My Camera Fund Gets A Home

Are you good at saving? Well, I am good at cheapskating, but the money that I save usually then gets spent on other unnecessary must-have items. But now I have this dream of upgrading my camera kit with some truly professional gear, and that doesn't come cheap :-(. Despite wanting it very, very baaaaaaaaaaaaadly, I knew I had to give myself some extra motivation to put money aside. And so I set about making myself a money box that will be nicely and proudly displayed near my workspace, reminding me day in, day out, that I am not to buy another interior design mag, the 31st white cream jug for my collection or yet another pair of shoes.

I can't resist anything but temptation nice tin boxes. This one was a filled with yummy orange flavour, dark chocolate from a classy chocolate company in my home town. Design-wise not that exciting, though, but too nice to throw out. (Hehe, in the reflection you can see me taking the picture...)

So instead I took a can of spray-paint to it, in my signature red. Gave it about four coats until the black background didn't show through anymore.

And then I set about decorating the tin. As this is a treasure box, it seemed only fitting to adorn the lid with gemstones and pearls. I stuck loads of little diamond-y stickers (from scrapbook supplies) on it to hide imperfections in the coat of paint. Centrepiece is a dome-shaped bead ball. (Read more about them here.)

I really love it when the insides of things are decorated, too - you know, wallpapered cupboards, paper-lined drawers etc. Such a nice suprise when you open it up... So I quickly threw a few photography-related images together, and cut them out.






 So grow, camera fund, grow... still a couple of grand to go.

Best,

1 is such a lonely number

I have a tendency to get obsessed. If I get interested in something, I immerse myself in it from tip to toe. Luckily my attention span is short, so it never develops into an unhealthy long obsession. This applies to crafting, too, where this week I wouldn't rest until I had made another cushion.

You can't have just one cushion on a sofa. And textured cushions are a big thing at the mo. I had in fact collected a number of ideas recently from magazines. Do you also have that habit? I cut out little snippets from my mags and then duly forget about them and design my own thing. I may still copy one of them - here are the inspirations:

And since another inlet cushion was at hand and I still had some red felt left over, I set about thinking up another cushion design. Does this come across slightly Christmas-sy? Looks like a pressie, doesn't it? Well, that is intentional, because I used some red satin ribbon for decoration. Like the Retro-Style Cushion from a few days ago, this is a really quick and easy sewing projects for beginners. Didn't take more than an hour to complete.

First of all I cut my material to size again. Then I sewed the ribbon onto the felt. I didn't even bother pinning it onto the fabric - it was much easier bunching it up as I went along. You can see in the picture on the right how I did it.

I sewed on two lengths of ribbon in a cross-shape across the fabric. Make sure you sew the ribbon no closer than 1cm to the edge.

Just for the fun of it I let the ends of the ribbon hang over the sides a bit. Hm, do they look like snake tongues?

Then it was time to make the actual cushion. Folding the material right-on-right, I pinned the two opposite open sides together. I also had to pin the snake tongues back onto the ribbon loops, just to make sure I didn't sew them into the cushion.

I sewed round three sides, leaving one side open to slide the inlet in.

Just like the retro cushion, I closed the cushion by folding in the remaining open side and then sewing across it and around the cushion edge to create a piping effect.









So there we are - another red cushion for the red sofa. Another one for cuddling up in front of the fire with.

I still have some red felt left over. Another red cushion? Or should I break the cycle and use some chocolate brown felt instead? In any case, I am hooked...

Best,




Linking to:     Metamorphosis Monday @ Between Naps on the Porch   Make it 4 Monday @ Cottage Instincts
Craft Link Party @ Polly Want a Crafter

 

Well Cushioned

I am well-cushioned. Always have been, always will be. I have made my peace with that. And now I have a beautiful new cushion. No, I didn't gain another stone (6,35 kilograms for those of us who do not live in the British Empire anymore...), but I just completed a little home decor project: a bright, red retro cushion.

This is one of the easiest sewing projects ever. Just the right kind of project for messy, lazy impatient crafters like yours truly. Honestly, this is so mind-blowingly simple, you'll get this finished quicker than the time it takes to choose and buy a fancy cushion in the shops. Here's what I did:

I started out measuring my inlet cushion which I had picked up in the Ikea bargain corner for a mere € 1.40 (price tag still visible in shot... um).
Lazy craftress that I am, I chose some red felt as the material for my cushion. The reason: Felt does not fray, therefore you can create all those little circles without having to hem them (unless you like the frayed look and therefore deliberately choose proper fabric...)

