new year, new wallpaper! :D

I was feel­ing very proud of this fluffy wreath and its mer­ry mush­room friends (which I made from a giant pipe clean­er and wine corks), and Mike kind­ly took real­ly nice pho­tos of them and made it into a desk­top wall­pa­per for me, thought I’d share it with you! :D 

Just click on the size you want and it should bring up an image that you can save.

iPad

iPhone

Desk­top

Wish­ing every­one a very hap­py new year! May 2017 bring much joy, lots of crafty adven­tures and many blessings :)

 

happy Christmas everybody! :D

Wish­ing every­one a joy­ous hol­i­day and many bless­ings for the new year!

 

And here’s a bit of behind-the-scene with this greet­ing card… every year Mike and I make Christ­mas cards togeth­er to send to friends and fam­i­ly. It’s a bit of a tra­di­tion of ours. This year we came up with the jel­ly­fish idea. We thought about lino block prints (which we may still try anoth­er year) and sim­ply print­ing an image from the com­put­er. Even­tu­al­ly we ran out of time, so I just thought I’d try my hands on what­ev­er we had in the house, which was an eras­er and a big old util­i­ty knife. 

Turned out not so bad did­n’t it? :D I’m quite proud of it actu­al­ly. I also carved the hol­ly stamp, and the berries are stamped with the end of a bam­boo skew­er. Mike typed the text with his grand­moth­er’s type writer.

Cheers to anoth­er year of sim­ple joys, new adven­tures and shared journey! :) 

 

this week’s awesome finds

For some­thing dif­fer­ent under the tree, make a glow­ing igloo vil­lage! From Miss Red Fox.

 

Socks knit­ted on 2 nee­dles! I’m intrigued by its origa­mi-like con­struc­tion. From Zoom Yum­my.

 

Sweet mini teacup orna­ments, for the tea lovers in our lives. From Thirsty for Tea.

 

Sim­ply fluffy yarn wreath, from A Beau­ti­ful Mess.

 

Also some­thing dif­fer­ent under the tree — a donut tree skirt! And no sew! From Cur­bly.

 

A cozy plaid slouchy hat, pat­tern from Whis­tle & Ivy.

 

Cheers! :D

 

a merry fluffy Christmas

Our decor is pret­ty min­i­mal this year but it does­n’t mean that it’s any less fun!

I was hop­ing to replace the paper flower wreath on our apart­ment door (which cov­ers up a half-peeled/­dis­in­te­grat­ing Neigh­bour­hood Watch stick­er), and I’ve been want­i­ng to make a pom pom wreath, but I know that I would­n’t have time to make all the pom poms. While brows­ing at Michaels I saw this giant, the most fluffy pipe clean­er, so I thought I’d try twist­ing it into a wreath! 

At first I was just going to twist it into a sim­ple, round wreath, with mush­rooms made of wine corks that I’ve been sav­ing for that pur­pose. But then I thought, what if the wreath has arms? What if it’s a wreath-shaped crea­ture? So the fluffy wreath with its mush­room friends were born :D

I’m only show­ing a close up of the wreath right now because these friends deserve their own post, so stay tuned! :D

(The wreath end­ed up on the wall inside the apart­ment because I could­n’t bear to leave them on the out­side of our door in the hallway)

The left over pipe clean­er turned into a tiny Christ­mas tree :D with a very excit­ed Totoro.

But we still need­ed some­thing fes­tive on our door. So I final­ly made the delight­ful plum pud­ding pom pom from Fleur Berna­dine! There are a num­ber of plum pud­ding pom pom tuto­ri­als out there, but I love that this one incor­po­rates a but­ton at the top. 

The fluffy plum pud­ding cer­tain­ly brings some hol­i­day cheers to the cur­rent­ly very grim-look­ing hall­way, which is cur­rent­ly under­go­ing ren­o­va­tion (please excuse the poor lighting).

I don’t have a pom pom mak­er so I made one with card­board using this tuto­r­i­al, which is very handy with tem­plates for dif­fer­ent sizes of pom poms. But it turns out to be quite chal­leng­ing (per­haps because it was my first time try­ing to use a home­made pom pom mak­er and I had dull scis­sors). Maybe I’ll invest in a pom pom mak­er. Just think about all the pos­si­bil­i­ties that pom poms can make! Pom pom ani­mals, pom pom fruits, pom pom wreath…

Mer­ry craft­ing! :D

 

the most sincere socks

photo-2016-12-05-11-09-36-am-1

‘Tis the count­down to Christ­mas, I thought I’d share a most sin­cere idea for the most prac­ti­cal gift. Who does­n’t need an extra pair of socks? Great alter­na­tive to choco­late cov­ered marsh­mal­low San­tas when you need to get an under $5 secret San­ta gift. 

The pom pom on top is actu­al­ly a fun fes­tive hair tie! I’ll show you how I made that as well.

I got a pack of 5 reused yarn socks from MUJI, they’re soft and love­ly (not to men­tion that it’s such a nice relax­ing expe­ri­enc­ing when brows­ing around at the MUJI store) and cost around $20 CAD, which rounds out to about $4 a pair. 

