Autumn Candle Glass

Want to catch some cozy autumn feeling in a glass?

I have found this great idea on some crafting blog. Sadly I lost the link when my old laptop crashed and I couldn't find it again.

So today I took a walk through the beautiful autumn forests and collected some coloured leaves.

I really love those on the left because they are bi-coloured. Also, I noticed that you get the most beauitfully coloured leaves from very young trees.

Well then I took them home, washed and dried them, and started crafting.

 I thought I could simply attach them to the glass with mod podge, but the surfaces really didn't work well together. Too smooth.

 So first I applied a whole layer of mod podge to the glass and the leaves I wanted to use and let them dry. Then I applied another thin layer on the leaves and attached them to the glass, holding a hairdryer in my mouth, directed at the leaf, while I pressed it onto the glass with both hands. Must have looked hilarious.

It really was a rather tricky procedure. But I love the result.

 I applied like two thick layers of the mod podge on top and probably will apply another one tomorrow. I just want to make sure everything it absolutely airtight and I hope this will prevent the colours from fading and the leaves from drying.

The glass on a mirror.

I think the yellow and red also make for a nice Christmas decoration.
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Donkey Piñata Time!

I made a piñata! Yay!

I wanted to make one for some time now and last week I spontaneously decided to try it for a birthday. Since I had no experience whatsoever I decided on a rather simple design without any fancy extras such as limbs.

The inspiration was my favourite star model: Eselchen

All I used was a balloon, an IKEA catalogue (I didn't have regular newspaper D:), and acrylic colours.

For the glue I tried a simple recipe I found on the internet. One part flour, two parts water. Didn't work too well, so I added decoupage glue-lacquer to it and it worked just great.

I really wouldn't recommend shiny catalogue paper. Real newspaper is the best because it soaks through really fast and is very hard when the glue-mix is dried, but I had to make do with what I had at home.

I made about 5 - 7 layers, I think, and it had some stability in the end, but not as much as it would have had with newspaper. When everything is dry you can make the balloon pop.
But seriously, make sure it's dry, otherwise the air that is forced out by the explosion might blast a hole or two into the damn thing :D.

I used some paper to form the ears, painted them, and attached them to the painted "head" afterwards.

After the colour had dried I filled it with sweets
When I bought all that stuff the cashier asked me if I were preparing for Halloween... what a funny woman! I don't share my chocolate with strangers :p

I couldn't figure out an intelligent way to create a construction to hang it up on. But then again it's too cute to beat it with a stick anyway.
I have a tendency to make things that are too cute to throw away but too useless to keep. But in any case, you can use it as a vault for sweeeets and chocolate :D

"Am I not cute?"

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Anniversary Quilt

My very first quilt project was to be an anniversary quilt for my parents. I wanted it to be SO awesome, but it turned out to be harder and more time-consuming than I thought. It sure isn't perfect and I'm not really satisfied, but I think it is presentable and my parents were very happy about it - which was the intention really. So I didn't totally fail :) And I sure learned a lot.

This project was planned some time in advance and I worked on it over a long period of time with long breaks in between. So no picture tutorial, sorry. But the text will reveal some of the problems I had in the process and might be helpful for starters who don't want to make the same mistakes as I did.

Of course I first made a lot of sketches with elaborate quilting patterns until I realised that I should probably start with something simple. But even those rectangles didn't quite turn out as I had planned them.

Then I went to buy fabric. And believe me, quilting fabric and wadding for a 2x2m quilt is not quite cheap x_X But it was a special present, so I wanted to use good fabrics.
I think I screwed up the colour mix and pattern a bit, especially with that ochre-coloured fabric. Oh well...

Then I started to cut the rectangles.

Please, if you ever cut fabric for quilting.... use a template to draw the pattern onto the fabric, use a rotary cutter for cutting. I HAD a pattern, but missed out on the seam allowance, so I added that by guessing. Of course, it became irregular. And I didn't have a rotary cutter. Two mistakes I WILL NEVER MAKE AGAIN.

It could have saved me so much pain to just cut a new template, but I was too eager to start.
Damn you, enthusiasm!

Here's the crumply quilt in all its mighty glory. After I had cut out all the rectangles, I sewed them together. The borderlines don't fit exactly because of my guessing work on the seam allowance. Meh.

Afterwards I ordered a very large and very warm and plushie microfibre blanket from ebay for the backing of the quilt. I adjusted all three layers - the backing, the wadding, and on top the.. well, top of the quilt, the patterned fabric. I secured them with saftey pins and started to sew all of it together.

First all horizontal lines, then all vertical lines. Of course always along the lines on the fabric, which didn't always work, but most of the times.

At the end it became quite difficult to fit everything under my sewing machine. And I'm glad about that walking foot I bought two years ago.

