My 2nd Attempt at a Zippered, Gathered Clutch

I decided last night to make another attempt at a zippered, gathered clutch. This time however, I decided to follow the instructions just a liiiiittle bit better. If you recall, the last time I tried making one, it turned out pretty alright, it just didn't have a pocket inside, I didn't do the lining right so you could see the seams on the inside and the strap wasn't quite right (it started fraying pretty bad):

Original post here : My First Zippered Pouch/Wristlet

It was however my first attempt at a gather and only my 2nd ever attempt at a zipper!! I believe it may also have been the first time I put a strap on anything too?

Anywho, last night I decided I should try making something that ISN'T perlers and something that I could maybe actually use! I again pulled up the awesome tutorial over at Noodlehead  and decided to follow the instructions for doing not only the lining properly, but also the band across the front.

For the 1st attempt I did, I folded under the edge of the strip and stitched that down, and THEN attached it to the pouch front. If I'd only read the instructions better, I would have seen that you're supposed to fold the strip over length-wise, stitch, turn inside out and then with the seam in the middle of the underside, you stitch the sides down. This process is much cleaner and much nicer!!

I also pulled out my instruction manual for my sewing machine for the first time ever that I can recall in the 10 or so years I've had it!! I had to look up how to change out to my zipper foot (first time using it and I kinda like it!) and also double-check how to change the tension for the gathering stitch. I don't think I ever realized that it should always be at 4 when I do normal stitching on projects and the process goes much smoother and quicker! D'oh!!

I am so excited I was able to stick some card pockets in here though! I aaaalmost didn't do them but decided at the last minute, why not!!

The only thing with this guy is I got so excited to get the fabric stitched down as close as I could to the zipper, that I kinda went too close to the zipper in a couple parts. I fixed what I could with doing a stitch on top of the fabric at the zipper's edge while pulling it as tight as I could and it helps, but it's still a little hard to not get the fabric stuck in a couple small spots.

All in all, I am really happy with this finished product and I can't wait to make some more!! What do you guys think?!

Craft ya laters!!

Feature #4 for an Artfire Collection!!

Wow!! I can't believe one of my pieces has been featured in ANOTHER Artfire Collection!!

The 3rd piece on the top row is mine!! To see it closer:

Blue, Green and Purple Lampwork Glass Bead Pendant Drop

It's one of my flameworked beads that I made into a drop using turquoise, green and lavender glass, with dots of blue goldstone as accents that the picture just can't do enough justice to!!

This is awesome you guys!! I get excited anytime my work is not only noticed, but appreciated and shared with like-minded artists!!

Craft ya laters!!

Tissue Paper Flowers

I have a friend that has asked Airon and myself to help with figuring out wedding decorations for her barn-themed wedding later this year and one of the things we thought of trying out when we were brainstorming the other day were tissue paper flowers!

If you try to google "How to make tissue paper flowers" you will get literally dozens, if not hundreds, of results! The how-tos and variations are EVERYWHERE!!

I decided to try out a few myself however, just very basic ones, to see how long it takes and variations of size and number of sheets of tissue paper. 
First one I did was 2 full sheets of tissue paper, but folded length-wise and cut so that I had 4 pieces of paper to use. I then cut the tips to sharp points and this is what it looked like:

Not bad,... but what about 6 pieces (3 sheets)?? She only had 1 more sheet of yellow, but the bride had 2 sheets of a tannish/pinkish glittery color! Awesome! I really wanted to see what that would look like together! This time however I cut the edges at a curve:

Another view. This one's my personal fave for the day!

Next up was to try a smaller version!! I went ahead and used 6 pieces, but each piece was about half the length as the previous 2 were. I cut the edges as an inverted "V" (to the ^ on the first one) but soon I realized this thing had wayyy too much tissue paper going on! I was having difficulties getting the layers of paper separated to spread out and actually tore the paper in some places where they seemed particularly stuck together... Not the best idea and I think I gave up on the 2nd half's last 2 pieces to split:

Last, I tried a small one again, only I used just 4 pieces. This worked out muuuch better and I did the ^ point again:

Here I just went ahead and took a group picture of all 4 pieces. I definitely like the 2nd attempt the best but we'll see what the bride decides to do!! Either way, I kinda like making tissue paper flowers!!

Craft ya laters!!

Perler Beads - Post 1

I titled this one "Post 1" because since around Halloween 2012, I have been let's say.... mildly addicted with making perler sprites and as I continue to keep making more, this is pretty much only a portion of what I'll eventually get around to doing! This is mostly going to be a picture slideshow, but these are most of the ones I've made since I picked some up in October last year and have added on since. There are a few more I haven't gotten to get good pictures (and even some of these aren't the best, I'm sorry!) but those will be in another post later:

Megaman 1

Sorry for the photoshop, I took 2 pictures for these, one that included the coin, the other included the pipe.  But here we have Mario, a pipe, fire flower, coin and I guess coin box?

Mario flower

These are some pieces I did for my boss at work. We have 2 of the guys from Despicable Me (movie), an owl and  Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street.

