Crafting 101

I found this bag online today over at Happy Together and had to share! She has a tutorial to make this really cool purse made out fabric scraps and a purse from the thrift store. Check out her blog to see how to make this! I plan on making one of these as this is a cool idea and neat way of using up all your scraps. I know I have a ton of scraps that I’m not using.

If you have little girls about to start school, here’s a cute way to use up some scraps of ribbon lying around in your stash.  This tutorial comes from The Long Thread and it looks super easy, super simple and fun! I think I will try this for my girls. Do you think it’ll help them to keep from losing them so fast? We shall see! It does give me another idea for gifts!

So, sorry for not posting much, been enjoying the summer a lot! Once school is back in session, I should be regular again with the posting. Hope you’re enjoying your summer!

Everyone loves a no-sew project, right? I do! This one is easy and it’s fun! I made a no-sew photo/memory board a few weeks ago for one of my girls. I have more materials to make more that I plan on selling. I also plan on making one for my classroom at church.

The materials are easy. You need cardboard, batting, material, ribbon, tacks and a hot glue gun. A iron is good too if you need to iron the material first.  You wrap the batting around the cardboard and wrap the fabric over the batting andhot glue it down. Just be sure to pull it tight! Then you run the ribbon across one direction and then the other, hot gluing the ends. Then use tacks to put the criss-crossed ribbons down. I put ribbon at the top to hang it up, but you can use whatever you wish.

That’s it! I took me just about an hour to make this one. They are easy and fun and there’s no sewing required! TTFN!

I love stumbling on new ideas! On of the many jobs I do online is answer questions for people online. One question I got was someone wanting to know of a craft to do under $5. I did a search and found one! This craft is awesome, it takes some time, but could be done while watching TV which is a good use of time. Check out the directions to make a coaster out of the curling ribbon that you get with balloons or use for gifts. This is really good for scraps.

It does take a few days to dry since you have to coat it, but otherwise, it would be done in less than an hour or so depending on how fast you go. Try this out and let me see how yours turns out! I have to get ribbon since I don’t have any right now to try, but all the supplies can be purchased for under $5 which is sooooo cool! TTFN!

So if you saw yesterday’s post about making the bag out of recycled jeans, check out what I put inside the bag! This bag was for my four year old friend Wyatt’s birthday. Being a boy, I had to be creative!

I decided to use old baby food jar lids to create a memory game. I took twenty jar lids and spray painted them yellow. It took a couple of coats. So when making this, the bag took me about an hour or so to make, the lids took several hours with all the drying so be prepared. You can start spraying the lids before making the bag if you want!

Anyways, while the paint dried, I went into my word processing program and made two circles, two triangles, two squares, two stars and two diamonds and then wrote out the numbers 1 - 5 putting each number twice. I colored them in and made them pretty, well, pretty for a boy! Make sure the objects are smaller than the jar lids inside, I measured the circle part that pops up when you open the jar. I then printed them out and usd my circle cutter to cut them out.

I used craft glue to glue the paper into each lid, but I think hot glue would work better. At least it would dry faster. I just couldn’t find my glue gun of course when I needed it! So you glue them in after the paint is all dry and once the glue is dry, you need to spray a clear coat on them. You can find this in the glue aisle of your craft store in a spray can. DO THIS OUTSIDE!!! You’ll regret the smell if you don’t! The clear coat is to keep the paint from chipping and it’ll seal the paper to the lid around the edges. The key is to spray not too close when doing the insides so it doesn’t ruin the paper. The clear coat needs to have three to four coats on each side so this will take a couple of hours.

Once everything is dry, I did all this in one day and let it dry overnight and it was fine for the next day, but adding an extra day would help it even more. But once it’s all dry, put the lids in the bag and voila! You have a cool and unique memory game! Good luck!

One of my four year old’s friends had a birthday the same week as she did. I’m always trying to find things to make for birthday’s and since this was a boy, well, that made it a challenge! I decided to make him a homemade Memory game.

It took several hours total, but that included waiting on spray paint to dry and a few coats of clear coat to dry. But the actually sewing took about an hour since I was working with jeans and doing this on the fly.

I took an old pair of jeans and cut the leg off a little under the knee. The key to this bag is to make sure you have a denim sewing needle and don’t sew on the hems or seams of the jeans. Your needle will break!

I turned it outside out and sewed a seam above the hem of the pants. Then I cut off the hem. You’re going to have a drawstring to the bag so you’ll need to turn the top over to create the hem at the top, but also to create the casing for your drawstring to go through. The trick with the casing is you end up having to cut a slit on the outside for the drawstring to go through. Since this is suppose to look like an old pair of jeans, you don’t have to worry about the slit where the drawstring is looking ragged.