After I had sewn all the lines, only the borders were still open. That's when I discoevered I had to sew 50% of the binding by hand x_x That's about 8 meters!!!
Anyway, I found this tutorial incredibly helpful.
Since it couldn't be helped, I sewed the rest of the binding by hand. And surprisingly enough it took me only two long evenings. And was kind of satisfying... really.

And the icing on the cake is the "25" I stitched into one corner of the quilt, which took me another two evenings. Without an embroidery frame. Again, something I won't do again.

Although the fabric is a little crumply around the edges, I still think the 25 turned out beautifully, I really like it.

Actually, I like the whole damn thing because its cozy and incredibly warm and it doesn't fall apart :'D

I sure will do more quilting projects now that I know which mistakes to avoid, but not until I bought a rotary cutter and a cutting mat. Seriously.

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More Papercraft: Gift Boxes and Pencil Box

I recently made two gift boxes for friends' birthdays. Actually, you can never have too many boxes, can you?
It's easy as pie and I used the same technique as with the cardboard drawer.

Here's what I used... default boxes and paper from the crafting store.

Before applying the paper I painted them with brown acrylic paint. I just thought it has a nicer look and texture.

Afterwards I really just cut out paper, glues it to the boxes with the glue-lacquer and occasionally added some fancy.

#1

#2


Duh... the lid has eight sides I made take a picture of the one where the ends of the paper strip meet... Yeah, that's me.

 Inside this one is some leftover and very nice petrol fabric and a kind of pocket watch on a necklace.

The second project was the pencil box. I had this one for ages, really. It was still fine, just needed a new look.

That's it. More papercraft sure to come! Follow me

Penroll / Brushroll

Hey.
Here comes my little tutorial for sewing a penroll or a brushroll.
It's very nifty and cute as well. And the best: very easy to sew.




I settled for a plain black fabric on the one, and a fancy red fabric with black velvet on the other side.

At first, you have to cut two squares (or rectangles close to suqares) of your preferred size. Mine were about 30 x 30 cm long. Then you have to sew the left sides together as if you were making a pillow slip.
Then you turn your piece to the right side and iron it.
Now you decide what should be your outer and your inner colour for the roll.
My outer fabric is the red one.
Lay the piece on the ground so that you only see the inner side and fold it so that you have about 20 cm of your outer fabric now on the inner side.
Sew the edges.
Then you decide how large your pipes for the pens or brushes should be (I made different sizes) and you sew a straight line on the 20cm where the back (outer side) is on the front.
Nearly done. Just add a ribbon on one side so that you can tie the roll later.

Here is a visual instruction:


Have fun sewing!

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DO THE KLIMT

I just reported of the cheap crafting sets...Here is the result






Here a photo of the whole set.... the things are worth a lot more than 4€ I'd say.



And this is what I made of it. Really like it...beautiful for jewellery... and Klimt is one of my favourite artists, I like Art Decó very much.





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For all Crafing-People a shopping hint: At the cheap store "Zeemann" you can buy now Crafting Sets for only 4 Euro from a good crafting supplier called Crea Donna (see, only for women XD)
The Items are normally pretty expensive (like varnish or colour from Marabu)
I bought Sets for
- jewellery box with Klimt Napkin-Technique
- Picture Frame with Craquelée technique with potpurri
- Ceramic figures from natural elemetss (like a bowl that looks like a lettuce leaf)

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Steampunk Clock

Sometimes I create things that simply turn out to look crappy when I'm done. I usually throw them away. This time I created something that didn't work. I decided to post it anyway because it still looks pretty, which makes it even worse because it's useless :/



This was supposed to be a birthday gift for a friend, and it worked fine until I decided to disassemble it...

The watch was a giveaway, but it has a Quartz clockwork, so I thought it would be rather long-living.



 I bought some nice steampunk-themed paperr, took off the clockhand and started to decorate the watch. Really very easy, nothing elaborate. Afterwards I drew the 3, 6, 9 and 12 onto it.
 Then I bought a new set of clockhands and added them.
I put the battery back in and that's where it stopped working.



I don't know what went wrong, it worked perfectly before that. Maybe some of the glue got into the clockwork but I don't think that's possible. Anyway, it's broken and makes for nothing more than decoration now.



Well, I guess things like that just happen.


I eventually decided to hang it on my wall anyway since it's too pretty to gather dust in some corner :D Also, it goes well with my Mucha posters. Follow me

Skirt Alert

I wanted to post some pictures of my skirts for ages now, but somehow I forgot to... Anyway, here are my two latest pieces, very very simple, and no tutorial. However, it's very easy to figure them out for yourself.



The first one I made last autumn or winter. It's a very soft and thick cotton skirt and I have to admit it's my favourite since the first time I wore it. And the pattern is lovely, though I wasn't sure about that back when I bought it.



