Con­tin­u­ing with more of flow­ery crafts this week, and some sea crea­tures too — for the antic­i­pa­tion of sum­mer! :D

 

Anoth­er genius, sim­ple, and super adorable tuto­r­i­al from Ruf­fles and Stuff! Don’t even need to break out my nee­dles and thread for this one :D

 

The instruc­tion calls for flo­ral paper punch (a Martha Stew­art one, to be spe­cif­ic :P), but I think once the fab­ric is stiff­ened it would be easy to just hand cut these, no? How-to on the Martha web­site.

 

Also from the Martha web­site, these are quite addic­tive! It did take me a while to fig­ure out how to make them. It seems to me that the video (on the right side­bar of the Martha web­site) has left out a bunch of steps. I even­tu­al­ly gave up after watch­ing that same clip 5+ times and just tried to fig­ure it out by look­ing at the pic­ture (maybe I’m just dense…). But once I under­stood the struc­ture it was real­ly fun to make. I’ve made quite a few cards already, like this one from last week… in the mid­dle of mak­ing more…

 

A dain­ty flower brooch made from cro­chet­ing thread. Sim­ple and sweet. Pat­tern by Good­knits.

 

Also sweet is this clothes pin bun­ny. Tuto­r­i­al from Maya Made.

 

Anoth­er bril­liant use of every­day object — cork char­ac­ters! I espe­cial­ly love this nin­ja, but there are also pat­terns for a gnome and a knight. I can see the poten­tial of mak­ing a whole series of out­fits for the cork guys! I’m not a wine-drinker, but I have friends who appre­ci­ate a glass of red with the beef from time to time. I need to vis­it them more often. Pat­terns gen­er­ous­ly shared by Lucy Raven­scar.

 

A whale for hire! To store your head­phones and keep them clean and safe! It’s such an awe­some design it’s def­i­nite­ly worth more than the $3 down­load fee! If you pre­fer cro­chet­ing, like me (that’s because I can’t knit very well… but that’s anoth­er sto­ry), there’s a cro­chet ver­sion of the whale too! On Roman Sock.

 

How awe­some are these? Knit­ted nau­tilus! When I was a kid I went through this phase of obses­sion with fos­sils and pre­his­toric crea­tures (ok, I still let out a not-so-sub­tle squeal when I find rocks with fos­sils at the beach). I once want­ed to become an arche­ol­o­gist (ok, I still wish I were an arche­ol­o­gist). So, all that is to say that these belong on my couch. Pat­tern is free on Knit­ty, so all I need now is bet­ter knit­ting skills.

 

Saw this on Whip Up, which fea­tures a nice review on the book Pup­pet Play, where this cat pup­pet comes from. The cat pup­pet tuto­r­i­al is a sam­ple project, made with a sweater sleeve, a scarf, or a leg warmer.

 

I’ve always won­dered whether beets would make a good dye­ing, paint­ing, or print­ing mate­r­i­al, because it stains absolute­ly every­thing (espe­cial­ly the white chop­ping board). These love­ly beet prints are from My Lit­tle Hen.

 

These real­ly remind me of the leg­endary tur­duck­en. It’s a straw­ber­ry, stuffed with cake, and cov­ered in thick lay­er of choco­late. Though they are def­i­nite­ly more appeal­ing (to me, any­way) than the tur­duck­en. A very detailed tuto­r­i­al on 1 Fine Cook­ie.

 

Ok, humour me for a moment, and imag­ine that it’s rush hour, and you’re on a crowd­ed sub­way train, and you see that all around you are men and women dressed in pressed busi­ness suits wear­ing these face masks, nod­ding at their smart phones… That thought real­ly made me chuck­le when I first spot­ted the face mask sty­lus on Inspire Me Now.

 

On that note, have a fun-and-laugh­ter-filled week­end, every­one! :D