Turn it right-side out and I ended up taking rope and hand stitching his initial to the front of the bag.  For the drawstring, I used the rope, I put it through it once, then took one end and ran it through again. That makes it draw up. To keep the ends from going back into the casing, I put buttons on the end. Gave it some class.

Tune in tomorrow to see how I did the rest…It’s fun and easy!

I always enjoy watching the movies that Threadbanger puts out each week. I usually learn something I haven’t seen before. They have cool videos and make what they are doing fun! Check out this video where the owner of Knit Knit Knits shows how to knit a triangle bikini top. It looks simple and she gives the equations so you can adjust the size to fit you!

I made these cute wall hangings a few weeks ago. Two are Hannah Montana and the other is High School Musical. The Hannah Montana ones were for one of Deanna’s friend’s birthday and the HSM one went to Deanna for her room which is decorated in HSM stuff. These originally came in a kit when I made their pillows for Valentine’s Day. But you can easily make these without a kit.

These are completely no-sew projects. I used iron on bonding stuff (I’m not sure the correct term!) to make these. All you need is whatever fabric you are going to use and a square piece of cardboard, probably a few of those if they aren’t too thick. You can also pick up about a one inch thick piece of foam board. You also need some ribbon to use to hang it up.

All I did was fold the fabric over the piece of foam board and used the iron on bonding tape to secure it. I used hot glue for the ribbon and folded it into the fabric so it would hold better. It probably took thirty minutes to do all three and it was fun! These make an easy and fun way to decorate a room and it’s so easy!

I went to the library Saturday to get a few sewing books. I want to make some more bags to sell and I wanted some ideas and such. I also was picking up the Sew What! Skirts book so I could make some more skirts and not keep my friend’s for weeks on end! Eventually I will buy the book to have it on my shelf!

Anyways, I picked up two other books, Hip Handbags: Creating &; Embellishing 40 Great-Looking Bags and Bend-the-Rules Sewing: The Essential Guide to a Whole New Way to Sew. Both have some awesome patterns in there and ideas on how to take one pattern and make different versions of it. I’m going to have some fun this week making bags! I will post all the ones I make plus all the bags I’m making will be going on my Etsy.com store for purchase. I have to start making some $$$ with my talent even though my DH is going crazy with the fabric in the house! But I did get some good deals at Wal-Mart so the damage wasn’t too bad!

Keep watching for more bags and purses and other objects to be made! TTFN!

Last night at church, I hung out in the nursery since I found out some classes were still going on and mine wasn’t! So I visited with my friends Christy and Sandi. Sandi brought something to do with her. She runs a Daisy Girl Scout troop and they learned to make what she called Sit Upons.

Basically, she got one huge table cloth and cut it into strips that looked like they were about 16 inches across and 30 or so inches long. She folded it in half and punched holes along each side except the folded side. She insert newspaper between the top and bottom for padding. Then she wove yarn through the holes in a whip-stitch pattern to close it up. Her Daisies did one side, she did another and at their next meeting, they’ll do the final side. They’ll take extra yarn or ribbon (she hadn’t decided) to make it to where they can tie it around their waist so anytime they’d need to sit down, like on the grass or bleachers, they’d have some place to sit.

I thought this was a really neat idea so I had to post it here.  I’m always looking for things to post about! If you want me to post about something you’ve done and post a link I’d be happy to do that! Just leave me a comment!

I found this online tonight while looking for something else and I thought, how cool is that! I absolutely love NCIS. I had never watched it before until Richard came home from his last deployment and now I’m hooked! But I found a crocheted Abby doll from NCIS. You can find the pattern here and it’s actually a combination of knitting and crochet so you get to do both at the same time! My husband loves Abby so I might make this for him. I searched online to see if I could find anyone who made any of the other characters, but did not find any. She looks fun to make!

So do you have any favorite character that has been made into either a crocheted or knitted doll? Maybe it was sewn? LMK and I’d be happy to post it here. I’m looking for content all the time.

On a side note, my novel is in the hands of three people total who are reading it and editing it for me. I’m looking forward to the critiques so I can polish it up and get it published. I still haven’t been able to think of a title, but maybe I’ll figure out something soon. I’ve already started the second book as a continuation so I know I need to add some things to the beginning of it in case someone picks up the second book first.

Well, thought you’d like this little fun pattern for today! TTFN!