Next I cut my red felt to size. Again making it easiest for myself, I cut it in rectangular shape so that the material could be folded in half and I would only have to sew along three sides... (Maybe I should have ironed the material, but hey... will get creases anyway...)

Then came the most time-consuming part: Cutting out the shapes that will give texture and interest to the cushion. I decided on felt circles in three sizes. I simply used three different size glasses to trace the shapes from. Liqueur glass, whiskey glass, pint glass (- please note: no alcohol was consumed during the making of this cushion...)

In total I cut out 60 circles for my cushion - and in the process permanently damaged my right index finger. It is still completely devoid of feeling... *eek*

Some of the circles I cut from brown felt, just to add some extra interest to the design and create a retro feel. Then I played around with the arrangement on the fabric.

I didn't bother to pin the circles onto the felt. Ok, my excuse was that I didn't want holes from the pins in the felt, but really, I was just a lazy bum seamstress. And since laziness is a recurring theme in this blog post, I also didn't take pictures of the sewing of the cushion. It is pretty obvious anyway: I sewed straight lines across the centre of the circles.

Then I folded the material over, right on right and sewed down the two opposite, open sides. After turning the bag-shaped cover over, I pushed the cushion inside. Then I sewed along the remaining open side to close the cushion.

That, of course, left a visible seam, so I continued to sew along the edge of the other three sides, just to give it the illusion of piping. Et voilá, that's it.

Added cost of this cushion: about € 5.00 including inlet. It has already got a new fan who likes cuddling up next to it... And I'll probably make a couple more to "dress" my couch.

Best,




Linking to: 

 

Make your Own Business Cards

My crafty enterprises are not a business but a hobby. And yet I had great fun making some business cards for me the other day.

Yep, you can have them printed very cheaply. But you can also have the fun of designing them yourself. Plenty of templates available in MS Publisher or any other desktop publishing programme. Ok, yeah, takes a bit of time to print and cut, but at least it is fully to your own specifications.

I even printed a nice design on the back of the card - not my own, of course, but a downloaded Chiyogami design from Canon Creative Park.

Happy designing, everyone!

 Best,

A First Commission

Over the weekend I worked on a project - my first commissioned piece. The friend who is selling pretzels on the market here in Dublin and for whom I produced loads of gingerbread heart pins (see the how to here and more pics here) challenged me with a request for a sign/flag for her stall. Now, I am not the most gifted seamstress ever. I am good at straight lines; appliquéing usually ends in desaster. But I was willing to give it a go. And I was surprised by the relative presentable-ness of the outcome.

I started out with an old promotional flag that is based around the colours of the Bavarian flag. I cut off one third off the bottom, dissembled the dowel from the top and sewed a new insert for the dowel at the top of my offcut.

Next I free-handed a pretzel on some newspaper to create a template and cut it out.

Then I put my template on some brown felt and traced around it with chalk to transfer it to the fabric. (Mental note: Should really invest in some taylor's chalk - I had to fall back on my left-over chalk sticks from my days as a teacher... Yes - that was aeons ago, quite clearly in the days before interactive whiteboards, when teachers still used such archaic means of communications as blackboards and chalk *LOL*)

Here is the pretzel on felt:

Before I sewed the pretzel cut-out onto the flag, I used some left-over fluffy paint to create the little salt crystals that adorn pretzels.This demanded letting the paint dry for about six hours, during which I attended a pub quiz, met with friends and drank a couple of  G&Ts (sorry, illustration for latter had to be censored...)

Next morning, after fluffing the paint in the oven, came the difficult bit: Sewing the pretzel onto the flag. I am notoriously lazy - and since I didn't want to go upstairs to get more pins, I messed up my first attempt at fixing the pretzel onto the fabric. What's the proverb: "A stitch in time saves nine"? Yeah, very true! After sewing around half the pretzel, the fabric underneath was all wrinkly and scrunched because I had not used enough pins to fix the felt onto the flag and it had moved all over the place. So I had to re-do it and pin it on properly...

I found it worked best to start sewing around the inside bits first and then finally going around the outside of the pretzel shape. The machine didn't even mind sewing over the paint blobs.

Finally, I reassembled the dowel, fixed the string, and ready. So here is the pretzel flag which will now hopefully grace the pretzel stall at the Oktoberfest:

I am quite happy with that for a start.

Best,