You guys, I’ve been trying for a WHILE to put designs on hats. Every now and then I pull it off. But more often than not, I end up wasting hats and time. I usually end up with a crease that makes the cap look bad 🙄
In the past I bought patches to sublimate onto to then put on the hat, hoping that was the answer. It wasn’t, not like I’d hoped.
But today was different!
I spent the weekend looking up tutorials on making my own patches and applying those to hats and it worked!
In the summer, we try to take the kids on a trip. It usually involves a family reunion, then some time for our immediate family to explore. I like decorating bags for the kids to take to keep their things in. And sometimes I go a little crazy…like this year.
This year there are water bottles, shirts, drawstring backpack tags, backpacks, and, you guessed it, hats.
I didn’t have really high expectations for these caps because of past experience. But boy howdy! I didn’t mess up ANY of them. Not even the practice one lol.
And since I’m super excited that I finally did something that worked like it was supposed to, I’m sharing it lol
So, here you go. Custom hat patches onto a variety of colors of baseball cap and even a bucket hat.
First, I LOVE the way these colors came out. It was a gorgeous image and seemed to be just right for this project.
But, there are definitely flaws and mistakes while I figure stuff like this out lol
But, see the first 😉
❤️❤️❤️
I think these are great spring/summer/fall/garden fun. They’re mesmerizing and hypnotic. A great way to relax. I can’t wait to hang mine and see how my little guys react. Hoping this a great way for them to calm outside when they need to ❤️
I’m doing wind spinners for a $20 donation to Paws 4 Autism. Again, it’s things like this that help us raise money for our service dog and the other pups in the program to help keep it going. This is a 10 inch spinner, but I might be switching to 8 in spinners so I don’t have to piece papers together lol
If you’re interested in a wind spinner, please message me and we’ll make it happen 😀
One of the things I’ve been trying to learn the past couple of years is 3D printing.
I understand the basics.
I struggle to understand the mechanics.
Every now and then, something works like it’s supposed to.
I originally wanted to use 3D printing as a fundraising avenue by printing lithophanes. It’s a really neat way of displaying a photo. One of these days, I may upload some that have been mostly successful. I just can’t seem to get them to work well and work consistently, and to get them to do both at the same time, lol.
But today, I managed to print a Mother’s Day statue that came out nice enough.
If anyone is interested in this as a Mother’s Day gift, it’s a $10 donation to Paws 4 Autism. Message me and I’ll let you know how to make the donation. Right now, I only have one, because my printer decided to stop working….again lol
I just started playing around with wind spinners, and I might be a little in love lol
This is the first one. I see places I need to adjust for next time, but my mind is swirling with ideas now 😀
Also, numbers are hard. And I don’t always consider them when buying items like this. So I bought 10 inch wind spinners, but my printer can only print about 8.25 inches wide. So now I get to learn how to piece together images to make one large one so I can fill the entire wind spinner 😀
I’m thinking about using something like this for Mother’s Day, but I also think something like the 4th of July would be really cool on these, too. But this one is going in my garden ❤️
I wish I could post videos, because it’s really neat to watch it spin. It’s kind of mesmerizing 🙂 Maybe I need a YouTube channel for videos to link to, lol
Anyway, thanks for stopping by!
XOXOXO
I make these for a $20 donation to Paws 4 Autism. If you’re interested in one, let me know and we’ll make sure you get one. I can put all sorts of things on these 😀
To check out our organization, go here: AWESOME DOGS
If you’re interested in donating to our fundraising, go here: EVEN MORE AWESOME KID, the donation section is at the bottom of the page.
In my catch up blog, I said I would post some of the projects I’ve been working on when I have a few spare minutes.
So, today, I’m posting the mugs I’ve been working on. These are the types of things I do as fundraisers for Paws 4 Autism and Bandit
To do these, I started learning how to sublimate. I looked easy, and theoretically it is. But it’s the small stuff that trips me up lol
This is a fun idea. I took a child’s artwork and put it on a shirt for him and a mug for his mom. It’s like fridge art – but better!
I’m also able to put pictures of cuties like this onto mugs. This particular grandma needed a mug with her granddaughter on it. It was so much fun to do ❤️ Can you imagine waking up to this smile in the mornings?
For Halloween, I had a BLAST making color changing mugs. We call them magic mugs. I need to figure out how to post a video here, but for now, trust me, they’re cool. They start out black. When you add hot water, the black disappears revealing and image under it.
And before we knew it, it was Christmas time. I did a Naughty/Nice Magic mug (because I LOVE them lol) and also did a set of matching mugs and kitchen towel set.
And then, I saw a pattern that I really liked, but couldn’t find, so I got to design some things using just a few images and tricks to recreate and refine the look I’d seen. I also did a matching tumbler 😊 I think this would be fun for Mother’s Day ❤️
This last set of mugs I did because I found images I fell in love with. A friend suggested they might work well as Magic Mugs. And I agree!
