Think Crafts Blog - Craft Ideas and Projects - CreateForLess

Welcome Guest Blogger Anitra Cameron, from the Blog “Coffee Pot People”.

Do you ever get the urge to just make something? Maybe you don’t have a lot of time, but there’s that need. It was that sort of a day for me. When time is limited, earrings can feed the creative hunger I feel, and anyway, the beads and buttons were already out, because I’d finished a bracelet just before going to bed last night. Since I’d been working with green, I just dug around in the green button baggie until I found a pair of buttons I liked.

Then I turned my fifteen minute project into two that took considerably longer by deciding to do this tutorial. Well, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

You’ll need the usual array of beading tools–round-nose pliers, flat-nose pliers, and wire nips. And also:

Pick out your beads

Fine gauge wire (I used 24 gauge)
2 matching shank buttons
4 matching flat, square beads (other shapes would also work–they just need to be flat)
2 seed beads

I’m going to assume you know basic wire wrapping technique (just enough to make a wrapped loop) to keep this brief, and also because I know others have already put tutorials for that up, and mine wouldn’t be as good.

So start by cutting a length of the wire roughly a foot long. You want to give yourself enough to work with. Make a wrapped loop on one end, and the thread on a flat bead, a button, and another flat bead.

Threading on

I noticed when I was working with my beads that the hole ran at a bit of a slant. If yours are similarly drilled, put the off-center hole against the shank of the button. Also, check to see whether one side of each bead is prettier or more evenly colored, and be sure to put the nicest side facing out.

Twist

That’s a lot of words for something that really happens almost intuitively, so study the picture below and go with your instincts.

Almost Done

I think they turned out rather well!

To read more of Anitra’s blog, click here.

Welcome Guest Blogger Ricë Freeman-Zachery, writer and fabric artist and from the Blog “Notes from the Voodoo Café”.

I have the best job in the world: I get to sit around in my pajamas all day and call up artists and ask them nosy questions and then write about them. And then, in my spare time, I get to make fabric art. Every now and then–about once a year or so–I get to write a book–my newest one is “Living the Creative Life: Ideas and Inspiration from Working Artists”, and you can read more about it here. Art, writing–all without having to leave the house! What more could anyone want?

The Joys of Hand Stitching

I don’t know about y’all, but I have a ton of stuff I don’t use. Like, just for instance, four sewing machines, including the olive green Elna my mother used to make all my clothes when I was a kid. I have my trusty all-metal Kenmore from 1977. I have a heavy-duty Singer. And I have my shiny new Janome. Oh, I’m not saying I never use them: I use the Kenmore for doing all those things I would never dream of doing by hand, like mending seams. But that’s not what I think of when I think of “sewing.”

When I think of sewing, I remember learning to sew under the ironing board in my mother’s sewing room, playing with the scraps she handed down to me from her sewing table. My efforts weren’t pretty, but I learned to love the act of joining two pieces of fabric with a needle and thread.

I have never had any discernible domestic talents. None. Ask my husband. Although I took Home Ec in 7^th grade and made an apron and, at the end of the semester, a little dress, that was as far as garment construction went for me. I didn’t make any of my clothes in high school-my mother did that. What I did do, though, was to stitch on the clothes I had-lines of embroidery, stitched names, butterflies. Although I was too young to get the full benefit of growing up in the 60’s, I discovered Native Funk and Flash when it first came out in 1974, and, for me, that changed everything. The idea of altering your clothes to make them into personal talismanic garments seemed to be about the coolest thing anyone could do. I started then, with a bunch of work shirts and jeans, and I’ve never stopped.

What is it about hand stitching, about pulling thread through fabric? It’s not about fancy stitches-I know only three embroidery stitches:  I know the running stitch, which is like saying I know how to breathe; the split stitch, which is so sturdy it will still be holding on when the fabric around it has worn to threads; and the French knot, which I learned just to show off. For me, it’s not about doing rows of fancy little stitches. For me, it’s about altering something, making something new, with nothing but my hands and a rainbow of floss.

And here I’ll admit: it doesn’t even have to be embroidery floss. When I did make clothes from scratch, my favorite part was always the hem, and it was always a blind hem, done by hand. There’s something about creating a perfect, invisible hem that just made me happy. Yeah, I know that sounds pathetic, but what can I say? I love to stitch. I love to sew, and I love to mend, and I love to decorate-if I can do it by hand, I’m happy. One of my favorite things in all the world is to sit on the front porch and stitch. The only thing that keeps me from being my great-great grandmother is that I’m stitching words and appliquéing skulls rather than creating little daisies on the edge of a pinafore. It could be scary, but there’s something comforting about imagining myself flowing into old age with my needles and a bag of bright thread.

