an elephant

I love elephants! They are by far my favourite animal. A couple of years ago, while she was visiting, my grandma bought me a card with this photo on it, and I love the card! (she didn’t even know that they were my fave!!)

I love elephants.

I hate the door to our bedroom. It has a really stupid latch on it – don’t get me wrong, I like our house, but this latch is annoying:

(That’s not actually our door, btw)

It doesn’t properly hold the door shut – so in the winter, when it’s cold and you want the door to be closed, it kind of rattles and sometimes even pops open – a bit scary when you’ve just been watching an episode of something murder-y… And in the summer, when you want it open, it swings and creaks and sometimes closes and opens itself. Creepy!

So the hubby suggested that, with my ‘vast’ sewing knowledge, I make a door stop. And I did. I wanted one that was pretty and that I didn’t mind constandly sitting on the floor, so I made an elephant. I used a stuffed animal pattern as a starting point, which unfortunately means that my elephant is constantly doing the splits. But that’s okay. Its cute. And it has a heart on it’s butt… just because!

So there you go – the results of my hating the door and loving elephants!

And, I’ve learned a thing or two, so the next one would look even better!

-Jamie

this could be the laziest thing you’ve heard of…

Okay, so I was sewing the other morning and my hair was bothering me. It’s getting really long and I’m between ideas about what to do with it. It was really hot out and long hair is not nice in the heat.

There are two things that one can do in this situation, one reasonable and one ridiculous:

1. Reasonable – you could walk down one flight of stairs to the bedroom and grab a hair elastic.
2. Ridiculous – this:

Yup, instead of walking 20 feet, I took ten minutes, 5 inches of elastic and 18 inches of fabric and sewed a scrunchie.

And let me tell you, it made me feel old! See, scrunchies are back in, it seems. I remember when I was a kid and all I wanted was the best scrunchies – I can still tell you that my favourite one was an off white, waffle fabric scrunchie. I loved it.

I don’t feel like I’m old enough to have trends coming around again for another time. But I guess if I’m really honest, it’s not the first time!

-Jamie

mini-pinboards

I saw this craft on pinterest ages ago and decided to have a go at it…

Mini-pinboards:

It started with some cute fabric (you’ll be seeing more of it!) and a pack of three Ikea pot stands. Nice and cheap!  And look at how cute the fabric is:

 

 

I cut out three fabric circles with diameters about 10 cm wider than the cork itself, then carefully stretched and hot glue gunned the fabric all the way around. It took a bit of doing to make it look really nice, but I think I succeeded.

Here is the final version, although still at this point just laid out on my coffee table. Cute, eh? I’m really pleased with how they turned out and can’t wait to get them up on the wall.

And with a few little things pinned to them – you get the idea!

 

Isn’t it fantastic what you can do with a few little scraps of fabric?

-Jamie

black & white necklace

 I’ve had these beads around forever. I bought them to make a necklace, then never really got around to making it. So when I started looking at my crafting stuff again, I thought I should do something with the beads. I’m pretty happy with the results, now I just need to remember to put it on sometimes! You wouldn’t know it from the way I dress everyday, but I have great jewellery – much of which I’ve actually made. It’s the thinking about what matches my outfit and then actually remembering to grab it in the morning. Maybe someday I’ll get better at caring about what I wear on a day-to-day basis! For now, I’ll just try to remember to get up on time!

-Jamie

card purse

Do you have as many loyalty and rewards cards as I do? They annoy me like crazy, because I don’t actually need them most of the time – usually I just need a payment card. So I like to keep the unimportant cards separate. A while ago, I made a really cute card purse from a tutorial online, but because of the way the slots were designed, the cards were CONSTANTLY falling out. Annoying!

So I decided to make a different type of purse. Same material again – I love it!

I have since replaced the metal snap with a cute plastic pink one.

And it holds the cards in! Very happy!

-Jamie

 

sewing machine pincushion

I love this fabric:

I originally bought it when I wanted to make bunting for my niece and had NO idea how much I needed. So I bought a metre of each. When I ended up using 8 inches or so, that left me with lots of great fabric for other crafty bits. And now I’ve fallen in love with the fabric and want more!! Unfortunately, the fabric store is a ways away and I’ll have to wait until I go again. And probably until I’ve used up some of the rest of my huge stack of fabric!

I saw a couple of great sewing machine pincushions on pinterest, and I thought they were a great idea!

  

I started by measuring the distance between the rubber feet on my machine deciding on the depth. Then I sewed the yellow edging fabric and the ribbon on, and went most of the way around the edge.

I thought carefully about what to stuff the cushion with, but decided in the end to go with simple batting that I had lying around, because I only intend to use it as a temporary home for pins. Then I sewed the edge up and voila! A lovely little pincushion!

Easy, quick and useful.

-Jamie

gift tags

Sorry for the hiatus – we’ve been poorly in our house, so I’ve been ignoring the crafting!

This is a craft that I’ve done for the last few years. Not exactly the same, but similar. I had the idea a few years ago when I had some random vellum lying around. I got a gold paint pen and went with it. The back needed some colour, and black seemed to work well.

I started with vellum, black paper, spray glue, gold pens, a punch and some coloured raffia.

The easiest way to do the design is random swirls. I always start with the thicker gold pen, then move on to the thinner one. As you can see from the pics, my pens are looking a little worse for the wear.

After that, I spray glued the vellum onto some black paper (not card stock – my punch could hardly handle this). The punch was so heavy to use that I had to get the hubby to help me. Unfortunately, his added strength only caused the table to crack.  OOPS! Good thing it’s only a cheapy Ikea table.

Anyway   , I punched a hole in each and strung the raffia through. Easy!

When I write on them, I must remember to write in gel pen, not the paint pens – too thick!

So there you go – quick gift tags! I’ll have to come up with a new and different idea for next year.

And by the way, the advent calendar is done (only a few days late) – just waiting for the hubby to put it up so I can take pics!

-Jamie

quickie christmas wreath

So despite the fact that my husband says it’s too early to put the decorations up, I just finished a quick project – a Christmas Wreath.  I had bought all of the supplies after Christmas last year (with the exception of the pine cones), and just needed to put them together.

It really was a quick project – only took me about an hour, including time to take pictures.

I started by laying the baubles (Christmas balls for you North Americans) along the wreath, thinking about which would look good grouped and where I wanted some separate. I used the hot glue gun to attach these, making sure to leave some space between them.

Then I laid out some of the nicer pine cones (the ones I bought weren’t great). I glued these on as well, making sure I kept the broken bits down.

Finally, I twisted the mini lights around, securing them with a thread or two to keep them on. It was actually pretty hard to make sure the lights were facing out.

I added a bow at the end, although I’m not sure if I like the bow in the end. I tied it in two pieces, one for the loops of the bow and tails, and the other going around the middle. I glued it on, and then glued the tail in a couple of places to make it lay how I wanted it too.  Who knows, though. The bow may just come off.

Anyway, that’s it. A quick Christmas wreath.  Now I just have to figure out how to hang it.  And how to convince the husband that it’s time to put it up!

-Jamie