Yesterday my pincushion swap parcel arrived, and luckily the one I sent to Gemma arrived with her too so I can show you both!

I’m still on this craft neutral bent, so upcycling and recycling was the name of the game. The pincushion base is a (thoroughly cleaned!) little catfood tin which I covered with some giftwrap and coated in a layer of PVA glue. The cushion part is a pair of Nairn’s old jeans which had burst at the leg and which were destined for the bin until they were repurposed.

The pins were made by supergluing some tiny beads which came from a broken necklace of Erica’s. I made a matching needlebook which is actually the item I’m probably most proud of! I’ve had this binding for a while but been too scared to use it because it was so ridiculously gorgeous. I used some more of Nairn’s denims to create the needlebook, some felt for the inside pages and some felt scraps to appliqué the front. I made 12 little pins with the beaded tops and added in a few sewing needles and buttons for Gemma.

The outside, all folded up

The inside

For me, swaps are all about what I can make. I’m not sure why because every swap I’ve participated in has been really overwhelmingly gorgeous but I tend not to have great expectations of them, so when Gemma’s parcel arrived yesterday I nearly cried.

Look how cute this tortoise is! He’s filled with lavender too and smells absolutely gorgeous.

Look at his wee face!

As if that wasn’t cute enough, Gemma also spoiled me rotten with supplies:

A cute box filled with buttons:

And chocolate! This is quite the trompe-l’œil because there’s actually FOUR fingers of fudge and a large Dairy Milk caramel bar in this picture:

So needless to say I was absolutely thrilled with my swap, as were the kids with their fudge bars! Thanks ever so much to Gemma for being a fabulous swap partner and additional thanks to Claire for organising

Gemma has blogged the swap too – go, read!

Posted under Uncategorized

There is nothing worse for me than the last dregs of a project. The sewing in ends when knitting, the trimming and hiding of loose threads in sewing. The TIDYING UP part of any crafting – by the time I get to that stage, I’m just over it. I have very few semi-completed projects because I really hate having things left unfinished and I also have a mad drive once I’ve started something – I must get this finished ASAP!

This is why I’m quite surprised at my latest endeavour. You may have noticed that I’m on a bit of a knitting bent right now and after finishing up a bookmark earlier in the week I decided to try something a little more experimental.

That there is yarn made from plastic bags (also known by the hideously cutesy term “plarn”), a process which I promise to document with a tutorial this week sometime. I don’t know what it’s going to be yet but I’m rather enjoying the novelty of doing something a bit wacky and out there. The orange at the bottom is Sainsbury’s carrier bags and the green at the top is the wrapper from a pack of pampers. To be honest the pampers pack didn’t work so well, it’s very thick and not stretchy so it was difficult to manipulate and has become a far heavier fabric than the orange bags, but this is a learning curve and this knowledge in itself is handy to know.

So tell me – have you crafted with any supplies that are not exactly the norm? And do you enjoy the process of crafting more or the end result?

A reminder too that the sign-ups for the Little and Large swap are still open – it would be great to have some more participants!

Posted under knitting

As previously posted here the craft challenge closed over a week ago and I haven’t yet had a chance to post the entries here. Apologies for that! As always, click on the photographs to view the larger versions (most of which have notes from the entrants) or visit the Flickr group.

So! Entry #1 is from Alex, OH of Kerry of PennyDog fame. He found old beehives by the roadside and repurposed them into a functioning beehive. Before:

And after:

Entry #2 is from Ali at Craft Matters. She utilised one of her Dad’s old ties to make herself a business card wallet and a needle book as a birthday present for her sister. Before:

After (needle book first, business card wallet second and third):

Entry #3 is from Jane, who inspired this contest in the first place! She created a shelf from an old drawer!

Entry #4 is from Cheryl who overhauled an old chair and made a cushion to go with it using her daughter’s outgrown dressing gown! Chair before and after:

Cushion before and after:

Entry #5 is from Cheryl’s seven year old daughter Sophie, who wanted to join in the challenge and made this funky rabbit by painting an old water bottle. Ingenius!

Finally, entry #6 is from me. I used an old dress of Erica’s that was frayed and damaged to make a sunhat and booties for Greer. Dress before:

And after:

Voting will remain open for one week from today and will close on Monday 15th June 2009 at 12noon. Voting is now closed, thanks for looking! See here for the result.

Leave your vote in the comments and the winner will be announced next week. Good luck everyone!

Posted under craft challenges

…to a crafty duel!

I’m having a kind of weird day, Nairn’s been unwell this morning but Bob’s off work so I’m able to relax a little. I’m using this time while Findlay & Erica watch cartoons and Nairn sleeps to try and catch up on my bloglines subscriptions because I have over 2000 unread entries to try and look at! I think maybe I need to trim my reading list a little.

Anyway! Today I happened to read the entries leading up to this entry from Jane at Out of the Crayon Box. What a transformation from a piece of furniture that was going to get sent to landfill! It made me think about how much thrifty crafting I see going on and how special it is to create something new from something old or destroyed. So here’s my idea: I challenge you to find an old obsolete object – whether that’s something in your home, something that you’ve found or something you can acquire by completely legal means – and turn it into something new.

Some rules are in order I think.
1) Your starting object must not cost you any money. So no charity shopping it up. I am watching.
2) You can spend no more than GBP£10 or the equivalent (USD$15, CAD£17, AUD$20, €11) on supplies to alter your starting object
3) A flickr group will be created for this project and all completed projects must be submitted by 9pm on Friday May 29th 2009.
4) The winner will be selected by vote which will be hosted here. Voting will open at 9.30pm on Friday May 29th 2009 and will close on Friday June 5th 2009.
5) Any soliciting of votes will mean a penalty against the entry with possible disqualification. Play nicely, please.

If you’re interested in joining in, leave a comment with the email address you’d like a flickr group invitation sent to.

Posted under craft challenges

The amount of art & craft stuff we have is tremendous, and my younger son is finally getting to a stage where he wants to draw and paint so it’s been great having his handiwork on display around the house. I noticed recently how many scrap ends, broken lumps and half chewed crayons we had lying around so over the last week while Bob and I gutted the kids rooms I saved all the bits of crayon.

I finally had half an hour free the other night, so out came all the collection and I added into it a few packs of the free crayons you get from restaurants. We ended up with a fairly large selection! We cut them up into smaller chunks for ease.

Pile them up into a mini muffin tin. Bear in mind they’re going to melt.

Pop the tray in the oven – I put ours in at gas mark 4 (180C/350F) and it took 5-6 minutes for all the crayons to melt enough.

When you take the tray out, all the colours will have blended but won’t have mixed to create a uniform khaki brown with luck!

Leave the tray to cool overnight, and pop them out in the morning. Great for little hands that are just developing their manual dexterity!

In other news, our eldest dressed as a headless man complete with papier mache decapitated head for Hallowe’en. Unfortunately we didn’t take any photos of the process, but here’s the end product! Excuse the homemade artwork and scrawlings on the door behind him!

Posted under for the kids, with the kids