It’s calming. It’s meditative. It’s downright Zen.

And it’s the height of being hip: taking scraps of fabric, or clothes faded by years of wear, and keeping them alive  by working on them with your hands-that’s about as green as you’re going to get. Zen and hip? What more could you want?

Click here, for more posts from Ricë.

Twitter has become a place where artists and crafters are promoting their wares. Twitter.com is a social media-networking site where you post messages in 140 characters/spaces or less. You sign up like most websites creating a screen name. For example on Twitter I’m MariaNerius and you’ll find other creative screen names like GardensAndCrafts (tips on gardening and using your garden elements to craft), BookGal (help with Twitter and books), and JavaCupCake (she sells her crafts on Esty.com)

I enjoy spending a few minutes each day reading the updates from those I follow (you find people to follow through the Tweeter search engine or other search directories like Twellow.com) And I post an update (usually sharing a great find on CreateForLess.com or to let others know I’ve posted something new on my blog) to those that follow me.

It’s a cheap tool to promote yourself, your crafts, your business, your blog, or anything else that meets your fancy. You’ll build a following over time and you’ll have a way to send a message out to potential customers. Come on and join the fun! Give me a tweet today!

I made this card to celebrate tweeting!

Returning Guest Blogger, Diane Gilleland, from the Blog and Podcast “CraftyPod“.

I used to Drink out of my Bracelet.

Tiffany Threadgould wrote the greatest article for CRAFT 03 about turning plastic soda bottles into all kinds of useful things. I especially loved her Photo Cuff bracelets.

Ever since that article, I’ve been eyeing the plastic bottles in my recycle bin, and last night, lightning struck. Here’s my bottle-bracelet variation, using felt!

A 16-oz (500 ml) water bottle makes a particularly good bracelet, fitting my wrist comfortably with a little room to spare. Besides, many water bottles have nifty horizontal ridges around their middles, which make for perfect cutting guidelines.

You can use a utility knife or even a sharp kitchen knife to poke through the side of your bottle. (Be very careful with this! Make sure the bottle is on a stable surface, and anchor it so it want roll or jump.)

Using the slit you’ve just made as your starting point, cut all the way around the bottle, using one of those ridges as your guide. Scissors will work fine for this - use the big, tough ones you keep around for the heftier cutting jobs.

Now, make a perpendicular cut (see the blue arrow above). Then choose another ridge to cut along - based on how wide you want your finished cuff to be. Cut around the bottle again.

Great! You now have a rough bracelet. You’ll want to trim about 1/4″ to 1/2″ off of each end, so there’s a little gap in the middle. You’ll also want to round off the ends. I used a circle template and traced it with a Sharpie, but you can also trim the ends free-hand.

Now, cut two strips of felt. They should be a little longer than your plastic form, and about 1/4″ wider. Decide at this point how you want to decorate your bracelet. There are lots of possibilities here - you can do felt applique, or bead embroidery, or regular embroidery, or silkscreen, or stencils . . . .

Do all your embellishment on one of the felt pieces. I recommend keeping about 1/2″ of felt at each end of this strip unadorned, because you may want to trim it off later. (I didn’t do that here, and it came back to bite me . . . .)

Now, put your two pieces of felt together, right sides out. Begin joining them with a whipstitch along one of the long edges. Stop stitching when you reach the rounded end. (By the way, futuregirl has the best tutorial ever on how to stitch felt.)

Insert your plastic form into the felt, and adjust the felt as necessary so it lies smoothly against the plastic. Wiggle the plastic form a bit so that you have a roughly equal amount of felt at each of the rounded ends of the bracelet. Now, you might need to trim a little felt away from the ends, so that you have about 1/8″ sticking out beyond the plastic form.

After that, continue your whip-stitching until you’ve stitched the felt together completely.

And that’s it! These bracelets are lightweight and comfortable to wear, and hold their shape beautifully.

Be sure to check out Tiffany’s website for lots more great reclaimed-material projects, including a soda bottle candy dish.

To read more of CraftyPod, Visit her website.

Returning Guest Blogger, Diane Gilleland from the Blog and Podcast “CraftyPod“.

How to Make a Wallet Shrine

Our Church of Craft project this month was Shrine Wallets. These are based on Mexican Shrine Wallets, which are small, tri-fold pocket shrines. Unfolded, they reveal pictures of saints, a miniature rosary, and a printed prayer folded up into a pocket. There’s a photo of one here. My version is a more generalized pocket shrine, which can commemorate anything you like. I love the idea of carrying one around in your bag as a reminder of your favorite people, places, or things.

It all begins with two pieces of felt, cut to the same size. Mine are 3.5″ tall by 5.5″ long, but you can really make them any size you like.