Sorry for the bad image quality ^^;

As you can see in the picture below it's simply a square to which I attached two trapezes (no rectangles because of the slanted hip line).
Finally I just added a zipper. Done!



The second one is a double-layered skirt made of creme-coloured cotton with a lovely flower or rose print on it. The underlying layer is made of creme-coloured IKEA cotton fabric. It's nice because it's robust and cheap, but I won't use it again for a visible layer because it crinkles heavily and I hate to iron my clothes. Such a waste of time...



It's really just 4 trapezes again (two for each layer) with a zipper at one side and one layer being, obviously, longer than the other one.



Love the pattern!

That's it :'D More to come? We'll see. The next weeks I'll be busy working on the axolotl tutorial and on sewing my very first quilt. The fabric I've bought so far already makes me despair. Lot of fun ahead! Follow me

Kitchen Wall Decoration

Sometimes I get the inner urge to decorate something new....



Last week I walked through the household section of the local "Müller" store and fell in love with some decoration elements in light brown with antique forks and knifes. I like this motive since I got napkins for my birthday with this motive.
I bought a little cupboard for kitchen utensils (only 6€, reduced ^^) an the canvas (3€, also reduced) and for the background I took silk paper from "Galeria-Kaufhof" since I have no possibility to get real wallpaper here in Halle without a car.
I really like the result. ^^

[PS: The rest of my kitchen looks very ugly, so at least this side had to become pretty]






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Book purse

As some of you may know, I make my income supporting my studies by making purses out of books.
Well, as I don't want to adorn myself with borrowed plumes, I have to admit that this beautiful accesoire is very common in the United States.
If you want to sew such a purse too, just look behind the curtain.



I think it's pretty easy to sew such a purse.
At first, you look for a very beautiful old book and some fabric (about 40 x 110 cm) thats fits to the cover of the book. Cut out the pages with a safety knife and keep it for further information ;-) Also you need about 1,50 of cord and other things you see in the picture:



Now we need a pattern. Use baking paper. I normally take the normal size of the book when its opened, add 1 cm seam allowance and then we put wings in the middle of the book, wide as the spine of the book an the sides have to be as long as the half of the long side of the book minus the half of the spine. Then draw a line at each side with around 65 degrees, you may need a set square to be exact. Also add a litte seam allowance here around the wings.


Then cut out the pattern, put it on the doubled fabric an eventually use "flieseline" on top to make it a bit stiffer.

Cut out the pattern with the fabric and don't forget to have four squares to attach the handles.

Iron the fabric with the Flieseline, sew the sides of the squares together and turn it around to the right side, also iron it.
Now we need the glue. Put a small amount of glue in the corners of the book and blur it with a Q-tip, put the strips on and give some glue onto them, to attach the cord on them as handles, close the strips an glue them on the book. (pew, that was hard to describe)
Then make it fix with clamps.

Now we sew the inlay. Put the fabric together so that the wrong sides look at each other and sew around the borders, leave a little hole.

Now make a little crop with a scissor in every corner which goes inside, that there are no wrinkles later on.

Now we turn the inlay to the right side by pulling one wing through the hole on the other side and also the rest. Now we iron again to have the inlay flat.

Attach the wings on the sides by sewing with a criss-cross-stitch and you get an inlay that looks like a hat XD.


It's nearly done. Just glue the inlay into the book.

Also fix with clamps and let it dry.

To close the purse, you can use satin bands and make a ribbon, or buttons on the one side and an elastic on the other. I normally make a "tongue" where i put a magnet inside and another magnet on the front of the book inside.

There are a lot of variations to make it pretty.

Thats the result:


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Doily bowls

Heyho, this is my first contribution to the blog.
As easter is coming, I wanted to craft something for my family and I found an instruction for beautiful little bowls.



At first, I bought some air-drying clay and a cute doily, the latter was hard to get. I looked for it in every 1€-shop in Halle and found nothing, till I had the idea to go to an antique shop where they had the famous "Plauener Spitze" even for a good price.
So at first, you get something to put under the clay, then you roll it out with a rolling pin till it's very flat, but not too flat to break later. Then you get a small dish to get the round shape and you cut it out with a stump knife and remove the rest.
After this, put on the doily, but do not cover the clay fully, I let the doily cover around two thirds of the circle and then you use the rolling pin again to get the pattern into the clay.
So, it's nearly done. Just put the clay circle into another bowl and let it dry (mine was about 24 hours).
If you like, you can use a rasp to make the edges a bit smoother, but be careful!
Finally, I had some spray-on white I used to make the "not so white"-white of the clay a bit brighter.
My clay was enough for 5 bowls.
I will decorate these bowls with some light-green grass for easter and some chocolate eggs to have a pretty nest.

Here the original DIY from Dawanda.

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