I did the Sagittarius mug for me (and I just noticed I misspelled it, so I will be fixing that right away!)
The Aries mug is for a friend of mine and I LOVE how the colors came out on this 💕
So those are some of the mugs I’ve been working on. There are some missing so there will be a Mug post part 2 coming soon.
As I mentioned at the beginning, these are the types of things I’ve been doing for fundraisers for Bandit and Paws 4 Autism.
For more information about Paws 4 Autism, click here: AWESOME DOGS
I haven’t been posting on much social media lately, so let me see if I can try and catch you up a little 😊 We’ve had A LOT packed into the last few years. I’m sure many of you can relate to that.
Summer of 2021 we had five cross country trips. Only one of them was planned ahead by any length of time lol. Then some other exciting things happened as well.
First, a trip to West VA, then VA to take care of some motor cycle issues.
This was when we still had the big giant van and Bandit had a big comfy seat to lay down in. We saw the sunrise in West Virginia, and had a little bit of downtime in VA before we turned around and made the 18 hour trip home. In the last picture, you can see JJ and Bandit, and looking closely, you can see that they’re tethered together with a leash.
One of the ways Bandit helps us, is by making it harder for JJ to bolt when something scares or upsets him, and making it harder for him to just wander off when something has his attention. On this particular trip, JJ and Bandit were in the yard playing, and JJ thought he saw a spider on Bandit. Panicked, he took off running. Bandit acted as an anchor to slow JJ down so we could get to them. The spider turned out to be dried cut grass. People are afraid of bugs, but JJ’s fear means he doesn’t pay attention to where he’s going. The road and any cars or obstacles on the road aren’t on his radar. Bandit buys us enough time to get to JJ before he can get to the road. That day he did what we needed him to do ❤️
Next up, about a month later, we picked up one of our daughters from an 18 month mission she’d just completed. This was our planned trip lol
He did a great job. Part of what makes autism hard for my two little boys is being out of routine. Doing something different – and that’s all a trip is. Lots of different experiences. Like Bandit acted as a physical anchor on that first road trip, he acts like an emotional anchor for my kiddos when their world is kind of off.
Following that, my husband switched jobs, so we snuck off to visit his dad who was in his 90’s at the time.
We had a nice time and it was so good to see him. We snuck in a visit to see my grandma on this trip, too ❤️
Shortly after that, we got word that my 25yo cousin passed away. We weren’t able to make it to the funeral, and I don’t have any pictures of that time. But this time, Bandit helped me. He’s good at knowing who needs his love and I’m so grateful for that.
Next on the list of fun things we did in the last couple of years, we had a wedding. This was a new experience for us, we’d never had a child get married before. That made it Bandit’s first time, too 😊
Then we were back in the car traveling cross country again. This time for my grandma’s funeral. I’m so thankful we took the time to see her when we were there visiting my father-in-law.
One of Bandit’s jobs is to just relax. He can then share that calm with those around him. Traveling. Funerals. Overwhelming sounds at the luncheon after the funeral are all things Bandit can help us with. As you can see, he did his job perfectly.
While we were here, we took the spend more time with father in law again. We brought pie over and we all enjoyed it together, then it was back on the road to head home.
After that trip we were able to go to UCM in Warrensburg to work with the Alpha Sigma Alpha sorority to raise money for Paws4Autism, the organization Bandit’s with. JJ had fun hanging out with the girls and loved the attention. It also just happened to be right around his birthday so they spoiled him a little. It was a great time and we were able to help raise funds that go back into the program to keep training and adding new pups to the program.
And then we were back on the road. We got word one morning that my father in law passed away. He’d been admitted to the hospital shortly after we’d visited with him at the end of October, but had started doing better. This wasn’t news I was expecting, especially after losing my cousin and grandmother. But we loaded everyone back into the cars and took the 20 hour drive west once again.
With funerals, there’s a lot of high emotion. Grief and feeling overwhelmed are just a few. And for us, add in exhaustion. JJ is like an amplifying sponge. He soaks in all of the emotion and feeling around him because his brain doesn’t filter them out. Then he sends them back out 10-fold. So being able to help him regulate those feelings and calm down is really important. That’s one of the places that Bandit can really help.
For JJ, we know that just touching Bandit regulates his heart rate and that’s a huge help. Another thing that JJ finds helpful sometimes is some deep, but gentle pressure. Here he is with Bandit resting with his legs on JJ’s lap to help with both. Poor JJ hadn’t been smiling a few minutes before because he was getting overwhelmed. Bandit is the fastest, easiest way to accomplish this.
My father in law was a veteran. He received his gun salute and this is the flag they presented his wife. I had a great father in law. I’m grateful for the sacrifice of him and countless other Veterans.