You’ll want to mark the center of each piece. I do this by folding each one in half, and placing a couple of pins along the fold. These pins help keep you from placing any embellishments over the fold - because that could become a problem later on.

. . . Did someone say “embellishments?” Now’s the time for those. It’s so much easier to decorate your felt pieces before you assemble them into a shrine. So you can really go to town here - embroidery is great, ric rac is great, beads and sequins and felt applique. Here are some samples I have in progress:

(Learn to make these ric rac flowers at Primrose Design. I love them!) 

You can add photographs, too! I glued this one down to the camel-colored piece with good old Aleene’s Tacky Glue, and then glued the light-blue frame over it. (I did the couching on the light blue before I glued it down.) Those are my great-grandparents - aren’t they cute?

And you can add stuff like little pockets, and tags, and charms. You’ll quickly become addicted to this part.

Once you’ve torn yourself away from embellishing, it’s time to assemble your shrine. Put the two pieces together, right sides facing out. Join them along three sides with a whip stitch. But leave the top open.

Now, use those pins you placed to mark the center as a guide, and run a little running stitch down the center to help you fold your shrine. You now have two openings in the top of your shrine. You’ll want to insert a piece of cardstock into each one, to give your shrine some body. (The cardstock can be any old thing - an old greeting card, some junk mail, etc.) 

Just cut the cardstock so that it fits inside the two panels of your shrine. The pieces should be short enough to leave you some room to stitch up the top. If you want to be extra shriney, you could also insert something secret into the inside of your shrine - like a picture, or a handwritten note. That would be really cool.

Okay, so now you can stitch the top closed. And if you like, you can add some ribbon ties or a button-and-loop to hold your shrine closed. 

If you want to make a three-fold shrine, you can start with felt pieces that are a little longer - mine are 6.5″ long by 3.5″ tall. And the process is pretty much the same.

The only crucial thing to remember with a three-panel shrine is that the panel that will fold to the inside of the shrine should be a little narrower than the other two panels. (In other words, all three panels shouldn’t be the same width. If you made it that way, it wouldn’t fold up nicely.)

When you’re looking at the inside part of your shrine, this narrower panel will be the one on the right-hand side.

When you’re looking at the outside part of your shrine, this narrower panel will be the one on the left-hand side.

To read more of Diane’s posts, visit her website “CraftyPod“.

I was catching up with my friend Linda Peterson the other day… well, I was reading her blog and spotted this:

BuyHandmade.org

Thus I do believe in returning the favor and whenever possible I buy from other professional crafters or handmade businesses.  So thanks Linda for reminding me that it’s important for us to buy handmade!

Welcome Gust Blogger, Barbara Matthessen, for Earth Safe Finishes.

Belt Bracelets

Recycle thrift store or old belts into fun and funky bracelets.  You can make 3, 4 or even 5 bracelets from a single belt and give them all different personalities with earth friendly paints, chains and beads.  Why not make a batch of these for gifts or to coordinate with every outfit you own?

Materials:

Leather or leather like belt

Opaque Shimmers from Earth Safe Finishes in your choice of colors 

Toggle or hook clasp

1″ chain or 22 GA wire to match clasp

Jump Rings

Strong scissors or leather shears

Leather/belt hole punch

Paint brushes, liner for details

Jewelry making tools, pliers and wire cutters

Optional extras:

Additional chain

Beads

Metal tags

Kevlar thread or wire to attach the above

Instructions:

1. Cut your belt 1″-1 ½” shorter than your normal bracelet size depending on how loose or tight you like to wear them.  (Don’t worry about the existing belt holes you can either ignore them or bead through them later.)  Trim corners round, on a diagonal or leave straight.

2. Punch holes on both ends about 1/8″ inch.

3. Paint your belt using Shimmers with your choice of colors.  Some are a random splash of colors, some use the existing embossed pattern and some are freeform patterns. You may also choose to use a stencil or rubber stamp to create your image.  Allow the paint to dry.

4. Attach your closure with jump rings or a combination of chain, jump rings or wire. If you are using a toggle make sure to add in a small chain on the bar end to make it easier to attach the bracelet.

5. Embellish more if you like! Stitch on beads, charms, buttons or trinkets using Kevlar thread.  Knot on the back then dot each knot with a dab of glue when you are done.

More Fun: Wire on tags by using a flat bead with a head pin run through it on the underside.  Wrap the ends of the head pins around holes in the tag, secure with more wraps then trim the ends. Add sections of chain by attaching chain ends to jump rings on each end. There are a million and one ways to make this bracelet so try it out today!

Learn more about Earth Safe Finishes HERE.