Craft Stew

       (click here  for larger image)

I’ve been thinking about charting this pillow design for a couple of weeks. Finally, tonight, I decided to sit down and do it. I hope you enjoy it.

Because the chart lines are hard to see, I’ll tell you the dimensions. The large red squares are 16×16 holes.  All of the small squares are 8×8 holes.  The yellow and red rectangles are 8×16 holes.

As far as the size of the finished pillow, it depends on the number of holes per inch of the canvas you use. To get the pillow dimensions you want, you may have to double the pattern.

Please leave me a message if you have any questions and I will try to answer them the best I can.

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                (click here  for full size pattern)

Lately, everywhere I look, I’ve been seeing wonderful sewing patterns for banners and bunting. Here is my needlepoint version of that great idea.

The finished needlepoint will be about 1 1/2 tall and can be used for gift tags, embellishing clothing, making jewelry, creating greeting cards or just about anything else your imagination can dream up.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be charting an alphabet to be used with the banner pattern.

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I usually only craft to supply a need, and these fruit-themed wall posters are no exception. I decided to make some wall decorations for an upcoming celebration and I wanted posters that were cheap, attractive, and most of all, quick to make. I didn’t want to put a lot of effort into the project.

I let ideas stew around my mind all day, and these multi-colored wall hangings are what I finally came up with. They fit all my criteria. They’re pretty, they cost less than one dollar per poster, and each took less than ten minutes to make.

How To Make Inexpensive Posters

1. Select two sheets of paper. One sheet should be a 12×12 scrapbook paper with a pattern. The other paper should be a standard 8 1/2 x11 sheet, in a color that compliments the scrapbook paper.

2. Choose clipart. I picked black and white line drawings from the site,  Clipart, Etc.  Line drawings are a lot cheaper to print than color art.

3. Using a free graphics program, size your art so that it prints onto one page. Check print preview to make sure your clipart fits the page correctly. 

4. Print out your clip art on the 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper. Be sure to use the highest quality setting your printer offers.

5. Size your 8 1/2 x 11 page so that it will look attractive when glued onto the scrapbook paper. To do this, measure and draw two lines. The first line should be 1-inch from the top of your printed page.  The second line should be 1-inch from the bottom of your printed sheet. Remove the two 1-inch sections.

6. Carefully center and glue the printed page onto the scrapbook paper.

That’s it! Once you choose your clipart this project should take only a few minutes to complete. I made seven posters in less than an hour and I wasn’t working overly fast.

I’ve been seeing a lot of embroidered greeting cards around the blogosphere over the last couple of months, and today I decided to try my hand at making my own.

It actually came out quite nice (the picture really does not do it justice!).

Here’s what I did:

First I located an easy embroidery pattern.  Because I wanted to make a baby card, I picked out this elephant. It’s got enough detail to be interesting, but not so much detail as to be overwhelming.

I printed the elephant out and cut off most of the excess paper.

Then, I positioned the elephant over the center of the card and taped it down. I pressed the tape against my arm a couple of times first, to make sure it would be easy to remove.

After that, I used a needle to carefully prick holes where I wanted to stitch. Each hole is about 1/4 inch apart, except in detailed areas. In detailed areas, the holes are about 1/6 inch apart.

Finally, using three strands of floss, I embroidered the entire card.

Here is a close-up.

The entire project took less than an hour.

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A couple of weeks ago, I needed an empty box for a game I made up. Since I couldn’t find any that was the correct size, I decided to make my own from a scrap box sitting around the house.

Here’s how:

1) I located a box that was the correct length and width, but too tall.

2) I reinforced the bottom of the box with clear, heavy duty, packing tape.

3) I marked off the height that I wanted the box to stand, and cut off the rest of the box at that point.

4) I used packing tape to re-attach the flaps at the correct height, and reinforced the flaps with tape to the inside of the box.

5) I glued several slices of scrapbook paper to the outside of the box in order to make it attractive.

6) I attached a brad to one flap and a short piece of plastic string to the other. When the string is wound around the brad, the box flaps stay closed.

The final step will be to print out a label for the box and glue it in place.

The entire project took about an hour, but I’m very pleased with the results. I think it was time well spent.

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