This is super sim­ple and involves things that you prob­a­bly have stashed away at home if you’re a crafter:

  • A new pair of socks in cup­cake colour
  • An elas­tic band
  • Light card stock or scrap­book­ing paper (I bought a sheet of gold metal­lic paper from Michaels for 99 cents)
  • Cup­cake wrap­per tem­plate (there are tons of print­able tem­plates out there, I can’t seem to find the one I used >_<, but this one seems just as great)
  • Scis­sors
  • Scotch tape
  • Mug of tea (essen­tial!)

Here we have our pair of socks, and the elas­tic band.

photo-2016-12-05-10-05-19-am

With the socks stacked togeth­er, fold them in half length­wise. The heels will stick out but that’s ok.

photo-2016-12-05-10-06-03-am

Start­ing from the cuff end, roll up the socks.

photo-2016-12-05-10-06-40-am

Secure the sock roll with elas­tic band.

photo-2016-12-05-10-07-11-am

Have a sip of tea. Trans­fer cup­cake wrap­per pat­tern onto the back of card stock / scrap­book­ing paper, and cut out the pattern.

photo-2016-12-05-10-13-58-am

Wrap the wrap­per around the sock roll, and secure with a piece of tape.

photo-2016-12-05-10-15-33-am

Repeat with all the pairs of socks you’ve got and set them aside.

photo-2016-12-05-10-23-12-am

Now we make the pom pom hair tie :D 

I used: 

  • A fork
  • Small amount of red worsted weight yarn 
  • Small amount of spark­ly sil­ver yarn (for a fes­tive touch)
  • Scis­sors
  • Hair elas­tics
  • Fab­ric glue (great to have, but not essential)

Using a fork to make small pom poms isn’t my orig­i­nal idea. There are a few tuto­ri­als out there, like this one from Eskim­i­mi Makes.

Basi­cal­ly, you would wind the yarn around the prongs of the fork (as you can see I used two dif­fer­ent yarns, and I cut off a length of the sil­ver yarn for wind­ing, rather than wind­ing direct­ly from the skein, to make things easier)…

photo-2016-12-05-10-27-02-am-1

… after you’re done wind­ing, cut yarn. Then cut a length of red yarn about 6 inch­es long, and tie the yarn around the mid­dle by thread­ing one yarn end through the base of the 2nd and 3rd prongs of the fork, and the oth­er yarn end between the 2nd and 3rd prongs at the tip.

Trim the pom pom but leave the tying yarn long.

photo-2016-12-05-10-35-35-am

Using the tying yarn, tie the pom pom to the hair elas­tic with dou­ble knot. Apply a dab of fab­ric glue (if you have it) to the knot to extra secure it.

photo-2016-12-05-10-37-45-am

Here we have our cup­cake top­pings! I also bought these adorable straw­ber­ry bells from Etsy sell­er Mim­iLo­lo, I attached them to cell phone charm hang­ers (not sure if they’re called that, but you know what I mean), thought they’d make great zip­per pull or fes­tive back­pack orna­ments! :D

If you know that the gift recip­i­ent won’t like hair ties or zip­per pulls, a sim­ple Toot­sie Pop might make the best alter­na­tive topping.

photo-2016-12-05-10-53-11-am

I pulled the hair elas­tic / cell phone charm hang­er through the mid­dle of the sock rolls using a cro­chet hook.

photo-2016-12-05-10-54-44-am

Ta-da! The most sin­cere socks of them all! Linus would be proud. (see It’s the Great Pump­kin, Char­lie Brown)

photo-2016-12-05-11-48-23-am

I put some of them in recy­cled pack­ag­ing from gift soaps.

photo-2016-12-05-11-12-43-am

And I made a flat-bot­tom gift bag with wrap­ping paper fol­low­ing this tuto­r­i­al. I then fold­ed the top down, punched two holes at the top through all lay­ers, thread­ed a fan­cy string through and tied a bow.

photo-2016-12-05-11-33-15-am

Have a sweet week, everyone! 

photo-2016-12-05-11-08-16-am

 

 

weekend quick make, with hex nuts!

Came across a book on mak­ing jew­el­ry with hard­ware store mate­r­i­al one day, was curi­ous about what peo­ple make with hex nuts, and spent an evening look­ing at all the dif­fer­ent hex nut tuto­ri­als. Espe­cial­ly love this bril­liant ear­ring idea from Cafe Craftea.

Final­ly went to Cana­di­an Tire on my lunch break one day and picked up the small­est hex nuts I could find.

I sim­ply glued the hex nut onto a 4mm ear­ring post with some E6000 and let it cure over night. Very sim­ple. Made a pair with­out glit­ter because I like the slight­ly steam­punk look :D

photo-2016-11-28-10-04-47-am

And for the glit­ter ear­rings, I glued the hex nuts onto the ear­ring posts like the plain ones, then I filled the hex nuts with a bit of glit­ter nail pol­ish with the help of a tooth­pick. Once the nail pol­ish is dried, I applied a lay­er of Mod Podge Dimen­sion­al Mag­ic to seal it, also with a toothpick.

photo-2016-11-29-7-46-59-am

Quite hap­py with how they turned out :D

Have a good week­end everyone!