This last weekend my girls were invited to their first ever birthday party!  My girls are 2 and 1, but for some reason I felt at a complete loss trying to decide what to give this little boy for his first birthday.  Maybe because he’s a boy?  I don’t know what it was.

Here’s the thing about handmade gifts, if executed well it can be something special and mean more than a store-bought gift, and it’s usually a lot less expensive.  Our gift to Michael was quick and free, but Lenna got to be a part of the process.

I did make a few simple changes to the crayon stuffie for this toy.  Lenna is two and I think her drawings are adorable, but I didn’t want to gift a stuffed scribble.  To avoid that, I drew a dinosaur in pen, let her color, and then went over everything, my outline and her colorings, very darkly in the same color crayons.

When I transferred it to the fabric, I wanted the outline to be a bit darker, so I used black thread to machine stitch around the dinosaur and emphasize the dinosaur shape.

I loved the finished product, so much that neither Lenna or I wanted to give it away!  Don’t worry, we did, but we might be doing this again very soon for keeps.

click here for the original tutorial >>