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