PS: Bandit didn’t like the gun salute…
After the summer and fall we had, it was nice to be able to do some normal, mundane things, like go to the dentist, lol
Dentist visits can make people nervous. JJ is no exception. We take Bandit with us to help keep JJ calm. You can see them working together here with touch and pressure to make the experience better for everyone involved.
Things were relatively ordinary for a little while, but we got to celebrate again mid 2022, and it rounded out the year featured above. A second child got married ❤️
We had a great time celebrating and Bandit was in on the fun, too.
We sure did need those two weddings to help offset the hard stuff that year encompassed.
After this, we started our school year. And this year we’ve been homeschooling both little boys, both with autism, instead of just one. And it’s been an adventure lol Luckily, Bandit is good at helping the boys, which I really appreciate since it can get overwhelming for all of us at times. This is honestly where so much of my time goes and one of the things that makes updating any social media more challenging than it used to be.
And yay! We get to do more normal things, too. Like speech therapy.
Bandit stays close, always within reach in case JJ needs him if he starts getting overwhelmed with therapy. I can remind him to pet his dog, and that usually helps get us back into the flow of things.
And during all of this, I’ve added more things to my learning and fundraising, I just haven’t been able to post them (see above lol). My favorite new thing is sublimation. I must now sublimate all the things lol. I’ll try and add some of that work later. It’s fun 😊
When people ask why a service dog. Or ask how it helps, these are all the things I think about, and more. But often times, it’s hard to put into words. I’ve been fundraising for a dog for JJ, but in reality, Bandit is there for us all. He loves without condition, he’s always excited to see us. He’s there for the good stuff, the bad stuff, and everything in between.
As my kids say, “He is good boy.”
Thanks for stopping by
XOXOXO
To check out the Paws4Autism organization, go here: PAWS
To check out JJ and Bandit’s page, go here: JJ AND BANDIT
If you’d like to make a donation, just scroll to the bottom of JJ and Bandit’s page.
There’s a lot of sad in the world right now. From world events, to national, to local, and right down to the people in our lives.
And I’m an emotional sponge. I soak in emotions. The easy emotions get released pretty easily. The laughter and smiles, that’s the easy stuff.
The hard ones…those are the emotions I keep in. I hold those close because I don’t WANT to give them to others. I don’t WANT others to feel those same things. So I keep them. I process them. I deal with them.
One of the ways I deal with them is art. But I don’t keep the art. The process and the thought behind the art is where the healing is for me, but that’s not the end of it. The end of that dealing with and healing from comes when I find the person that work belongs to. Sometimes it’s easy, if someone has been on my mind. Sometimes I have to wait and see who comes my way. But every single time I’ve been able to do something like that for someone, that’s really what healed my soul and filled my heart.
My therapist didn’t understand at first when she asked me what I did for ME. The answer is, I make things for someone else. And even if it didn’t fit her idea of what that meant, she realized that it worked for me.
So this last week I spent some time playing with paper because I needed to feel better. And I had a very specific project in mind. I needed the message it created. It didn’t come out exactly like I hoped, but I use the good stuff and once it was in place, that was it, lol.
The design took eight layers of paper to complete. I fell in love with the design right off the bat, and I absolutely love the colors and how they came out. It was tricky trying to get it to look like I wanted it to in the shadow box, but I got it figured out. The only part I’m not too keen on is the wording. I needed to use a lighter color of vinyl, but like I said, this stuff isn’t coming off easily lol.
Anyway, the words say, “You are Always Enough” I just wish I’d done it in white 🙂
Here it is, out of the shadow box, which takes the glare off of it. The designer did a beautiful job and this file was so nice to work with 🙂
This post has a sense of deja vu about it. We went back to church again this week. Again…
Quick refresher brief: along with my little boys being autistic, I have my own set of health issues that necessitate taking medication that suppresses my immune system. This makes it hard for my body to fight things off and hard for it to heal. And I had the fantastic adventure of starting this medication at the beginning of the pandemic. Because of this, there’s a lot of time at home and I have to be thoughtful about where and how I spend my time. Now, back to the post 🙂
So yes, I have written something similar to this post before, last year, when we went back after being out for over a year because of health concerns. But it was short lived. When the Delta variant started picking up speed in our area, we started staying home again. And while we were still fighting that, Omicron came in and my area was fighting two variants that overlapped. But things eventually got better, even if they took longer than we wanted, so we tried again.
Our congregation is quite a bit different than it was even last year. I had the opportunity to sit down with new people and try to figure out how to help the boys slide back into things as easily as possible. It was nice to sit and talk about what they needed to know to help them and to let them ask questions so they could best help my boys.
