirt that are under the part that you are sewing. I had to sew about 1/2″, put down my needle, and then shift the material a little so I could sew a little bit more. When you’ve sewn all the way around, turn it right side out.

All the dresses that we made before they were decorated.

If a white sock is used, children can use fabric markers to design their own Barbie dresses. I had some leftover markers from when we decorated T-shirts for a birthday party, so the girls had fun drawing patterns and designs on their sock.

So now we have some modest clothes for the Barbie dolls that cost us almost nothing! All the socks we used also had holes in them so normally we would have just thrown them away!