Perler Beads Art That Looks Like Embroidery

These awesome art pieces depicting animals are made with teeny tiny beads. Yes, I wrote that correctly. If one doesn't  know that perler beads are used  to make these artwork, it's easy to assume that they were done with cross stitch embroidery. Especially the owl on the top looks like as if it's created with hundreds of cross stitches. I completely love how the brightly colored beads make the animal faces pop on the dark background. Something like this needs lot of patience and is a painstaking task.

Images found via and via.

DIY: Woodland Throw Pillows

These cute diy pillows are part of the project that's put together by Lia Griffith for Hayneedle. They designed a camping themed children's bedroom using furniture, accessories, and these pillows that were created for the project.

The adorable forest friends were illustrated by designer Krista and can be purchased in form of pre-printed fabric. The fabric with the sleeping owl and the inquisitive little fox are available from Spoonflower and can be sewn at home. For making your own pillows you'll need only a fat quarter of the fabric that you'll simply trim and sew!

For the more details on how to get the fabric to make your own throw pillows and for instructions on how to put everything together go here.

Back to School Party Printables

Time flies when you are having too much fun and before you know it's time to begin school again. To get you started Carla Chadwick has designed these colorful party printables that come with party invitation, back to school gift bags, and cupcake toppers and wrappers in four designs. The templates can be downloaded from here for free that come with step-by-step instructions included in the zip file.

Cool Doodles by Manik and Ratan

Bangladeshi twins Manik and Ratan started to make cartoons when they were only in seventh standard. Their project ‘doodles interact with real objects’ is a collection of adorable illustrated characters who are portrayed as interacting with real life objects around them resulting into a fun and clever doodles.

They have illustrated for Forbes and the Huffington Post, spoken at TEDx. They combined their passion for cartoons with their education in computer engineering to launch apps and have produced an animated TV commercial for a gum brand. 

You can view their profile on Behance to learn about their past projects and join them on facebook to get updates on their new creations.

Telephone - Picture Book by Mac Barnett

I loved these illustrations the moment I set my eyes on them. They seemed to me a work of a genius artist and I was not wrong. Telephone is a witty picture book for children by award-winning and bestselling author Mac Barnett which is illustrated by Jen Corace. Telephone is a take on the old game of telephone or "pass it on" on a telephone wire with birds. A mama bird says: "Tell Peter: Fly home for dinner." What makes the whole thing funny is that each bird understands the original message according to its own very particular hobby distorting it completely. The birds have unique personalities and expressive faces. The wise owl plays a vital role filtering all the distortion and delivering the original message at the end. 

It's a light-hearted, silly story with amazing illustrations and characters that preschoolers will love to listen to repeatedly. 

“Raucous avian take on the old-school children’s game, in which the action takes place, naturally, on a telephone wire.” -  New York Times

★“Delightful. . . The idea that one’s own passions affect the way one engages with the world is . . . presented with verve and humor.” - Publishers Weekly, starred review.

You can download the owl image, second from the top, as a free desktop wallpaper from Chronicle Books blog here. The book can be purchased from Amazon and Chronicle Books.

Cupcake Liner Crafts

You can make some fun animals using colorful cupcake liners this week. Rachel has made many animals, alphabets, party bunting and other cool things with cupcake liners. Kids can get creative and make their own shapes. There are over 40 great crafts on Rachel's blog including owls, ducks, toucan, flamingo, peacock that you can browse through and pick out the ones you would want to work on with your kids. Happy crafting!

Beautiful Owl Hamper and Baskets

Angela Curtis has been crocheting since she was just 8 years old and designing for many years now. A & B Design Studio was started by her and her husband in Arizona with a focus to add a modern twist to crochet a traditional craft which has been around for many years. She makes owl shaped hampers, baskets, tissue box covers, planters and much, much more!

You can visit their online store for viking helmet hats, octopus plushies, ice cream cozies in variety of colors. 

Onszelf Kids Wallpapers and Posters

{1. Onszelf owls wallpaper, 2. Onszelf mini deer,3. Onszelf silver cars and stars, 4. Onszelf stars}

{5. Onszelf black and white kids poster 6. Onszelf rabbit poster, 7. Onszelf cheers, 8. Onszelf polka dots}

Amsterdam based brand Onszelf was founded in 2003 by Claudia Drübe and Astrid Nieuwenburgwho are also the designers. They offer a wide range of wallpaper collection with lovely prints as well as custom make wallpaper to any size and design. You are sure to find something that you'll love to put in your room and your kid's room, or any other room in the house. There are kids friendly prints like stars, animals, cars and more that I picked out for this post but there are more sophisticated prints suitable for grown up space.  

Check out their website for posters, fabrics, tablecloth, tableware and postcards. You can find out here if they ship to your country or go to Just Kids Wallpaper to find the shipping rate to your country.