So this Sunday, we gathered things the day before. We made sure things were packed away in the bags I bring so we wouldn’t be scrambling the next morning. The boys and Bandit were clean and spiffy. We went over the things that needed to happen the next morning so we were on the same page. Everything was set… except…I got the start time wrong 🤦🏻♀️
We scrambled, panicked, made back up plans for seating since we weren’t there as early as we wanted to be, and had to remember to breathe. Lots of deep breaths later, we walked through the doors. I don’t know how it happened, but the exact spot we needed was still available and we were able to get settled in easier than I anticipated.
Isaac looked a little shell shocked and unsure at first, but quickly settled in. JJ was tense and careening to the fight, flight, or freeze stage of panic that happens when our routine changes and new things are coming at us. We know to expect this now though, and we’re usually prepared. And this is where Bandit comes in…he regulates JJ because JJ’s not able to regulate himself in these types of situations yet (We’re working on it).
Touching Bandit is all it takes to help J’s heart rate start to even out.
Petting Bandit calms my son even more.
THEN, that’s when JJ is ready to interact with me (or others) and let them help him. We have hugs that are really, really helpful, but if J isn’t at this point we can’t use them.
Bandit made it easier for J to sit in church – and he was actually able to focus on what was being said. I know that, because he shared it at dinner with the people who weren’t able to be at church that day.
I remember helping this little boy try to handle the sensory issues that came his way at church (or anywhere really). It wasn’t easy. And we worked on it for YEARS. But after two+ years of watching church from home, that little champ slid into that church pew like no time had passed.
All because of Bandit.
And it’s reasons like this that we do the hard things.
Thanks for stopping by, and as always, info about our organization will be linked below.
XOXOXO
To visit the Paws 4 Autism page please click here: Cool Stuff
But there is value in making mistakes, if we’re willing to learn from them.
I was playing with an idea to sublimate Bandit’s name onto a few things. I’m trying to put together an emergency bag for him that’s ready to go, including first aid items. We live in Tornado Land and it is that time of year. But we’ve also had ice storms in the winter that knock out power for four days. Gas leaks. People sitting in front of our house watching it…and more, I’m sure, because my life is NOT boring lol.
I found these bags at a good price, so it was worth experimenting with, especially because this one would stay in the basement unless we needed it. And if we need it, it will have character 🙂
Here’s what I learned:
Nylon straps melt at high temps. I’m sure I would have remembered if I’d taken time to think about it. In the future, I’ll just cut off this particular strap. I’ll get a better image that way, too. But I do have to clean the melted nylon glob off my heat press. Luckily, I have a teflon sheet attached to it. If I can’t clean it off, I can replace it. You can see some of the melted strap I’ve already scraped off on the silicone mat.
2. I learned that not only does the nylon strap melt, it impedes the transfer of the image. You can see that on the right hand side of the picture. In this set up, there was no way to move it far enough out of the way for a good transfer. But then again, it also wouldn’t have mattered since the strap melted. On the other hand, I also learned that I CAN sublimate on these bags, and the temp and time seem to work.
3. I also learned that the melted strap I hadn’t gotten off the teflon, was over further than I thought…Maybe I should have tried harder to clean it off, but I thought I had enough room to do the last transfer. I should have paid more attention to exactly where the glob would land. Because some of it got on to the other piece I was sublimating lol. You can see where it transferred on the bottom left. But again, this is an emergency bag, so this gives it character 😉 And I now have a matched set 😀
In addition, the transfer on the bottom left is a little light. So I learned I need to move the image up just a little more to stop the seam from interfering.
4. I learned that the top inside of this bag…melts a little 🙄
When sublimating, it’s usually wise to use some blow out paper on top of the image and under the substrate you’re sublimating on to, to catch any of the ink that could transfer to somewhere you don’t want it to go. The white part inside the zippered pouch…that’s the blowout paper. It’s stuck to the top of the bag now because the material above it melted a little. You can also see the blue tape I used to keep the blow out paper in place…it may also be a permanent part of the bag now lol. But now I know.
I learned I was right to use another teflon sheet inside that zippered pouch. It was placed after the blow out paper, because I wasn’t sure about the material there and how it would react to heat. If it *did* melt a little, I didn’t want it sealing off this pocket and limiting the options I have for this bag.
I learned a lot. Not everything I did was a failure, I saved some of the project by making smart decisions. But other parts, I really messed up on, and learned from them. Knowing what NOT to do can be as important as knowing WHAT to do.
I have another bag like this. It’s for use in the car or for traveling so the labeling will be similar, but a little different. Now, I can take my mistakes and the knowledge they created, and apply it to this other bag 😀
Thanks for stopping by! Bandit and JJ appreciate everyone’s support on this journey ❤️
To find out more about our organization, you can visit us and check out the pups in our program here: Paws 4 Autism
To find out more about JJ and Bandit, you can find their page here: JJ’s Magic
ajdurrant 