Mario's Hammer Bro

Sonic the Hedgehog 

Megaman 2

Earthworm Jim

Megaman 3 and Elec Man

Megaman 4.... a LOT of people like and asked for a Megaman!! lol

Cape Mario

Yoshi

Black Mage

Deadpool

Turbo (Wreck It Ralph)

Mario Spring

These are on the wall at my desk at work!! We have Birthday Bear, Bedtime Bear and Cheer Bear!

Donkey Kong Country Bananas

A quick note, I was working on the above bananas (from Donkey Kong Country videogame) and the metal tweezers I was using slipped out of my hand and fell......

I was able to fix it though (obviously) but below is how far I WAS before I dropped the tweezers.... My boyfriend kind of looked at me funny when he heard me whimpering until he saw what happened haha. Note to self, be wayyy more careful while holding tweezers and I REALLY hope I don't do that when I get to some of the bigger projects I have planned!!

I still have quite a few requests I need to get working on, but a lot of what I want to make requires colors I don't have, and neither does Joanns (local supply store that sells the beads by the color, no other local store does). I do believe that Airon, myself and another friend (whom we have awesomely gotten into doing perler beads) are going in on a bulk order from the manufacturer's website. 

I'll try to get pictures of the other pieces I've made that aren't in this post and show you guys what else I've got done, including a picture of our fridge at home as boyfriend painted it orange so it's a cool background, but there's also multiple scenes of magnets going on (see Mario and pipe and flower and coin ;) ).

If any of you are interested, you can check out/follow my Pinterest board: Perler Beads!

Craft ya laters!!

Monthly All Girls Craft Group - May 2013

Again, a little late on this since we had May's craft day on 5/18/13, but here we go!! (I will try to get better and more prompt about posting these, I swear!)

First, we had Anne working on a necklace and earring set for her mother:

Isn't it pretty?! 

Chessire spent some more time getting her scrapbooking done... I envy her, I have 2 drawers full of stuff I need to get in my scrapbook for HIGH SCHOOL that I STILL haven't gotten to!! One of these days.... Hopefully I can get that done before getting married and having kids to scrapbook for. 

Next up, Michelle was working a little on her silver polymer clay flowers for an upcoming wedding. These guys keep getting better and better!! 

Airon brought out the perler beads once again and had some fun... Guys, this is only 1 of the 2 boxes we've acquired of these things, and the 2nd box is more overflowing than this one! Also, we have about a dozen pegboards to use too!! They're still not enough! lol

Here she is working on some hearts...or is she?

Iron, iron, and iron some more!

Final design to be shown below...

Anne got in on some of the perler bead action and made these guys for her daughter!

This guy got ironed just enough to give him some pretty funk-a-licious hair, don'tcha think!?

After my first attempt of making a felted bunny here, I decided to make another one except I did it more like the original tutorial and did a more 3-D head. I left the ears for this craft day but after making 1, I decided to see what it would look like on my fella:

 You guys, I was *this* close to leaving him like this! But I was talking into making another ear....

As you can see, I was also talked into making a little cut-out in his new ear as if he's had some "special" times.

 My next project was to follow this tutorial and decided to try my hand at a felted rattle ball:

 This thing is actually pretty awesome... It's soft, it has a small rattle in there and is just pretty neat to begin with. We didn't have any bells or plastic eggs, but Anne was kind enough to supply me with a plastic ball from a toy she'd gotten her daughter and I put some beads in there. I then wrapped a ball around that with some yarn she also was kind enough to bum me (double-sided tape was the best we had or could find in getting the darn yarn to stick to the plastic ball but it worked fantastically!). Then I just used some yellow, blue and purple felt to make the outside! Took me about 10-15 minutes I believe to make this and so wasn't really that hard at all! I might just make some more!

 Then I decided to make a free-form piece that I could maybe turn into a wrist cuff or just an embellishment for a purse or something for later...

Final result at the bottom of this post...

 Anne saw this felting thing and decided to get in on the fun there too!! 

She made the CA-YOOTEST bunny!!!

Then Mr Bunny wanted to sit on Airon's heart-petal flower!!!

Here are all the final pieces (with the exception of my first 2-D bunny in there too) that got made this craft day!!

How's about that for a craft day spread!! We didn't get in progress pics but the butterflies were also made by Airon for her nieces and the felted ball bead (above the fish) was made by Michelle when she decided to test out the felting craft too! Bottom right is the final product of my possible future wrist cuff. I played around with using random pieces of felt as well as getting longer, bigger pieces and doing things like the twisted swirl on the left in blue, the folded over twist in purple at the middle top and the thinner loop of yellow on the far right.


I am sooo excited for where these craft days are going!! They have mostly been small, but hey, that means we can play around a little more with each others crafts and we still have lots of fun! I can't wait for next month!!

Craft ya laters!!

Feature #3 for an Artfire Collection!!

Hey guys, I was featured in another collection on ArtFire!!

On the far right, top row, that's mine!! I did some polymer clay pieces a while back where I was trying to use various shades of brown and pieces to resemble faux woodgrain I made to make some steampunk-like pieces with clock parts. This was also towards the beginning of my using resin, so I tested using resin to encase them. This definitely was the best piece, but I never got around to making it anything ready-to-use unless someone buys it just to glue it on a bezel or something.

Anywho, just wanted to let ya'll know! :D

Craft ya laters!