Knitted Lacy Cropped Wrap-Around

I found this lacy pattern in a book of designs by Victor Herbert that I found in a charity shop for $1. He calls the pattern "Shells and Fans". I used the pattern to create a very different style of top from what he had made, and in a very different kind of yarn but I think it turned out great, and am excited to work on many more lacy projects.

Paint Brush Holders

I've finally gotten around to sorting out our spare room, turning into my craft/sewing/painting room. I needed a place to put all my paint brushes so I decided to dress up some old glasses with yarn. I used a wine flute and a beer glass, so they would hold different lengths of brushes nicely. It's pretty easy and I think it looks great. All you have to do is wind the yarn around the glass, gluing as you go.

Paper Cherry Blossoms

 This is another craft that requires a bunch of patience but I think it really paid off. I think cherry blossoms are just so beautiful and have that sort of oriental zen factor that gives them simplicity even though they're so detailed and dainty.

Click here to see the tutorial I used to make the flowers. I used plain printing paper that I swirled pink watercolour paint onto, this way none of my blossoms are quite the same as one another.

Before I began this craft I had found this square black vase for cheap and it gave me the inspiration to put something contrasting into it, I decided on the pretty intricacy of cherry blossoms. I was lucky in finding some branches I thought were perfect that were dead on a tree in my backyard. I tied them together (with yarn, my handy tool that I use for everything) so they sat just how I wanted them to and slid them into the vase. I stuffed around them with newspaper to hide my very messy blue yarn tying.

With them arranged I glued my flowers on, with some general craft glue. I guess you can arrange the flowers on the branches however cherry blossom look in your head, but I had an idea that they look great grouped together and towards the ends of the branches.

The finished product. I feel a little bit proud each time I walk past it.

Christmas Crafts

Christmas is now nearly a month gone, but maybe because I only just took my tree down it feels like not long ago.

Anywho, before Christmas I became obsessed with Christmas crafts and determined that all the ornaments on my tree would be hand made by me.
I'd like to share a few.

1. Origami Snowflakes

These snowflakes are the type of origami a person can feel proud to have made. I found the pattern here. It helps if you've had a little experience with origami, but you should be fine. I used plain printing paper for the white snowflake and silver wrapping paper for the silver one. I've also seen it done with a slightly transparent paper which looked great.

2. Paper Rose Ball Ornaments

I don't recall the exact site I found the instructions for the paper roses, but they're all over the internet. Here is one. I made mine from magazine pages so the ornament was pretty as well as environmentally friendly. It took me a little while to get the hang of the rolling, I guess everyone has their own technique. I then just glued them into a ball, including a piece of thread doubled over between two of the roses so the ornament could be hung. Each ball takes a fair few roses to complete, but once I got into the "craft zone" (my special crafting mind-space) it seemed to run smoothly.

3. Paper Flower Ball Ornaments

These paper flower balls are really sturdy and I think they're really impressive, but they're also very time consuming. Each petal must be made separately, then glued together, then the flowers glued together (again with a thread glued in for hanging purposes). Here is a link to instructions, they put some extra beads on theirs, but I prefer to leave them entirely paper : click here.

4. Rolled Paper Christmas Tree

I hadn't intended to make this ornament (I only made one), but I had all these left over strips of paper from cutting out the squares for the Paper Flower Ball petals, so I did make it. This one requires extra patience and dexterity, but it's simple. Simply roll your strip around some thread and then around itself, lowering it as you go so it is always approximately 1mm below where it had passed the last round. Glue as you go. When the strip runs out, replace it with a new strip. I used a different coloured strip each time, but I can imagine it could look lovely as one colour as well. Stop when it's big enough or you're fed up :) 

5. Mini Boxes

I made these boxes very small (about 10mm wide and 5mm high) but I'm sure if you have a larger Christmas tree it could handle having larger boxes. The larger the boxes, the less fiddly they will be to make. Here is the box tutorial. Make one slightly smaller than the other and glue the thread into the larger box, then slide in the smaller. Glue the smaller box in if the fit is not tight.

Hope that gets you inspired. Maybe you could start making some Christmas crafts now and by the end of the year you'll have a full arsenal. Actually, that sounds like a good plan...

The Reason

I've recently discovered the joy of craftgawker.com and have been thinking that if other people's projects interest me so much, those people might also be interested in mine. I also am hoping that through doing this my crafts will have some meaning to more than just me and my nearest and dearest.

So this is my blog. I hope whoever should stumble across this will enjoy it.