very small card holder

i have been having some rather entrepreneurial thoughts lately, awesome ideas that were going to make me my millions by crafting for maybe an afternoon a week. one such idea was that i was going to make baby dresses - people spend a ton on them and they use up very little fabric, however, now that the fabric i've been ordering has stared to arrive.....i just want to make myself things! plus, people who don't have babies but do have lots of baby dresses can be a bit strange. so! i was having a browse online to see what people make with pretty fat quarters, and found a super quick and easy card holder by the lady at the crafty cupboard (that was a link to the instructions). here's my one:

it uses almost no fabric. which makes this almost free as i used a tiny bit from a green fat quarter i picked up off etsy for something like 87p, and an even smaller piece from a pink fat quarter which i grabbed at work for £1. i did use wadding instead of fusible fleece, because, well, i had no fusible fleece and wadding worked out great : ) also i made one pocket longer than the other so the most frequently needed cards are easier to get to than say, the loyalty cards and tickets and gumpf:

the only thing i would change is that i would make the pockets just a tiny bit bigger as at present they won't hold more than like 4 cards each, though i guess that's probably enough for the essentials.

coptic/exposed tape book binding!

hello again! it's been a while but i'm back and full of crafty ideas and ambitions : ) one of which is to get really good at book binding....partly because i am prone to parting with quite a lot of money when i spy a pretty notebook, but mostly because i saw some really cool ones on folksy.

my fist attempt was just to get my head around the basic stitching, which i can only describe as being something between embroidery chain stitch and and a crochet chain. there are already lots of good tutorials, youtube videos etc. online explaining how it works (here's good), they all make it look and sound far more complicated than it is, just stick with it a bit and you'll be fine. my first one looks like this:

(please excuse the chipped nail polish!)

it went quite well so i am rather pleased, however i did make a few mistakes - i made the covers the same size as the pages...so they're a tad too small really, also, the card i used was quite thin, which resulted in it having a slightly less-than-professional feel to it. but the fabric i covered it with is cool so that kind of makes up for it:

also, not having a guillotine meant that it took a while to sort the pages, and that when they were folded into groups, the pages stuck out more towards the centre of each grouping than at the edges. this lead to my second attempt, which involved larger, stiffer covers and a quick borrow of my work's guillotine:

it's square, black, has black pages and incorporates velvet ribbon in the spine. the tape method here involves laying a piece of ribbon across the spines of your pages, doing a large stitch over it for a few spines, once you've done 3 or 4, the next one you use to tie the others together to make a sort of cluster....ok, my descriptive abilities are not on top form today. it looks like this:

to be honest, so long as the holes you've pierced in your pages all line up, you could do any kind of stitching and it'll probably look quite good. plus it's fun, fairly cheap as far as crafts go, and you end up with an almost gender-neutral and useful thing to keep or give : )

vintage style yarn wreath with felt birds

another piece of work i took home to do, my brief was to make a wedding/spring wreath. i didn't think the traditional spring pastel colours really lent themselves well to a wedding theme, so i went with a more vintagy thing instead...at which point i learnt just how hard it is to make things look 'vintage' without making them look 'old-womany'. here;s how it went:

i wrapped (very cheap) cream wool around the polystyrene ring, used sequin pins to attach peach coloured pearl beads all over and glue-gunned peach roses and a mossy-green bow to the bottom of it. next came the hard bit - what sort of birds won't make this all look terribly old ladyesque? i tried needle felting a couple first, that was a mistake, then i tried crochet lace, they were even worse, i mean, in there own right they were very pretty, but on the wreath they looked awful. so i did some minimalist dove type things out of felt with a bit of lace ribbon along the edges of the wings...i think i might have gotten away with it : s

vintage style mother's day cards

work sent me home with a little do craft mother's day card pack, it makes two cards....these are not quite the cards given on the label, but with some artistic licence, and some ribbons and bits, i made these:

they're somewhat super cheesy : ) but that's kind of what i was going for so i guess that means they're a success. buttons, ribbons, lace and doilies seem to be the thing at the moment, one thing i will say; double sided sticky tape - it doesn't stick things to velvet for very long, use wet glue instead.

felt 'love letter' envelope clutch bag

it's a bit silly, and would benefit from some pretty lining fabric to make to a tad more professional looking, but here's a little something i made earlier:

i'm not sure this is sophisticated enough to merit instructions - it's a very simple bag made from felt, sewn together with big running stitch. but it makes me happy so i thought i'd put it up : )

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revised on 25.03.2013

here's a little doodle of the net for the bag, just pin together and hand stitch about 5mm from the edge in running stitch with embroidery thread : ) enjoy!

'manly' DIY felt microwavable hand warmers

we may technically be in spring at the moment, but i'm in scotland, so it's still sub-zero here. i've seen quite a few of these hand warmers online, but so far they've mostly been more than a little bit girly. i wanted to make my boyfriend a pair that wouldn't be too embarrassing for him (crafting things for boys is so hard!) here's what i came up with:

ok, so the heart kind of defeats the object of the thing, but you could totally omit that bit.

i used: scissors, a sheet of grey felt, black embroidery thread, a needle with a large eye, some rice (and a bit of pink felt for the heart).

time: not that long, if you're good at blanket stitch then you can make these while watching tv.

step 1: cut out four matching rectangles form the felt, use your palm as a guide as to size.
step 2: blanket stitch two together, leaving a gap to pour the rice into.
step 3: pour in the rice - don't totally fill as you want it to be a bit bean-bagy.
step 4: continue with the blanket stitch until the while thing is sealed and tie off
(repeat steps 2 to 4 for the other one)
step 5: microwave for about 20 seconds on high and slip into gloves or pockets for cozy hands : )

using sharpie pens on ceramics - it's all lies!

i, like so many others, was delighted to hear that one can draw onto glazed ceramics with sharpies, which, after baking at 180 for half an hour, become permanent. they don't. which is awful! i spent ages on these:

i didn't put them through the dishwasher or anything, and they were left to dry, but white wine became orange in the octopus tea cup, the image now all but gone, and my doodle of russel's teapot was wiped away with the most gentle of sponges : ( fail! i didn't take pictures of the destroyed work, it was too depressing.