Monday, March 19, 2012

Bunting Wrapping Idea

My MIL is coming to visit next weekend and to save on postage in May for Mother's Day, I have her pressie all ready to give her.


I am a big fan of bunting at the moment and this was the best I could come up with in 5 minutes :)


Happy crafting!

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Pillow Case Box

I ditched school work today in favour of some crafting :)

Here is my creation; A fabric box made using an old pillow case and some cardboard!


I started with a plain white pillow case from the thrift store. We live in a tourist town, so lots of plain white hotel linens end up at the thrift store. Woo-hoo!


I trimmed off the band at the open end of the pillow case and later used it as a handle on the box.


I then sat the pillow case on the counter to create a flat base. I rolled down the top part so that I could see the corners. It's exactly how I made the tiny fabric box in this post.


I then marked straight lines across the corners...


Difficult to see the pencil marks, but they're there!


Then I sewed along the pencil lines.


The triangular flaps were long enough to sew together, so I did :)


Here you can see the box standing up, but it has no support.


Inside of the box...


(note: this is a great time to attach a handle to the box. The band I cut off at the beginning worked well - but I forgot to take photos of this step! I also should have ironed it, but didn't realize how crinkled the finished box would look.)

To give it some support, I used some cardboard I had lying around.


I made a box shape using the cardboard...

 

... Then stretched the pillow case around it...


... Then shoved the base to the bottom and hid all the rough edges.


I glued the excess pillow case (the raw edge from taking off the band) back up inside the box. I then glued the base of the box around the bottom edge to keep everything in place.


Here it is looking tidy-ish:


Ta-da!


The bottom of the box:


Inside the box:


I saw some similar boxes at Home Hardware for $7 each, but this one took me 25 minutes to make and cost me $1.50.

And because it is plain white, it's a blank canvas to decorate. Flowers, accent fabrics, labels... the possibilities are endless. How would you decorate it?

Happy crafting!

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Shamrock Accessories

Apologies for the long delay between posts - I am officially back at school, doing my Master of Education degree (part-time and externally) but still working full time. All spare "crafting" time has simply disappeared from my schedule... a small compromise for a better education, I suppose.

But, given that I still work with children in a creative environment, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to do something for St Patrick's Day.

Here are my 5-minute Shamrock Accessories :)


I used:
Green string
A tiny scrap of fabric
A safety pin
A headband
My glue gun


I wrapped the yarn around two fingers to form two diagonally opposite leaves then tied them in the middle.
I repeated the same to create the other two leaves and bound them to the other leaves.
The loose ends were tied together.
I wish I had photos to demonstrate, but my fingers were (literally) tied up.


I used hot glue to attach a safety pin to the back and covered it with a tiny scrap of fabric so the glue had something to attach to.

For the headband, I just tied the loose ends around the band. No glue necessary.


And there you have my St Paddy's Day accessories. I wore the headband and attached the pin to my green sweater. It took me a total of 5 minutes and fully intend to use them again next year :)



Happy crafting!